The “Who” Question
On April 7, 2023, an Ukrainian publication headlined,
“American and Chinese Scientists Engineered a Terrifying Coronavirus in 2015”[1]
This rousing headline appears to refer simply to the fact that work on bat viruses at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology was done jointly, with two US laboratories – at Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Galveston, Texas.[2]
“The “Where” Question
This joint lab work included “gain-of-function” research to produce (for vaccine-making) a human-infective bat virus. Indeed, on December 9, 2020, a senior State Department official[3] warned employees that the U.S. government’s own role in gain-of-function research was not to be discussed publicly.[4]
Less than two weeks after that Ukraine headline, Congress members huddled to hear once again that national security demanded the US not be linked with Cov19 origin. This time, Congress members heard that this imperative meant that it would be US spies – “the intelligence community” – who would answer the question of Cov19 origin.
“I don’t think that answer’s going to come from the scientific community,” Congress heard from virologist Robert Redfield, former Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. “I think that answer’s going to come from the Intelligence Community.”[5]
On June 23, 2023, the spy-community chief, the US Director of National Intelligence reported,
“We continue to have no indication that Wuhan Institute of Virology’s s pre-pandemic research holdings included SARSCoV-2 or a close progenitor.” [6]
No indication, that is, except the fact of the US Chapel Hill lab’s joint project with Wuhan on gain of function bat-virus to infect humans, a project begun in 2013 when the Wuhan lab was built, with US direction[7] (there is no question that the US IC knew of this project, because media reported it to the public). From that joint project, the paper “A SARS-like Cluster of Circulating Bat Coronaviruses Shows Potential for Human Emergence” was published, in 2015 by Dr. Ralph Baric of Chapel Hill and Dr. Shi Zhengli of Wuhan.[8]
Additionally, Dr. James LeDuc of Galveston and Dr. Zhi-Ming Yuan of Wuhan have collaborated around virus research.
Dr. James LeDuc and Dr. Zhi-Ming Yuan
Yuan and LeDuc told Science magazine,[9]
“We direct a newly constructed Maximum Containment Laboratory in Wuhan, China and an established MCL in the United States in Galveston, Texas.”
So, the record shows that US spy agencies obfuscated, in their April 2023 report, around the “Where” question on Cov19 origin.
The “When” Question
The April 2023 Intelligence Community report also says,
“Information available to the IC indicates that the Wuhan Institute of Virology first possessed SARS-CoV-2 in late December 2019.”
However, it is without dispute that SARS Cov2 was found present in Spain in summer 2019.[10] The US spy agency National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) is paid to discover just such data. Thus, the spy community report again obfuscated in its April 2023 report on origin of Cov19.
Of course, in general spies are paid partly for lying. Still, though, troubling questions seem begging to emerge.
The “Could Have” Questions
Could have US experts, ominously, been wrong or lying when saying “we find Cov19 originated in Wuhan, either through bats in a market or through a lab leak?” What of findings, publicized, that SARS Cov2 appeared first in Europe?[11]
Here note that the US intelligence community contains “cowboys” – rogues, fringe agents either on the payroll or fired, who are ready and willing to undertake ultra-ruthless black operations against communism and domestic progressive movements;[12] all of these men either have official security clearances or retain contacts who do.
“Could have” SARS Cov2 from a US lab been not leaked but rather misappropriated? Such has happened – the weaponized anthrax in the 2001 scare is agreed to have been misappropriated from the US biolab at Ft. Detrick – by someone with ready access to the lab. If SARS Cov2 was misappropriated from Chapel Hill, or Galveston, or Ft. Detrick, this most likely was done by access-carrying fringe members of the US IC. We have seen that a politico-economic motive existed for cowboy agents to punish Spain and Italy for harming US investment potential by cooperating with communist China.
“Could have” existed a sufficient motive – or sufficient indifference to potential unintended consequences – for creating a planet-wide pandemic, of Cov19? Unfortunately, apparently so; just as with the Ft. Detrick anthrax, a motive is to terrorize the American population – here, with the aim of stifling possibility for dissent. Cov19 has stifled dissent in that it has blocked face-to-face conversation including political discourse and blocked public gatherings including political rallies.
With this in mind, all required to achieve this goal would have been planting a misappropriated SARS Cov2 – say in crowded marketplaces in enemy countries.
In early 2018, a kind of US enemy status arose for Spain and Italy. These nations were targets of large US investment. However, Spain and Italy were edging toward hindering US investment plans – by joining China economically in China’s New Silk Road venture (known as BRI), a pact to ensure Chinese investors would gain contracts to build roads, cell towers, power grids, seaports, and pipelines – infrastructure to serve Europe’s expected EU economic boom.
As such, US national-security officials have said of China’s BRI,
“BRI (in Europe) poses a significant challenge to U.S. economic, political and security interests.”[13]
In this context, note that securing potential for US investment abroad is part of the mission of the CIA officially,[14] and unofficially of IC fringe agents.
So, ruthless and massively risky here – but certain, if chosen, to be effective – was an option for agents to plant a misappropriated SARS Cov2, in Europe, to punish nations allying economically with China to exclusion of planned US investment profits.
I believe troubling questions emerge when events are timelined.
- November 2018 – Spain joins BRI’s “Chinese Railway Express.”
- March 2019 – Spanish virologists find SARS Cov2 in Barcelona wastewater.[15]
- March 2019 – BRI enrolls Italy as a member.[16]
- Summer 2019 – SARS Cov2 found in Italy; blood samples analyzed by virologist Dr. Giovanni Apolone.[17].
- November 11, 2020 – Publication of Apolone findings.[18]
- November 15, 2020 – the following image, depicting Italy as epicenter of Cov19, is published on the Internet by news outlet Euractiv;
- December 2, 2020 – China’s Xinhua news agency interviewed Apolone, who confirmed his findings.
Immediately came a pair of actions to dispute Apolone’s finding and the weakening, by that finding, of the “Wuhan origin” theory for Cov19.
- December 9, 2020 – CIA-funded outlet Radio Free Asia interviews Apolone, with transcript published under headline “Italian Study Doesn’t Contradict Theory That COVID-19 Came From Wuhan.”[19]
- December 2020[20] – The World Health Organization “requests” that Apolone submit his blood samples for “re-testing,” in “independent” lab settings;[21] Apolone consents,[22] but WHO tests – using criteria less sensitive to Covid-19 antibodies – find “inconclusive” (on whether Apolone’s tests showed Cov19 in Italy in summer 2019).[23]
In this murky context, one thing known is that the US spy community is now authorized to give us the answer on start of Cov19. But it’s impossible, practically, that the spy community would report, “We learned some of our guys started it.”
Where does that leave us?
[1] UkrainianFreedomNews.com Web site, April 7, 2023
[2] “New SARS-like virus can jump directly from bats to humans, no treatment available,” North Carolina University press, November 9, 2015“Findings provide an opportunity to develop drugs and vaccines for coronaviruses before they emerge from animals to cause a human epidemic.”Epoch Times, August 6, 2022 Galveston National Laboratory personnel trained Wuhan personnel in biosecurity while conducting joint research projects.
[3] Christopher Park of the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation.
[3] According to meeting documentation obtained by investigators at Vanity Fair magazine, ibid. to 1.
[5] The US IC currently is keeping open the question of whether SARS Cov2 came from bats sold in a Wuhan market or from a Wuhan lab leak.
[6] “Potential Links Between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Origin of the COVID-19 Pandemic.”.
[7] 2018 US State Department cable, link published in Washington Examiner, April 24, 2022
[8] Nature Medicine, November 9, 2015
[9] Science, November 28, 2018
[10] The claim implies that Spanish virologists, in random tests of wastewater, noted a virus that, although originating and spreading rapidly at the time in China, went unnoticed at the time in China. The US IC does not allege China had early knowledge of Cov19 and then covered it up; cf. US Director of National Intelligence, “Unclassified Summary of Assessment on COVID-19 Origins.”
[11] “Coronavirus traces found in March 2019 sewage sample, Spanish study shows,” Reuters, June 26, 2020
[12] On taking office, President Jimmy Carter fired more than 2,000 cowboy agents. One, Ted Shackley, vowed that a group of these fired agents would continue hyper-aggressive covert action against communism. Shackley and his band were still covert-active many years after being fired. See my “Not Exactly the CIA.”
[13] Report, US Council on Foreign Relations
[14] For example, CIA enforcing, by coup d’etat, United Fruit Company interests in Guatemala, 1954..
[15] Reuters, June 26, 2020. Barcelona is the center of Spain’s micro-electronics industry.
[16] CNBC.com, March 27, 2019
[17] According to a study conducted by the National Cancer Institute of Milan finding “a more aggressive form of flu that seriously affected older people and those with respiratory problems.” “Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the prepandemic period in Italy,” G. Apolone et al, first published online November 11, 2020; published in print in Journal Tumori 2021
[18] G. Apolone et al, “Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the prepandemic period in Italy,” Sage Journals, November 11, 2020
[19] Almost certainly this coincidence is one of cause and effect. The CIA/RFA story is practically certain to have been read by WHO officials, likely through WHO’s subscription to the US spy agency CNMI’s global-health data bank. Cf. Wikipedia on NCMI.
[20] Dates were not reported by World Health Organization; December 2020 is the most likely time of occurrence.
[21] Reuters, June 1, 2021. “Insensitive” compared to their own tests and to tests used at a second WHO-selected lab, VisMederi. samples had levels of IgM recognised by VisMederi but below the threshold set by Erasmus.
[22] Grudgingly, the Apolone team went along, saying WHO had approved using tests that were relatively “insensitive” to presence of Covid-19 antibodies
[23] July 23, 2021 – A Reuters story reported in effect that WHO’s “inconclusive” results did not rule out Cov19 being in Italy in summer 2019, saying, “The difference in findings centres on the criteria of the tests.”