The Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin said in a book published Monday that the U.S. learned in 2017 that the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research was studying a bat-borne Chinese Communist virus, warning that the research threatened to trigger a SARS-like plague.
Newsmax reported March 8 that the book, titled “The World in chaos: Trump, Xi Jinping and the War of the 21st Century,” states that after scientists from the National Institutes of health visited the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research in 2017, a meeting was held in Beijing with senior health and science officials from the U.S. Embassy in attendance to hear their report. listened to their report.
At the meeting, the researchers warned of the dangers of this bat-borne, SARS-related CCP virus. The researchers had clearly identified a so-called “spike protein” in three new viruses.
The U.S. Embassy then sent teams of experts to the Wuhan Institute of Virology over the next several months (beginning in January 2018) to meet with virologists there. The researchers informed the U.S. diplomats that they had found evidence that the bat-borne virus could be transmitted to human cells.
The Wuhan Institute had issued an English-language press release about the last U.S. visit on March 27 of that year, which was later removed.
Rogin said U.S. diplomats sent two cables back to Washington warning the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research of a number of worrisome issues, such as the dangers of the research, the security of the institute, and management weaknesses, and suggesting the U.S. government give the institute more attention.
Citing a diplomatic cable sent back on Jan. 19, 2018, Rogin said scientific staff at the Wuhan Institute for Virus Research had mentioned that they had a serious lack of properly trained technical and investigative staff.
According to excerpts from Rogin’s book, the Trump Administration‘s State Department issued a statement in its final days in office (Jan. 15) that the U.S. intelligence community had evidence that researchers at the Wuhan Virus Laboratory had developed symptoms of COVID-19 (New Coronavirus) in the fall of 2019.
The State Department statement said, “The U.S. government has reason to believe that multiple researchers within the Wuhan Virus Research Institute became ill in the fall of 2019, prior to the appearance of the first confirmed cases with symptoms consistent with New Coronavirus pneumonia and common seasonal diseases.
“And the new information raises questions about the credibility of Wuhan Institute of Virus, whose senior researcher Zhengli Shi has said the institute’s staff and students have ‘zero infections’ in terms of the virus in question.”
Rogin wrote in the Washington Post last year that several U.S. national security officials have long speculated that the 2019 CCP (coronavirus) disease may have come from the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research, or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a media interview on May 3, 2020, then-Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said there was “overwhelming evidence” that the outbreak of the new coronavirus (CCP virus) began in a laboratory in Wuhan, China. He also said the Chinese Communist Party‘s response to the outbreak was a classic communist disinformation campaign.
“I can tell you that there is overwhelming evidence that this (virus) came from a laboratory in Wuhan.” Pompeo said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” at the Time.
“Remember, China (has) a history of infecting the world, they have a history of running substandard labs. And this is not the first time that the world has been exposed to a virus because of Chinese lab failures.” Pompeo said at the time.
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