OPINION:
The origin of the coronavirus that killed millions has yet to be elucidated to the satisfaction of Americans. But rather than point a knowledgeable finger at the most likely cause, the U.S. intelligence community has opted to sit on its hands.
In the absence of a definitive explanation, reason favors the most plausible one: The virus was likely a product of an experiment that leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV. Given China’s refusal to take responsibility, the U.S. should err on the side of caution and keep its distance.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday published its declassified report analyzing the links between the Wuhan lab and the genesis of the COVID-19 pestilence in late 2019.
“All agencies continue to assess that both a natural and laboratory-associated origin remain plausible hypotheses to explain the first human infection,” the report concludes.
It’s a statement of caution comparable to looking both ways before crossing the street, and then staying frozen in indecision on the sidewalk.
The partially redacted 10-page analysis contains evidence of scientific malfeasance at the lab. Among the charges:
• “Some WIV researchers probably did not use adequate biosafety precautions at least some of the time prior to the pandemic.”
• “WIV scientists conducted extensive research on coronaviruses, which included animal sampling and genetic analysis.”
• “Some scientists at the WIV have genetically engineered coronaviruses using common laboratory practices.”
Moreover, the report says, among WIV researchers who were stricken with illness in fall 2019, “some of their symptoms were consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19.”
If U.S. intelligence analysts were to add two plus two, they may or may not come up with four. In sum, the National Intelligence Council and four other intelligence agencies expressed belief that the pandemic started with “natural exposure to an infected animal.”
This despite a fruitless, three-year search for the offending creature.
The CIA and another, unnamed agency quailed at even offering an educated hypothesis about the virus’s origin, owing to the presence of “significant assumptions” or “conflicting reporting.”
Only the Department of Energy and the FBI dared enunciate a likely scenario: that the initial outbreak was caused by a “laboratory-associated incident.”
Evidence points heavily in that direction based on the testimony of Andrew G. Huff, who as a vice president of a scientific research group that helped fund the Wuhan lab claims to have witnessed faulty management of the lab’s risky research.
The lack of professional oversight, he has said, constitutes “the biggest failure in U.S. intelligence history.”
To be sure, hasty conclusions sometimes lead to begrudging regrets. For example, if only dozens of current and former U.S. intelligence luminaries had remembered that before contaminating the 2020 presidential election with their bogus assertion that the Hunter Biden laptop story was likely the product of Russian disinformation.
Now exhibiting an abundance of caution, the U.S. intelligence brain trust refuses to point the finger over the source of the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, Americans are left with little choice but to deter the next global pandemic by keeping China at arm’s length. The intelligence report is, as the saying goes, good enough for government work — but not much else.
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