Chris Lieberman, FISM News
President Joe Biden signed legislation on Monday requiring intelligence officials to declassify the intelligence community’s information on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic with exceptions for info that his office determines “would harm national security.”
“We need to get to the bottom of COVID-19’s origins to help ensure we can better prevent future pandemics,” the president said in a statement accompanying the bill’s signing.
My Administration will continue to review all classified information relating to COVID-19’s origins, including potential links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In implementing this legislation, my Administration will declassify and share as much of that information as possible, consistent with my constitutional authority to protect against the disclosure of information that would harm national security.
The bill, titled the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, passed unanimously through both the Senate and the House earlier this month. Biden had previously been non-committal about signing the legislation despite its bipartisan support in Congress.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) sponsored the bill following the Department of Energy’s (DOE) announcement last month that they believe COVID-19 was most likely the result of a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, China.
“For nearly three years, anyone asking whether COVID-19 originated as a lab leak outbreak was silenced and branded as a conspiracy theorist,” Hawley told Fox News Digital following the DOE’s revelation.
Now these prudent skeptics stand vindicated. The Biden administration must immediately declassify all intelligence reports pertaining to the origins of COVID-19 coronavirus and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The American people deserve to know the truth.
The Director of National Intelligence now will have 90 days to review and declassify all materials related to the origins of the pandemic and submit a report to Congress. However, the law allows for redactions of information that could compromise U.S. national security interests, such as confidential sources.
The origins of COVID-19 have been the subject of substantial debate since the outset of the pandemic. Some experts claim that the virus may have leaked from the WIV, while others believe that the disease is the result of natural spillover from animals.
The U.S. intelligence community is currently still divided on the pandemic’s origins. While the DOE and FBI both support the lab leak theory, four other agencies maintain that natural origins are the most likely explanation, and two are undecided. Some experts say that the true origin of the virus might not be known for years, if at all.
The determination that COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab could further strain U.S.-China relations. China has repeatedly denied the lab leak theory and frequently blocked investigators from the World Health Organization and others who were trying to research the pandemic’s origin.
But if the lab leak theory is proven true, many are calling on the U.S. government to make China answer for its role in a pandemic that has killed over 1.1 million Americans and millions more across the globe.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) tweeted, “Re. China’s lab leak, being proven right doesn’t matter. What matters is holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable so this doesn’t happen again.”