U.S. President Joe Biden’s 90-day probe into the origins of COVID-19 censored the input of intelligence agency scientists who concluded the virus was most likely genetically engineered. Sky News Australia‘s Sharri Markson has the story.
In May 2021, President Biden tasked the Intelligence Community with providing an assessment into how the pandemic began after reports, first published by Sky News, that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been hospitalised with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019 in the suspected first cluster of the pandemic.
When the report was published it concluded that most intelligence agencies assessed the virus, even if it had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was natural rather than manipulated in a laboratory.
Sky News can reveal that this was not the assessment made by the four groups within the intelligence agencies that actually engaged in scientific analysis, who concurred that there was either a highly likely or reasonable chance the virus was genetically engineered.
Scientists at the Defence Intelligence Agency’s National Centre for Medical Intelligence (DIA NCMI) had conducted rigorous research on the genomic sequence of the virus and firmly concluded that it was, most likely, a laboratory construct.
In a world exclusive, Sky News can for the first time reveal their story, their research and their discoveries about SARS-CoV-2.
They had been working with the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction unit, until the co-operation between the two agencies was blocked, with a director at the Defence Intelligence Agency claiming the FBI was “off the reservation” on the topic of the origins of COVID-19.
Well-placed sources familiar with the work that unfolded inside the intelligence agency and their interactions with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the 90-day probe spoke to Sky News for this investigation.
Their internal research at the Pentagon-based agency led to a finding that was described internally as a “smoking gun”.
One of the scientists discovered that the size and location of a fragment of COVID-19 resembled the same fragment in Wuhan Institute of Virology research from more than a decade earlier, in 2008. It was the same technique that the WIV had used in grant applications to make chimeric viruses.
“This paper is the smoking gun of everything. When the team reviewed this data, they thought ‘This is created in the lab. It’s a reverse genetics construct,” a source said.
But their input into the 90-day origins probe was censored.
Sources close to the inquiry estimated about 90% of the DIA NCMI edits were deleted, censored or simply weren’t included.
A longer article in the Australian has further details.
They [NCMI scientists Robert Greg Cutlip, Jean-Paul Chretien and John Hardham] wrote an unclassified working paper, dated May 26th 2020, titled ‘Critical Analysis of Anderson et al. The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2′. Their paper was circulated within the NCMI and among multiple scientists within the intelligence community. It was also intended for wider publication, so that the public could have a greater understanding of the new virus sweeping the globe. But it was never allowed to be disseminated more broadly, in yet another cover-up of scientists who questioned the natural origins narrative perpetuated by senior officials.
The report was scathing of the Proximal Origin authors’ claim that COVID-19 had a natural origin.
“We consider the evidence they present and find that it does not prove that the virus arose naturally. In fact, the features of SARS-CoV-2 noted by Anderson et al. are consistent with another scenario: that SARS-CoV-2 was developed in a laboratory, by methods that leading coronavirus researchers commonly use to investigate how the viruses infect cells and cause disease, assess the potential for animal coronaviruses to jump to humans, and develop drugs and vaccines.”
While Kristian Anderson and the other authors that the “high-affinity binding ofthe SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2”, Chretien, Cutlip and Hardham disagreed.
“This is not a scientific argument but rather an assumption of intent and methodology for a hypothesised scientist,” they wrote.
“Instead of aiming to design a virus that binds with high affinity to ACE2, a researcher may have chosen to investigate, empirically, the effect of one or more receptor binding domain variants on receptor binding or infectivity.
“In fact, leading coronavirus research laboratories have been doing this for years to study the potential for bat coronaviruses to infect humans.”
The paper then provides examples of where these experiments happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“In the context of this research, SARS-CoV-2 could have been synthesised by combining a backbone from a coronavirus similar to RaTG13 with the receptor binding domain of a coronavirus similar to the one recently isolated from pangolins. Such research might have aimed to investigate pangolins as possible intermediate hosts for bat coronaviruses potentially pathogenic for humans, and would have been consistent with the longstanding line of investigations described above.”
Chretien, Cutlip and Hardham also disagreed with Anderson et al.’s argument that there was no known progenitor virus that could have led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2.
“However, the absence of a publication does not mean that the research was not done,” they wrote. Perhaps the experiments were aborted or not reported because of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak? Perhaps the results were never intended for publication?
“In a recent example of delayed publication from the COVID-19 pandemic, WIV researchers first reported RaTG13 in January 2020, but later stated that they had discovered the virus in 2013. The possibility of the SARS-CoV-2 furin site arising during passage in thelaboratory cannot be dismissed.”
The esteemed authors go on to say that “laboratories also have directly inserted furin cleavage sites into coronaviruses”.
They cite several examples including the Shi Zhengli gain-of-function experiment with the University of North Carolina.
Their paper concludes that the Proximal Origin authors’ arguments “are based not on scientific analysis, but on unwarranted assumptions”.
“A long line of research shows that leading coronavirus laboratories do not work as described in the laboratory-origin scenario Anderson et al. consider and dismiss. SARS-CoV-2 – a bat coronavirus with pangolin coronavirus receptor binding domain – is consistent with the chimeric constructs these laboratories have developed and studied for more than a decade.
“We highlight the features of SARS-CoV-2, noted by Anderson et al,. are consistent with longstanding and ongoing laboratory experiments; the evidence Anderson et al. present does not lessen the plausibility of laboratory origin.”
Following this the group continued to work on the virus.
By June 2020, their genomic analysis of amino acids and nucleotides was producing fairly conclusive findings that COVID-19 was genetically engineered.
While their recommendations and working products are highly technical, there are four main reasons for why they found that SARS-CoV-2 was most likely genetically engineered.
They thought perhaps the backbone was related to the virus miners in Mojiang, China, caught in 2012 and had been modified.
Then came the discovery that was described internally as the smoking gun. The majority of the SARS-CoV-2 virus genome is similar to bat coronaviruses. However, a small region of the spike gene, encoding the spike protein’s receptor binding domain (RBD), is identical to that of the pangolin coronavirus MP789.
Hardham reported to NCMI that the size and location of the pangolin fragment in SARS-CoV-2 was similar to the same RBD fragment described in one of Wuhan institute’s previous research publications.
In a 2008 paper by Shi Zhengli and Ren Wuze, the Wuhan researchers identified the minimal cassette that would be necessary to change the binding to different host ACE2 receptors – this refers to how the virus crosses from species to species.
Once the Wuhan researchers identified the minimal RBD cassette, they proposed using this same technique in their future work – including in grant proposals sent to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
This same technique (minimal cassette) is found in SARS-CoV-2.
They also found scientific papers in which Shi Zhengli, who had worked at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, described working with furin cleavage sites in the precise location where they appeared in SARS-CoV-2. “Shi helped research furin cleavage sites in the Netherlands laboratory that are very similar to SARS-CoV-2,” sources close to the inquiry told the Australian.
“This paper is the smoking gun of everything. Figure 7 is literally the description of the pangolin RBD insert. When the team reviewed this data, they thought ‘This is created in the lab. It’s a reverse genetics construct.’ They identified the minimal cassette required to change the host range.”
The NCMI researchers shared their findings among scientific elements of the intelligence community, and their colleagues concurred.
Over the next year, their work and analysis continued, drawing in and involving other scientists from separate units, including the Institute for Advanced Technologies in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Their findings were shared and discussed with scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the CIA, the FBI’s weapons of mass destruction unit and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.
The Australian understands that the scientists generally concurred that the virus was most likely genetically engineered.
“We briefed everyone on these findings. We were in alignment,” sources close to the inquiry said. “All four of the scientific groups concurred it was not a natural virus.”
But, on July 7th 2021, the group was blocked from sharing other findings with the FBI.
A director at NCMI is understood to have instructed them: “You may not speak with the FBI WMD anymore. They are off the reservation on this.”
The reports in Sky News Australia and the Australian are worth reading in full.
It’s worth wondering why these stunning scientific conclusions from within the U.S. intelligence community – which are at odds with the official statements from U.S. intelligence officials throughout the pandemic – are being released now. This must have been authorised, and Markson’s source, as before, is likely to be Robert Kadlec, the U.S. biodefence chief who has always pushed the lab leak theory, though appears to have been overruled on this for much of the pandemic. Why this is all being aired now is not entirely clear, though it is clear that Biden is being blamed for the censorship and cover-up, despite the fact that it pre-dated his presidency. Are the intelligence agencies turning on Biden?
The 2008 “smoking gun” paper for a WIV origin is intriguing, though the basic issue with a WIV origin remains: if Shi Zhengli realised it was from her lab, why did she publish a paper in mid-January 2020 comparing SARS-CoV-2 to RaTG13 and stating the former did not appear to have emerged naturally from the latter, casting immediate suspicion over her lab’s research? Perhaps she was just trying to show that similar viruses exist in the wild. But then there’s the question of why China spent weeks not taking any measures against the spread if it secretly knew or suspected it was an escaped experimental virus engineered to be more contagious. Conversely, there’s the weird foreknowledge of U.S. intelligence, sources from which claimed to be following the outbreak in China in mid-November 2019, before it was detectable.
While there is clearly a renewed push from elements within U.S. intelligence on the lab leak theory, questions remain.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.