The FBI had not only concluded a lab leak was likely but that it had “moderate confidence” in its assessment – more than any other agency – and had expected to make this case to the White House but no officials from the agency were invited to do so.
In his first interview, Mr Bannan told the Wall Street Journal: “Being the only agency that assessed that a laboratory origin was more likely, and the agency that expressed the highest level of confidence in its analysis of the source of the pandemic, we anticipated the FBI would be asked to attend the briefing.
“I find it surprising that the White House didn’t ask.”
{snip}
The office of the DNI and the NIC’s work on Covid-19 origins “complied with all of the intelligence community’s analytic standards, including objectivity,” the spokeswoman said.
‘Cutting-room floor’
Mr Bannan, who joined the FBI as part of the agency’s efforts to bolster its expertise in germ weapons, toxins and biological warfare post 9/11, has since retired, but is calling for the evidence backing a lab leak theory to be reassessed.
“What ended up on the intelligence community’s cutting-room floor needs to be re-examined,” he said.
The conclusion from the US review published in August 2021 was that it would be hard to confirm the origin without cooperation from China.
{snip}
However, other US officials also suspected that Covid may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology where scientists that had genetically engineered coronaviruses worked, according to declassified US government documents.
* Original Article:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/12/26/fbi-evidence-covid-lab-leak-barred-biden-briefing-claim/
