Just one point to add to Jimmy Quinn’s excellent reporting that former secretary of state Mike Pompeo says the Biden administration “haven’t lifted a finger” in investigating the origin of the virus, and in fact shut down an existing State Department inquiry that began when Pompeo was running the department.
In theory, a new administration could argue that the State Department investigation into the origin of the virus was duplicative of other efforts in the U.S. intelligence community. But there’s a catch. In these particular circumstances, the State Department might be able to find things that other agencies and departments of the federal government cannot.
It is pretty darn unlikely that any member of the U.S. military has ever stepped inside the walls of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We’ll probably never know if any officer or agent of the Central Intelligence Agency has ever been able to snoop around in the WIV. (If they have, well done, guys.)
But we do know, for certain, that at least two U.S. State Department employees have indeed toured the facility and been given briefings by the institute’s staff. Jamison Fouss, the U.S. consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology, and health, repeatedly visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology and in January 2018 wrote that memo to Washington warning about a lack of trained staff. Every once in a while, diplomats can get access to places that other professions cannot.
(Did you know that the U.S. State Department has its own intelligence organization? The Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which apparently finds, analyzes, and disseminates high-quality information despite a small staff.)
No one’s afraid of diplomats. They’re polite and respectful. They can’t arrest people. They don’t carry guns. Lots of people, at home and abroad, can get in trouble for talking to a spy. But nobody gets in trouble for meeting with a State Department employee! Certain scientists, both at home and abroad, may be more comfortable speaking to diplomats than to members of the armed services, the “spookier” branches of the intelligence community, or law enforcement.
Yes, I’m usually the guy complaining about duplicative efforts within the federal bureaucracy, but in the realm of intelligence-gathering, it makes sense.