Josh Christenson\u00a0and Ryan King, NY Post<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spy chiefs \u201csilenced\u201d researchers in the Defense Department and FBI who discovered strong evidence that COVID-19 most likely leaked from a Chinese lab, The Post has learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a result, their findings were kept out of an August 2021 report to President Biden on the origins of the global pandemic. That report concluded that the virus behind COVID \u201cwas probably not genetically engineered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the pandemic erupted in Wuhan, China, three scientists from the Defense Intelligence Agency began trying to figure out exactly where it came from \u2014 whether SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats into humans, or whether the virus was man-made and came from a lab accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u201czoonotic origin\u201d theory was backed by powerful members of the public health establishment, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, and questions about a possible \u201clab leak\u201d were repeatedly dismissed as a conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the researchers\u2019 analysis compiled dozens of data points in favor of a lab leak \u2014 compared with a \u201cpaucity of evidence supporting the natural origin theory,\u201d a source familiar with their investigation told The Post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The analysis was conducted by John Hardham,\u00a0Robert Cutlip\u00a0and\u00a0Jean-Paul Chretien, three scientists in the Defense Intelligence Agency\u2019s National Center for Medical Intelligence, which is tasked with examining potential biological weapons threats and dangerous infectious diseases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among their damning findings:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rather than amplifying these findings, they were all but ignored as Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines was preparing her report on COVID origins \u2014 which Biden ordered in May 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe scientists who had the subject matter expertise were silenced,\u201d the source said, noting that Biden and others remained \u201ccompletely unwitting\u201d about the evidence that SARS-CoV-2 likely leaked out of a lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The spy chiefs further forbade the scientists from sharing the information with Congress \u2014 even after Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) expressly requested them in a March 2021 letter<\/a> \u2014 or from rebutting a since-disgraced May 2020 paper \u2014 prompted by Fauci<\/a> \u2014 that sought to discredit the lab leak theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat was going to be the basis of an official intelligence product,\u201d another source said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They were also told not to share their findings with the FBI \u2014 which was the only US intelligence agency agency that concluded a lab leak was the most likely theory behind COVID, the sources added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All three were told that the FBI was \u201coff the reservation<\/a>\u201d when it became the sole agency to conclude the lab leak theory was likely, according to comments previously reported by the Australian newspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n FBI scientist Jason Bannan and his team running the parallel probe were also never offered an invitation to the White House briefing, according to the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, which first reported on the scientists getting sidelined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBeing the only agency that assessed that a laboratory origin was more likely, and the agency that expressed the highest level of confidence in its analysis of the source of the pandemic, we anticipated the FBI would be asked to attend the briefing,\u201d Bannan said. \u201cI find it surprising that the White House didn\u2019t ask.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cutlip, Hardham and Chretien in their investigation had determined that a region of a \u201cspike protein\u201d that permitted the virus to get into human cells mirrored methods described in a 2008 Chinese paper that had been developed in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The paper was published by researchers at the now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where the US government funded so-called \u201cgain-of-function<\/a>\u201d research, which increases the infectiousness of viruses, long before the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. Shi Zhengli, the notorious \u201cbat lady\u201d at the WIV, and her team of virologists also trained up on their techniques at a US lab in Galveston, Texas, where they learned how to make a whole coronavirus genome with \u201cseamless assembly,\u201d according to sources close to the probe who believe the trick was likely used to construct the SARS-CoV-2 virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Additionally, Zhou Yusen, a Chinese military researcher who worked with the WIV, applied for a COVID vaccine patent on Feb. 24, 2020 \u2014 a feat that must have taken at least six months\u2019 work to complete despite SARS-CoV-2 not being fully sequenced until the end of January 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe had to have that sequence well before,\u201d one source added, pointing out how Zhou also plummeted to his death from WIV\u2019s roof in May 2020, US investigators later claimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The upshot of the alleged coverup is that Haines informed Biden that the more dominant view of COVID origins within the intelligence community in 2021 was that the virus had jumped from animals to humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the time, there were at least four intelligence agencies \u2014 along with the National Intelligence Council, a group of top intelligence officers whom Haines supervised \u2014 that believed zoonotic transmission was the most probable explanation, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notably, the CIA and at least two other agencies took a neutral stance on the virus\u2019 likely origins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Director of National Intelligence Office spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that typically officials from individual agencies do not show up for briefings for the president of that nature. The spox also contended that the different perspectives were included in the briefing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Intelligence Council\u2019s work on Covid-19 origins complied with all of the Intelligence Community\u2019s analytic standards<\/a>, including objectivity,\u201d the spokeswoman claimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The DNI did not respond to The Post\u2019s questions on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last month, The Post reported on whistleblower documents that alleged federal grant documents that described a so-called \u201cblueprint\u201d for producing viruses that cause COVID-19<\/a> could have been improperly classified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a result, the inquiry of the pandemic origins by the Intelligence Community may have been \u201cflawed,\u201d per that whistleblower, Marine Corps. Lt. Col. Joseph Murphy.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA genomic assessment backed the lab leak theory<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A faulty briefing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFlawed\u201d probe of COVID-19 origins<\/h2>\n\n\n\n