Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe maintains the “only explanation and “plausible assessment” for the global Covid-19 pandemic is a leak from a Chinese-controlled lab, and cited U.S. intelligence and “numerous, diverse and unassailable” sources for the intelligence.
Fox News obtained Ratcliffe’s prepared testimony before his appearance before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Ratcliffe, confirmed in May 2020 to serve as director of national intelligence during the pandemic, is expected to give an unclassified overview of what intelligence learned about Covid-19 origins.
He is also expected to say the administration of President Biden declaring the assessment would have “enormous geopolitical implications” that they “seemingly” do “not want to face head-on.”
“My informed assessment, as a person with as much or more access than anyone to our government’s intelligence during the initial year of the virus outbreak and pandemic onset, has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science and by common sense,” Ratcliffe is expected to state.
He will explain that if evidence and intelligence from the U.S. supporting a lab leak theory were placed “side-by-side with our intelligence and evidence pointing to a naturally occurring ‘spillover; theory, the lab leak side of the ledger would be long and overwhelming while the ‘spillover’ side would be nearly empty.”
Ratcliffe will point out China’s obstruction of investigations into the origins and will say China is “incapable of offering a single shred of exculpatory evidence.”
He will also say, “The intelligence community’s sources for the information are numerous, diverse, and unassailable.”
Ratcliffe is also expected to provide details of the “challenges” he and other administration officials for former President Donald Trump encountered, including “legitimate concerns about the closely-held sources of our intelligence and the sensitive methods used to obtain it, as well as illegitimate roadblocks related to professional conflicts of interest and partisan politics.”
He will say the roadblocks included “the headwinds created when a lab leak assessment was initially labeled and falsely reported with near unanimity as a “conspiracy theory” by the mainstream press and conflicted scientists, while also being censored as “disinformation” by the giants of social media.
Ratcliffe will also explain that “national and electoral politics were also influencing analysis of our intelligence on China” in the intelligence community.
“To this day, the CIA, unquestionably the world’s premier spy agency with an unrivaled capacity to acquire information and near limitless resources to do so, has continued to state that it does not have enough information to make any formal assessment. To put it bluntly, this is unjustifiable — and a reflection not that the agency can’t make an assessment with any confidence, only that it won’t,” Ratcliffe will say.
Additionally, he will explain that the intelligence community “makes thousands of assessments every year with a fraction of the intelligence — circumstantial or otherwise — that it possesses related to Covid origins.”
“The real problem is, now three-and-a-half years later, the only plausible assessment the agency could make is that a virus which killed over a million Americans originated in a Chinese Communist Party-controlled lab whose research included work for the Chinese military,” Ratcliffe will explain. “Such an assessment would have enormous geopolitical implications that the Biden administration seemingly does not want to face head-on.”
Testimony comes after the Senate and House voted to require the administration to declassify all Covid-19 origin info
His expected testimony comes after the Senate and the House of Representatives voted to require the president’s administration to declassify all information related to Covid-19 origins.
The president signed the bipartisan bill last month, which directed the declassification of intelligence related to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology and cited “potential links” between the research done at the lab and the outbreak of Covid-19.
In addition to Ratcliffe’s upcoming assessment, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Covid-19 “most likely” came from a Chinese lab.
“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” said Wray. “Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab.”
Additionally, earlier in the year, the Department of Energy also concluded the pandemic likely stemmed from a leak at a lab.
The National Intelligence Council and four other agencies assess with “low confidence” that the Covid-19 pandemic originated from natural transmission from an infected animal. In contrast, the CIA and another unnamed agency remain undecided.
According to the World Health Organization, the Covid-19 pandemic has taken the lives of over 1.1 million Americans since January 2020.
