Biden National Security Adviser Downplays Report Saying COVID Likely Came From Chinese Lab

The U.S. Department of Energy changed its view of how the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The DOE was previously noncomittal about the pandemic’s origin but now shares the FBI’s belief the coronavirus likely spread due to a Chinese laboratory mishap. Information in a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress was attributed as the basis for the revelation by the Journal.

Roughly half of the federal agencies mentioned in the updated 2021 document, initially prepared by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, share the DOE’s current “low confidence” assessment of that theory, the report noted.

The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency not named in the classified report remain undecided, according to the Journal report.

All agencies agree that the pandemic was not created by a Chinese bioweapons program.

“Did the coronavirus pandemic start in a lab?” CNN’s “State of the Union” host Dana Bash asked National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan during a Sunday airing of the network program. “Is that what you believe now?”

“Well, Dana, there is a variety of views in the Intelligence Community,” replied Sullivan. “Some elements of the Intelligence Community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other.”

“A number have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure,” added the national security adviser.

He said he was able to tell her that President Joe Biden has repeatedly directed every element of the IC to put every effort and resource to get to the bottom of this question.

“One of the things in that Wall Street Journal report, which I can’t confirm or deny,” explained Sullivan, “but I will say the reference to the Department of Energy, President Biden specifically requested that the national labs, which are part of the Department of Energy, be brought into this assessment because he wants to put every tool at use to be able to figure out what happened here.”

Sullivan added the administration will share any further insider information it receives with both Congress and the American people.

“But right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question,” he concluded.