Final Assessment and Political Implications

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 What the CIA think caused the COVID pandemic Presididentents Trump and Biden influence the intelligence community's assessments Well, welcome to the restest is Classified, I'm Golden Carrera. And I'm David McLlasky And David last time, we left off with newewly installed president Joe Biden turning to his spooks, to his intelligence community to investigate this question of where the COVID virus had actually come from and whether it had been truly Zoonotic origin transferring from animals to humans or whether it had somehow escaped a Chinese lab, the lab leak theory, which initially had been dismissed as a conspiracy theory It's going to become increasingly the focus of questions and of work by the intelligence community And yeah, one thing I should say is I had appreciated this distinction until I got deep into this series is that the lab leak and the genetically modified virus. go together likeike you could have a virus actually is a naturally occurring virus. that Wuhan Institute of Virology was looking at had just collected had just collected from from you know, a sample from a cave with bats or something and that it leaks. So that's why just I bring that up because I think the labeling of the conspiracy theory around the Lam leak is in part driven by this idea that there was a genetically and modified kind of bio weapons. somehow got out which I I think is probablyably not true it come. But like the idea that you have a virus that's actually natural that got out that was being studied there is also part of this lab leak theory as well. Trying to get to the bottom of this is hard because there are a lot of L lot of competing hypotheses. It's actually not just two. it's like two big ones and then you know, sort of sub options off of Lab leak. And it's worth saying that there is a lot at stake, particularly at this time when we're in the middle of the pandemic. In answering this question, I mean some of it is about the practicalities of preparing for a future pandemic and detecting it and being able to respond, but it's also about the world and particularly America's relationship with China, is there some aspect in which China is to blame for this So the implications of this question are absolutely enormous. and politically fruit becausecause as we saw last time, you had a certain pressure from Donald Trump, then in his first term to to suggest that it was pererhaps China to blame and perhaps some kind of lab leak and a caution. I think it's fair to say from the intelligence agencies of being pulled in to politics. That's to some extent, exactly what we're going to see happen This episode is brought to you by HP. In intelligence work, it's rarely the obvious problem that causes failure. It's the overlook detail or the flaw nobody quite solved, the kind of vulnerability intelligence services look for. 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I think it's being driven by the uncertainty that's swirling around and the political debate around it. It's also being driven, I think it's fair to say by some intelligence that the community has gathered up to this point, including this very interesting piece of intelligence to suggest that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virolology had become sick enough in November of twenty nineteen that they had to be hospitalized. So you know, is that is it a seasonal flu? Or is it something else if they're involved in coronavirus research? couldould this actually be a sign that the pandemic originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology? You have some intel which obviously you need to look deeper into to determine its credibility and all of that You've got the politics and then you've got the uncertainty and the important intelligence question. So Biden kicks off this ninety day sprint to try to answer a number of questions around the virus' origins. And basically the idea is, can we answer whether the virus begingan zonotically Or was it the result of a lab associated incident There's another question, which is was the virus genetically engineered? And there's a final question Is it a biological weapon And I I think it's worth thinking about what an intelligence agency would need to have confidence in any of these assessments. that is the question I was kind of wondering is how do you, if you're in intelligence community go about answering that? Because some of it is deep science which is can you look at this in enough detail to know, is it genetically engineered or not? Can you tell You know, can you find that the original source of the virus and the trail? which led it eventually to humans But those are fundamentally scientific rather than intelligence questions, aren't they? If you're an intelligence collection agency you're using your intelligence collection capabilities tyypically target maybe organizations, institutions and people to learn what they know. You're stealing secrets You're stealing secrets. So it relies on there being a set of secrets In other words, if there is an answer in China, then I guess you can point your intelligence community to finding that answer If you're confident, it exists, but then I guess you got to work out where it might exist, who might hold that secret of the truth if it exists and then how you whether it's I suppose through different intelligence sources. Yeah. No, you're right, because there's a There's a lens to this where you could say Well, the intelligence community is it's not the entity you want assessing origins of this virus. like you want it to come from deep scientific research by the medical or public health community, right? That That's where you would want it to come from because the details on the genomics of the virus You're not going to get that through Claniston collollection That's not where it's going to come from. U But given I think given the concerns about The way China behaved in the early months of the crisis and I guess a parent cover up that the or at least the fact that the Chinese were not being fully open with the international community about, you know, giving access and things like that raises the question that have they got something to hide, which is a classic intelligence community question? Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So youd think, okay, well Does the intelligence community, for example intertercept of Sone from the Wuhan Institute of Vilogy or some National Health Institute that's talking about an incident or more likely because you're probably not collecting If you're using scarce resources, you're probably not training your sigant collection on the Wuhan Institute of Virology Do you have a security official from the MSS, let's say to has himself or herself conducted the investigation of the Wuhan Institute of Vrology who is talking to a superior or who has written a document explaining what's actually happened. couldould you, if you're a spy agency get your hands on that? Would you as another example, have human intelligence from someone who has access to senior Chinese officials who are receiving reports on a classified internal investigation on the origins of the virus Would you have human intelligence from someone working inside You know, China's biological weapons program . You know, with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and their research on coronaviruses and in particular on this virus to a weapons program, right? Those are examples of like those would be In the intelligence world, the closest kind of thing you might get to a smoking gun, you never have that in intelligence. but The closest that you'd get to a really solid answer on the origins of the viruses, basasically what we're saying is if the Chinese ran their own investigation could you have penetrated that and steal their secrets? Right? So that's that's what you that's what you'd be looking for So the intelligence community runs this ninety day sprint to get to the bottom of this. We'll talk more about some of the detailed you know, sort of findings that come out of it. They release it in August. The public version that comes out is two pages long This doesn't have a lot of it very much it. Yeah The more detailed classified report comes out in October in the assessment, which is prepared by the National Intelligence Council. There are three broad areas of agreement One, The virus is not a bioeapon They consider that to be inconsistent with the available technical information on coronaviruses And they look at the public claims that have been made that the virus is a bioeapon and say these contain a number of technical inaccuracies and they omit key data points. So they dismiss the bio weapon thing right off the bat. Ierestingly, There's no confidence judgment attached to this. It's just we assess it's not a bioeapon The second point of broad agreement. It's not genetically engineered Though this is a low confidence assessment, Policymakers love low confidence assessments Because there are ways to make genetically modified viruses appear natural and they can't rule those out I always think if someone says I have low confidence in this assessment, it basically means I don't really know. It's It's one step above that. It's I think this is the case But I'm not very sure. So ye the confidence attached to a judgment is really important. The third area of broad agreement is that Chinese officials were unaware of the virus. before the pandemic which, again, there's not like a specific piece of intelligence that is declassified to make this point in this in this paper but you can imagine all of the agency's sources who are in China All of the sigant, the Signals intelligence collection, that's being trained on different Chinese security and political officials. You're probably seeing, my guess is you're probably seeing a bunch of people saying Where in the hell did this virus come from which I think would when you're tying back to the questions you're trying to answer would strongly suggest that It's not a biological weapon because it If it was, you presume somebody somewhere might have said, Ohh, yeah, well that's we're actually there's a weapons program here and maybe that's part of it. Again, it's a deeply unsatisfying answer because you want to be able to pin this on the Chinese and if the Chinese themselves are confused about where it came from, it's That's harder. Yeah, because the idea that, you know, you've got an intercept, say of a Chinese official going, where the hell did this come from? or how did this start doesn't actually get you to answering whether or not it was lab leak or naturally occurring, does it? Because you could imagine if something leaks from a lab in Wuhan, they are not going to know initially maybe whether it's leaked or not. They may not want to tell their bosses, they may not want to tell Beijing. So the fact that there's a kind of surprise about it emerging doesn't really get you anywhere. So what you have with that assessment is actually I mean, the answer that they give is that both Hypotheses are plausible Natural origin and lab leak But there are some disagreements, and I think this is interesting to tease out, isn't it There are some disagreements about the level of confidence that different parts of the U. S. intelligence community have. about this assessment Essentially, you have various analysts at different agencies who kind of come to an actual conclusion. So they don't say this directly, but I think you're probably looking at a situation where For example, some CIA analysts thought that the Zunota hypothesis was more likely and some thought that Lav Leak was more likely. So there's no consensus inside the organization FBI winds up being an outlier in having a moderate confidence judgment. in the lab associated hypothesis, right? So the FBI is kind of out there and has a very distinct and higher confidence of viewpoint in the lab leakue theory right off the bat. Now, I think it's worth lookingoo at the case that's made because this paper presents kind of the argument for each, I think. So we start with the natural origins hypothesis The analysts Basically say, look We're giving weight to The lack of foreknowledge that we see from Chinese officials, probably from classified sources, right? But they don't say that They highlight the precedent of past in infectious disease outbreaks, having zootic origins, right The wide diversity of animals, we talked in the last episode about that Huana seafood wholesale market and the fact that you have this whole menagerie of, you know the anible trade that's in this really concentrated et in Wuhan. They look at the wide diversity of animals that are susceptible to SARS COVD two, which is the virus that causes COVID nineteen and the range of scenarios of animal trafficking, farming, sale and rescue in China that would enable zootic transmission. So they basically say, look There's a whole bunch of different ways this could happen and this is kind of this is how these kind of pandemics have happened in the past. Yeah. Also note that in many previous zonotic outbreaks, the identification of animal sources has taken years in some cases it's never happened. There's also a precedent. I found this fascinating viral vectors to travel really, really long distances And that is a points that basically says it's not diagnostic in any way that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is here and this is where COVID started It could have come from elsewhere It could have come from animals that are being taken in. outlying parts of Hubei province brought into Wuhan to this market, right? Viruses can travel very long distances and that transmission vector can occur over, you know in some cases, I think thousands of kilometers. So So that's the that's kind of the case that's being made by these analysts for natural origins or zotic hypothesis. The Lab leeak theory though. They place an emphasis on academic articles that are being authored by The Wuhan Institute of Virology which indicates that scientists there conducted research on other coronaviruses under inadequate biosafety conditions could have led to Aab leak They also take into account the genetic epidemiology and at the initial COVID nineteen clusters occurred only in Wuhan and that with researchers the Wuhan Institute of Viroology researchers who conducted sampling activity throughout China provided a node for the virus to enter the city. What the Vilogy researchers are doing is they're going all throughout China. collecting bat samples and samples from you know other animal species and bringing those viruses to Wuhan. So they were were identified by these analysts as kind of a key node for how the virus could have entered the city. It's also plausible that researchers may have unwittingly exposed themselves to the virus during experiments And the assessment concludes by noting that the intelligence community will need cooperation from Beijing to determine the origin. as the global scientific community doesn't know exactly where or how the first human infection That strikes me as a problem if you cooperation from Beijing to determine the origin. because it's fair to say, it is absolutely not in Beijing's interest to admit that there was even a possibility of a lab leak. I mean, at one point, I think China was pushing the idea it had come through imported material frozen food, right? It was like frozen food that had been brought in. I mean, there was a theory that like an American I think sports team had come to China and they might have brought it. You know, there were all these kind of theories and it would be part of that politicization China being accused of covering something up. Aing very defensively, perhaps because it's being accused, perhaps because it's got something to hide but certainly not being and to a kind of joint investigation or an openness which would help you get that answer. you've immediately got a massive obstacle here which means that You know, I guess you're stuck doing spy work to try and get the answer I think the spy work is never going to give you the answer. And I just this is this is David Mclotsky's hypothesis, but I think Chinese government There's no secret investigation order I think for this very reason. I think If your X Jinping Do you want answer to this question Yeah No. Do you want to know that it could be a lab leak? No? You don't want to know becausecause as soon as you know You have a trail of paper and people who have that secret and it can it can be leaked to journalists or it could be collected by the CIA O maybe even maybe even MI six Gordon, you know? So like you don't, you don't want that to exist at all Yeah. so you don't ask. So you don't ask You don't ask. Yeah You just give out the order which says move on. Nothing to see here. Right Which is exactly what exactly what we get My theory is that like You're never going to get a an answer to this because the Chinese have basically said We're not even going to create the secret that could be leaked or collected. right? That could be stolen. And ultimately the, you know, the report, the first this first intelligence community report that comes out in is broadly declassified in October of twenty twenty one basically says that to confirm the natural outbreak Youre you're going to need to the first cases, which the Chinese government's not going to do do to confirm that, you know, the natural origins hypothesis and then to confirm the lab incident you'd have to either get cooperation from the Chinese or and they don't say it exactly this way, but they basically say We're going to have to Steal information that will yield new insights. and that information would probably come from China's own investigations into the COVID en outbreak, which I think is not going to happen. So This is a conundrum And you get to this point where I really think This is a great case study and how When the intelligence community, when the spies basically say we don't we don't know, which I think is more or less what this thing is we don't know There's no consensus when you have the FBI saying moderate conference but you have It's a mess of intelligence assessment from a policymaker standpoint I think it's a vortex politics fillet, right? Because it's hugely politically contentious People want an answer. peopleople want an answer, the public and politicians want an answer and politically it may be useful for some politicians to have a particular answer. There's an answer which it seems some politicians prefer or want which also add to the pressures in this case So I guess this is where we get into the politics of this and where politics and intelligence meet, don't we? I think it's worth setting up a key character in the rest of this drama which is John Ratcliffe, who was the director of National intntelligence under Trump, twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. for much of the pandemic He is now the CIA director. And that'll be important as we get to the end of this episode Ratliff He's a lawyer and former small town mayor. He was the mayor of Heath, Texas, population twelve thousand. Is that near you? Where's that? It's pretty close. It's just east of Dallas. uh on on a lake called Rockwall. Thissays this little like littleittle township I have never been to Heath, Texas, but if we have anyone listing for from Heath, Texas, you know hello Heath. M love, much love to Heath Rackliff after being The mayayor of Heath, Texas. becomes the U. S attorney for the Eastern District of Texas Um, He gets a reputation as a hardliner, particularly on immigration. In twenty fourteen, he's elected to Congress They'll wind up on the intelligence, the judiciary and the Homeland Security Committee. There's a different committee. It's only spent a year on the intntelligence committee though He's a China Hawk Big tryin to hk and a major Trump ally through, you know, the kind of rocky impeachment years. And he is named the DDI twenty twenty Directory of National intelligence. Yeah. exactly. Now. Radcliff's name had been floated back in twenty nineteen he withdrew after five days about, you know, questions about his experience and qualifications, a point that We're having right now with the acting DNI, Bill Pulty, Mortgage man and It's interesting because past DNIs had typically been drawn from military roles you know, or had national security experience Ciff kindind of doesn't, right? I mean Yeah, he's a political guy And as a result The Senate confirms him on a forty nine forty four like party line vote, which is in sharp contrast to Trump's first DNI during that term, a guy named Dan Coatates, who was confirmed eighty five to twelve, right? And Coates had national security experience as an ambassador And you know, a long tenure as a center anyhow Cliff is Big on China. He's a China haawk and thus big on the lab league Theory And in August of twenty twenty one So but he's no longer the DNI when he's kind of out of office. Biden is now, yeah,. Biden is now president. Ratcliffe writes an opit for Fox News where he writes the lab leak theory was not just a possibility closer to a probability or near certainty. Wow and notes that he had seen no evidence during his tenure as DNI of natural spillover very strong opinions I'd He was a kind of controversial DNI. I mean he had focused during his tenure on CIA analysis of Chinese intervention in the twenty twenty US election, there had been a nasty back and forth with the The intelligence community is analytic on budsmen How did this assessment end basically said that, you know Cliff. head and the analyst said this the Redcliffe hit outrageously misrepresented their analysis on China m just because he disagreed with the analytic line the analyst had put out there and kind of put his own warning in at the last minute He's got a, you know, he's got a bit of a China haawk mentality that is going to feed into the lab league theory. And it's interesting. So if we think about it politically at this point, he was in office, so he's seen the intelligence. he's now out of office. and it's fair to say that he and some other Republican haawks are certainly going to push the lab leak hypothesis and also start to suggest the idea that maybe even not just a cover up in China, but even a cover up in Washington, that Washington has been trying to avoid pinning the blame on the Chinese government for a lab leak and that the intelligence community's assessments have somehow been you know, pushed pressured, emphasized away from coming to that conclusion. So this is now becoming a political with which to beat the Biden administration to say, you are not being tough enough on China. you are not willing to face the facts There is evidence for Lab leak. That's what's kind of going on politically, isn't there at this point? I mean at this point, you don't have the scientific answer to the question You don't have the intelligence community standing up and saying we have the answer to the question So you have this massive This void, right? And politics need to fill it. So veryer soon you have Chris getting into the fray. So House Republicans on what's called Hipsy, the House perermanent Select Committee on Intelligence. So it is the House Osight commommittee decide that they need their undocument They put out a report in twenty twenty two that basically says that the intelligence community' document ignored important information and suppressed the Lablak hypothesis for political purposes. So this hippssy document makes the politicization claim running the other way So it's the politicians and their staffers who accuse the intelligence community of actually playing politics, which again reminds me of the claims we investigated in our Russian election interference series on the CIA or the intelligence community kind of playing politics with Trump Russia connections to allegedly help Hillary. So it's a kind of similar argument that you have these really politicized kind of deep state elements inside the intelligence community who are suppressing route and the The Hippsy report. I don't think we need to get into all of the evidence here They make a circumstantial case that the COVID virus, Saroscope two may have been tied to China's biological weapons research program and could have escaped during a lab incident at the Wuhan Institute of Vilology So that's putting them at, you know, we talked about the different theories within LabLeak. I mean here they are going to, if you like the more extreme end, which is this is actually linked to biological weapons research. So not just that it was gain of function for health research But that actually this was a kind of cot secret program by the People's Liberation Army, which was somehow working out of this institute And they present, I think, all kinds of bits of evidence for it I mean, that's a pretty , extreme end claim, isn't it? It is. And look I mean, you know, it's worth maybe just setting a couple pieces of the evidence they present Um, because for example, they look and they say there's a twenty fifteen book It was edited by PLA affiliated scientists. No it's the Chinese military that discussed weaponizing engineered coronaviruses and the supposed advantages of deniability there and the congressional report that we're talking about says, lookook, the intelligence community's public assessment never mentions this book This is a key piece of circumstantial evidence for that case. whyy is it mentioned? Pretty circumstantial. It is very circumstantial. and look, the language the congressional Republicans use in the overall assessment, I think is quite soft Don't say definitively. that it's a lab engineered bi a weapon They say there are indications the virus quote may have been tied to China's biological weapons research program and could have escaped during a lab incident. But that report is very helpful politically because they claim they then go into some detail to say, lookook, Intelligence community's decclassified assessment is misleading. They say The intelligence community reported confidence levels for nearly every judgment, except the claim that the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. so they say, why is that the case Congressional report says that omission let the public assume that the question was more settled than the underlying intelligence warranted. they also say that the classified version dismissed or omitted relevant intelligence. It kind of reminds me a little bit when we did our series on a Rock WMD And the Vice presresident's office would put together reports And they would they would wait different pieces of intelligence differently than the CIA would, for example. And so they'd have, know to come over and sit down and go through these reams of information to see, well, okay, who's how are you racking and stacking the different little bits of intelligence And I think in this case, You know, the conongressional Republicans are basically saying we want to take these pieces of circumstantial evidence and give them more weight than the intelligence community gave them. They also charge the Congressional Republicans charge that the intelligence community refused to tell Congress, which outside scientific experts the IC, the intelligence community consulted on that assessment because obviously this is a scientific intelligence question And it's not just like the China political analysts who are answering these questions. There's scientific experts the IC brought in to help with the drafting of that assessment And we should say what they're doing here is not so much. Well, they're partly attacking the intelligence community and they're partly att attacking the Biden era leaders of that intelligence community, particularly Avirl Haines, who was the director of National intntelligence. So it's a kind of dual attack almost, isn't it? onn the intelligence community stroke deep state, but really on the Biden administration having failed to be honest and open up about about, you know, scientists and about the level of evidence. So maybe there Gordon with the intelligence politics in full swing. Let's take a break and when we come back, we'll see how a new CI director fininally compels the CI to take a position on COVID We'll see whether that's correcting the record on a politically driven assessment or creating one all itself Thinking about refreshing the carpet in your home, now's the time to do it. For limited time at the Home Depot, get ten percent off installed carpet projects on trusted brands like L proroof, Life proroof with petproof technology, Home dececorators collollection, and traraffic Master. Plus, with installations starting at just forty nine cents per square foot, upgrading your space is more affordable than ever at the Home Depot Offer valid, june eleventh, twenty six through june twenty eighth, twenty twenty six. Exclusions apply for licenses, see Homedepot d. com slash license numbers. Welcome back So this question of where Cid nineteen came from is becoming increasingly political and increasingly fraught. And we're going to get report after report, aren't we, David? which is basically trying to score political points off this Well, that's right, The intelligence community will Wade back into the fray again in twenty twenty three when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence releases a paper looking at the links between the Wuhan Institute of Viroology and the origin of the pandemic. Now this report had been mandated by a congressional act in twenty twenty three, which had called for the intelligence community to declassify All information it had related to potential links tweing that Wuhan Institute and the origin of the pandemic So the report deep into We have safety practices, links to the Chinese military and security establishment But it says all agencies continue to assess that both hypotheses, the natural origins and the lab leaks, remain plausible. Disappointing. Right? It's it's disappointing. It's yet another disappointing piece of paper that's come out of the intelligence community The Department of Energy update of its assessment You'd be pleased to know Gordon to a low confidence one that it was a lab mishap underlying intelligence that assessment was based on was never released. but I I showust moderate confidence and all the other agencies are divided. I'm slightly struggling to understand why the Department of Energy is offering its intelligence assessment. I know they deal they have some role in nuclear weapons. Well, they're tied in with the national all the national labs. Yeah, and all the national labs. Okay.body everybody's got an intelligence agency. You don't have eighteen intelligence agencies, G in America. No, we don't and all with different levels of confidence and all arguing with each other about how confident they are and changing it. It basically g gives everyone room to say, well, there's no answer, but Hey, you know Someone agrees with me and someone less so, but who cares? Well, it's a mess. It's a mess. And let's make it even worse because do you remember that piece of intelligence that we talked about at the start of this episode Th reesearchers from the Wuhan Institute of Vilogy who had gotten ill in like November of twenty nineteen. and on the face of it, that seems to lean toward a Labley hypothesis, right? Because it would suggest that it's not the market that's the source of the virus, it's the Wuhan is due to virrology and the market is probably a super spreader event. It's not the source, right? So those three researchers who got sick, the DNI report goes deeper into that and it says The IC continues to assess that this information neither supports nor refutes either hypothesis of the pandemic's origins. because the symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases. And some of the symptoms were not consistent with COVID nineteen. We have no indications that any of these researchers were hospitalized Because of the systance consistent with COVID nineteen, one researcher may have been hospitalized in this time frrame for treatment of a non respiratory medical condition Again, I say disappointing. It's disappointing. So so we're stuck, cann't we at this point Well, so the report, interestingly, the way it's been used as a political football since The report gives a little bit of grist to lab league proponents because you now have an intelligence community document comments on The Wuhan Institute of Iilology safety prorocedures, the genetic engineering capabilities that it had and its connections to the Chinese military. Again, it's all circumstantial. It has doesn't make the case that it's a lab leak around this virus, but it gives frankly, it gives politicians something to point to to say, Well, look at these guys, you know, they've got this, they've got this inststitute. lacks safety, their're genetically engineering viruses there. They're linked in with the military establishment, right Again, doesn't make the case, but politically it's very helpful I think that DNI report ' it's certainly not conclusive. It's frustrating, as you've identified. I mean, there's a little bit more there for labate proponents because you now have an intelligence community document that says someome negative things about the WIibbs safety procedures, its genetic engineering capabilities, its connections to the Chinese military establishment. But again have a satisfying Intelligence commommunity assessment on COVID origins. But In late twenty twenty three, a whistleblower appears Love a whistleblower. Ga gotota love a whistleblower, don't you The leaders of two House committees send a letter to then CIA Director Bill Burns, friend of the pod, publicizing testimony that they had received from this individual. They describe him as a multi decade senior CIA officer And the whistleblower claims that the CIA had a seven person team, although Some of the reports have a different number, but a, you know, relatively small team sometimes called the COVID Discovery team And these were officers that had significant scientific expertise and they were tasked with assessing the pandemic's origin. According to this whistlelower, six of the seven members concluded that the virus most likely originated from a lab Only the most senior officer favoring the natural origins hypothesis. but explosively He claims that the CIA is said to have offered those six scientists a monetary incentive to change their position to favor natural origins. And of course, this gets framed in much of the kind of, you know, more right wing media environment as the CIA having bribed its officers. So It's a big claim Yeah. V. I will note spoiler alert the whistleblower is later going to change his tune on the bribery piece of this in particular It's a totally preposterous claim, Gordon, I have to say. as you you doubtless be surprised to hear me say that I find that No one at the CIA would be capable of the Wh would be capable of bribery at such an institution? But it' G bars It doesn't the issue G bars sorry. Anway that's thence doesn't this doesn't ring this just I don't know. this forbe doesn't pass the stiff test. The gold bars passes the stiff test ironically that you have a really you know, a sort of crooked operations officer who set up his own classified intelligence program and is using it to Ebezzle Tens of millions of dollars. That makes me It's more plausible than this. That is more plausible to me than this The CIA, unsurprisingly strugglly rejects whistleblowerers's claim in a statement that it releases within hours says it's bogus A number of irologists publicly doubt the story's plausibility as well. You know, O of the committee chairs who'd actually released this testimony or made pieces of it public acknowledges the limits this says, look, these are just allegations. but Rackcliffe Jon Rackcliff picks up the claim ed that he writes for the Wall Street Journal ends up with the title, although you know, They don't write the titles, right? But The title ends up being the CIA politicizes intelligence on China and COVID And Radcliff is careful in that op ed. He doesn't he does not directly endorse the claims but he gives them a lot of space And in that oped, he makes the broader point that there's a trend inside CIA to politicize intelligence on China and that the suppression of the lab leak theory is just one example. And he wrote, you know when we push to declassify intelligence, exposing some of what the U. S. government knew about the virus's origins And the Communist Party's initial cover upp, we faced constant opposition, particularly from language Yeah And he says that every shred of intelligence pointed to the likelihood of a lab leak. So every shred. Wow. Okay. So so you have, you know, again, you have John Radcliff, who at this point. is not back in government who's out, I believe he was he was doing a fellowship at the Heritage Foundation, amongst some other things is really You know, this this this Lably theory in the back and forth, the politics and the intelligence around it is a very live issue. going into twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four whichich of course, we should say is also an election year. Another election year. And then in twenty twenty four, we get another report, don't we from the report another report because we love a report from the House select committee. But this is the Republican a Republican led committee. So again, it's pushing the politics of it, isn't it? And the idea of Lav leak All right? because Republicans are now in the majority There's this Big select subcommittee report on the pandemic and they deliver their final report. And by the way, if you're listening to this episode and you're confused about the number of reports, I think that the The number of different investigative committees is actually directly related to the fact that the intelligence community's assessment was so U uncertain and ambiguous, right into that uncertainty step the politics and you have a desire and need by, you know conongressional Republicans in this case to have official documents that back up the Lab leeague theory. And this document really does push the lab leeague theory, doesn't it? I mean it's pretty clear that it thinks it's a lab league I mean, likely emerged from a laboratory or a research related incident. The weight of evidence increasingly supports the lab leak hypothesis. I find it so interesting because the language, as a journalist, you're trained to look at this language pretty carefully. and they're pushing people towards the lab leak, but they're also careful to say, we still don't know for sure. You know, it's interesting, isn't it? caveatted, but trying to really kind of push that argument And it is an interesting case study and how intelligence communities' assessments are used in these political documents because They pull information from the ODNI report on the Wuhan Institute of Virology that came out in twenty twenty three and they kind of strip away the caveats and the uncertainty. ignore the principle finding that both The Lab leak and natural origins hypothesis are plausible This report from House Republicans actually has testimony from John Radcliffe says, you know, that his bottom line up front was that his informed assessment as a person with as much access as anyone. government's intelligence during the initiial year of the pandemic. has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science and by common sense from a view inside the IC, the intelligence community, if our intelligence and evidence supporting a lab leak theory was placed side by side with our intelligence and evidence pointed to a natural origins or spillover theory, which by the way, is what the IC assessments have been trying to do The lab side of the ledger, Rackcliff says, would be long convincing, even overwhelming while the spillover side would be nearly empty and tenuous It's so interesting that Radcliffe's testimony is being used you know, as someone who says he saw the intelligence because he was on the inside his judgment is being used as one of the kind of key bases for this report's judgment. So it's still you know, kind of compounding this political pressure to come to the Lablak hypothesis We talked to the first episode about this Trump statement about how you know, in the early days of the pandemic where, okay, it came out of a lab in Wuhan and I've seen intelligence on that, but I can't share it with you And he's saying that at the same time as the IC the intelligence community is putting out a statement saying We don't know where it came from, really, and we're investigating all options Radliffe is basically saying he's almost proving the point that many tried to raise in the spring of twenty twenty, that the intelligence community was sitting on intelligence, suppressing the intelligence that would make the Lavak case aus Radcliffe is actually making that argument in his testimony here And then we get we get another review, don't we by the end of twenty twenty. We get another review. Be that's what we needed. No more answers, but more reviews, please. I find this one to be fascinating and frankly, a bit of a political miscalculation because in December of twenty twenty four. So after Biden's lost the election It's his last month in office He authorizes yet another review of the available intelligence on COVID origins And this is done under the auspices of Bill Burns, who's the CI director at the time and I think this is a massive backfire because bottom line from this new assessment is that The CIA assesses with low confidence that a research related origin of the COVID nineteen pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of report They continue to assess both hypotheses are plausible, but they've bumped up from basically, we're not making a call who are making a call with low confidence And the reason I think this is a backfire or ends up backfiring, frankly on the Biden administration is that I think the intentions are good, which is we've got this log jam in the intelligence community around COVID origins assessment Let's have another look at it and see if we get a different answer or get a better answer or we get the answer And yet it backfires because as the CIA increases its assessment, to low confidence. you can you as a policy maker who is perhaps a little bit politically oriented. now have ammunition to release the assessment strip aside the confidence statement and claim The Biden administration has been sitting on this the whole time That's the ammunition you're given. and as we'll see, that's exactly how it gets used. But it is a big deal because in the one hand, they're saying, yeah, it's low confidence, but a research related origin. They've changed it. Yeah is more likely than a natural origin I mean, but with low confidence. So it's like the most frustrating situation. but it is a shift But just low confidence and But you're right, that provides the ammunition for the new incoming Trump administration to basically be able to go, well, the CIA were hiding the fact that they actually did think it might be something that came out of a l when you dig into all, why did the assessment change the conclusion was not based on fresh intelligence That's clear It was based on analysis of the spread of the virus its scientific properties and the wor and conditions of China's viroly labs So Again, there's not a It wouldn't be low confidence if there were really if there was really good scientific information or if there actually had been a Chinese investigation in secret into the orrigin of the virus that somehow CAA got access to You'd probably have higher than low confidence. Yeah. So again, it's this is this is very unsatising, but but it's as I said earlier This is enough because it is declassified and released on the first day of the new Trump administration by incoming CIA director John Ratcliffe. None other than John Rackcliff. other than John Radcliffe. Rackcliff said He released this because he wanted CIA off the sidelines His words of the origins debate And the release of the assessment, I thought this was fascinating was meant to restore Americans trust in our own institutions. So I think that is a strong implication that the CIA the intelligence community more broadly had been covering something up. So which fits in with the new Trump administration deep state narrative of intelligence community which under Biden had been turned into a political tool and had not been willing to confront the truth about things. So You know, the politicization is absolutely there. One thing we should we should talk about is the whistleblower Because that you tease that we we'll hear a bit more about him We do learn who he is, don't we? and what actually was the situation with him We do because I mean, as recently as last month, S May of twenty twenty six, So whistleblower whose name is James Erdman I third has been submitting testimony to a congressional committee that's being chaired by Rand Paul and Erdman He's a career CI operations officer. I think he joined in teeen Cool from March of twenty twenty five to April of twenty twenty six been on an assignment to the Director's Initiatives group, which is this task force that Tulsi Gabbard was running over at the DNI and had been stood up to kind of the implementation of a number of Trump's executive orders on declassification, the JFK assassination And one of them was COVID origins. And Wh whistleblower, James Erdman His core claim was that the CIA's scientific analysts repeatedly concluded that a lab leak was the most likely origin and that managers, none of whom were scientific subject matter experts overrode them. And he says that the agency had an effort ongoing in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three to do a relook. the findings from that initial Biden era ninety day spread team gets assigned. He says it's seven technical experts and three generalist analysts and that eight of the ten had supported the lab league at low confidence one at medium. But that when a draft was L like it was going to head toward a lab leak assessment, reach the front office And it got changed that managers change the analytic line to something like We may never precisely know the origin of the virus. and Erdman says that the changes were made at one fifty three AM changes that don't show who made them and that the precisely wording was chosen to discourage further inquiry. It's like a kind of aggath Christy mystery. who was in the office at onety three AM who with anonymously changed a document to alter the conclusions. Can we find the suspect? You need Pirot or someone to do it. And what about the bribery claims? he claim climed about bribery. he walks them back He walks those back. actually, when I was first reading the accounts of the bribery claims, I thought that he was probably referring to exceptional performance awards, which are things you get, you know, if you're on a task force that does something important, everyone, you know could get a it used to be that they gave you gift certificates to restaurants actually. And those were really highly prized. But they stopped doing that. And now they have, you know these awards. It's like a, mini bonus and his account againg, he changes his tune on this says that the Lab Lak analyst received a fif five hundred dollars exceptional performance award One non specialist who actually favored the natural origins theory received four times that amount. So that claim kind of falls apart. He basically documents Yeah, it's it's similar to the to the congressional report kind of the congressional oversight reports that have come out because he basically highlights some instances where Um information someome of it circumstantial that leans toward the Lablake hypothesis was not included. in intelligence reports. So I mean one of them he mentioned was You know, there was a national lab report done by the Department of Energy back in May of twenty twenty that, for example, found all of the preconditions for a lab leak existed at the Wuhan Institute of Fyroly. and he says this didn't make it into any intelligence community products. in twenty twenty. So why is that? right? open quest? It's interesting though, because as well, back to politics Erdman, this whistleblower, also seems to have a political viewpoint, Is that fair to say I think that's fair to say, he's He's the co founder of Feds for Freedom, which is We will love employee. We do love freedom. It's a group of federal employees built around opposing COVID vaccine mandates He's also a very vocal Dr. Anthony Fauci critic, I think maybe even more important than his political leanings are that most of his testimony is secondhand and is cited to other unnamed whistlebowers. So he's We have a sort of chain of custody in this information that you may not have confidence in becausecause you can't get to the ultimate source, which is a problem in the intelligence world and you're back to politics because, you know, as you said, he I mean, you know, whether he's got a political agenda, we can't kind of impute that, but he's linked to groups which you know, oppose vaccines and perhaps do have an agenda and certainly is his H views are being used as politics. So once again, you just have this feeling Politics has kind of soured all of the relationships and all of the Gcussions at the heart of this subject increasingly so. 's it's an unsatisfying. I find this to be a very unsatisfying conlusion because the whole thing is just an absolute mess But for me, this is a great case study. in how diffifficult it can be But you are, I mean, like us now we're sitting outside of the intelligence community. We don't have firsthand access to this information Be the key question is Wh politicized it Do we think it was the Politicians. Or do we think it was peopleople inside the intelligence community with a political agenda Yeah, that's the war over this question comes down to to that and I find there's no there's not a there's not going to be diagnostic very clear information that comes out, which I think is part of the point. you know, I think I think it's part of the political war around this is you make it very hard get to the bottom of this and create a swirl of information and additional reports that have all kinds of Hide to low quality of information. you throw this stuff in put it out there and make it really hard for people to know what actually happened or what the truth might be. I do think that moment where Donald Trump, President Trump initially went COVD starts says I think this is Lab leak and starts to push the direction immmediately injects a level of politics into it And I remember what was so interesting as a journalist covering it was that then everyone went, well, he's only saying that because he wants to bash China because that's what he does. And we don't always believe what he says But then the frustration of you know, what's the evidence, the lack of evidence The fact that there was evidence, but it wasn't being seen properly just creates this confusion where it becomes impossible to see this through anything but a political lens, it feels like You know, it feels like you've got to take sides like with so many of these questions And if you take ses your taking a view on whether you agree with Donald Trump or disagree with Donald Trump, or whether you think there's a deep state or not, or whether you think China is good or bad. and immediately rather than kind of looking at it ively You end up having to take a side in a polarized debate. And I think it's that way in which intntelligence and politics have got mixed and polarized which is the problem Um And I think this is a perfect example of that and this debate about that, where you end up with two camps opposing each other and looking for evidence which supports their position I don't know which one is true. but I know that's not all I know is that that's not a healthy thing You know, if I were to put my conspiratorial hat on for a second and say, well, how would we know if there had actually been an effort inside the CIA or any other element of the intelligence community to kind of to suppress a lab leink theory Politicization is really hard to say It' it's hard to confirm. It's very hard to pin down So You know, they going what this whistleblower said Um Like that would be a pretty stark, even that can't really be proven, But that would be a stark example of, you know a manager twisting the arm of sixix seven analysts to say change your tune it could be to an outsider looks like politicization, saying, Ohh, why didn't you include this report or that report in some kind of official assessment can also be the natural outgrowth of a bureaucratic process and an intelligence process to like make sense of a really complicated world and try to weight information appropriately. I't To an outsider, it's like it could look the outcome could look sort of, it could look political, but in fact The process itself was anything but. So It's not, it's not the kind of question we're ever going to get an answer to, but you know, probably much like COVID origins itself, but I think that this has been a good case study in how intntelligence and politics are how they interact with each other and I think, frankly, something that we're likely to see a lot more of in the future over really important intelligence questions like the nature of COVID, which I think does not necessarily bode well. And I'm afraid if you were hoping for an answer to the origins of COVID, I dont think we've got one, I'm not sure we'll ever get one. That's also I just think, you know, if there was an answer somewhere in China, I think it been well suppressed. I don' think it's in their interest, as you said to discover it. So I think it's going to continue to be a mystery a secret that can be uncovered. And as a result I think open to politics and more politicization, you know, which is a bit of a tragedy when it is You know, COVID was something which really important. It's a real Yeah it's really important Yeah, and we may never get to the bottom of it where we You've enjoyed this deep dive into different theories around COVID's origins, the intelligence story around it. know as always, you don't have to wait to get these series. you know, you can just go to the restest isclassified. com Sign up for the declassified club there, all sorts of goodies. H hope you've enjoyed this one and We will see you next time. See you next time