FBI Director Wray acknowledges bureau assessment that Covid-19 likely resulted from lab incident

The FBI believes that a lab accident in Wuhan, China, caused the Covid-19 pandemic, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, who acknowledged this on Tuesday.

 

Wray stated during an interview with Fox News that "the FBI has quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan" in his first public remarks regarding the FBI's inquiry into the virus' origins.

In 2021, CNN reported that the FBI had "moderate confidence" in the lab-leak theory, citing two sources with knowledge of the situation.

Wray's remarks follow the Department of Energy's "low-confidence" assessment that Covid-19 most likely came from a laboratory leak in China. This highlights a rift in the US government, as the majority of the intelligence community continues to believe that Covid either emerged naturally in the wild or that there is still insufficient evidence to make a determination either way.

The National Intelligence Council and four other unnamed agencies determined with low confidence that the initial Covid-19 infection "was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus," according to a 2021 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The level of confidence in an assessment can be low, medium, or high for intelligence agencies. A low confidence rating typically denotes that there is insufficient information to support a more solid conclusion or that the information obtained is either unreliable or too fragmented to allow for a more definitive analytical judgment.

According to Wray, the FBI has a group of specialists who are focused on the possibility of biological threats getting into the "wrong hands," including those of a "hostile nation state," during the interview.

With regard to the coronavirus, Wray noted that "you're talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans, and that's precisely what that capability was designed for."

According to Wray, it has been challenging to collaborate with the Chinese government on the investigation into the pandemic's origins and that the majority of the FBI's investigation's specifics remain classified.

The bureau director stated, "I will just observe that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here. "The work being done by our US government and trusted international allies. It's unfortunate for everyone that way.

During a press conference on Monday, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs argued against the Department of Energy's updated assessment, saying that "the parties concerned should stop stirring up arguments about laboratory leaks, stop smearing China, and stop politicizing the issue of the virus origin."