New information and a group of scientists working in weapons labs led to a slight change in the notion regarding “lab leaks.”
According to current and former U.S. officials, the work of a little-known scientific team that conducts some of the federal government’s most secretive and technically difficult investigations of emerging security threats gave the theory that covid-19 started with a lab accident in central China a slight boost in the most recent U.S. intelligence assessment.
The Energy Department changed its opinion regarding the likely cause of the 2019 coronavirus outbreak earlier this year as a result of an analysis by specialists from the U.S. national laboratory complex, including members of the legendary Z-Division team, the officials said. Energy experts came to the conclusion, following a new government-wide intelligence review, that a lab accident was most likely the precipitating event for covid-19, despite initially being unsure of its origins.
Other intelligence agencies, however, were divided on the issue of the origins of covid-19, with most still holding that an organic, evolutionary “spillover” from animals was the most likely explanation. The classified update was completed in the past several weeks and kept under wraps. According to U.S. officials who spoke anonymously to disclose a classified assessment, even the Energy Department’s research was carefully hedged because the officials only expressed “low confidence” in their judgment.
