An investigation classified as “Top Secret” led by a top federal research institution last year determined that the coronavirus could have been created and leaked from a Chinese laboratory, Sinclair Broadcast Group disclosed on Monday.
The investigation, which was previously a secret, was led by researchers within the intelligence division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, considered the Department of Energy’s premier biodefense research institution. It was released May 27, 2020.
The conclusion reached by the investigation, which reportedly “assessed that both the lab-origin theory and the zoonotic theory were possible and deserved further investigation,” counters recent reports from World Health Organization investigators.
After a joint WHO-Chinese team spent four weeks investigating the root of the virus in Wuhan earlier this year, investigators successfully canned the lab leak theory, calling it “extremely unlikely.” But critics, including many with the U.S. intelligence community, have raised concerns about the honesty of the investigation.
In its report, Sinclair noted it has not reviewed the investigation but has confirmed its contents through interviews with multiple sources who have either read it or been informed on it.
In an email to the broadcast group, a Livermore spokesperson allegedly confirmed the investigation’s existence but rejected to go into further detail about its contents, saying, “Because the report you are referring to is classified, it would be inappropriate for our lab to discuss this.”
Sinclair noted that the new director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, testified last month that the U.S. intelligence community is actively investigating both theories.
“We have two plausible theories that we are working on that components within the intelligence community have essentially coalesced around. One of them is that it was a laboratory accident, and the other is that it emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals,” she said.
News about the previously secret investigation comes as a former head of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service of the United Kingdom, called the World Health Organization’s probe a “farcical investigation.”
Sir Richard Dearlove, who led the spy agency from 1999 to 2004, recently argued in an interview with a British newspaper that the coronavirus was “far more likely” to have come from a lab than to have passed from animals to humans.
That theory has picked up considerable steam since the start of the pandemic early last year as a increasing amount of circumstantial evidence comes to light. That evidence includes the fact that risky “gain of function” research was being conducted on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology over the last several years — and that U.S. diplomats warned the federal government about the dangers involved.
Last month, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill which, in part, calls for the U.S. government to conduct its own investigation into the roots of the pandemic, including whether or not the virus leaked from a Chinese lab.