The U.S. intelligence community is not ruling out the possibility that the new coronavirus was accidentally leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, AFP news agency said.
AFP reports that U.S. intelligence chief Haynes told a Senate committee meeting Wednesday that “the U.S. intelligence community does not yet know where, when and how the new coronavirus first spread.” Haynes said there are two “theories” to explain the origin of the coronavirus: human contact with an infected animal or a laboratory accident.
“We are continuing to work on the origin of the virus, gathering all the information we can, and we will do everything we can to provide a compelling explanation for the origin of the virus,” Haynes told the U.S. Senate committee.
U.S. CIA Director William Burns added, “We are doing everything we can to elucidate the origin of the virus using all available resources.” But he also added, “One thing that is clear to us and to our experts is that the Chinese leadership has not been entirely forthcoming and transparent in its cooperation with the World Health Organization on the traceability of the coronavirus.”
Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of the National Security Agency’s military intelligence agency, told the conference that U.S. intelligence is working with other government agencies and universities to determine the exact source of the virus.
In a report released in late March, international experts from the WHO said it was “highly unlikely that the virus was leaking from a laboratory,” but WHO Director General Tan Desai called for a new investigation into the possibility of a laboratory leak days after the report came out. Tandezai also said international experts told him of the difficulties they had encountered in obtaining raw data during the China investigation.
According to U.S. intelligence, former President Donald Trump’s administration believed, based on information provided by the U.S. intelligence system, that the virus was most likely leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research, a possibility that China has vigorously denied.
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