Speaking of disturbing Biden news related to China and a lack of
transparency, there seems to be a rather stubborn effort among senior
government officials to avoid reaching a rather plausible conclusion about
the origins of Covid. Over time much evidence has bolstered the theory that
the virus escaped from a Chinese lab, yet much of official Washington has
continued to embrace a zoonotic origin, holding that the virus jumped
naturally from animals to humans.

Government researchers who deemed the lab leak the most plausible of the
theories were not always welcome to share their findings. Michael Gordon and
Warren Strobel report for the Journal on former FBI scientist Jason Bannan,
who while in government was not included in a briefing for Mr. Biden on the
subject in 2021. The Journal report notes:

The dominant view within the intelligence community was clear when Avril
Haines, the director of national intelligence, and a couple of her senior
analysts, briefed Biden and his top aides on Aug. 24. The National
Intelligence Council, a body of senior intelligence officers who reported
to Haines and that organized the intelligence review, had concluded with
�low confidence� that Covid-19 had emerged when the virus leapt from an
animal to a human. So did four intelligence agencies.
At the time, the FBI was the only agency that concluded a lab leak was
likely, a judgment it had rendered with �moderate confidence.� But neither
Bannan nor any other FBI officials were at the briefing to make their case
first hand to the president.
�Being the only agency that assessed that a laboratory origin was more
likely, and the agency that expressed the highest level of confidence in
its analysis of the source of the pandemic, we anticipated the FBI would
be asked to attend the briefing,� Bannan recalled in his first on-the-record
interview on the subject. �I find it surprising that the White House didn�t
ask.�

A spokeswoman for the Director of National Intelligence�s office said that
it wasn�t standard practice to invite representatives from individual
agencies to briefings for the president and that divergent views within the
intelligence community were fairly represented.

The Journal reporters note that Mr. Bannan wasn�t the only one who doubted
the zoonotic theory embraced by senior officials:

Three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, part of
the Pentagon�s Defense Intelligence Agency, conducted a scientific study
that concluded that Covid-19 was manipulated in a laboratory in a risky
research effort. But that analysis was at odds with the assessment of their
parent agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and wasn�t incorporated in
the report presented to Biden.

The Journal reporters elaborate on the work of the three scientists:

Specifically they concluded that a segment of the �spike protein� that
enables the virus to gain entry into human cells was constructed using
techniques developed in the Wuhan lab that were described in a 2008
Chinese scientific paper. That was an indication, they argued, that the
Chinese scientists were conducting �gain of function� research to see if
the virus could infect humans�

But in July 2021 they were instructed by a superior at the medical
intelligence center not to continue sharing their work with the FBI, which
they were told was �off the reservation,� according to people familiar
with the matter. That order was earlier reported by The Australian.
Nor were all of their proposed edits to the National Intelligence Council
report accepted.

Nor would Mr. Biden necessarily have been able to comprehend the report even
if it had been wisely prepared. But the disturbing resistance to the
plausibility of a lab leak is one of many issues demanding further inquiry
and explanation. Did officials believe that Mr. Biden wouldn�t want to hear
it or did they have their own reasons for downplaying an obvious possibility
for pandemic origin?

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Let's go Brandon!

Ubiquitous wrote:
> Speaking of disturbing Biden news related to China and a lack of
> transparency, there seems to be a rather stubborn effort among senior
> government officials to avoid reaching a rather plausible conclusion about

What then? Short of starting a MAD nuclear war with PRC, what do
you propose the USA to do?

Accuse PRC. And if they deny, tell them their mothers were
hamsters and their fathers smell of elderberries?

We have to continue to share the planet with them.

--
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of Discordian Mysteries. This post insults Islam. Mohamed