Ohio Republican Representative Mike Turner has requested that the Director of National Intelligence share the data, not just their interpretation of where COVID-19 originated.
During an interview, Turner was asked whether he believed there was a definitive conclusion that the government was not releasing.
According to Turner, he saw the classified annex to the report Biden had requested from the intelligence community. Contrary to what was implied by the intelligence committee’s assertions, he said the information supplied in the 90-day report to the President is more nuanced and complex. Turner insists the intelligence itself be made public, not just the intelligence community’s review of it.
He requested it be made available to the people of the United States. He advised that non-intelligence community professionals needed to be aware of it.
A nine-page report titled Potential Links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Origin of the COVID-19 Pandemic was released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The report summarized the intelligence community’s understanding of the institute in Wuhan, China, at the center of the theory that the pandemic could have come from a lab leak, including the institute’s capabilities and the actions of its personnel.
All agencies continue to assess that both a natural and laboratory-associated origin remain plausible hypotheses to explain the first human infection, the report said, adding that the intelligence community has not yet concluded whether the pandemic was sparked by a lab leak or from natural exposure by an infected animal, such as at one of the wild animal markets in China.
When questioned why the results were inconclusive, Turner cited a law mandating the release of details about the work done at the Covid and Wuhan laboratories as the reason. Director Haines, who heads the National Intelligence, released a report detailing the agency’s conclusions regarding the intelligence they’ve analyzed.
Turner elaborated by saying that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had been tasked with releasing the intelligence but instead went behind closed doors, read the reports, and came out and said, ‘This is what we think about it,’ which is insufficient and will set up a battle between Congress and the ODNI to ensure that the law is passed unanimously in the Senate and the House and signed by the President. The American people need to know what’s going on.
The Energy Department agreed with the FBI’s assessment that the COVID outbreak was most likely the result of a laboratory leak.
After some internal debate, the Energy Department ultimately agreed with the FBI’s assessment that the spread of the coronavirus was most likely the result of an accident in a Chinese laboratory.
The COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, signed by President Biden in March, mandated the declassification of the classified annex report, which contained information on possible causes of the pandemic.