Spy bosses ‘silenced’ Defense Department, FBI scientists from briefing Biden on COVID lab leak evidence

Spy chiefs “silenced” researchers in the Defense Department and FBI who discovered strong evidence that COVID-19 most likely leaked from a Chinese lab, The Post has learned.

As a result, their findings were kept out of an August 2021 report to President Biden on the origins of the global pandemic. That report concluded that the virus behind COVID “was probably not genetically engineered.”

After the pandemic erupted in Wuhan, China, three scientists from the Defense Intelligence Agency began trying to figure out exactly where it came from — whether SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats into humans, or whether the virus was man-made and came from a lab accident.

The “zoonotic origin” theory was backed by powerful members of the public health establishment, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, and questions about a possible “lab leak” were repeatedly dismissed as a conspiracy theory.

But the researchers’ analysis compiled dozens of data points in favor of a lab leak — compared with a “paucity of evidence supporting the natural origin theory,” a source familiar with their investigation told The Post.

The analysis was conducted by John Hardham, Robert Cutlip and Jean-Paul Chretien, three scientists in the Defense Intelligence Agency’s National Center for Medical Intelligence, which is tasked with examining potential biological weapons threats and dangerous infectious diseases.

Among their damning findings:

• The COVID virus contained a feature allowing for easier transmission to humans that was constructed in a manner similar to that described in a years-old Chinese study
• A Chinese military researcher applied for a patent for a COVID-19 vaccine just weeks after the virus was first sequenced in 2020. (He later died after falling from the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology’s roof, according to US investigators.)
• WIV researchers worked with US researchers who trained them to construct viruses without leaving a trace of them being engineered.

Rather than amplifying these findings, they were all but ignored as Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines was preparing her report on COVID origins — which Biden ordered in May 2021.

“The scientists who had the subject matter expertise were silenced,” the source said, noting that Biden and others remained “completely unwitting” about the evidence that SARS-CoV-2 likely leaked out of a lab.

The spy chiefs further forbade the scientists from sharing the information with Congress — even after Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) expressly requested them in a March 2021 letter — or from rebutting a since-disgraced May 2020 paper — prompted by Fauci — that sought to discredit the lab leak theory.

“That was going to be the basis of an official intelligence product,” another source familiar with the probe said.

They were also told not to share their findings with the FBI — which was the only US intelligence agency agency that concluded a lab leak was the most likely theory behind COVID, the sources added.

All three were informed that the FBI was “off the reservation” when it became the sole agency to conclude the lab leak theory was likely, according to comments previously reported by the Australian newspaper.

FBI scientist Jason Bannan and his team running the parallel probe were also never offered an invitation to the White House briefing, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the scientists getting sidelined.

“Being the only agency that assessed that a laboratory origin was more likely, and the agency that expressed the highest level of confidence in its analysis of the source of the pandemic, we anticipated the FBI would be asked to attend the briefing,” Bannan said. “I find it surprising that the White House didn’t ask.”

A genomic assessment backed the lab leak theory

Cutlip, Hardham and Chretien in their investigation had determined that a region of a “spike protein” that permitted the virus to get into human cells mirrored methods described in a 2008 Chinese paper that had been developed in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The paper was published by researchers at the now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where the US government funded so-called “gain-of-function” research, which increases the infectiousness of viruses, long before the pandemic.

Dr. Shi Zhengli, the notorious “bat lady” at the WIV, and her team of virologists also trained up on their techniques at a US lab in Galveston, Texas, where they learned how to make a whole coronavirus genome with “seamless assembly,” according to sources close to the probe who believe the trick was likely used to construct the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Additionally, Zhou Yusen, a Chinese military researcher who worked with the WIV, applied for a COVID vaccine patent on Feb. 24, 2020 — a feat that must have taken at least six months’ work to complete despite SARS-CoV-2 not being fully sequenced until the end of January 2020.

“He had to have that sequence well before,” one source added, pointing out how Zhou also plummeted to his death from WIV’s roof in May 2020, US investigators later claimed.

A faulty briefing

The upshot of the alleged coverup is that Haines informed Biden that the more dominant view of COVID origins within the intelligence community in 2021 was that the virus had jumped from animals to humans.

At the time, there were at least four intelligence agencies — along with the National Intelligence Council, a group of top intelligence officers whom Haines supervised — that believed zoonotic transmission was the most probable explanation, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday.

Notably, the CIA and at least two other agencies took a neutral stance on the virus’ likely origins.

A Director of National Intelligence Office spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that typically officials from individual agencies do not show up for briefings for the president of that nature. The spox also contended that the different perspectives were included in the briefing.

“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Intelligence Council’s work on Covid-19 origins complied with all of the Intelligence Community’s analytic standards, including objectivity,” the spokeswoman claimed.

“Flawed” probe of COVID-19 origins

Last month, The Post reported on whistleblower documents that alleged federal grant documents that described a so-called “blueprint” for producing viruses that cause COVID-19 could have been improperly classified.

As a result, the inquiry of the pandemic origins by the Intelligence Community may have been “flawed,” per that whistleblower, Marine Corps. Lt. Col. Joseph Murphy.

The grant proposal, known as Project DEFUSE, was put in digital portal for classified documents outside public reach despite not having been classified by the government. Some scientists have described that as “smoking gun” evidence to support the lab leak theory.

The DEFUSE papers detailed plans to develop a coronavirus with identical characteristics to the virus.

Also since the August 2021 briefing, the Energy Department, which oversees scores of United States labs and research centers, concluded with “low confidence” that the lab leak theory was most likely.

Bannan believes the failure to communicate the full trove of evidence requires a deeper look into COVID-19’s origins in the future.

“What ended up on the intelligence community’s cutting-room floor needs to be re-examined,” Bannan told the Journal.

“The FBI has long assessed that the origin of the COVID pandemic was likely a laboratory incident in Wuhan,” an FBI spokesperson told The Post when asked for comment.

“FBI agents and analysts studied intelligence and conducted over 200 interviews of more than 80 people since the beginning of the pandemic.”

The COVID-19 virus is believed to have killed over 1.2 million Americans since its inception around late 2019 into early 2020.