NBC News – The CIA said Saturday it has shifted its previous assessments and has concluded that it’s likely the Covid-19 virus was leaked from a Chinese lab before it became a global pandemic but added that the agency had “low confidence” in its judgment.
“CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting,” a CIA spokesperson said in a statement.
“CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible.”
The spokesperson added that the agency has “low confidence in this judgement” and will continue to evaluate any new intelligence reporting or relevant information.
For years, the CIA has said it was unclear whether the Covid pandemic emerged from human exposure to an infected animal or from an event at a research lab in China.
U.S. intelligence agencies and other government departments have been divided over the origins of the virus.
The FBI and the Energy Department have said it was likely the virus was the result of a lab leak, while other agencies assessed that natural human exposure to an infected animal was the most likely scenario. The CIA had been agnostic until now.
The CIA’s assessment was not based on new intelligence but on analysts reviewing existing information, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News.
The review was ordered in the closing weeks of the Biden administration and completed before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the source said …