CIA Officials Took Hush Money to Bury Covid Lab-Leak Theory, Whistleblower Claims

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic has reportedly heard “new testimony from a highly credibly whistleblower” alleging that the CIA “rewarded six analysts with significant financial incentives to change their COVID-19 origins conclusion from a lab-leak to zoonosis.”

In a public letter addressed to CIA director William Burns, subcommittee chairmen Brad Wenstrup and Mike Turner, both Republican representatives from Ohio, argued that the CIA created a “Covid Discovery Team” that was tasked with investigating the origins and emergence of the coronavirus. However, apart from a “lone officer” in the group who believed the virus “originated through zoonosis,” the remaining officials agreed that, on balance of probabilities, the coronavirus was likely the result of a lab-leak.

“According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that Covid-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” the letter reads.

The unnamed source further alleged that “to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position.”

The chairmen gave Burns until September 26, two weeks from the date of submission, to provide the subcommittee with relevant “documents and communications” pertaining to the “Covid Discovery Team” between the CIA and other federal agencies, including the FBI, State Department, and DHS. The request also demanded documentation outlining “any type of financial or performance-based incentive/financial bonus to members of all iterations of the Covid Discovery Team(s).”

“At CIA we are committed to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity, and objectivity. We do not pay analysts to reach specific conclusions,” the agency’s director of public affairs, Tammy Kupperman Thorp, told the New York Post in a statement following the subcommittee’s letter. “We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them. We will keep our Congressional oversight committees appropriately informed.”

In June, the agency declassified its report that the available evidence on the origins of the coronavirus suggested it “was not genetically engineered.”

A similar letter co-written by Representatives Wenstrup and Turner was addressed to Andrew Makridis, the CIA’s chief operating officer, who retired in 2022 after a four-year stint in the position.

“Should the required information not be produced in an expeditious and satisfactory manner, you should expect the Committee, or Committees, to use its additional tools and authorities to satisfy our legislative and oversight requirements,” the letter concluded.