BREAKING NEWS? US Intelligence Agencies Lied About Origin of Covid-19 Virus

A Wall Street Journal exclusive reports that FBI backers of the lab-leak theory were shut out of high-level meeting with President

Exactly one week ago today, as many Americans were recovering from holiday festivities and gearing up for New Year’s celebrations, the Wall Street Journal published an explosive exclusive: As the conflict over the origin of SARS-CoV-2 continued into the last days of 2024, the President of the United States was lied to by the country’s intelligence services about facts surrounding the origin of the virus. (1)

WSJ reporters Michael Gordon and Warren Strobel traced the path of FBI microbiologist Jason Bannan, who’d worked on the Covid-19 virus for the Bureau since 2019. In August 2021, he’d been told to be on standby; he might be asked to join a meeting in which the rest of the intelligence community would brief President Joe Biden on their conclusions about the origin of the virus. The invitation to join the meeting never came. (1)

At the meeting with the president, Avril Haines (Director of National Intelligence) and a couple of her “senior analysts” reported with “low confidence” that the virus had jumped from an animal to humans, according to the Journal. That’s the “zoonotic theory” of how the virus came to infect people, as opposed to the competing “lab leak” theory.

“At the time, the FBI was the only agency that concluded a lab leak was likely, a judgment it had rendered with ‘moderate confidence,’ ” Gordon and Strobel reported. “But neither Bannan nor any other FBI officials were at the briefing to make their case firsthand to the president.” (1)

The WSJ investigation revealed deep-seated differences between intelligence agencies that resulted in the FBI’s conclusion about the lab leak—which was given a higher degree of confidence than that of the rest of the intelligence community—being concealed from the president. (1)

And it wasn’t just the FBI’s scientists who found the evidence that the virus had somehow leaked or been released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (in Wuhan, China) compelling.

“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,” according to the Journal. “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. ... Now some current and former officials say a fresh look is needed, including at the analysis that wasn’t included in the 2021 intelligence report,” Gordon and Strobel reported. (1)

The London Times picked up the Wall Street Journal story with the headline, “FBI ‘not allowed to brief Biden’ on Covid lab leak theory.” (2)

“The FBI was excluded from a secret intelligence briefing with President Biden to discuss the origins of the Covid-19 virus after concluding that the pandemic was caused by a lab leak, it is claimed,” Samuel Lovett reported in the London Times December 26, 2024.

The evidence not presented to the President “included one genomic analysis—conducted by three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, which monitors global health threats to US soldiers on behalf of the Pentagon—that concluded the Covid-19 virus had been created in a laboratory,” Lovett pointed out. “The scientists were later ordered by a superior not to share their findings with the FBI, according to The Australian newspaper. Their research was not included in the final intelligence report given to Biden in August 2021. Nor were their proposed edits accepted.” (2)

Like all stories involving the intelligence community, the actors are legion and the plot byzantine. However, the WSJ provides an excellent backgrounder on the conflicting theories about the origin of the Covid-19 virus and who was on which side.

“Those two theories [zoonotic and lab leak] have also divided the scientific community,” the Journal reported. “In February 2020, more than two dozen scientists published a statement in the medical journal Lancet, calling the lab leak hypothesis a conspiracy theory that would jeopardize global cooperation in the struggle against the virus.” (1)

Anyone who’s done any research into the controversy over whether HIV causes AIDS has probably encountered a similar attempt to shut down dissent: The Durban Declaration. (3)

In July 2000, more than 5000 scientists signed the Durban Declaration, which proclaimed:

“HIV causes AIDS. Curbing the spread of this virus must remain the first step towards eliminating this devastating disease.” (3)

The Durban Declaration was published in the journal Nature, which noted that it was written to shut down the then-current controversy in South Africa over whether HIV causes AIDS.

“This has caused massive consternation among all scientists, doctors and many others in the international community who treat AIDS patients or who work on AIDS in other ways,” a July 2000 article in Nature asserted. “There is widespread anxiety that denying or doubting the cause of AIDS will cost countless lives if blood screening, use of condoms, and methods to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus are not implemented or, worse, even abandoned.” (3)

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: The “methods to prevent mother-to-child transmission” included the dosing of pregnant women with toxic AZT, which resulted in babies with birth defects. The plural “methods” is misleading, since AZT was the only “preventative” given to pregnant women at the time.]

The Durban Declaration did not call for more research to determine, once and for all, that HIV causes AIDS. It simply told all dissenting scientists to shut up and go away, the scientific equivalent of a four-year-old stuffing fingers in his ears and yelling “la la la la la.”

The history of fraud and lies in research about the AIDS doppelgänger ME/CFS is no less pervasive or unremarked; I’ve written about the paucity of good research for 37 years. Two excellent exposés of how both AIDS and ME/CFS patients have suffered in the absence of proper research and safe treatments are The Why. The Historic ME/CFS Call to Arms, author Hillary Johnson’s recounting of the harm done to ME/CFS patients by the CDC since the 1984 Incline Village outbreak (4); and journalist Mindy Kitei’s Philadelphia Magazine article describing the mishandling of a drug that could possibly change the lives of both AIDS and ME/CFS patients, “A History of Ampligen: The AIDS Drug That No One Can Have.” (5)

As American economist Paul Craig Roberts (Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration) said, “For reporting a scientific finding, I was called a 'conspiracy theorist.' Only in America is scientific analysis seen as conspiracy theory and government lies as truth.” (6)

AUTHOR’S NOTE: To read my most recent books about ME/CFS, check out AMERICA'S BIGGEST COVER-UP: UPDATED 2ND EDITION 50 More Things Everyone Should Know About the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic and Its Link to AIDS (2022) and Ampligen: The Battle for a Promising ME/CFS Drug (2022), both available on Amazon.com

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel. “Behind Closed Doors: The Spy-World Scientists Who Argued Covid Was a Lab Leak.” Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2024.
2. Samuel Lovett. “FBI ‘not allowed to brief Biden’ on Covid lab leak theory.” London Times, December 26, 2024.
3. “The Durban Declaration.” Nature 406: 15-16. July 6, 2000. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35017662
4. Hillary Johnson. The Why. The Historic ME/CFS Call to Arms. 2021. Bassett Creek Publishing. Based on a speech given to “Invest in ME” in London, May 2009. Copyright 2009, 2021 by Hillary Johnson. All rights reserved.
5. Mindy Kitei. “A History of Ampligen: The AIDS Drug That No One Can Have.” Philadelphia Magazine, October 1994.
6. Paul Craig Roberts. “Can Anything Be Done?” Peoples Geography—Reclaiming Space. August 2006.