Cautious scrutiny of COVID origins marks a win for US intelligence agencies

In May, President Biden asked the intelligence agencies to prepare a report on the origins of the coronavirus. In the background was the question of whether and how the Chinese government was involved. 

At the beginning of the pandemic, then-President Trump made incendiary and evidence-free statements that China had “unleashed” the virus on the U.S. This produced a counter-reaction, from Trump critics and others, rejecting a blame-China approach in favor of the view the virus had a natural origin in wet markets in Wuhan, China. 

However, more and more respectable scientists began to express worries that the virus might have come from a “lab leak” at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That led to the president’s directive to U.S. intelligence agencies. Their final report was released on Friday.  

Some might suspect that, given the hostility towards China now common in the U.S., intelligence agencies would endorse the lab leak theory — but that’s not what happened. 

Four agencies concluded with “low” confidence that the virus passed naturally from animals to humans. One agency believes with “moderate” confidence that it came from a lab leak. None believes it was intentionally engineered by China as a pathogen, as Trump’s original contention implied.  

This is how an open society works. It is hard not to be impressed by this report. It is balanced, doesn’t jump to conclusions and reports what the analysts don’t know, as well as what they know.

We should note the stark contrast between this report and how the Chinese government has handled the issue of virus origins. Initially, the Chinese government tried to cover up information about the virus. 

Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang, who warned colleagues on social media of a potential outbreak in December 2019, was taken into custody for “spreading false rumors” and forced to sign a document admitting he “seriously disrupted social order.” In February 2020, Li died after becoming infected with COVID-19. 

Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan was arrested after publishing documents about the early days of the virus. She is now in prison for four years for the Chinese catch-all “crime” of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” It was recently reported she is on a hunger strike and her weight is down by more than half. Her name and imprisonment have been unmentioned in the Chinese media.

China has repeatedly directed its ire at demands by the World Health Organization for a real investigation of the virus’ origins. The Danish head of a Western team that worked on the first WHO investigation has asked for new inquiries after revealing in a documentary that he accepted wording in their report saying a lab leak was “highly unlikely” because Chinese participants said they would not sign the report without that wording. 

The head of the WHO said recently, “We are asking China to be transparent, open and cooperate, especially on the information, raw data, that we asked for in the early days of the pandemic.” 

An astounding element of the official Chinese reaction has been to promote the conspiracy theory that the coronavirus originated at the U.S. Army biological threats research lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland. 

The official spokesman of the Chinese foreign ministry has repeatedly promoted this notion for months, as has the Chinese media. A petition with 25 million alleged signatures was organized by the Communist party paper, Global Times, along with the hashtag #ProbeFortDetrick — though Chinese media reports did not reveal to whom the alleged petition was delivered. 

The only “evidence” provided for the Fort Detrick theory is that there was a “mysterious” outbreak of a respiratory ailment in northern Virginia during the 2019 vaping crisis, and Fort Detrick lab closed for a period due to safety violations. How the virus would have migrated 7,000 miles from Washington D.C. to Wuhan has hardly been mentioned. 

The Chinese embassy issued a response to the intelligence community report almost as soon as it came out. Apparently surprised that the report did not blame China as they had expected, China chose to proceed as if it had. 

“The report by the intelligence community is based on presumption of guilt on the part of China, and it is only for scapegoating China.” it reads. “If the U.S. insists on the lab leak theory, isn’t it necessary for the U.S. side to invite WHO experts to Fort Detrick?” 

We as Americans should note this contrast and be proud of what it says about us. 

At the same time, we should be careful not to be triumphalist. There have been suggestions in the past, most dramatically in the context of the discussions of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq during the Bush administration, that intelligence assessments were marred by “see what you want to see” biases or even political interference. But those accusations produced changes by the intelligence community to make sure things were played straight. 

Even more important, while China covered things up at the beginning of the pandemic, their success at beating back the virus itself, although through fairly draconian lockdowns, has been starkly better than ours. One might say we did a good job telling the truth about the virus, but the Chinese did a good job combating it. 

So let’s neither exaggerate how good we are nor ignore our strengths. That is how an open society should behave. 

Steve Kelman is the Weatherhead Professor of Public Management at Harvard Kennedy School, and editor of International Public Management Journal.