US spy agencies unable to pinpoint source of Covid-19, classified report shows

Four agencies assessed, with low confidence, that it reached humans via infected animals, the summary said, but one argued with moderate confidence that it was the result of a lab accident.

The summary, drawn from a much longer classified report presented to President Biden on Tuesday, is unequivocal on two major points.

“We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon," it stated. And, it said, U.S. spy agencies don’t think that Chinese officials had foreknowledge of the virus, SARS-COV-2, before the outbreak emerged.

Most agencies assessed, though with low confidence, that the virus wasn’t genetically engineered, although two said there wasn’t enough information to make a judgment, the report stated.

The declassified summary, the result of a 90-day review of the issue that Mr. Biden ordered in May, acknowledged that the $80-billion-a-year U.S. intelligence community won’t be able to pinpoint—without more information from China—the source of the virus, which has killed more than 600,000 Americans and more than four million globally.

“Beijing however continues to hinder the global investigation, resist sharing information and blame other countries, including the United States," it said.

Mr. Biden said in a statement Friday that efforts to find the origins of the virus would continue, and he criticized China for not being more forthcoming.

“Critical information about the origins of this pandemic exists in the People’s Republic of China, yet from the beginning, government officials in China have worked to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community from accessing it," Mr. Biden said.

In a statement late Friday, the Chinese Embassy in Washington rejected that assertion and said the report “is only for scapegoating China."

The report appears likely to provide fodder for proponents of both the lab-leak and natural-transmission theories for Covid-19’s origins, and presents Mr. Biden, U.S. lawmakers and the World Health Organization the challenge of how to proceed almost 18 months after the pandemic began.

Many lawmakers have said that it is vital that the U.S. determine how the pandemic emerged and have urged the Biden administration to continue its investigations until it gets a more definitive answer.

The Biden administration had pinned much of its hope on efforts by the World Health Organization, but in July China rejected the organization’s proposal for a continued investigation of Covid-19’s origins, saying that the search should be carried out in other countries.

The report found that the virus first infected humans through “an initial small-scale exposure" no later than November 2019, with the first known cases arising in Wuhan, China, a month later, a finding that roughly corresponds to the conventional understanding of the virus’s emergence.

Analysts in four intelligence organizations as well as the National Intelligence Council assess that the first infection with the virus “was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it, or a close progenitor virus, a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar," the summary said. But it said analysts had low confidence in that judgment.

Analysts at one intelligence unit assessed with moderate confidence that the pandemic began as “the result of a laboratory-associated incident probably involving experimentation, animal handling or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology," a laboratory that conducts coronavirus research in that Chinese city.

The report doesn’t say which of the 18 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community assessed the origins which way. The National Intelligence Council conducts strategic analysis, often bringing in outside experts, and reports to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.

For intelligence analysts, moderate confidence indicates the information is credibly sourced and plausible, but not of high enough quality or with enough corroboration to merit high confidence. Low confidence means questions remain about the information’s quality, plausibility or sourcing.

In announcing the 90-day review, Mr. Biden said that it might lead to specific questions the U.S. could put to China, but the unclassified summary doesn’t say what they might be. Nor does the summary cite any new scientific data that might support either theory.

The equivocal nature of the assessment is likely to fuel efforts to make changes in the intelligence community, which has long been criticized for giving insufficient priority to global dangers such as the spread of infectious disease.

Ms. Haines has said that she plans to upgrade the intelligence agencies’ ability to detect pandemics, as well as its ability to handle other scientific questions such as the impact of climate change. She hasn’t provided details of what steps she is taking.

Some former officials say that the failure of the intelligence agencies to unravel the mystery points to the need for an independent 9/11-style commission that could canvass international scientific advice.

In a July 27 letter to Mr. Biden, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senator Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees urged the president to carry on with the investigation until the intelligence community had reached conclusions on the origin of the pandemic with a high degree of confidence.

The letter urged that the inquiry examine what U.S. government funding was provided to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for advanced virus research.