Six of the members believed with low confidence that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.
Six CIA officers were paid to change their position on the origins of COVID-19, according to new whistleblower testimony.
A current CIA senior officer told the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that a CIA team of seven personnel analyzed the origins of COVID-19. Six of the members believed, based on the available evidence, that they could say with low confidence that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, where the first COVID-19 cases appeared.
The seventh and most senior member of the team thought COVID-19 came from animals.
“The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the panel, and Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CIA Director William Burns in a letter on Sept. 12.
“These allegations, from a seemingly credible source, requires the Committees to conduct further oversight of how the CIA handled its internal investigation into the origins of COVID-19,” they said.
The CIA was asked to provide all documents from the CIA team that analyzed the origins of COVID-19, including communications among members regarding the analysis. Mr. Wenstrup and Mr. Turner also requested documents showing the pay history of the seven members.
“At CIA we are committed to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity, and objectivity. We do not pay analysts to reach specific conclusions,” a CIA spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email. “We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them. We will keep our Congressional oversight committees appropriately informed.”
Another Letter
In another missive, the lawmakers asked Andrew Makridis, until late 2022 the CIA’s chief operating officer, to sit and answer questions.
“The whistleblower pointed the Committees to a CIA led COVID Discovery Team(s) in which you played a central role in its formation and eventual conclusion that the CIA was ‘unable to determine’ the origins of COVID-19,” they told Mr. Makridis.
Mr. Makridis, now with Beacon Global Strategies, should participate in a voluntary interview on Sept. 26, the letter said.
The lawmakers suggested that a subpoena might be issued if Mr. Makridis declines to appear.
