DrAccording to media reports, the US Department of Energy has changed its assessment of the origin of the coronavirus and now assumes the possibility of a laboratory accident. This comes from a classified intelligence report that was recently provided to the White House and prominent members of CongressWall Street Journalon Sunday, citing unnamed sources. the „The New York TimesAs reported later intelligence report.
The DOE now agrees with the FBI’s assessment that the virus may have spread through a Chinese laboratory glitch. However, the Ministry assumes this with a „low” degree of certainty.
US President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, said Sunday that he could neither confirm nor deny the report. „At the moment there is no definitive answer from the secret services to this question,” Sullivan stressed, referring to the origin of the virus. „Some parts of the intelligence community have drawn conclusions on the one hand, and others have said they don’t have enough information to be sure.”
Some US authorities still consider the virus likely to be transmitted naturally, and others are reluctant. According to the report, the Energy Ministry’s conclusion is based on new information from the intelligence services. The two American newspapers were unable to find out what these results were.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the department had previously been reluctant to assess it. Like other US departments, the Department has its own Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, which is part of the US Intelligence Community. These trace the origin of the coronavirus.
In 2021, after several months of scrutiny, there was no agreement among US intelligence agencies on the origin of the coronavirus. Whether the virus came from a laboratory or jumped from an animal to a human remains to be seen, according to a report published at the time in which the intelligence departments of various agencies published their assessments. China has long denied allegations of a possible laboratory accident.
„Kick-off” is WELT’s daily news podcast. In the morning, the most important dates of the day are classified by our experts. And in the evening, the WELT editors analyzed the most important topic of the day. Subscribe to the podcast at SpotifyAnd Apple PodcastAnd Amazon MusicAnd Google Podcast or directly via RSS feed.