As top U.S. officials prepare to meet their Chinese counterparts for their first face-to-face meeting during the Biden administration, the State Department’s former lead investigator who oversaw the Task Force into the COVID-19 virus origin tells Fox News that he not only believes the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but that it may have been the result of research that the Chinese military, or People’s Liberation Army, was doing on a bioweapon.
“The Wuhan Institute of Virology is not the National Institute of Health,” David Asher, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute told Fox News in an exclusive interview. “It was operating a secret, classified program. In my view, and I’m just one person, my view is it was a biological weapons program.”
Asher has long been a “follow the money” guy who has worked on some of the most classified intelligence investigations for the State Department and Treasury under both Democratic and Republican administrations. He led the team that uncovered the international nuclear procurement network run by the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, AQ Khan, and uncovered key parts of North Korea’s secret uranium enrichment. He believes the Chinese Communist Party has been involved in a massive cover-up during the past 14 months.
“And if you believe, as I do, that this might have been a weapons vector gone awry, not deliberately released, but in development and then somehow leaked, this has turned out to be the greatest weapon in history,” Asher said during a panel discussion at the Hudson Institute: The Origins of the COVID-10: Policy Implications and Lessons for the Future (Watch Below). “You’ve taken out 15 to 20 percent of global GDP. You’ve killed millions of people. The Chinese population has been barely affected. Their economies roared back to being number one in the entire G20.”
“And if you believe, as I do, that this might have been a weapons vector gone awry, not deliberately released, but in development and then somehow leaked, this has turned out to be the greatest weapon in history,” Asher said during a panel discussion at the Hudson Institute: The Origins of the COVID-10: Policy Implications and Lessons for the Future. (Watch Below) “You’ve taken out 15 to 20 percent of global GDP. You’ve killed millions of people. The Chinese population has been barely affected. Their economies roared back to being number one in the entire G20.”
By Jennifer Griffin
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About Above Video: The Origins of COVID-19: Policy Implications and Lessons for the Future
Join Hudson Institute Senior Fellows David Asher and Miles Yu and expert panelists for a discussion on the origins of COVID-19, policy implications and lessons for the future.
One year after the WHO declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic, the exact origins of this devastating virus remains unclear. Although almost all established experts conclude that China was the locus of the initial major outbreak, important questions remain regarding exactly where, how and why the virus spread. What is beyond reasonable doubt is that China took myriad actions that served to obfuscate, confuse, and even deceive the world, and continues to stymie efforts to understand the timeline of the pandemic.
This panel will discuss questions around the origins of COVID-19, and will consider what the U.S. policy response should be if the Chinese government does not cooperate with investigations on this matter. Panelists will also discuss lessons from the past year for preventing future pandemics and other biological threats. Please join Hudson Institute for a discussion on this timely topic.
