Retcliffe, who served as Director of National Intelligence during President Trump’s first term, has long supported the lab leak theory, claiming that Coord is probably in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. A leak came from.
The company is 40 minutes away from the Huanian wet market, where the first infection was revealed.
In an interview with Brett Bart News published on Friday, Ratcliffe said he wanted to abandon his neutral stance on the start of the CIA virus and “turn away from sidelines”.
“One of the things I have talked about is to remove the threat from China on numerous fronts, and it goes back to why one million Americans were killed and why the Central Intelligence Agency five years Sitting on the sideline.
“This is a day’s thing for me.”
But officials told US media that the new estimate is not based on new intelligence and is predicted by the Trump administration. The review was allegedly ordered in the closing weeks of the Biden administration and was completed on Monday before Trump took office.
The review offered on Saturday is based on “less confidence”, which means lack of intelligence, inexperienced or inconsistent.
There is no consensus on the cause of the Kovade epidemic.
Some support a “natural original” theory, which argues that the virus naturally spreads to animals, without any scientist or laboratory involvement.
The lab leak assumption has been particularly fought by scientists, including many people who say there is no final evidence to back it. And China has in the past rejected the lab’s claim as a “political manipulation” by Washington.
Nevertheless, once the controversial theory is gaining importance among some intelligence agencies.
In 2023, FBI Director Christopher Ray told Fox News that his bureau estimated that “the onset of epidemic is likely to be a lab.”
