COVID
FBI Had Evidence That COVID Leaked From a Lab — But Wasn’t Allowed to Present It
In an interview with two Wall Street Journal national security reporters, former FBI Senior Scientist Jason Bannan said the White House only invited proponents of the “zoonotic” — or animal origin — theory to an August 2021 briefing on the origins of COVID-19.
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The Biden administration excluded the FBI from an August 2021 White House intelligence briefing, preventing the bureau from presenting evidence supporting the theory that COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab, the Wall Street Journal reported.
In an interview with the Journal’s national security reporters, Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel, former FBI Senior Scientist Jason Bannan said the White House only invited proponents of the “zoonotic” — or animal origin — theory of COVID-19 to the August 2021 briefing.
According to the Journal, some current and former intelligence officials now say “a fresh look is needed” at the lab-leak theory that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
The report revealed conflicts between the FBI — which supported the lab-leak theory with “moderate confidence” — and other intelligence agencies. Despite a lack of consensus, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines opted to brief President Joe Biden and top aides only on evidence supporting the zoonotic theory.
“It has long been known that the FBI favored the lab leak hypothesis,” longtime New York Times science journalist Nicholas Wade told The Defender. “What is new in the Wall Street Journal article is the report that the FBI was excluded from the critical Aug. 24, 2021, briefing with the President.”
According to the Journal, Bannan, who holds a doctorate in microbiology, had spent more than a year investigating the origins of COVID-19. In August 2021, he was ready to brief the White House regarding evidence of a lab leak — but was never summoned.
Speaking to The Hill’s “Rising” on Dec. 31, 2024, the Journal’s Gordon said the most significant aspect of the report was that it was the “first time that a figure who is involved in this intelligence investigation has spoken on the record about what happened.”
“It’s striking that the people who were the foremost proponents of the lab-leak theory weren’t invited by the White House to the actual briefing, where these theories were hashed out,” Gordon said.
Bannan, now retired and employed as a consultant, told the Journal, “What ended up on the intelligence community’s cutting-room floor needs to be re-examined.”
‘There was a plan to control the narrative’
Experts told The Defender the Journal’s report adds to evidence of a cover-up.
Journalist Paul D. Thacker, a former U.S. Senate investigator, told The Defender the report “further reinforces what we have long known, that the intelligence community has not released all the information on COVID origins, despite a law” — the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023 — “signed by Biden, requiring them to do so.”
Dr. Meryl Nass, a biological warfare epidemiologist and founder of Door to Freedom, told The Defender the Journal report showed “there was a plan to control the narrative.”
“Similar to how Fauci and Farrar controlled the scientific narrative, people controlled the intelligence agency narrative,” Nass said, referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci and to Jeremy Farrar, Ph.D., then-head of the Wellcome Trust and now chief scientist for the World Health Organization (WHO).
“A decision was made early in the Biden administration to protect Fauci and former National Institutes of Health [NIH] Director Francis Collins from accountability for having funded the gain-of-function research by EcoHealth Alliance and its Wuhan collaborators,” Ebright said.
“If the intelligence agencies are controlled such that they lie to the President, then what good are they? How can any assessments be trusted?” Nass asked.
Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, Ph.D., a critic of gain-of-function research, told The Defender the report “dismayed” but did not surprise him.
“The manifest problems with the 2021 intelligence-agency analysis and summary reports … had been reported previously,” Ebright said. “The WSJ article was the first to cover these problems in a major media outlet, and, as such, brought these problems to the attention of a new and broad audience.”
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‘Mixture of motives’ may have led to suppression of lab-leak evidence
In May 2021, Biden ordered an urgent assessment by the U.S. intelligence agencies and national laboratories on COVID-19’s origins, to be completed within 90 days.
Earlier that year, two publications appeared in key peer-reviewed journals promoting the zoonotic theory. The White House and mainstream media used those reports to label backers of the lab-leak theory as “conspiracy theorists.”
One publication — a statement by Farrar and Peter Daszak, Ph.D. — was published in The Lancet in March 2020. The other, which became known as the “Proximal Origin” paper, was also published in March 2020 in Nature Medicine. It was later revealed Fauci and Farrar played key roles in the publication of “Proximal Origin.”
In early 2021, a team of WHO experts visited China and subsequently drafted a joint report with Chinese scientists that the virus most likely had a zoonotic origin.
When Biden ordered the review, two intelligence agencies supported the zoonotic theory. One was the CIA, albeit with “low confidence.” According to the Journal, the August 2021 White House briefing reflected this “dominant view.”
“It’s certainly surprising that the FBI, given its scientific expertise, was excluded from a leading role in Avril Haynes’s intelligence review of COVID’s origins,” Wade said.
According to the Journal, Adrienne Keen, Ph.D., played a key role in promoting the zoonotic narrative. Keen, who previously served as a consultant to the WHO, worked with the U.S. Department of State when the intelligence report was drafted. She later became director of Global Health Security for the National Intelligence Council before joining the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Keen advised the White House that the WHO report that determined a zoonotic origin for COVID-19 “shouldn’t be completely discounted,” the Journal reported.
A spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told the Journal the agency complied with “the Intelligence Community’s analytic standards, including objectivity” in setting up the August 2021 briefing. A spokesman for Haines said the FBI’s assessment “was accurately presented” at the briefing.
But according to Wade, there are several likely reasons proponents of the lab-leak theory were excluded.
“There was probably a mixture of motives, from a fear that this episode could derail the larger relationship with the Chinese government to the possible desire of intelligence agencies and the NIH to cover up a scheme for gaining insight into Chinese biological warfare research,” Wade said.
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‘Zero secure evidence points to a natural origin’ of COVID
Gordon told “Rising” there is “no smoking gun at this point that could decide” the COVID-19 origin debate. He noted that while evidence supporting the lab-leak theory exists, “there’s an absence of evidence on the other side.” Other experts agreed.
“Multiple lines of secure evidence point to a research origin of SARS-CoV-2,” Ebright said. “Zero secure evidence points to a natural origin.”
According to the Journal, “The pace of U.S. intelligence investigation” into COVID-19’s origins “has slackened.” Gordon told “Rising” that the intelligence community’s effort “doesn’t have the energy and staff resources behind it that it once did.”
In 2023 the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) joined the FBI in concluding that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak. Both agencies “have strong scientific competence, perhaps greater than that at other agencies, and being closer to the evidence, were more persuaded by it,” Wade said.
According to Ebright:
“The FBI and the DOE were the only two of the 18 U.S. agencies assigned to assess the origin of COVID-19 that had the in-house scientific experts in molecular biology and microbiology able to assess the data, and that lacked conflicts of interest from having parent agencies that had funded EcoHealth Alliance and its collaborators.
“The other 16 agencies lacked the competence, the independence or both, to address the matter.”
In June 2023, a report Haines’ office released to Congress acknowledged that some of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s scientists “have genetically engineered coronaviruses using common laboratory practices.” However, the report also claimed the U.S. Intelligence Community had no evidence this research led to the pandemic.
Thacker said he hopes the new administration “will declassify all this information so that the public can understand what caused the worst pandemic in modern history.”
“An unbiased intelligence review would be a good step,” Wade suggested.
“The reckless, unregulated research that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, killing 20+ million and costing $25+ trillion, urgently needs to be stopped,” Ebright said.
Ebright called for a moratorium on gain-of-function research. He also called for executive orders requiring intelligence agencies to comply with the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023 and all government agencies that funded EcoHealth Alliance to release unredacted documents related to the research they funded.
“Clearly, virologists have proved themselves too irresponsible and self-interested to be allowed to control gain-of-function research. We need some mechanism for independent oversight of this research if it is to proceed at all,” Wade said.
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