Last Update: March 01, 2023, 09:54 AM IST
Washington, United States
FBI Director Christopher Wray said the Chinese government is trying to block investigative work into the origins of the coronavirus. (Reuters)
Christopher Wray accused the Chinese government of ‘doing its best to sabotage and obstruct’ efforts by the US and others to learn more about the origins of the pandemic.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday that the COVID-19 pandemic was likely caused by a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
“The FBI has long assessed that the origin of the pandemic is a possible laboratory incident in Wuhan,” Christopher Wray told Fox News.
“Here you are talking about a possible leak from a Chinese government-controlled laboratory,” he said.
The comments come after a Wall Street Journal report that the US Department of Energy assessed with low confidence that the pandemic was caused by an inadvertent laboratory leak in China.
The report said four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge the pandemic was the result of a natural transmission and two are undecided.
He accused the Chinese government of “doing its best to sabotage and obstruct” the efforts of the United States and others to learn more about the origins of the pandemic.
“I would just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, is doing its best to sabotage and disrupt the work here, the work that we’re doing, the work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing are doing. And it’s unfortunate for everyone,” he said.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the US government has not reached a definitive conclusion and consensus on the origins of the pandemic.
Asked to comment on the Wall Street Journal report, China’s foreign ministry cited a WHO-China report that pointed to a natural origin for the pandemic rather than a laboratory leak.
Ray said he could not share many details of the agency’s evaluation because they were classified.
In 2021, officials released an intelligence report summary saying that four members of the US intelligence community believe with low confidence that the virus was first transmitted from an animal to a human, and a fifth believed with moderate confidence that The first human infection was linked to it. a laboratory.
Some scientists are open to the lab-leak theory, but many scientists believe the virus came from animals, mutated, and jumped into people — as has happened with viruses in the past. Experts say the true origins of the pandemic may not be known for many years – if ever.
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