The CIA's 25 January 2025 Statement About the 'Origins' of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Observations & Commentary

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a statement yesterday about the ‘origins’ of the COVID-19 pandemic.¹

“CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting,” a CIA spokesperson said in a statement. “CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible.” (NBC News)

The spokesperson added that the agency has “low confidence in this judgement” (NBC News)

…and that the CIA would continue to evaluate “any available credible new intelligence reporting or open-source information that could change CIA’s assessment.” (WSJ)

Here’s what I observe about what the agency has said:

1. The statement is not as strong as some media headlines are suggesting. The agency leads with a characterization of its assessment and says one kind of origin is “more likely than” the another. A “low confidence” designation refers to the National Intelligence Council’s lowest level of analytic certainty: Questionable or implausible information was used to make the determination, the information is too fragmented or poorly corroborated to make solid analytic inferences, or significant concerns or problems with sources existed.²

2. The statement doesn’t reveal anything new, which isn’t surprising considering the review was ordered in the final weeks of the Biden administration and completed just before Trump took office. It’s a predictable political move designed to give the illusion of progress, as though something significant is unfolding and agency director John Ratcliffe is on track to uncover the truth about the lab leak theory that he’s already strongly inclined to believe happened.³

3. The statement doesn’t specify sources. While the agency mentions that its assessment is based on 'the available body of reporting,' it doesn’t clarify which reports were used or who provided them. The phrasing suggests that other reports may exist but were either not included or are inaccessible.

4. The statement largely affirms the World Health Organization’s (WHO) pandemic declaration and doesn’t challenge key assertions that were accepted by all three branches of the federal government in 2020, and continue to be upheld: a) There’s a new, newly identified virus. b) The new virus causes a distinct type of pneumonia/disease. c) This pneumonia/disease adds risk of severe illness or death for some individuals. d) The virus spreads from person to person. It seems the CIA's assessment must accept these premises and avoid making any statements that would challenge or undermine those claims.

5. The statement refers to “the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic,” not the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus purportedly responsible for COVID-19. This distinction is strange, as it focuses on the origin of the pandemic itself rather than the virus that supposedly caused it. This framing could be interpreted as the agency avoiding scientific and medical issues by focusing on a political act (the pandemic declaration) rather than addressing an observed phenomenon.⁴

6. The statement offers only two potential explanations for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic: a research-related origin and a natural origin. These broad categories leave room for a range of possibilities and give the CIA flexibility, especially with the “low confidence” qualifier. It’s not an airtight conclusion but more of a statement of limited understanding.

7. The statement makes no mention of specific scenarios like a lab leak, lab accident, wet market, or bat-cave collection. The terms “research-related” and “natural origin” could theoretically encompass such scenarios, but such specifics are avoided. It also doesn’t allude to transmission pathways, reservoirs, or intermediate hosts.

8. The statement uses “COVID-19” with all caps, a hyphen, and the “19” — mirroring the WHO’s official naming convention, rather than (for example) Covid-19, Covid, or covid. COVID is a pseudo-acronym — one I suspect also functions as a genuine acronym with another or alternate meaning.⁵

9. The statement articulates a contingent commitment to ongoing evaluation. The CIA is saying, “Here’s what we think now based on the information we can allude to having reviewed. We might changes our minds with new information.” This might be true but it falls flat given that director John Ratcliffe feels so strongly about a lab origin. By explicitly mentioning “open-source information” as a factor that could influence its assessment, the agency is signaling that it is not only tracking but also potentially incorporating the public work and analysis of various independent researchers and organizations into its evaluation. As one such researcher, I can applaud that idea if it eventually compels disclosure of what really happened, why, and how.

10. [Added 27 Jan 2025]. The statement says both origin scenarios remain plausible. So, although the assessment said a research-based origin was more likely based on “the available body of reporting,” the agency does not discount a natural origin, nor does it comment on the possibility both could be true.

COVID Dissident Response

I haven’t fully surveyed the reactions from the “COVID dissident” community to the CIA’s statement, but I expect that some will focus less on the lab origin itself and more on the vindication of lab origin theories that were previously censored, suppressed, or dismissed as fringe by scientific circles, mainstream media, and social media platforms.

In hindsight, I can’t agree that “lab leak” was ever truly censored in the strictest sense. It was always “out there” and part of the public discourse, presented as one of two options in a false dichotomy, with the “wet market” scenario positioned as the opposing storyline.

The fact that outlets like the BBC were giving full coverage to various “conspiracy theories” as early as January 2020 shows that a lab origin for the alleged novel, highly transmissible virus was getting plenty of airtime. It doesn’t matter that these theories were labeled “misinformation” or that some included wild speculation. Any press is good press, and it’s likely that agencies like the CIA played a role in planting opposing narratives to help control and direct the conversation—keeping people distracted from more fundamental questions, like whether a novel virus was even spreading from person to person and what the true threat was.

The idea of the CIA revealing the “truth” five years after a major event seems highly unlikely and, I believe, unprecedented. While true skeptics will always question everything, most Americans probably don’t view the CIA as an institution worthy of trust. The stance “never trust the CIA unless or until they agree with you” strikes me as an unwise—and decidedly non-dissident—position to take.

Michael Shellenberger’s post is one example of a confirmation bias that lets verisimilitudes from the U.S. government substitute in for the full truth.

Shellenberger seems to believe the truth has now been revealed, that the events and motives of late 2019 and early 2020 have been laid bare, and it’s time to move on. He and his colleagues are, of course, free to pursue whatever investigations they choose, and I wouldn’t presume to tell a fellow American when to feel satisfied with their understanding of the COVID events. However, I see no reason to claim that the mystery has been solved and the case closed. (Also, unless I missed something, the CIA’s formal statement yesterday didn’t mention "COVID" coming from China or even reference China at all.)

Anyone seriously studying the COVID events—Michael Shellenberger included, who is an outstanding journalist—brings their own focus and priorities to the table, which invariably shape their interpretation of anything a government official or agency has to say. For me, the CIA’s statement adds nothing of substance. If anything, the agency continues to obfuscate the situation and steer Americans away from the most basic, fundamental questions.

The Most Basic Questions

To my knowledge, no one from the CIA has ever been publicly questioned about the agency’s role in or knowledge of the mass casualty event in New York City during the spring of 2020, despite the fact that excess deaths were nearly ten times higher than the fatalities from the World Trade Center disaster, all within just eleven weeks. The chances that intelligence forces weren’t involved before, during, or after the event are infinitesimally small.

UPDATE: CIA Director John Ratcliffe used different language in interviews this weeks than the emailed statement used:

“I had the opportunity on my first day to make public an assessment that actually took place in the Biden Administration. So it can’t be accused of being political,” Mr. Ratcliffe told Fox News. He said the CIA “has assessed that the most likely cause of this pandemic that has wrought so much devastation around the world was because of a lab-related incident in Wuhan. And so we will continue to investigate that moving forward.’’ (Source: WSJ)

News organizations that received the email should publish it in full.

What Ratcliffe says about the assessment and the statements from the assessment emailed to reporters is not the same. I left a comment on WSJ, asking for the email to be published.

FOLLOW UP POST

Follow Up: CIA Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic Origins vs. New CIA Director John Ratcliffe

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X thread version

1. I was unable to find a complete version of the statement and have combined parts of quoted statements reported by two different sources. Update 28 Jan 2025: FoxNews had published a more intact version of the emailed statement.

2. https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/20071203_release.pdf

3. On 18 April 2023, Radcliffe told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic: “My informed assessment as a person with as much access as anyone to our government’s intelligence during the initial year of the pandemic has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science, and by commonsense” and the “spillover side” of the evidence ledger was “nearly empty and tenuous.” See pages 2 and 3 of the subcommittee’s report.

4. Terms have always been conflated and used interchangeably in the broader origins debate (e.g., COVID origins, virus origins, origin of SARS-CoV-2, lab origin) and had the effect of confusing issues and underlying questions.

5. See thread and COVID-19 Did Not Come from a Lab