Shifting Public Opinion and Biden's Review

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the declassified club The rest is classified. com Where does the CIA think? COVID nineteen virus came from Could it have been intentionally leaked as an act of biological warfare. Well, welcome to the restest is Classified. I'm Gordon Carrera. and I'm DavidcLlasky And David, we're starting a two part series on the CIA and the wider U. S. intelligence commommunities's effort to determine origin of the COVID pandemic. Now this is a story which really did affect the world And we're going to take a particularly Rest is classified lens on it, aren't we? to try and look at this really explosive and politically contentious question, which is where did the virus come from killed millions and crippled the world economy. This episode is brought to you by HP. In intelligence work, it's rarely the obvious problem that causes failure. 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I think it is It's a story about how spy agencies look at really tricky intelligence questions of a scientific nature and Frankly, Spoiler alert a story about the limits that intelligence agencies have when they look at those kinds of topics? And you know, it's also a story Gordon, I think about what happens when Sooks just cannot get to the bottom. of a really important topic. What happens when there is so much uncertainty over a major intelligence question that the assessments donon't satisfy anybody And when that question the topic becomes intensely politicized as it did in this case. And when you have political pressures, diplomatic pressures, global pressures And pressures from the White House, I think on the intelligence community about that answer because frankly, so much was at stake with this question in terms of where it came from You know, who was to blame? Was there someone to blame? Was there a human hand involved in this or was it purely natural? I mean so much at stake, so much pressure and so much uncertainty really created a really heavady mix, which I think is fascinating for us to look at as the rest is classified to understand, you know, the pressures on intelligence communities and assessments, when you get something like that happened We should say up frront this series is not not going to be an examination of the total domestic political debate or the ins and outs of the really detailed science around these questions, even though we know Gordon Carrea loves himself, a Rushia' cllassified science explainer There'll be a bit of that There be a bit of that, but we're not going to go into the to the sort of, you know, the all out political brawl that this turned into in the states we're not going to go down to the sort of cellular level of the science. but we are going to show how intelligence agencies grappled with this question and how I mean also this is another fascinating dynamic How when intelligence agencies get embroiled in a politically charged topic, they are then themselves accused being of being political animals. So David, I guess, I mean, I feel like probably like a lot of people, I'm blocked out how it all began and how it started. I mean, there's this kind of odd in my memory where you know of a period of months and even years, which I maybe like lots of people don't think about, but we do need to go back there And the first signs really came out in November december twenty nineteen, not so much publicly but in Wuhan, in China in Hubei provroince, when there was a cluster of mysterious illnesses of an unknown cause And that was the moment when something started. and actually that origin point will be quite important, won't it to the intelligence investigation and trying to understand where it came from and who knew what when But that was where it seems to have first originated period around november twenty nineteen. Many of the earliest known patients did have connections to this Guanan seefood wholesale market, which is a site that also sold live animals. So there's there's an interesting cluster of cases in Wuhan, but also around this market, which we'll come back to in a moment. But on deecember thirty first of twenty nineteen, China formally notifies the World Health Organization of that cluster And in the first week of January, Chinese scientists have identified the which is a novel coronavirus. Now. This is a type of virus which causes diseases in mammals and birds. COVID nineteen is the disease that the virus causes The virus itself is SARS CoD two and it is related to the virus behind the two thousand three SARS epidemic The first known death is reported in Wuhan on the eleventh of January and just two days later. Thailand confirmed the first case outside of China And then we get to you know these now iconic photos of, you know, China locking down Wuhan cases nonetheless begin to appear all over the world. it's too late And on february eleventh, twenty twenty The World Health Organization gave the disease, its official name in COVID nineteen Coronavirus disease twenty nineteen. In March, the World Health Organization declares a pandemic which means that the virus has achieved sustained transmission worldwide And then we enter this phase you know, which I think Somebody of us remember of, you know governments responding with these really unprecedented measures, lockdowns, school and business closures, travel bans, mandates for mask wearing and physical distancing all of that. It's interesting because this obviously, this debate has carried through today P of the reason we're doing this podcast, but the Tempt, of course. to determbine the origin of the virus. It's we should say' it's not just u a matter of curiosity for the scientific community, right? is it is There is a tremendous amount of value to be gained from learning where it came from because it that knowledge could help prevent further pandemics, obviously, to understand the viroogy of how these kind of pandemics can start where the viruses come from. So the question is not this kind of theoretical academic one It's hugely important. And of course, there's a tremendous amount of investigation right away in the spring of twenty twenty about where it came from. That's right. And there were two general hypotheses wanded is zoonotic, which means it naturally transmitted from animal to animal to human and through some kind of change. And the second was involving a human in the sense of a lab leak. Now we should say there are variations to what lab league meant. I mean, very few people although they will be some who thought it might have been a deliberate leak from a lab And so the presumption was that something accidentally had been researched on and then leaked from the lab. But those were the two theories, and those basically remain broadly the two theories today, which we're looking at But it's interesting isn't it? Because very early on There is a lot of pressure, particularly from the scientific community.aybe pressure is not the right word. There's a lot of emphasis from the scientific community pointing towards the Zoonotic transmission route rather than the lab leak. I think that's exactly right. muchuch of the framing for the conversation came I mean right away. and mid February of twenty twenty, there's something called the Lancet statement. Now Lancet is It's a very respected and influential medical journal The statement is signed by twenty seven scientists It expresses solidarity with Chinese colleagues and condemned quote conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID nineteen does not have a natural origin And so right off the bat. You have this kind of this very influential statement. from a bunch of scientists saying You are xenophobic and a conspiracy theorist If. you are proposing the lab hypothesis. We should say though, that I think much of the research, the scientific research at the time, Again, there wasn't total consensus, but I think there was early science on this suggested that the Zoonotic hypothesis was was the answer because there was a highly influential article in a publication called Nature Medicine that was titled the P proroximal Origin of SARS Cove I This is released in mid March of twenty twenty just as we're, you know, the world's going into into lockdown. the article used comparative analysis of viral genomes and the central conclusion and I'm dramatically simplify the science here and we're We're not even We're not even turning to Gordon Carrera, Res is classified science explainer. to go to go deep into O linked glycans and and the polybasic furine cleavage site. We could sound sounds sounds very exciting, but we're not going to. And basically the article says The virus arose through natural processes rather than deliberate laboratory engineering and Engineering point, again, we'll come back to this because there's some different variations on the lab leak theory. but this seems to point toward a you know, zoonotic transmission rather than something that's been engineered in a Chinese lab the paper lays out a couple plausible kind of natural pathways. and says, look the virus could have acquired It's adaptations that an animal host and then jumped to humans or it could have jumped first and then adapted during a period of undetected human to human spread, they consider bats the most likely reservoir for the virus. Now The paper' hugely influential hugely influential that spring. It's one of the most read scientific papers of its era. And it is treated as something close to a definitive answer in mainstream public health and media circles. So for example Anthony Fauci, who is the top infectious disease public health official in the U. S. He cites it from the White House podium in april twenty twenty as evidence that the virus's features are consistent with an animal to human jump And of course, there's a lot of fear at this time this thing, you know, is a genetically modified virus that has been has been built to be more infectious and more deadly than any other of these kind of you know SARS viruses before So the sense of the scientific community, I think that spring looks like, okay, this is this is a zoonotic virus like we have seen, for example, with SARS back in two thousand three. The initial thinking is that the virus probably originated out of that wholesale market in Wuhan. And it's probably worth I mean a little bit on this market because it's turned out to be a centerpiece of the the debate Yes, because if the idea is that it's transmitted through animals and through different animals eventually to humans, then a wet market where animals are being sold and a kind of wide range of animals are being sold like this Wuhan wet market is a perfect place for that to develop and for that to spread. So the wholesale market is this poorly ventilated market. They're still pictures of it you can find full of stalls where wild animals are sold for food. And I was reading the list and it is extraordinary. There's snakes badgers, muskats, birds, Raccoon dogs, which look like I've discovered, long legged raccoons, but are more closely related to foxes. And it's actually thought that the SARS virus back in two thousand two to two thousand three went from bats through these raccoon dogs potentially to humans. So the idea was that this is a perfect place if you imagine that there is a transition of this through animals, eventually to humans for that to take place. And then eventually quite quickly actually, the Chinese authorities are going to close it down, hose it down by january the first by which case of it's too late. So that's the market And I think it's fair to say that that was the sens us it felt like theory that that's where it had originated and the scientific paper did seem to push towards that idea and emphasize that possibility, didn't it It did. and at the time, although the paper has become hugely controversial for a number of reasons, but mostly because Freedom of Information Act requests and then subsequent congressional investigations have unearth all these emails and sllack messages show you that the authors privately discuss the Lav Leagak scenario as a plausible one even as the paper seems to dismiss a lab origin, right? So there are like private remarks in there from an author telling colleagues that a lab escape was, quote, so frigggin likely U And so there's there's politics around even that paper. But at the time in the spring of twenty twenty I think the lab origin speculation is treated as a kind of conspiracy theory and it's often blended with this idea, which I think is what those scientists are initially reacting to in the Lancet statement with this idea that the virus was a bio weapon that had been developed by the Chinese, which of course is like the nightmare scenario, that this is some bioeapon that got out. But in any case it's kind of if you were in the lab elite camp in the early days of the virus, you're seen as a bit of a nut. I mean, ABC News runs a piece headlined sorry consonspiracy theorists, stududy concludes COVID nineteen is not a laboratory construct. The Lab Leak idea was banned on Facebook. until I think the spring of twenty twenty one is a form of misinformation The New York Times ran a feature on the pandemic's origins in the summer of twenty twenty that groups lab speculation with you know other conspiracy theories, aliens, JFK assassination, all this kind of stuff. So I think that's the sense of the scientific community, the political kind of commentary around this As we get into late spring of twenty twenty, maybe there Gordon, we take a break and we come back. we'll see how the spies. begin steppinghe of the fray Hello everybody. I hope you realize, dear listeners, that Father's Day is coming up on the twenty first of June. It's all very excitited, Gordon. And if you haven't got anything yet for your father. and if you're on speaking terms, we have an incredible gift idea for you because what more do dads love than something intelligence and espionage related. And this year, we're offering twenty five percent off Gifted annual membership to the declassified club. So you can treat your father to early access to full series bonus episodes much more. That's right. You could givet your dad what he truly wants, which is six hours on a roock WMD with no ads in between. give him the gift of M Gordon and David in his life. Yeah, that sounds good to me. So just head to the rest isclassified. com and go to the gifts page. The gift will land straight in your father's inbox on Father's Day. And it'll give us access to your computer. And if you want to give your dad something special to open on the day itself, why not gift him our exclusive secret Squirrels t shirt? gift confirmation email will include a discount code for one of these Brilliant t shirts Th that is a Father's Day present Hi, this is Garalinka from Goldhangers. The restest is foootball. This episode is brought to you by Wise. 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For more information about cancer research their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them canancerreesearchuK d. org forward slash rest is science So welcome back established that the idea of zootic natural, if you like transmission is the broad consensus and the idea of a lab leak is seen conspiracy. and it's a late April twenty twenty when the intelligence community starts to get drawn in on this. And I guess that's because it is a question which is still being asked B politicians, by the public, Where did this come from? What does the intelligence community know? I guess it's natural, isn't it? We think there might be a secret out there, we want to understand something What does spies have to offer on answering? Another theme of this question, the investigation around it will be that the Chinese government has not provided fulsome cooperation to really get to the bottom of this. And so again, we've talked before the break about those early cases, you know you'd want to have access to the early cases in order to establish you know, have have a better sense of the virus' origins. That's not happened by the spring been a Wor health organization kind of visit to China that seems to confirm the Zonata hypothesis, but also makes, you know, that' sort of that's where the Chinese government wanted it to land anyway. So there's there's this kind of I think a growing sense that someone's covering something up, right And maybe the Chinese are covering up the true origins of this, which then seems to make this a relevant question for intelligence agencies. So on april thirtieth of twenty twenty the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, puts out What I think is a I think this is a very ambiguous statement that I think ultimately kind of backfires because the goal was to suppress, I think the growing fear around the Lab leeakue theory and the statement goes like this The intelligence community concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID nineteen virus was not man madeade or genetically modified but that the intelligence community would continue to assess whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a lab in Wuhan And so the statements's not saying much But But I mean, I think I think it's a fascinating statement because it's a statement designed to basically say, well, we're looking at the different possibilities But it is holding out the possibility of a lab leak of an accident at a laboratory In a sense, it's putting it on an equal footing So it's bound to at least elicit more interest in it And I guess this is where who else but Donald Trump enters the fray? becausecause we should remind people, I guess here that this is the tail end of the first term Again, another thing which people may have blocked out from their minds for various reasons, the undulations of American politics over these years. I don't know what you're talking about, Gordon. I'm offended I'm offended as a yang. But I guess one of the things to remember is at this point particularly actually more in his first term Donald Trump had been big on China, and I don't been big in a kind of positive way. But he was pushing hard against China deals particularly, the temperature was hotter, I think than it is Now actually at the moment in the second. term when it came to China And this is something which he is going to get involved in and where politics is going to meet this question of intelligence in the Lab leeague because at a press briefing just hours after that ODNI, Director of National intntelligence Statement. immediately distances himself from the the fairly You know, I'd say kind of nothing burger, but also balanced statement factual statement that the intelligence community has put out, Trump distances himself from that pretty rapidly. he claims that he has seen classified information that the virus had come from a lab Woyle. And when asked what the evidence was, he said, I can't tell you that. I'm not allowed to tell you that. W So right off the bat, we have this unfortunate reality that the intelligence community's public assessments and statements aren't matching what the president sank. And so there is I think a real if you're if you're a kind of unbiased person who's looking at this, you're saying, well, either someone's lying to me or or someone's hiding something Yeah And is it the intelligence community? Is the intelligence community sitting on information in secret? doesn't match public statements Or is the president pushing He's a gender against China, right. Trump is basically saying that he buys Lably canank And so maybe it's worth setting up what that hypothesis actually is. Now It's interesting that there is a a lab in Wuhan The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the WIV, the WV It's been around since the nineteen fifties. It's one of China's premier virology centers K of looks like a college campus Red brick buildings beside this Mayabbeade Lake and The Wibbs signature work has long focused on bat borne coronaviruses it's an emphasis that really intensified after the two thousand three SARS epidemic The Institute has a very prominent Wld renowned scientist, ShesZgleli who was who had the nickname Batwoman and The WV housed one of the world's largest collections of batT samples and bat virus strains only two other labs in the world that do anything similar One of them is in Texas, and one of them is in North Carolina. So right off the bats You have this very weird piece of circumstantial evidence coincidence that The world is in the midst of a pandemic caused by coronavirus and some of the most cutting edge coronavirus research in the world is being done at a nearby lab. That is just a fact One piece of Zang L's work drew later scrutiny, and it's in the twenty fifteen paper She had showed a spike protein of a novel coronavirus could be used to infect human cells. And this is research at the boundary of what is now gain a function. which is essentially research and again, well, maybe Gordon. You are the science explainer. I've done nuclear physics, but I'm afraid this is a little bit beyond me. But I find this gain of functions really interesting and slightly weird because this is taking a virus engineering it in a lab to see if you can make it more infectious. And this is something scientists do to understand what the risks are of a more infectious disease and potentially how you can treat it and deal with it But I still find it extraordinary that they do that and This will be one of I think the controversial aspects, you know, in the science world is the fact that people are doing this kind of work, which to me is inherently risky I mean, we hear so much about people trying to make bioeapons. Well this is kind of to do that. Now, obviously for good scientific, defensive reasons and to try and protect people, but you can see the risks and the fact that there are also other researchers, including from the West who are involved in some of this work and who have an interest in presenting it as something positive and not seeing it as something dangerous or that could have led to the release of coronavirus will become part of the story because I think those scientists are very keen to say Don't look at this gain of function work as a problem because this is what we do and are worried about it. But what it shows is that they were doing that kind of work on coronaviruses and on bats here in this Killer Institute. And then on top of all of that real legitimate concerns about the safety measures that are being taken at the Wuhan Institute of Birology This is in Maybe April of twenty twenty. So it's in the first few months of the pandemic. The Washington Post, a reporter named Josh Rogan at the Washington Post breaks a story. about concerns around those biosafety measures. And he got access to some state Department cables that had been categorized as sensitive but unclassified And they are cables from basically those kind of science diplomats that are at the U. S. emmbassy in Beijing who went on a visit. to the Buhan Institute of Viroology. and report it back in these cables to Washington about what they'd seen. and the cables Wn about safety and management weaknesses there and actually propose that the U S. might consider offering more attention and help One cable warned that the labs work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS like pandemic and one of the cables from January of twenty eighteen read, quote, During interactions with scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Viroogy lab, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high containment laboratory Right. So there's there's there's worries concern right. there's there's worries that predate the pandemic. Now she's angly herself had also publicly acknowledged that up until the pandemic All of our team's coronavirus research had been conducted in less secure biological safety level three and even biological safety level two labs. And BSL, biological safety leevel four is like the absolute upper end BSL too is like equivalent of a doctor's office or a dentist's office. Wow. Okay. R. So they're doing coronavirus research. Now we don't know exactly Is it the gain of function stuff? Is it other research? but some of the coronavirus research is being done in facilities the wiv that are particularly safe. And there had also been, I think this is also another piece of the mystery collaboration an The wiv and military scientists attached to the PLA Chinese military that goes back decades There's over fifty co authored papers. and frankly On the face of it, you'd expect that, right? There's collaboration between big national labs in the U. S. and the U.S. military That's obvious But this connection between the with and PLA scientists, some of whom do work inside or adjacent to China's bioeapons program. raises the prospect of this worst case scenario, which is Was the virus engineered as a biological weapon And did it escape or, you know, kind of the b conspiracy end of it, did the Chinese actually release it on purpose. So we end up with a series of competing hypotheses or potential options to explain what had happened. One is zoonotic origin, this idea is something happened at that wet market, maybe you know, a bat or something else through another animal, eventually to humans and that's why it spreads at Wuhan. And the other option is the Wuhan Institute Vilogy, there is some kind of leak And it is this weird coincidence. you both have a you know, at the place where the virus emerges, you have both a wet market which is a potential place and you have an Institute of Vrology. And I guess within the lab leak theory as youve put it there, you've got differentifferent possibilities, haven't you? You've got just that there happened to be an animal there and it and the virus escapes Or you've got that they were engineering something with gain of function research and that that escapes or you've got at the most extreme end, you've got the kind of The idea that they're building bioeapons to kill us all there and that that escaped. I mean, they all sit within LabLak but they're all different, aren't they, to some extent And also, I mean, we should say, you know, by By the middle of twenty one. I mean the pandemic is an absolute catastrophe. Global confirmed deaths by that point are about three million against more than one hundred forty billion cases worldwide. And then when you look at the excess mortality estimates from the World Health Organization or the economist, I mean The real figure is probably well above the confirmed count The pandemic has triggered the worst global downturn since the Great Depression. So the question of How did this happen and how might we prevent it from happening again? is a really, really, really big question And as we get into twenty twenty one, those lab leak theories. and I think in particular, the idea that it was It was zootic but had escaped from the lab somehow or that it had been engineered and escaped somehow are really starting to gain steam because There's no host animal that's yet been discovered to prove the natural theory. although that would be hard, and I think is unlikely. The Chinese, secondly, have aggressively blocked efforts at an investigation. The government actually shut down the market They ordered lab samples destroyed. tri to Review any scientific research about COVID nineteen head of publication, that expelled team of Wall Street journal reporters. So there's this question of like, what are they covering up Right? Why are the Chinese so insistent We not find the origins of this pandemic Right. And given the, you know, given China's authoritarian politics, there's this question of If a leak had happened, Would the Wuhan Institute of Vilogy with a scientists there have even been permitted to talk about it So there's much more focus on the Labley hypothesis. There's a bigig Vanity Fair article by Catherine Eban that goes deep into the open source researchers who are investigating COVID's origins and the fight over this question inside the government And I think, really importantly the scientific consensus is starting to break down a little bit because there's a former New York Times science writer Named Nicholas Wade who puts out know a big piece, basically looking at the scientific clues both for and against a lab leak You know, he quotes a really respected microbiologist named Dr. David Baltimore, who says that he believes And again, we won't go into the the absolute details of the science, but he basically says when you look at the actual you know, virus genome that there are particular signs suggest it might have actually been manmade right or genetically modified in some way. So You start to feel like this needs to be taken seriously. This can't be seen as a purely conspiracy theory going forward. and we should also say the public opinion on this is shifting. So the polling that's happening in the spring of twenty twenty one shows that actually a majority of Americans believe that the Lablak theory was either definitely or probably true, like fifty nine percent, according to an economist Yugov poll done in May June of twenty twenty one and There are indications that U. S. intelligence has picked up I think something useful finally to add to this debate. fininally, because that is that is the point is you have a mystery, but you would logically think there are answers there that may be secret, particularly because the Chinese government is working so hard prevent something coming out and to keep a tight lid on the investigation and on the discussion about this. whichich to me makes it a perfect question for intelligence agencies to be tasked to answer It's not entirely clear to me that they were yet looking that hard, but at this point it seems they are starting to pick things up You know, this is it's a classic example of There are different tiers of intelligence questions, right? I mean, some are not as important as others And what happens in the sprig of twenty twenty one? is that this question rises Not to the absolute top, I'm sure, but it gets to the point where Joe Biden, who is then president, haveving won the twenty twenty election and he's now in office in the spring of twenty twenty one. says okay Let's have the intelligence community