FBI probed EcoHealth Alliance, then told Biden it believes in COVID lab-origin
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation sought details of collaboration between the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology in early 2020, according to documents obtained from the US National Institutes of Health by The Intercept.
The National Institutes of Health were granting research funds to EcoHealth Alliance, which was sub-granting them to Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Later in 2021, the FBI was identified as the US agency that reported to President Joe Biden with “moderate confidence” that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, could have originated in a laboratory.
As The Dispatch reported earlier, four US agencies out of 18 had “low confidence” in a natural origin of COVID-19 pandemic. Three others had expressed inability to point to either outcome and only one — later reported by The New York Times to be FBI — had suggested with “moderate confidence” a laboratory origin.
The report on the origin of the pandemic was submitted to White House in August 2021, following President Joe Biden’s instructions to the US intelligence community to report in 90 days their assessment of the origin of novel coronavirus.
While FBI suggested a laboratory-origin, the report clarified it did not mean a deliberate release or a bioweapon operation. Moreover, none of these suggestions by US agencies — including FBI — were conclusions. The report said no conclusion can be reached until more evidence about the first outbreak in China emerges. Their suggestions only presented their level of confidence in the likelihood of a scenario.
FBI possesses intelligence on US-Wuhan collaboration
FBI’s inquiries in the EcoHealth-Wuhan collaboration in 2020 suggests the agency is in possession of credible intelligence that made it report to President Biden with “moderate confidence” a likely laboratory-origin.
According to people aware of the working of US intelligence agencies, a “low confidence” of an agency means “very low degree of confidence” — suggesting the assessment of these agencies is very weak, whereas “moderate confidence” means a respectable degree of confidence.
This gives more weight to FBI’s line of argument over other agencies — particularly in light of revelations that the agency was already inquiring into EcoHealth-Wuhan collaboration.
FBI inquiries put more spotlight on gain-of-function research
Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance, is a leading collaborator of Wuhan’s Shi Zhengli in coronavirus research. He is also at the forefront of dismissing the notion of a laboratory accident behind the pandemic.
Shi Zhengli is known as “Bat Woman” in China for her extensive work on bat coronaviruses.
As reported in The Dispatch earlier, the Chinese researchers led by Shi Zhengli collaborated with Peter Daszak and other US-based researchers for years on coronaviruses in what’s called “gain-of-function” research.
The gain-of-function research involves modifying a pathogen in a way that it gains increased transmissibility with an aim at understanding the potential of a pathogen to mutate and spread.
In simpler words, gain-of-function research makes a virus more lethal, more transmissible, which often involves making it jump species.
The gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at Wuhan, which has included making coronaviruses jump into human airway cells — making them able to infect humans through laboratory experiments — has been at the centre of laboratory-related discussions surrounding the origin of COVID-19.
The fact that FBI was also inquiring into the same lends credibility to the laboratory-origin thesis.
US State Department also investigated Chinese gain-of-function research
Citing insider accounts from the US Department of State, Katherine Eban reported for Vanity Fair that officials studying the Wuhan Institute of Virology learnt three of their researchers conducting gain-of-function experiments on coronavirus samples fell ill in the autumn of 2019 — before the COVID-19 outbreak was known.
Moreover, the research was not entirely a civilian project. US virologists highlighted that 11 of 23 Chinese authors of a study published in April 2020 worked for China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences — the Chinese army’s medical research institute, according to Katherine’s investigation.
In the study, the Chinese researchers — involving military researchers — engineered mice with humanised lungs to study their susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2. According to Katherine’s piece, the US investigators concluded the mice had been engineered sometime in the summer of 2019 — before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
It boils down to this: An institute funded by American dollars is trying to teach a bat virus to infect human cells, then there is a virus in the same city as that lab. It is not being intellectually honest not to consider the hypothesis of a lab escape, according to a former US health official quoted by Katherine Eban in her investigation.
Roads lead to Wuhan but remain blocked— even those passing through USA
That the pandemic began at the doorstep of the most advanced coronavirus researchers cannot be ignored. For years, the Chinese researchers along with their US-based partners hotwired viruses in the name of understanding their pandemic potential.
It’s natural that the authoritarian Chinese state would want to block investigations into their researchers’ role regarding the origin of the pandemic.
However, the road to Wuhan passes through USA where the likes of Peter Daszak and Ralph Baric contributed for years with the Chinese Bat Woman. Organisations like The Intercept and US Right to Know have used Freedom of Information Act to obtain and publish troves of documents detailing the linkages of American and Chinese researchers. However, much of this was a result of extensive litigation (that’s ongoing) and the released documents often proved to be highly redacted.
The redacted nature of documents released puts into question the commitment of American government institutions such as the National Institutes of Health to understand the origin of the pandemic.
Madhur Sharma is an Indian journalist. Connect on Twitter at @madhur_mrt.
