CIA 'bribed' its analysts to say Covid didn’t originate in Wuhan lab: whistleblower

A new letter penned by Reps. Mike Turner (R-OH) and Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), who chair the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, respectively, revealed that a CIA whistleblower has said to Congress that the government agency handed bribes to its own agents so they would claim that Covid did not originate from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.



"A multi-decade, senior-level, current Agency officer has come forward to provide information to the Committees regarding the Agency’s analysis into the origins of COVID-19," the letter addressed to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director William J. Burns reads in part. "According to the whistleblower, the Agency assigned seven officers to a COVID Discovery Team (Team). The Team consisted of multi-disciplinary and experienced officers with significant scientific expertise."

It goes on to state that per the whistleblower, "six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis."

"The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position."

The lawmakers told the CIA it must hand over all records related to the COVID Discovery Team and any communications with the FBI, State Department, Health and Human Services and Energy Department regarding the topic by September 26, or otherwise be faced with a subpoena. 

Turner and Wenstrup also sent a writeup to Andrew Makridis, a former Chief Operating Officer for the CIA who retired near the end of 2022. In that letter was a request for Makridis to "participate in a voluntary
transcribed interview" in order to assist the committees in their investigations. 

In February of this year, The Department of Energy, which monitors biological research labs, found with "low confidence" that the Covid virus had emerged from a Wuhan lab. The FBI said the same, with moderate confidence. 

Ultimately, the CIA chose to not announce a formal assessment of the origins of Covid, even with low confidence.

A total of about seven million people have lost their lives since the virus started spreading throughout the world in 2020, according to the Daily Mail.