New CIA Director Touts 'Low Confidence' Assessment About Covid Lab Leak Theory

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: 'Every US intelligence agency still unanimously maintains that Covid-19 was not developed as a biological weapon,' CNN reported today.

But what about the possibility of an accidental leak (rather than Covid-19 originating in wild animal meat from the Wuhan Market)? 'The agency has for years said it did not have enough information to determine which origin theory was more likely.'

CNN notes there's suddenly been a new announcement 'just days' after the CIA's new director took the reins — former lawyer turned Republican House Representative John Ratcliffe. While the market-origin theory remains a possibility according to the CIA, CNN notes that Ratcliffe himself 'has long favored the theory that the pandemic originated from research being done in China and vowed in an interview published in Breitbart on Thursday that he would make the issue a Day 1 priority.'

'We have low confidence in this judgement,' the CIA says in the complete text of its announcement, 'and will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting or open-source information that could change CIA's assessment.'

After speaking to a U.S. official, CNN added these details about the assessment:
It was not made based on new intelligence gathered by the US government — officials have long said such intelligence is unlikely to surface so many years later — and instead was reached after a review of existing information.
'CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible,' a CIA spokesperson said in a statement Saturday.

CNN adds that 'Many scientists believe the virus occurred naturally in animals and spread to humans in an outbreak at a market in Wuhan, China....'

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