A secret intelligence study from the U.S. Department of Energy, currently in the hands of the White House and senior members of Congress, explains that the spread of the coronavirus pandemic likely began with a leak in a laboratory.
According to a report in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal, new information prompted the Energy Department to revise its assessment of the pandemic’s origins. The new information was included in an update to a document originally drafted in 2021 by the office of Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.
While the inquiry is ongoing, the WSJ reports that more authorities are coming around to the lab leak scenario, while there has been no final determination made.
The new research emphasizes how several intelligence agencies have reached diverse conclusions on the cause of the epidemic. The Energy Department has joined the F.B.I. in concluding that an accident in a Chinese laboratory was likely the source of the virus’s global spread.
While the National Intelligence Council and four other agencies remain convinced that it was caused by a natural transmission, two others remain on the fence.
Those familiar with the confidential assessment told Breitbart News that the Energy Department’s conclusion was reached with “low confidence,” but that it was consistent with an earlier conjecture regarding the virus’s precise origin.
While the lab leak scenario was “always feasible,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) noted that it was swiftly dismissed as a conspiracy theory by “reporters & activists in white lab coats.” Cotton’s doubts about the origins of the Chinese coronavirus date back to at least 2021.
In January 2020, Cotton initially raised the potential of a lab leak and he stated that the argument for such a leak remains unchanged.
It has already been widely recognized that the Biden administration would be negligent if it did not look into the Wuhan laboratory as a possible source of the lethal discharge.
According to reports, U.S. officials have been cagey in discussing the new information and analysis that prompted the Energy Department to reverse course.
However, the WSJ notes that the Energy Department and the FBI have independently concluded that an accidental lab leak is most plausible, but they did so for different reasons.
No word yet on whether the Chinese government’s stance on the origins of the coronavirus has shifted, despite repeated requests for comment.