[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF COVID.
PART 2:
CHINA AND THE AVAILABLE INTELLIGENCE
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 18, 2023
__________
Serial No. 118-19
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on: govinfo.gov,
oversight.house.gov or
docs.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
51-891 PDF WASHINGTON : 2023
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman
Jim Jordan, Ohio Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Ranking
Mike Turner, Ohio Minority Member
Paul Gosar, Arizona Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Columbia
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Gary Palmer, Alabama Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia
Clay Higgins, Louisiana Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Pete Sessions, Texas Ro Khanna, California
Andy Biggs, Arizona Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
Nancy Mace, South Carolina Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Jake LaTurner, Kansas Katie Porter, California
Pat Fallon, Texas Cori Bush, Missouri
Byron Donalds, Florida Shontel Brown, Ohio
Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota Jimmy Gomez, California
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico
William Timmons, South Carolina Robert Garcia, California
Tim Burchett, Tennessee Maxwell Frost, Florida
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Becca Balint, Vermont
Lisa McClain, Michigan Summer Lee, Pennsylvania
Lauren Boebert, Colorado Greg Casar, Texas
Russell Fry, South Carolina Jasmine Crockett, Texas
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida Dan Goldman, New York
Chuck Edwards, North Carolina Jared Moskowitz, Florida
Nick Langworthy, New York
Eric Burlison, Missouri
Mark Marin, Staff Director
Mitchell Benzine, Subcommittee Staff Director
Marie Policastro, Clerk
Contact Number: 202-225-5074
Miles Lichtman, Minority Staff Director
Select Subcommittee On The Coronavirus Pandemic
Brad Wenstrup, Ohio, Chairman
Nicole Malliotakis, New York Raul Ruiz, California, Ranking
Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa Minority Member
Debbie Lesko, Arizona Debbie Dingell, Michigan
Michael Cloud, Texas Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
John Joyce, Pennsylvania Deborah Ross, North Carolina
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Robert Garcia, California
Ronny Jackson, Texas Ami Bera, California
Rich Mccormick, Georgia Jill Tokuda, Hawaii
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on April 18, 2023................................... 1
Witnesses
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The Honorable John Ratcliffe, Former Director of National
Intelligence, Former U.S. Representative
Oral Statement................................................... 5
Mr. David Feith, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for
East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Fellow at the Center for a New
American Security
Oral Statement................................................... 7
Dr. Mark Lowenthal, Ph.D., Former Assistant Director of Central
Intelligence for Analysis and Production, Former Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research,
Former Vice Chairman for Evaluation for the National
Intelligence Council
Oral Statement................................................... 9
Written opening statements and the written statements of the
witnesses are available on the U.S. House of Representatives
Document Repository at: docs.house.gov.
Index of Documents
----------
* Report, DNI, Updated Assessment on COVID-19 Origins;
submitted by Rep. Dingell.
* Report, Cell Press, The Origins of SARS-CoV-2: A Critical
Review; submitted by Rep. Dingell.
* White House National Security Strategy; submitted by Rep.
Mfume.
* Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Fact Sheet, SSCP
Democrats; submitted by Rep. Ruiz.
Documents are available at: docs.house.gov.
INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF COVID
PART 2:
CHINA AND THE AVAILABLE INTELLIGENCE
----------
Tuesday, April 18, 2023
House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Accountability
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:34 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brad Wenstrup
(Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Wenstrup, Malliotakis, Miller-
Meeks, Lesko, Cloud, Joyce, Greene, Jackson, McCormick, Ruiz,
Dingell, Mfume, Garcia, Bera, and Tokuda.
Also present: Representatives Comer, Jordan, and Moskowitz.
Dr. Wenstrup. The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus
Pandemic will come to order. I want to welcome everyone.
Without objection, the Chair may declare a recess at any
time.
Pursuant to Rule 7(d) of the Committee on Oversight and
Accountability, at the discretion of Chairman Comer, Mr.
Jordan, a Member of the full Committee, may participate in
today's hearing for the purposes of questions.
Further, without objection, I ask unanimous consent for Mr.
Moskowitz of the full committee to join today for the purposes
of questions.
I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening
statement.
Today marks the Select Subcommittee's second hearing in our
series investigating the origins of COVID-19. At our first
hearing, we heard what we presume for years that in addition to
this being a scientific question, it is also one of
intelligence and national security. Former director of the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert
Redfield, who himself is a virologist, while discussing the
origins testified, ``I do not think that the answer is going to
come from the scientific community. I think the answer is going
to come from the intelligence community.''
As Dr. Redfield stated, and we agree, the intelligence
community plays an important role in this investigation. We are
not here to analyze the intelligence ourselves. We are here to
listen to the experts and follow the facts, and that is exactly
what we are here to do today: ask those that were actually
involved in the intelligence process in the earliest days of
the pandemic about what they saw and how we as Congress should
proceed. We appreciate each of the witnesses here today.
I do want to highlight that according to the congressional
Research Service, this is the first time current or former
director of national intelligence has testified before the
Oversight Committee. Welcome. I think it truly shows the
importance of this issue for Director Ratcliffe to be here
today, and we thank him.
We will discuss and examine many aspects of the available
unclassified intelligence, and it is my sincere hope that this
hearing moves the ball forward and we can ultimately agree on
both sides of the aisle that the origins of COVID-19 cannot be
solved by science alone. Starting in early 2020, there were
rumblings about the possibility COVID-19 came from a lab likely
in Wuhan. Every month since then, more and more circumstantial
evidence has come to light suggesting this is the case.
On January 15, 2021, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,
released a fact sheet regarding some intelligence gathered
surrounding the origins of COVID-19. The fact sheet stated
three things. First, there were numerous researchers inside the
Wuhan Institute of Virology that were sick in the fall of 2019.
While this does not prove COVID-19 came from the lab, it is a
data point suggesting so. Just two weeks ago, an expert in
emerging disease outbreaks testified before this Subcommittee
that researchers in the lab becoming sick would be consistent
with a research-related lab outbreak.
Second, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has a published
record of gain-of-function research, including at low biosafety
levels, and, again, we know that much of this work was done
with U.S.-based, EcoHealth Alliance. And we know that EcoHealth
Alliance has failed to publish all its work and has, in fact,
refused to share its work with the U.S. Government. In other
words, U.S.-taxpayer-funded risky research that may have
sparked a pandemic is being hidden by a U.S. entity in China.
Third, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has cooperated with
the Chinese military since at least 2017, including on animal
laboratory experiments. The Biden Administration did not and
still has not disagreed with these facts. A senior Biden State
Department official said, ``No one is disputing the
information, the fact that those data points exist, the fact
that they are accurate.'' Ironically enough, the Biden
Administration takes issue with the fact that the Trump
Administration released these facts. The same official said,
``The Trump Administration put spin on the ball.'' I think the
fact sheet is pretty clear and non-biased. It even stated that
the U.S. Government does not know exactly where, when, or how
the COVID-19 virus was initially transmitted to humans. That is
true. The rest are simply statements of fact derived from
available intelligence.
Next, on October 29, 2021, the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence released its first declassified
assessment on COVID-19 origins. This stated unequivocally that
both a laboratory and natural origin are plausible. Since then,
more reporting has emerged. FBI Director Christopher Wray
confirmed publicly that the FBI assessed COVID-19 most likely
originated from a lab incident in Wuhan. And the Wall Street
Journal reported the Department of Energy now also believes a
lab leak is the most likely origin.
The fact that it is these two agencies is important. The
FBI uses experts in biological threats and was reportedly
supported by the National Bioforensic Analysis Center, and the
Department of Energy used its own Z Division experts in
investigating biological threats. These are both scientific and
intelligence experts.
While the specific origin of COVID-19 may not be 100
percent clear, there is mounting evidence suggesting a research
or lab-related incident. What is clear, though, is that China
does not want the globe to know the origins. They dodge and
duck every legitimate attempt to investigate this question.
According to the fact sheet, China has systematically prevented
a transparent and thorough investigation of the COVID-19
pandemic's origin. According to the ODNI report, China has
hindered global investigations, resisted sharing information,
and reported to blaming other countries, including the United
States. This became even more clear when we received this email
from the Chinese Embassy last week.
Without objection, I would ask unanimous consent to enter
this email into the record.
Dr. Wenstrup. In it, the Chinese Embassy expresses grave
concern regarding this hearing and states they firmly oppose
it. Well, we have some news for Beijing: these intimidation
tactics will not work. We will not slow down our work, and we
will not cease. After the hearing, I will be sending a letter
to the Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. requesting China cease
intimidation tactics and cooperate with this investigation. I
extend the invitation to any Member of this Subcommittee to
join me on that letter. Thank you.
I would now like to recognize Ranking Member Ruiz for the
purpose of making an opening statement.
Dr. Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Understanding the
origins of the COVID-19 pandemic is important to America's
public health and our ability to respond to future public
health threats. In fact, since the first outbreak of COVID-19,
researchers in the scientific community have worked tirelessly
to get to the bottom of this very issue with dozens of studies
that have been conducted or currently under way, and agents in
the intelligence community have continued their sweeping
assessment of COVID-19's origins. Thanks to President Biden's
direction and leadership, we are learning more every day.
In May 2021, he directed the intelligence community to
evaluate whether the novel coronavirus could have emerged from
a laboratory in China, urging our Nation's intelligence
agencies to do ``everything we can'' to trace the roots of this
outbreak. Since then, two government agencies have assessed
with low and moderate confidence that the virus originated in a
lab, while four government agencies assessed with low
confidence that the virus came about through natural
transmission. As it stands, there is no consensus. The reports
are inconclusive, and more research is needed.
While our scientist and intelligence communities continue
their investigations, it is crucial that we empower them to do
so without extreme partisan rhetoric or political biases that
cherry pick evidence to push a partisan political narrative
that vilify public health leaders. Our focus as lawmakers
should be on developing policies based on current and evolving
evidence to prevent and prepare for future pandemics and save
lives. To do right by the American people and our public
health, we must let our expert communities do their job. And in
turn, we must develop policies based on evidence, as
inconclusive as it may be at the moment, that will help us
prevent the next pandemic no matter which COVID origin theory
you believe in.
We must also take a deep dive into the barriers to our
Nation's ability to research the origins of COVID and respond
to it. This includes examining how the Chinese Communist
Party's refusal to cooperate with international investigations
in December 2019 set us back in our pandemic response, and how
the Chinese Communist Party's continued spread of
misinformation and obfuscation of evidence has hindered our
ability to understand both theories of how this virus came to
be in the first place. In order to better be prepared for the
future, it is crucial that we develop forward-looking domestic
and foreign policies that advance American interests, protect
our public health, and save lives. This means rejecting the
isolationist approach President Trump took under the guise of
``America first'' that decimated the State Department, weakened
our ability to engage, left a void that rendered America
vulnerable to China's growing influence. It also abandoned
state-to-state diplomacy, allowed tensions to intensify, and
escalated a trade war that fell hardest on American workers.
Under this approach, America's public health, economy, and
security ultimately paid the price.
So now, we must take decisive action to protect our public
health, economy, and security from the CCP's growing influence
by investing in competition, deepening collaboration with our
allies, and furthering the State Department's diplomatic work.
That means building on the progress we have made with
legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act to invest in
innovation, so that we can outcompete China in sectors critical
to our public health and national defense and strengthening our
supply chain. And that means building on House Democrats' and
the Biden Administration's work to bolster our pandemic
preparedness, public health infrastructure, and international
and domestic standards for pandemic surveillance to address
possible animal transmissions, and biomedical research safety
to address possible lab leaks.
There is certainly more work to do, and it is my sincere
hope that we can pursue this work together on a bipartisan
basis. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how global health
security, pandemic preparedness, and national security are
linked, and so as we seek to better understand the virus'
origins, we must take a scientific and evidence-based approach.
As a physician and Ranking Member of the Select Subcommittee, I
take this charge seriously of putting people over politics to
protect our public health. We should do this work without the
politicization and extreme partisan rhetoric that get in the
way of commonsense solutions to the public health challenges we
face.
Let us get to work on forward-looking policies that will
prevent and reduce the harm of future viruses and pandemics
without vilifying our Nation's public health officials. The
world is watching what we are doing here today, and it is my
hope that we rise to the occasion, and that we meet the moment
with the integrity that our global health and national security
demand.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, Dr. Ruiz. Pursuant to Committee on
Oversight and Accountability Rule 9(g), the witnesses will
please stand and raise their right hands.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony that you
are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, so help you God?
[A chorus of ayes.]
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, please be seated.
Let the record show that the witnesses all answered in the
affirmative.
Our witnesses today are the Honorable John Ratcliffe.
Director Ratcliffe was most recently the Director of National
Intelligence, serving as the principal intelligence adviser to
the President. Prior to that, he served in Congress and as a
Member of the House Intelligence, Homeland Security, and
Judiciary Committees. Mr. David Feith. Mr. Feith is currently
an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American
Security. He was previously the Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. And Dr. Mark
Lowenthal. Dr. Lowenthal previously served as the Assistant
Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production,
and also as Vice Chairman for Evaluation on the National
Intelligence Council. The Select Subcommittee certainly
appreciates you all for being here today. We appreciate your
service, and we look forward to your testimony.
Let me remind the witnesses that we have read your written
statements, and they will appear in full in the hearing record.
Please limit your oral statements to five minutes. As a
reminder, please press the button on the microphone in front of
you so that it is on and the Members can hear you. When you
begin to speak, the light in front of you will turn green.
After four minutes, the light will turn yellow. When the red
light comes on, your five minutes have expired, and we would
ask that you please wrap up.
I now recognize Director Ratcliffe to give an opening
statement.
STATEMENT OF JOHN L. RATCLIFFE
FORMER DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE
Mr. Ratcliffe. Chairman Wenstrup, Ranking Member Ruiz,
Members of the Committee, it is a pleasure for me to be back in
the House of Representatives where I spent six years serving on
the House Intelligence, Judiciary, and Homeland Security
committees before leaving Congress when I was confirmed by the
Senate to serve as the Director of National Intelligence in the
Trump Administration.
My confirmation was actually the first in-person Senate
hearing after the COVID-19 pandemic began. And during it, I
promised to ensure that the intelligence community would be
laser focused on getting answers to the virus' origins and
spread. What follows is a brief unclassified overview of what
the intelligence community learned and knows, a synopsis of the
relevant challenges that I encountered during this effort and
where I believe we must go from here.
First, let me state the bottom-line up front. 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. From a view inside the IC, if our
intelligence and evidence supporting a lab leak theory was
placed side-by-side with our intelligence and evidence pointing
to a natural origins or spillover theory, the lab leak side of
the ledger would be long, convincing, even overwhelming, while
the spillover side would be nearly empty and tenuous.
Were this a trial, a preponderance of circumstantial
evidence provided by our intelligence would compel a jury
finding of guilt to an accusation that coronavirus research in
Wuhan Labs was responsible for the pandemic. And likewise, the
Chinese Communist Party would be guilty of going to great
lengths to cover up the virus' origins, from destroying medical
tests, samples, and data to intimidating and disappearing
witnesses and journalists, to lying and coercing global health
authorities, even spreading propaganda that the virus
originated here in the United States by the U.S. military.
Their efforts continue to this day as the Chinese Embassy
has formally objected to this hearing and this committee's
efforts to ascertain the truth, and the Chinese Government has
done all of this, while proving itself incapable of offering
even a shred of exculpatory evidence. The intelligence
community's sources on this issue are numerous, diverse, and
unassailable, and I hope that the recent unanimous
congressional support to require the declassification of our
COVID origins material will make some of this available to you
and the American people.
Right now, a few of the intelligence community's agencies
are publicly assessing that COVID-19 virus originated from a
lab leak in Wuhan. And as the shift continues, the day will
come when every single agency in the IC will make the same
assessment, which begs the question, why have they not to this
point? It is a simple and obvious question that does not have a
simple answer.
The challenges that I and other senior Trump Administration
officials encountered while in office included legitimate
concerns about our closely held sources and methods of
intelligence as well as illegitimate roadblocks that related to
professional conflicts of interest and partisan politics. These
included the headwinds created when a lab leak assessment was
initially labeled false and falsely reported with near
unanimity as a conspiracy theory by conflicted scientists and
by mainstream press while also being censored as disinformation
by social media giants.
Internally, national and electoral politics were also
influencing the analysis of our intelligence on China within
the IC as reflected in the January 6, 2021 report by the
intelligence community's analytic ombudsman. As a career
nonpolitical official, the ombudsman found, ``Analysts appeared
reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward
because they tend to disagree with the Trump Administration's
policies, saying in effect, I do not want our intelligence use
to support those policies.''
To this day, the CIA, which I believe is unquestionably the
world's premier spy agency with an unrivaled capacity to
acquire information, has continued to state that it does not
have enough information to make any formal assessment. To put
it bluntly, I think this is unjustifiable and a reflection, not
that the Agency cannot make an assessment with any confidence,
but that it won't. Some 3 ½years later, the only
plausible assessment the Agency could make with any level of
confidence is that a virus, which killed over a million
Americans, originated in a Chinese lab whose research included
work for the Chinese military. And such an assessment would
obviously have enormous geopolitical implications that I
believe the current Administration does not want to face head
on.
Let me close by saying that I think that the search for the
truth should drive where we go from here. And everyone, from
our intelligence agencies to members of the Administration, to
Members of Congress, to public health officials should put
politics aside and let our intelligence speak the truth about
what happened. Speak the truth to the Americans who deserve
that truth, deserve justice, and deserve accountability. And
only by seeking truth, justice, and accountability for this
pandemic can we achieve the other equally important goal of
preventing the next pandemic.
Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, Director. I now recognize Mr.
Feith to give an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF DAVID FEITH, ADJUNCT SENIOR FELLOW
CENTER FOR A NEW AMERICAN SECURITY
FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE
FOR EAST ASIAN AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS
Mr. Feith. Chairman Wenstrup, Ranking Member Ruiz, and
Select Subcommittee Members, thanks for this opportunity.
My written testimony that I have submitted has three
elements. First, it describes how the State Department's East
Asia Bureau approached the COVID origin issue during the first
year of the pandemic, from the outbreak to the publication in
January 2021 of a fact sheet on activity at the Wuhan Institute
of Virology. Second, it describes the terribly damaging effects
of our public health establishment's efforts to stigmatize the
very notion that COVID may have emerged from a laboratory
accident. This drove underground discussion of a set of risks,
namely those involved in gain-of-function research, that
deserves to be at the front and center of our policymaking.
Third, it offers some oversight and policy suggestions on
helping to find the origin of COVID, to fix policy and
intelligence problems raised by these issues, and to tighten
U.S. science and technology exchanges with China to protect
national security and to help prevent a next pandemic.
In my short remarks here, I want to stress the stakes
involved in whether COVID emerged from nature or from a lab,
the stakes are almost unimaginably grave. COVID was not some
immaculate infection. It was not spontaneously generated. It
came from somewhere, and the details matter. If it emerged
naturally, it implies certain things about human interactions
with nature where the risks are sizable enough. But if it
emerged from a lab, particularly one conducting gain-of-
function virology experiments with technologies invented only a
few years ago, then this was akin to a Hiroshima event,
revealing new and modern high-tech risks to human civilizations
and even to our species.
This is what makes it such a scandal that many of the most
influential U.S. Government and academic authorities on
virology were coordinating to, as one said, disprove any type
of lab theory. These officials and scientists knew that COVID
may have come from a lab, they knew that a lab leak could have
resulted from research in Wuhan funded by the U.S. Government,
and they knew that if such research were, in fact, part of
COVID's origin, they could face professional and personal
embarrassment. So, these officials and scientists evidently
collaborated to convince the government and the public not to
investigate the origin of COVID, at least not in a fashion that
followed the evidence down paths that could point to a lab
origin.
The misdirection tactics worked. The lab leak theory became
stigmatized, driven underground, and yet evidence continued to
mount in its favor. By late 2020, colleagues at State flagged
new U.S. Government information that underscored the
plausibility of a lab leak. Most significant, there were sick
researchers inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology just before
the public outbreak in Wuhan. That same Wuhan lab had a long
record of secrecy about its coronavirus research and
undisclosed ties with China's military. Working with ODNI, we
at State arranged to make this information public. Some of our
colleagues warned us not to. They said not to highlight China's
gain-of-function research lest we draw attention to the U.S.
Government's own role in such research and open a Pandora's
box. It wasn't clear exactly what these colleagues feared, but
their seeming demand for non-transparency was unpersuasive.
On January 15, 2021, we published a fact sheet on activity
at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In the months that
followed, the lab leak possibility began to force its way into
the mainstream. By May 2021, President Biden himself recognized
the significance of the lab leak possibility and ordered a 90-
day review of U.S. intelligence. Unfortunately, progress since
then has been limited. We now know that the FBI and the
Department of Energy both assessed that a lab leak is most
likely. That is important. But we do not need a running
intelligence community straw poll as much as we need a
transparent whole-of-government campaign to recognize the
gravely high stakes of the lab leak possibility and pursue
appropriate policy reforms. Gain-of-function technologies of
the kind that emerged only in the last 10 to 15 years, where
the deadliest viruses can conceivably be fused with the most
infectious ones, appear to pose a species-level risk to human
life.
It has been commonly said for 75 years that nuclear weapons
could destroy the world or humanity, and so they might, but
that would likely require many decisions in at least two
capitals over some sustained period of time. The gain-of-
function risk is that one mistake in one place, let alone one
deliberate act by some actor, is all that it takes. Once a
virus of sufficient infectiousness and deadliness escapes a
lab, there may be nothing humanity can do to stop it.
This is the stunning tragedy of those experts who
stigmatized even the notion of a lab leak. Faced with a
possible dry run of the worst-case pandemic that gain-of-
function science has made the world have to fear, the
authorities who know the most about this threat did not speak
up. Many even sought to silence others. This has caused a
paralytic affect to this day, not only on public awareness, but
on the policy reforms that we need to protect ourselves from
lab risks in the future. Overcoming this handicap is a major
obligation for lawmakers and policymakers going forward.
As we are trying still to confirm COVID's origin, I would
quickly note three points. First, the immediate
declassification test. Congress recently passed a law requiring
the Biden Administration to declassify intelligence on COVID's
origin within 90 days. This is a third test for the IC and the
rest of the interagency after failures to disclose in 2020 and
2021. There is no doubt that the Administration has far more
information than has been released publicly.
Second, the sick researchers still stand alone. The sick
Wuhan lab researchers identified in the January 2021 fact sheet
remain the best lead into who or what was patient zero. No
animal anywhere has been identified as a comparably likely
source of the outbreak. The Biden Administration, like the
Trump Administration before it, has more information about the
sick researchers than has been released. Third, and finally,
what changed the Department of Energy's mind? The most
significant fresh piece of intelligence we know about post-2020
is whatever reportedly motivated the Energy Department's recent
change of assessment. Maximizing the release of this
information would clearly shed additional light on the COVID
mystery. Thank you.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, Mr. Feith. I now recognize Dr.
Lowenthal to give an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF MARK LOWENTHAL
FORMER ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE FOR ANALYSIS AND
PRODUCTION
FORMER VICE CHAIRMAN FOR EVALUATION FOR THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
COUNCIL
FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INTELLIGENCE AND
RESEARCH
Dr. Lowenthal. Chairman Wenstrup, Ranking Member Ruiz,
Members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to
discuss intelligence and the origins of the COVID pandemic.
I have spent most of my adult life as an intelligence
analyst or as a manager of intelligence analysts. I have also
taught analytical skills to hundreds of new analysts. To be a
good intelligence analyst, you have to have the ability to deal
with ambiguity. Very often, analysts are asked to address
issues for which there may not be a final definitive answer.
Analysts live in a world where there may be several
possibilities, each of which has its own degree of certainty
and uncertainty. This can be very frustrating to policymakers
who want an answer. Given the available intelligence and our
own expertise, a specific answer cannot always be determined.
This seems to be the case at this point in terms of the origin
of the coronavirus in China.
There has not been sufficient intelligence to date to make
a firm judgment as to whether the virus occurred naturally or
was the result of activity in the lab, whether witting or
accidental. The ODNI's October 2021 declassified assessment on
COVID-19 origins, which you both cited, reflects this
uncertainty. Four intelligence agencies assessed that the virus
originated naturally with low confidence. One intelligence
agency believes the virus originated in a lab with moderate
confidence. Three intelligence agencies are unable to make a
determination either way. Again, this can be frustrating to
policymakers, but that is the nature of intelligence.
One of the points that I stress to new analysts is that you
want your reader, the policymaker, to understand and appreciate
your uncertainty as well as your certainty because they will be
making decisions based on your analysis, and you do not want to
portray a confidence and a certainty that misrepresents your
intelligence. Absent greater cooperation and transparency from
China, which seem highly unlikely, we may never resolve this
issue with certainty.
It is important that we look back at the intelligence and
policy experience from the pandemic and ask ourselves, what can
we do better next time. I have a few recommendations.
We should consider creating a national intelligence officer
for health issues, who, with his or her office, would serve as
the focal point for U.S. intelligence collection and analysis,
not only on health issues that threaten the United States, but
also looking at health issues worldwide, that can be
destabilizing regionally. The intelligence community likely
needs to hire analysts with backgrounds in medicine,
epidemiology, and other areas. There is a section of the
Centers for Disease Control that has TS/SCI cleared analysts,
but I think the larger intelligence community needs more in-
house expertise in these issues. Finally, it is important to
avoid politicizing intelligence efforts on issues like the
COVID pandemic. The intelligence community prides itself on
being nonpartisan and objective, and I believe we meet these
standards on a high consistent basis.
Intelligence may sometimes be discomforting and may run
counter to preferred policy preferences, but that does not mean
that it is partisan or subjective. It becomes increasingly
difficult for intelligence officers to do their best work when
they are put under constant partisan pressure or when they are
consistently accused of being partisan.
Some people refer to the role of the intelligence community
as telling truth to power. I find that phrase objectionable as
it is arrogant, and, more to the point, we do not have truth in
many cases, but well-sourced, well-thought-out analytic
conclusions. These will sometimes run counter to the preferred
views or outcomes of policymakers. That does not mean the
intelligence has been politicized. It means that intelligence
is being honest when talking to power. That is a great
responsibility, and the intelligence community takes it very
seriously.
Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you all very much. I now recognize
myself for a series of questions.
If you have had the chance to follow the initial workings
of this Subcommittee to date, you would know that the drive of
this committee is to perform an after-action review, have
lessons learned, create a path forward for any future pandemic
so that we may able to predict, prepare for, protect ourselves,
and hopefully prevent any future pandemic. This, I believe,
would be consistent with the suggestion made by Dr. Lowenthal.
Hopefully, we may produce a product that will allow us to
certainly be better next time out of this committee.
It is a fair question, why decisions may have been made.
Were they based on data, hypothesis? Were there motives to the
decisions such as personal gain or political game? All fair
questions.
Dr. Lowenthal recommended having a national intelligence
officer for health. In many ways I believe we have this with
the National Center for Medical Intelligence, but we may need
to expand their role. It was also suggested that the
intelligence community hire experts with backgrounds in
medicine and epidemiology and other specialties. And I agree
with that, and that is why I have been requesting from ODNI
information concerning those experts that they have consulted
during their review of the origins question. I am interested in
knowing which actual specialists weighed in for each component
of the IC. If one agency has 20 virologists and another has
none, that can make a huge difference in analyst outcomes. So,
I am curious as to why so many agencies have different opinions
on this. The expertise of those that have contributed to each
agency matters and makes a difference.
For this committee, I have stated that honesty is non-
negotiable, and that requires truth. And I understand that 100
percent certainty in an analysis is difficult to come by, but
what can be truthful is the level of confidence in an analytic
summary. Unfortunately, during my time on the Intelligence
Committee, I have seen cases of what seems to be political
partisanship. I have seen a situation where analysts came
forward as whistleblowers, charging that their analyses were
changed or ignored for political purposes. In other words,
their analysis stated that things were going badly and yet
after going up the chain, a politician stated that everything
was going well.
Mr. Ratcliffe, as DNI, did you ever feel that information
was being withheld from you or altered in any way, or did you
have that concern?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Mr. Chairman, I would say that, fortunately,
that did not happen very often, but it did happen on occasion,
and I didn't just feel it. As I referenced in my opening
remarks, the analytic ombudsman referenced the fact that there
were times when intelligence was suppressed.
Dr. Wenstrup. So, why and what kind of information was
that, if you can share it?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, as it has already been publicly
available, the ombudsman made specific reference to
intelligence on China.
Dr. Wenstrup. So, did this, in your opinion, hamstring your
ability to conduct your job?
Mr. Ratcliffe. I think it made it more difficult, but, you
know, through persistence and some of the things that Mr. Feith
talked about, we were able to, in looking at the intelligence,
particularly as it related to COVID origins, to still get to a
point where we could protect sources and methods and yet make
some of that intelligence available by declassifying it. And he
referenced the process whereby we did that through a State
Department fact sheet.
Dr. Wenstrup. One of the aspects of this investigation that
is most important is learning who the IC consulted with during
the review. They said we want to know what kinds of experts
each component worked with. I am going to ask each of you, to
each witness, do you think this question is an important one
when it comes to origins of COVID?
Mr. Ratcliffe. I will begin just by saying, it is because
sometimes, in this case, particularly when we are talking about
COVID-19, our analytic judgments are framed in part by science.
And so, who the scientists are and how they are motivated
certainly is important.
Mr. Feith. Yes, sir. I would agree and just add the element
that conflict of interest in general, and with respect to the
enormous amount of scientific exchange with China are
especially important as China is central to our national
security analytical work going forward.
Dr. Wenstrup. Doctor?
Dr. Lowenthal. I think it is fair to ask the intelligence
committee who they consulted with, yes.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Mr. Feith, you were heavily
involved in this investigation from the side of the State
Department. While you were gathering information, did you
struggle to find experts that did not have conflicts of
interest?
Mr. Feith. In short, yes, and that problem became clear in
retrospect also.
Dr. Wenstrup. And do you believe these same conflicted
scientists may be briefing the IC today?
Mr. Feith. I can't speculate about today, but based on the
experience a few years ago, yes.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Quickly to Director Ratcliffe and
Dr. Lowenthal. In your opinion, is it acceptable or practical
to avoid or ignore the truth from Congress of trying not to
divulge or to shield a covert operation?
Mr. Ratcliffe. I don't think it is ever appropriate to
ignore the truth. I think, from the intelligence community
standpoint, there is an ability to protect sources and methods
but still meet our obligations to keep Members of Congress
informed through its proper oversight role.
Dr. Wenstrup. Doctor?
Dr. Lowenthal. There is a provision of law that requires
that Congress be fully and currently informed of all current
and significant anticipated activities. I am probably the only
person in this room who was in the Senate chamber when the
Senate Intelligence Committee was created, so I am an advocate
for congressional oversight, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Wenstrup. Yes, I have read that statute myself, but I
have had to bring it up and still get fought a few times in the
Intelligence Committee. So, the next question for the two of
you, is it important for the IC to try to know all they can
about the weapons systems of our adversaries, including
biological weapons?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Absolutely, and in the case of China, the
intelligence community has publicly addressed China as our top
national security threat from a nation-state perspective, so
particularly, that is important with respect to the country of
China.
Dr. Lowenthal. Mr. Chairman, yes, this has always been a
high priority for U.S. intelligence since the committee was
created in 1947.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Should a virus that killed more
than one million Americans be an intelligence priority for the
IC and specifically the CIA and DIA?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Absolutely.
Dr. Wenstrup. Doctor?
Dr. Lowenthal. That depends on the policymakers. We don't
make our priorities. The President and the National Security
Council determine the priorities for the intelligence
community, so if they determined it is a priority, then yes, it
is. If they decide there are higher priorities, then, no, it
isn't. But this is not a call for the intelligence community.
This is something that is not understood. We don't set our
priorities. We were there to respond to the policymakers. I
helped create the current priority system, and its one we
derived from the President and his National Security Council
where are the areas you wanted the most emphasis, knowing that
inevitably there are going to be areas where we spend less
attention because we have finite resources.
Dr. Wenstrup. That is a fair assessment. I would have to
say as a policymaker that I think it should be a very high
intelligence priority. That is well taken. Finally, Director
Ratcliffe, we sent a document request letter to Director Haines
on February 13. To date we have yet to receive any documents
from ODNI. Understanding all the appropriate restrictions on
classified material, as a former director, do you believe it is
important for ODNI to fully cooperate with our investigation
and produce the requested documents?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Yes.
Dr. Wenstrup. I would now like to yield to Ranking Member
Ruiz.
Dr. Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Look, understanding how
COVID-19 came to be as critical to America's public health, I
want to point out and make clear that we wouldn't even be
having this hearing in the first place if it wasn't for
President Biden taking early and decisive action in May 2021 to
investigate whether the novel coronavirus originated in a lab
or nature.
President Biden directed the intelligence community to
conduct this review to ``do everything we can to trace the
roots of this outbreak that has caused so much pain and death
around the world so that we can take every necessary precaution
to prevent it from happening again.'' In fact, the very
intelligence that Democrats and Republicans voted to declassify
last month was collected because of President Biden's directive
for the intelligence community to use every tool at its
disposal to investigate COVID-19's origins.
Dr. Lowenthal, can I get a quick ``yes'' or ``no?'' Was
President Biden's directive a critical step in advancing our
understanding of the pandemic's origins?
Dr. Lowenthal. Yes.
Dr. Ruiz. I agree, and thanks to this action, we are making
progress every day in advancing our understanding of the
pandemic's origins despite continued obstruction from the
Chinese Communist Party. And while we know more now than we
ever did before, the fact of the matter is that the
intelligence community's assessment remains inconclusive on
whether the virus emerged from either human contact with an
animal or from a laboratory accident. Various elements of the
intelligence community have made different assessments, all but
one of which were made with low confidence, meaning without
certainty.
Dr. Lowenthal, you have explained that the function of
intelligence is to reduce uncertainty. When intelligence on a
particular issue is divided between two conclusions, what is
the best course of action for policymakers? Should we prepare
in the event of both scenarios?
Dr. Lowenthal. Probably, but policymakers can make their
own decisions, regardless of the intelligence you give them. We
are not speaking ex cathedra. We are giving our best
intelligence and then they are making decisions. But if you had
two strong possibilities, and I were a policymaker, which I
have only done once or twice in my career, I would say, yes,
you should try to protect against both of them.
Dr. Ruiz. I agree with this, too, and this is exactly the
approach that President Biden and Democrats have taken, an
approach that puts people over politics. While our intelligence
community continues to collect and analyze information that
will bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, we have worked
to prevent and better prepare for the next deadly pandemic, so
that we can keep the American people safe, no matter if this
threat originates from an animal or a lab.
In fact, last Congress, Democrats included in the
Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 significant reforms to
address pandemic preparedness. This includes provisions to
enhance safety standards for biomedical research, involving
pathogens of pandemic potential and to recruit more public
health workers with epidemiological backgrounds. It also
includes reforms to prevent undue foreign influence in our
Nation's biomedical research, such as the requirement that
participation in foreign talent programs be disclosed to
receive NIH grants, and a provision directing the Secretary of
Health and Human Services and national security officials to
identify and develop strategies that address threats to
sensitive biomedical research. There are a whole host of other
commonsense reforms that we passed last Congress as part of
this package that are outlined on this factsheet.
Mr. Chairman, permission to enter it into the record.
Dr. Wenstrup. Without objection.
Dr. Ruiz. Thank you. And, you know, I find it interesting
that despite how much my colleagues on the other side of this
dais have focused their efforts to push a lab leak narrative,
they voted against these reforms that help prevent lab leaks in
the future. I also want to point out the good work the
Administration is doing by partnering with our allies to press
for strong international standards for biosafety and security
as part of its national security strategy. And while these are
all good steps forward, I do think that there is more we should
do and can do.
Dr. Lowenthal, what additional steps should we be taking
from an intelligence and policy perspective to build on this
work and to better prepare us for future pandemics?
Dr. Lowenthal. Well, I outlined those in my opening
statement, Mr. Ruiz, but one of the things you have to remember
about the intelligence community is we are a volunteer
organization. I cannot draft doctors any more than the military
can draft individuals, and so when we go out looking for
people, looking for experts, we have to hope they want to come
work for us, but we obviously have gaps. The National Military
Intelligence Center is there, but they have mostly been devoted
to supporting the defense establishment, which is fine. I am
suggesting we need a broader expertise than that.
But you have to remember, we can only recruit the people
who come to the recruiting table. This was one of the great
frustrations in my life, in my last three years at CIA, but we
have to look at our expertise across the community and we have
a system for doing that and ask ourselves, where are the gaps,
and then how do I go hire the people to fill in those gaps?
Dr. Ruiz. Dr. Lowenthal, I received my medical doctorate at
Harvard Medical School. I received my master's in public policy
from Harvard's Kennedy School. And I realized that when I was
at the Kennedy School, the CIA was there recruiting students to
join their firm. Yet there was no recruitment happening in the
public health school, which I later received a master's in
public health from Harvard School of Public Health or from the
Harvard Medical School. So, perhaps one of the suggestions
would be to entertain the career options for public health and
physicians and medical scientists to join the intelligence
communities in doing their research as well.
Dr. Lowenthal. I think that would be a good idea. There
were also no CIA recruiters when I got my degree from the
Harvard history department. We have to rethink how we recruit,
so going to medical schools, public health policy schools would
be a very good idea.
Dr. Ruiz. Thank you. I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize the Chairman of the full
committee, Mr. Comer from Kentucky, for five minutes of
questions.
Chairman Comer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank
each of the witnesses for being here today.
As I have said from the beginning, discovering the origins
of COVID-19 is vital to both the public health and national
security of the United States. Former CDC Director Redfield
testified last month that this is not simply a scientific
question but also one of intelligence, and I agree with that.
And we need to ensure the intelligence is accurate and
truthful.
On March 17, 2020, one of the most influential papers of
all time was published in the scientific journal Nature
Medicine, entitled ``The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.'' It
was prompted by Dr. Fauci and written to suppress the lab leak
hypothesis. This paper stated that no type of lab-based
scenario is possible. Director Ratcliffe, is that factual?
Mr. Ratcliffe. It is not.
Chairman Comer. Mr. Feith, to you, is that statement
factual?
Mr. Feith. Based on my understanding, no.
Chairman Comer. Ten days later, on March 26, the State
Department produced a memo that stated, ``U.S. scientists
assess the virus emerged naturally.'' It continued to say, ``A
lab leak was improbable and not supported by the available
evidence.'' Director Ratcliffe, are those statements factual?
Mr. Ratcliffe. They are not.
Chairman Comer. Mr. Feith, to you, are those statements
factual?
Mr. Feith. No, they were, at best, overstated.
Chairman Comer. Mr. Feith, you were involved in the
briefing that produced that memo?
Mr. Feith. I was a recipient of the briefing that the memo
is an account of.
Chairman Comer. So, while serving at the State Department
and investigating the origins of COVID-19, were you ever
briefed by an author of the proximal origin paper?
Mr. Feith. Yes, sir.
Chairman Comer. During the preparation of that memo, which
I referenced above, do you believe the unnamed scientists had
apparent conflicts of interest?
Mr. Feith. In short, yes, especially based on what we know
since then about them.
Chairman Comer. Were the authors, were they the ones that
were briefing the intelligence community, the authors of that?
Mr. Feith. So, that document is a write-up of a so-called
analytic exchange that had been hosted by the State
Department's Intelligence and Research Bureau that day or the
day before, including a number of U.S. scientists who were
briefing a range of policymakers from across the interagency.
Chairman Comer. So, the authors were on the conference call
with Dr. Fauci on February 1, 2020, where they almost
universally said COVID-19 may have come from a lab.
Mr. Feith. That actually I am not sure of, and there is a
little bit of a difficulty in identifying exactly who was part
of that State Department briefing just because of the rules
that we were subject to.
Chairman Comer. OK. Director Ratcliffe, once you became
director, did Dr. Fauci relay any of these concerns to you that
they have come from a lab?
Mr. Ratcliffe. He did not.
Chairman Comer. And why do you think he did not?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I would obviously have to speculate,
but I would point you to Dr. Fauci being perhaps the best
person to answer that. And there is publicly available
information that has been obtained through open sources and
freedom of information where Dr. Fauci and other virologists
and scientists talk about the fact that it would bring unwanted
attention to funding sources and the research that was taking
place using domestic funding sources from the United States,
and the relationship of certain Western scientists with
scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology where unsafe
coronavirus research was taking place in labs that did not have
appropriate biosafety levels and precautions as had been
reported.
Chairman Comer. This is so bad. It just gets worse every
day. These scientists flipped 180 degrees with no new evidence,
produced a paper not based on facts, and then may have used
that paper to brief the intelligence community and suppress the
lab leak hypothesis. This is a how-to manual in orchestrating a
cover up by using some of the most powerful and influential
institutions in our country. If you ask me, this was set in
motion by Dr. Fauci to hide U.S. funding of gain-of-function
research and dodge accountability for a virus that has killed
more than 1 million Americans. This must be investigated. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Mfume from Maryland for
five minutes of questions.
Mr. Mfume. Thank you very much, Chair Wenstrup, and my
thanks also to Ranking Member Ruiz and all others who
collaborated to make sure that we could have this hearing
today. I want to thank the witnesses for their participation.
Mr. Ratcliffe, welcome back.
Mr. Chairman, the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored in many
ways that the Chinese Communist Party's growing influence is
absolutely contrary to America's interests and to America's
values. If we as a Congress fail to meet this moment, I fear
that we will undermine, for some time to come, our ability to
respond to the next public health crisis and to protect
American interests both at home and abroad. We have got a long
road ahead of us. However, in the last two years, congressional
Democrats as the majority party during that time, working with
President Biden, did lay the groundwork to make sure that we
take decisive action necessary to safeguard and to advance our
health, our geopolitical, and our economic interests.
In October of last year, the Biden Administration announced
its national security strategy, which includes, as most of us
know, a three-part plan focused on outcompeting China. And, Mr.
Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent that that national
strategy be entered into today's record.
Dr. Wenstrup. Without objection.
Mr. Mfume. The first step of the plan was to invest in
strengthening American competition. President Biden delivered
on that, rolling out initiatives guided by the bipartisan CHIPS
and Science Act to strengthen American manufacturing and
American supply chains, all, mind you, while solidifying
America's technological leadership on the global stage. The
State Department also launched, as we know, the China House
initiative, which brings together China experts from throughout
the State Department and security officials to help the
Administration responsibly manage competition between the U.S.
and China.
The second step of the plan was to work with America's
allies with common purpose and with a common sense. President
Biden delivered, convening, as we know, the leaders of Egypt,
Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, the EU, Italy, the
U.K., Mexico, and Canada, to emphasize that combating China's
global influence must be a team effort to which, by the way,
they all concurred.
The third and final part of the plan was to put resources
to defending America's interests abroad. The President
delivered, including in his fiscal 2024 budget proposal to the
Congress, comprehensive investments in the Indo-Pacific
region's critical infrastructure as well as investments
focusing on shoring up American defenses in that region.
Dr. Lowenthal, you are by all counts an expert in
intelligence matters and have a robust understanding of China's
influence in the global order. I appreciate the recommendation
in your written testimony advocating for a national
intelligence officer. I appreciate the Chair's comments that
if, in fact, there is a similar position in place that we ought
to look at expanding that role. Can you tell this committee,
sir, and the American people what you think is the most
important tactic that this Congress can use to counter the
Chinese Communist Party?
Dr. Lowenthal. Excuse me. I am recovering from a cold. I
don't have COVID, I promise you. It is less a tactic than a
strategy. We need a strategy for dealing with China, and it is
a difficult issue because we are entangled with them
economically. They are a competitor. They are a rival. That
doesn't mean that they are necessarily an enemy, but we have to
figure out how do we outcompete them without resulting in overt
hostility. And you have to also remember that anything that we
do is going to have a reaction from the Chinese.
So, when President Biden tries to control the chip
industry, for example, so that we are not supplying a rival
with the technology that they need, which makes good sense to
me--we did the same thing to the Soviet Union during the cold
war very successfully--the Chinese interpret that as an act of
hostility, which if we were all sitting in Beijing, we probably
agree with.
It is important, certainly as an intelligence analyst, to
understand how the other side is going to react, but I think we
need a strategy, and I think we have elements of that strategy.
I think the EU, the United States, British, Australian
alliances, is part of that strategy. I think that that is being
successful. I think our relationship with India as part of that
is successful, but also, we have to be prepared just as we were
during the cold war. This is a long struggle. This is not going
to wrap up in this Administration or the next administration.
This is a long-term struggle. But I think if you look at it
objectively, would you rather be China or the United States, I
would still rather be the United States.
Mr. Mfume. Every day.
Dr. Lowenthal. Every day.
Mr. Mfume. Every day. Dr. Lowenthal, my time has expired.
Dr. Lowenthal. I am sorry.
Mr. Mfume. Mr. Chairman, there is much to be done,
obviously. I just want to invite colleagues on both sides of
the aisle here and in the larger body to work together in a
thoughtful manner to develop national security solutions based
on putting the American people first. I yield back. Thank you,
sir.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. I now recognize Ms. Malliotakis
from New York for five minutes of questions.
Ms. Malliotakis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the
witnesses who are here today.
What is equally as important as the CCP's actions to cover
up and conceal the origins of COVID is understanding what role
our government may have played in the origins of this virus and
to what level, if any, that the health officials and members of
our media attempted to conceal or hide the truths from the
American people. The question surrounding American tax dollars
being used to potentially fund the origins of this virus and
attempts to suppress them, that is what I am here to focus on
today.
In November 2021, Dr. Fauci told Senator Rand Paul, under
oath, that the NIH did not fund gain-of-function research at
the Wuhan lab, despite having been explicitly told in an email
in January 2021 that NIH had a monetary relationship with the
Wuhan Institute through the EcoHealth Alliance. During the
committee's initial origins hearing in March, I asked former
CDC director, Dr. Redfield, whether the NIH was funding or had
funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute, and he
told me, ``No doubt,'' NIH was funding this research in Wuhan,
refuting Dr. Fauci's claims.
I will start with you, Mr. Ratcliffe. Do you agree with Dr.
Redfield?
Mr. Ratcliffe. I do.
Ms. Malliotakis. Given what we know now, if you were in Dr.
Fauci's position, would you have denied the NIH's role in gain-
of-function research at the Wuhan lab?
Mr. Ratcliffe. No.
Ms. Malliotakis. Do you think that Dr. Fauci lied under
oath?
Mr. Ratcliffe. I think that some of Dr. Fauci's testimony
is inconsistent with some of the intelligence that we have that
remains classified, as well as inconsistent with some
information that is publicly available.
Ms. Malliotakis. Do you think that President Biden should
declassify all information related to COVID origins, every
single document, as was requested and passed by the
legislature?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, with the caveat that we always have to
be careful about protecting our sources and methods,
particularly those sources and methods as it relates to what
the intelligence community uniformly agrees is our No. 1 threat
from a nation-state actor standpoint. But with that caveat, you
know, providing as much information about our intelligence as
possible while preserving those sources and methods should
absolutely take place as soon as possible.
Ms. Malliotakis. Actually, let me back up and fill you guys
in. So, even more troubling, at the time, when my time was
expiring at the last hearing, Dr. Redfield testified that not
only did American tax dollars fund gain-of-function research
through the NIH but also that the Wuhan lab received money from
State Department, USAID, and the Department of Defense. Do you
agree with Dr. Redfield's testimony that this funding, which
very likely played a role in the virus, came from these
government agencies?
Mr. Feith. My understanding is consistent with what you
have read back in terms of the many funding sources that ran,
you know, from Washington to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
And certainly if the COVID origin is indeed a lab leak from
there, it was from, you know, bat coronavirus research
programs, some of which were funded by the U.S. Government.
Ms. Malliotakis. OK, because we had previously heard about
the NIH funding, but up until that hearing, I had not heard
that it was potentially the State Department, USAID, and the
Department of Defense that had also funded Wuhan lab
activities. So, the U.S. Government determined that the Wuhan
lab collaborated on publications and special projects, top
secret projects, with the CCP military since at least 2017.
Knowing this, for what purpose would U.S. Department of Defense
funding be provided to the Wuhan lab?
Mr. Feith. Well, I think for a full answer, I defer to
folks from DOD and from the DOD, you know, biodefense relevant
components. But in principle, the kind of broad theme of the
funding, as I always understood it, across different parts of
our government, NIH and USAID and State and otherwise, was
based on a certain theory of pandemic prevention by scooping up
these viruses, playing with them in the lab, and then trying to
design vaccines in therapies. But there were always warnings
that this was extremely dangerous work and that the work
courted exactly the kind of danger that appears to have
happened in Wuhan.
And from our perspective, parts of the State Department
that don't specialize in this, part of what was most troubling
is that when COVID broke out in Wuhan practically on the
doorsteps of that lab, we did not have folks from other parts
of the government raising their hand to educate the non-experts
across the government in how plausible this was and how it
needed to be taken seriously. In fact, the folks from the other
parts of the government that work these issues generally were
deflecting attention, and that cost us a lot of time and
understanding that was really damaging.
Ms. Malliotakis. Well, I have run out of time. Mr.
Ratcliffe, do you have anything to add to that because I saw
you nodding your head. If not, I will defer back to the
Chairman. Thank you.
Dr. Wenstrup. Now I will recognize Dr. Bera from California
for five minutes of question.
Dr. Bera. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A lot happened in the
last three years. Millions of Americans died. We can go back
and re-litigate the past. I can go back and look at the prior
administration that we set up an Office of Pandemic
Preparedness that was there solely to advise the NSC that was
disbanded. That was a mistake. We raised alarms at that time.
We raised preparations. You know, I held the first hearing on
the novel coronavirus at that time in February 2020. We pushed
the Trump Administration to do everything they could to get our
scientists to the hot zone, et cetera.
So, I can very well argue the lab-leak theory because, you
know, China did not cooperate. They did not let folks get in
there, et cetera. You know, I can also make a case for why
initially folks thought it jumped from an animal to human. At
this point, I think, you know, as Dr. Lowenthal said, I don't
think we are ever going to get an answer because I don't think
China will ever let us get to the hot zone, will ever let us
interview folks. I don't even think those scientists probably
are around. I don't think the data that we would have to look
at is there. So, I think we have to take both theories
seriously. I think the intelligence community should continue
to try to get an answer with high confidence.
But, Mr. Feith, as you accurately pointed out, you know,
any bad actor out there in the world just saw what a virus did
to the entire planet. You know, what keeps me awake at night
are these biothreats, are the fact that a lot of this equipment
is readily available. I think it is legitimate for this
committee to discuss and educate ourselves on gain-of-function
research.
There is a legitimate reason to do this, to help us develop
counter tools, et cetera. But we should debate what kind of lab
should do this, what are lab standards, et cetera. How do you
make sure labs like Wuhan, which clearly did not have the
precautions in place, are not doing research that might
potentially allow something like that. Those are all legitimate
areas, Mr. Chairman, that we should be thinking about policy
on, we should be putting protocols in place, et cetera. We
should be working with the IC to assess these threats.
You know, Mr. Feith, let me ask you a question. We have to
work with the international community. There is a reason why
the U.S. Government partners with labs around the world because
we do want to have these early warning systems. We do want to
go to where these novel viruses are emerging, whether manmade
or naturally jumping from animals to humans, because we would
rather discover it over there. We would rather have early
warning systems abroad. Would you agree with that assessment?
Mr. Feith. I think, broadly, biosurveillance is extremely
important. You know, as you have said, I think that there are,
though, especially in light of COVID, clearly very important
consequential questions about how broadly that kind of pandemic
preparedness work should apply in terms of creating in
laboratory environments certain viruses of a sufficient
lethality and infectiousness that might be completely unlikely
ever to emerge in nature. But having created them in a lab, we
have delivered the world the risks that wouldn't have otherwise
existed except with an infinitesimally small unlikelihood.
Dr. Bera. So, I think that is accurate. Should we be doing
that type of work? We can certainly have that debate. And if
that type of research is taking place, what are the exact
highest safe standards that have to exist if that research is
taking place? That said, there is nothing that is going to
prevent bad actors in other countries and other, you know,
individuals from doing this type of research. Director
Ratcliffe, would you agree that we ought to be really concerned
about biothreats going into the future within Congress?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Absolutely.
Dr. Bera. And what types of steps would you take? We have
got to work with the international community to develop those
standards. We have got to work with the international community
to try to detect these risks and bad actors early on, and what
are some recommendations you might have?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, to that point, I would agree with
that. But the facts that are not in dispute here and have been
acknowledged by those international organizations, including
the World Health Organization, was that they were lied to
initially by Chinese officials and that they were coerced into
making or not taking certain actions that they later regretted.
And so, some of those world organizations, like the World
Health Organization, have corrected and have now tried to bring
about China's participation.
I think, you know, from a commonsense standpoint,
Congressman, to this question about the origins, if China had
exculpatory evidence that showed that this was of natural
origins or that there was not a lab leak, you would expect that
they would share that information with international
organizations, which they have not. They have not shared it
with anyone.
Dr. Bera. A hundred percent, and, again, China has acted
irresponsibly here. You know, they put the entire world at
risk. I would not trust them as a legitimate partner at this
point. That said, we would hope that at some point, if they
looked back at the damage that happened to their own country,
that they would be forthright working with us and working with
the rest of the world to get to the bottom of this and prevent
the next pandemic. So, I am out of time, but, again, this isn't
about trusting China. It is about actually preparing and
preventing the next pandemic.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. Miller-Meeks from Iowa
for five minutes of questions.
Dr. Miller-Meeks. Thank you, Doctor, and Chair Wenstrup. I
will be signing on to the letter just as an aside, so thank you
for that. And I want to thank my colleague on the other side of
the aisle, Dr. Bera, for his comments as well.
Almost two years ago this committee had a hearing into the
origins of COVID-19. Unfortunately, it was only attended by
Republicans, but at the press conference following that
hearing, I could tell that people were thinking of this as a
partisan issue. And why it is critically important that we
understand COVID-19 origins is to prevent future outbreaks and
global pandemics, precisely that, and why. One is that we know
that there was a lack of disclosure. We know that International
Health Regulations require 24 hours' notice, and certainly we
were not notified of this until late January, even though I
think the evidence points to the virus circulating in the fall
of 2019.
We need to know, as previously mentioned, because of
biosafety laboratory research, is there research being
conducted. We understand even in the best laboratories there
can be leaks, but biosafety lab 4 work was occurring in a
biosafety lab 2. And the international community has a vested
interest in both disclosure and that the proper type of
research is occurring in the proper biosafety lab.
And then four, as previously mentioned, again, and I think
needs to be underscored, the ethics of the type of research
that is being performed. This is not a Republican issue, it is
not a Democrat issue, it is not a United States issue. It is an
international issue, and the international health organizations
have a vested interest in disclosure immediately in biosafety
lab and in the ethics of research.
And, Mr. Ratcliffe, I want to thank you for testifying
before the Subcommittee this morning and supporting our
investigation into the origins of COVID-19. When the former CDC
Director, Dr. Redfield, testified before this committee last
month, he stated that when you look at the two departments, the
FBI and the Energy Department, they have the strongest
scientific footprint of any of our intelligence agencies. And I
think the way they got to the answers of low probability and
moderate probability is their internal scientists did the
science. And there are some in the media especially who
insinuate that a low probability or moderate probability means
no probability.
With your background and experience as the director of
National Intelligence, can you elaborate on the scientific
expertise within the Department of Energy and the FBI and why
their conclusions on COVID-19 origins would be noteworthy, and
it doesn't mean not probable?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman.
So, from initial starting standpoint, as has been talked about,
some agencies haven't made any assessment at any confidence
level. When assessments are made, they can be made at a low
confidence level, they can be made at a moderate confidence
level, or they can be made at a high confidence level. And in
this case, you referenced the moderate and low confidence
levels that the FBI and the Department of Energy respectively
have made. Those are based on scientific information, and none
of this is political. None of this is disputed.
There is currently no environmental source identified for
COVID-19. There is no intermediate host that has ever been
identified. There is no reservoir species that has ever been
identified, and COVID-19 was never known to exist in any animal
or species before the pandemic began. Those are scientific
facts that are not disputed, and there is nothing political
about that that factored into the determinations that have been
made.
And I talked about before about this shift taking place,
the things that I just related early on. The intelligence
community was briefed by various scientists who said those
answers will come. They referenced to SARS 1 and MERS outbreaks
and saying, look, it may take several months, even a year,
sometimes even longer to identify an intermediate host or a
species. We are now 3 1/2 years, and every day that passes
makes it less likely that there is anything that will ever tie
this to nature, whereas on the other side of the ledger, it is
overwhelming when you look at China's actions and the
circumstances surrounding what was going on from a biosafety
standpoint at Wuhan, the massive number of coronaviruses, the
massive numbers of bats carrying coronaviruses that were
brought into Wuhan. All of that weighs heavily into making
assessments at some confidence level that a lab leak was the
origin for this pandemic.
Dr. Miller-Meeks. So, it sounds like that you would
consider the opinions of these components to be taken
seriously. And I would say that, in reference to the letter
from the Chinese Embassy, that at minimal, the WHO now
recognizing its earlier mistakes would diminish the influence
of the Chinese Communist Party within the WHO. Thank you, Mr.
Chair. I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Tokuda from Hawaii for
five minutes of questions.
Ms. Tokuda. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You know, as we develop
policies to better prepare us in the future, it is crucial that
we do so without fanning the flames of anti-AAPI extremism that
festered during the pandemic. Anti-Asian rhetoric espoused by
those at the very top of the Republican Party in the pandemic's
earliest days have had very real-world consequences on our AAPI
community here in the United States.
In an effort to deflect from his Administration's botched
pandemic response, President Trump looked for a scapegoat and a
way to score points with his base. And in doing so he
recklessly villainized AAPI people for his political gain,
making our community human shields and red herrings to distract
from his inability to deal on all levels with the public health
crisis, including understanding in the very earliest days the
origins of COVID.
For example, within a matter of days, President Trump using
the phrase, ``Chinese virus'' on Twitter. Anti-Asian rhetoric
on the platform grew exponentially, according to a study
conducted by the University of California, San Francisco. And
in the summer of 2020, President Trump began referring to
COVID-19 as ``kung flu'' at campaign rallies across the
country, ratcheting up vitriol among his right-wing base. This
hateful rhetoric online has had deadly consequences. According
to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, hate crimes
targeting members of our AAPI community increased by 339
percent from 2020 to 2021. Words, my friend, matter.
We know that the CCP did not cooperate with international
efforts to understand the origins of COVID-19, but President
Trump made it worse. His words helped perpetuate the CCP's
misinformation campaign and assign blame for the COVID-19
pandemic on Asian American communities, and, in doing so,
further hindered our Nation's ability to implement an effective
evidence-based public health response. We must recognize the
consequences of our words, the impact they have on the
communities we serve, and how it shapes the national
conversation on issues of critical importance to our health and
our security.
Dr. Lowenthal, you have warned about the dangers of
politicizing intelligence and national security. As we seek to
engage in a thorough fact-based analysis, what are the real-
world consequences of distracting rhetoric and politicizing
intelligence regarding the virus' origins?
Dr. Lowenthal. Well, as I said, it makes it very difficult
for analysts to do their work because if they know that what
they are writing, or what their briefing is going to go into is
going to be questioned, not because somebody disagrees with the
substance but disagrees with why they are being told something,
it makes it increasingly difficult for analysts to do good work
because they are worried about the consequences. Nobody wants
to be vilified, either as an ethnic group or professionally,
and so that becomes a problem.
Ms. Tokuda. Thank you, Dr. Lowenthal. There are clearly
troubling consequences, as you noted, of this rhetoric, both
for the value and ability for us to do the work, as well as for
our AAPI community here in the United States, as well as, we
have all talked about today, our intelligence community's
efforts. How can we make sure we course correct what has been
happening to both and ensure the safety of our communities and
preserve the integrity of our intelligence work as we seek to
fully understand the origins of COVID?
Dr. Lowenthal. Well, the issue of vilifying communities is
beyond the scope of the intelligence community. That is not our
responsibility. That is a leadership issue. That is a political
leadership issue. In terms of the partisanship, I mean, you
have to hope that people on both sides of the aisle recognize
that analysts are not out there trying to grind an axe. They
are trying to present the best intelligence they have at the
time with caveats and with uncertainties and that they are
doing this not because they are being pusillanimous but because
they really don't know the answer.
And again, I have had to deal with senior officials many
times and I know this is frustrating that, you know, you want
an answer, and sometimes we just can't give you an answer. And
that creates a tension between these two communities, between
the policy community and intelligence committee, but that is
the reality of a lot of the issues on which we work.
Ms. Tokuda. Thank you, Dr. Lowenthal. You know, it is my
definite hope through these discussions that we are having that
we can put the harmful rhetoric aside that we have seen and
focus on the work that matters: protecting our Nation's public
health, and preparing for future public health crises. We can
be tough on the CCP and their lack of transparency and
cooperation with pandemic-related investigations, but we must
do so without putting at risk the safety and well-being of
Asian Americans and our communities. If we fail to do this, we
are only strengthening the CCP's efforts to distract and to
mislead, and gets us no closer to fully understanding the
origins of COVID and allowing us to do the good work of
preventing future crises and being able to respond to save
lives. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize, Mrs. Lesko from Arizona for
five minutes.
Mrs. Lesko. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Over 1 million
Americans died. Millions more got sick, some with long-term
effects from COVID-19. It is absolutely vital that we determine
what happened, what did China do. Did people within our own
government cover up information because they had professional
conflicts of interest or for political reasons? The Ranking
Member says COVID-19 should not be a political issue. I agree.
But with all due respect, sir, I contend that it is you that is
making this a political issue. You said that the only reason we
are having this hearing today is because of President Biden
wanting to get to the bottom of it. With all due respect, are
you kidding me? You have been in the majority. The Democrats
have been in the majority for the last two years, and there
have been no hearings on the origins of COVID while you were in
the majority.
My first question is for Mr. Ratcliffe. Mr. Ratcliffe, in
your testimony you wrote, ``The challenges that I and other
senior Trump Administration officials encountered while in
office include legitimate concerns about the closely held
sources of our intelligence and the sensitive methods used to
obtain it, as well as illegitimate roadblocks related to
professional conflicts of interest and partisan politics.'' Can
you please elaborate on the conflicts of interest you
encountered?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Thank you, Congresswoman. Good to see you
again. I referenced in my opening a report from the analytic
ombudsman. That person, by the way, is a career individual, is
not a political appointment. That person is charged with
refereeing disputes about assessments. And it was based on his
investigation that when it comes to the issue of China, some of
our intelligence was being suppressed because there were
analysts within the community that felt like that some of that
intelligence may be used by the Trump Administration in ways
that they disagreed with, and that is clearly inappropriate
under analytic judgment standards. And again, that is not my
opinion. That is the independent opinion of the analytic
ombudsman.
Mrs. Lesko. My next question for you, Mr. Ratcliffe, is you
mentioned in your written testimony that CIA analysts on China
were reluctant to bring forth the information. Do you think you
ever got all of the information that they uncovered from China
related to COVID-19?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I think that, you know, intelligence
is such that we are constantly gaining new information even
where we have limited sources and methods. You know, I do think
that there were headwinds to get information. I endeavored to
be made aware of as much as possible. And ultimately, that is
what led to the process where I worked with Secretary of State,
Mike Pompeo, on the State Department fact sheet, to put out the
information about the coronaviruses, their similarity to what
became COVID-19, researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
becoming sick, and the other information that was included in
that fact sheet so that that information would hopefully drive
further declassification of intelligence, the American people
and would drive congressional hearings going forward.
Unfortunately, that hasn't happened the way that we
anticipated.
Mrs. Lesko. Thank you. Mr. Feith, in the January 2021 fact
sheet on activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which you
helped to write, it mentions, ``WIV researchers who got sick in
2019 with COVID-19-like symptoms,'' which we have talked about.
Can you tell us more about these sick researchers?
Mr. Feith. I can share the view that I think that the sick
researchers are probably still today the most potentially
probative part of the story that we are yet aware of. You know,
it has been suggested already that the passage of time doesn't
help in finding a confirmed answer here. And that is certainly
true, and that is probably true also with respect to some of
what we would want to know about these sick researchers, and,
you know, what tests were taken and what material and evidence
would have been available from the autumn of 2019.
But still, what we know is that there is additional
information that the U.S. Government has that was not able to
be specified at the time in the fact sheet that was released in
January 2021. But part of the hope in doing the fact sheet, as
Director Ratcliffe just noted, was that it would bring interest
and, frankly, pressure and help make the case for additional
disclosure, including by the Biden Administration once they
came in, interest by, you know, those with subpoena power
elsewhere in Washington because it certainly, well, bowled us
over, frankly, to find in the autumn of 2020 that there was,
after all, U.S. Government information about a cluster of
illnesses in that lab, which is exactly what you would expect
to happen if the origin of COVID came from a laboratory
accident where a worker became ill, knowingly or not, and then
took the virus out into the community and had it emerge in
Wuhan, a place where it is really hard to imagine any
explanation for a bat coronavirus emerging for the first time
on Earth unless it walked out the door of the lab.
Mrs. Lesko. Thank you very much for all of your
testimonies, and I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. Joyce from Pennsylvania.
Dr. Joyce. Thank you, Chairman Wenstrup, and thank you to
our witnesses for appearing here today.
Let me be clear. The work that this Subcommittee is
conducting is critical to ensure that the destruction that was
caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and our
subsequent response is never again repeated. To quote from the
Lancet COVID-19 Commission, ``Identifying COVID-19 origins
would provide greater clarity into not only the causes of the
current pandemic but also the vulnerabilities to future
outbreaks and strategies to prevent them.''
Beginning with my service on the House China Task Force and
throughout our investigation on this Subcommittee, I have had
consistent concerns with the NIH biomedical research security
and how the NIH interacts with other elements of our government
on research that could raise national security concerns. For
this reason, last Congress I introduced the SAFE Biomedical
Research Act, which did become law, that required both the NIH
and HHS at large to consult with the director of the Office of
National Security within the Department of HHS, and the
Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, the director
of National Intelligence, the director of the FBI, and the
heads of other appropriate agencies on a regular basis
regarding biomedical research conducted or supported by the NIH
that may affect or be affecting other matters of national
security.
Director Ratcliffe, since this was not law when you served,
do you feel that these requirements would have been beneficial
to ensure research being conducted by the NIH was being
properly vetted for national security risks?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Yes.
Dr. Joyce. Overall, what was your experience with the NIH,
and were they cooperative during the initial outbreak on
matters such as lab-leak theory?
Mr. Ratcliffe. To be candid, some of the information that
came from officials there was inconsistent with what later
became intelligence and later became publicly known through
open-source intelligence. As has been discussed here, there are
questions about relationships, including scientists from the
NIH, and whether or not they had an interest in one theory over
another and how that would have been or should have been
disclosed.
Dr. Joyce. In December 2022, then chairman of the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Adam Schiff,
released an unclassified report on the origins of COVID-19,
where he wrote, ``At the onset, it is important to note that
the first warning signs of an emerging novel virus will almost
always come from public health authorities and their
unclassified reporting.'' Director Ratcliffe, to your
knowledge, what mechanisms and processes exist between the
intelligence community and public health authorities, such as
the CDC, to coordinate the aforementioned dissemination of
knowledge about the identification of novel diseases,
particularly in countries like China?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, with respect to China, particularly,
it is not unusual for local officials to actually suppress
intelligence from national leaders until the problem can be
arrested or remediated. Sometimes lives depend on that. It is
one of the interesting things about the events that took place
and the fact that, as Mr. Feith testified, researchers became
sick within the Wuhan Institute of Virology with symptoms that
were consistent with COVID-19.
There has been public reporting about intelligence that
those researchers became patients and were hospitalized. So,
without confirming the accuracy of that, what I would submit to
you is, if that is, in fact, the case and those
hospitalizations took place, the lab results and tests from
those patients, if submitted for genetic sequencing, would be
dispositive of the issue of whether or not those initial or
patient zeros worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. I
would submit to you that in China, there are not HIPAA
considerations that prevent the Chinese government from
accessing that. I would submit to you that if this took place,
they have the answers to that. And I would submit to you that
if the answers were exculpatory in nature, that information
would have been shared by the Chinese government, which it has
not.
Dr. Joyce. Had that information been shared early, could
this have been a regional, a local endemic, as opposed to
unleashing this pandemic onto the world?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Absolutely. That is just one of many
factors, and unfortunately, actions that the Chinese government
took or did not take, they misled. I referenced their
conversations with the World Health Organization. They urged
that a public health epidemic not be declared earlier. They
misled international scientists about human-to-human
transmissibility and what they knew about the COVID-19 virus.
All of those things could have minimized and prevented the
spread of this disease and surely would have saved millions of
lives globally.
Dr. Joyce. Had China cooperated and not suppressed actions
by the World Health Organization, could this have pandemic have
not spread worldwide?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Yes.
Dr. Joyce. Again, I thank you for appearing today, and, Mr.
Chairman, I yield.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Greene from Georgia for
five minutes.
Ms. Greene. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like for the
record to address something that one of our colleagues across
the aisle was talking about, which was Asian hate in reference
to President Trump. President Trump never spoke any language of
racism or hate. He did, however, call, and many of us have
called the COVID-19 virus the Wuhan flu, the China virus,
because we feel it originated from China. I would like to also
state for the record that many viruses and diseases are named
after the area that they come from, like the West Nile Virus
from West Nile, Uganda, Rocky Mountain spotted fever from the
Rocky Mountains, Marburg virus for Marburg, Germany, Zika
fevers from the Zika forests of Uganda, Japanese encephalitis,
German measles, and I could go on and on and on.
We are really tired of the racism and name calling, and it
needs to end, but we are really talking about the origins of
COVID-19 here today, which is shocking to me, because honestly,
we have been talking about the origins of COVID-19 for 3 1/2
years. And every commonsense American that I know pretty much
understands where it came from, came from the Wuhan Institute
of Virology and doesn't really care if the intelligence
community says it did or didn't.
I would like to point out that here we are, the
intelligence community is able to figure out immediately who
was leaking classified information in a Discord chat, but yet
still doesn't want to say whether it came from the lab or
didn't come from the lab. The intelligence communities seem to
release or not release information based on how the information
will affect the government that it seems to protect. Yet,
unfortunately, so many times it doesn't release or not release
the information the people that it serves, and, I will remind
everyone, is paid for by the taxpayers of America.
I would like to point out that the State Department fact
sheet on January 15, 2021 knew a lot of information about the
Wuhan Institute of Virology, so that means our intelligence
community knew a whole lot more before that. They knew the U.S.
Government believes that there were several research
researchers inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick
in the autumn of 2019 before the CCP first reported cases of
COVID-19. They also knew that the CCP was preventing
journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from
accessing the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They also knew that
starting in 2016, well before this, the Wuhan Institute of
Virology was researching the bat coronavirus with the closest
relationship to SARS-CoV-2, 96.2 percent similar. The Wuhan
Institute of Virology has published record of dangerous gain-
of-function research, and the State Department memo also said
that the U.S. Government determined the Wuhan Institute of
Virology collaborated on publications and secret projects with
the CCP military since at least 2017.
And you know what else we know? We know that Dr. Fauci and
the NIH funded through grants EcoAlliance with the gain-of-
function research. We know that for a fact our government paid
for it. Our taxpayers, unfortunately, unknowingly paid for it.
So, we know all this to be true, and we know it was going on at
the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Mr. Lowenthal, with your dedication to being an analyst of
information, why is it so hard to determine whether COVID-19
came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology or not?
Mr. Lowenthal. Because the Chinese will not give us access
to the information that we need. If they gave us the kind of
access that Mr. Feith was talking about, if they gave us
samples, if they gave us access to the records. And you will
never be sure with the Chinese whether they are giving you the
access that you want. We are never going to be able to say with
a high degree of certainty.
May I respond to something else that you said in your
comments, Ms. Greene? There was a vast, vast difference between
tracking a leak on a social media site and determining the
origins of this disease, and to compare the two is entirely
fallacious, ma'am.
Ms. Greene. Dr. Lowenthal, you have said that you keep your
intelligence claims and information nonpartisan. In 2018, Mr.
Lowenthal, you were quoted in the New York Times saying that,
``President Trump is the best President that Russia ever had.''
That sounds pretty political to me.
Mr. Lowenthal. But I was no longer an intelligence officer
at the time, ma'am. I am a private citizen.
Ms. Greene. Well, I think you have a difficult time keeping
your political opinions out of your political analyst. Mr.
Ratcliffe, you are quoted as saying, ``To this day, the CIA,
unquestionably the world's premier spy agency, with an
unrivaled capacity to acquire information and near limitless
resources to do so, has continued to state that it does not
have enough information to make any formal assessment. To put
it bluntly, this is unjustifiable and a reflection, not that
the Agency cannot make an assessment with any confidence, but
that it won't.'' Could you elaborate, please, Mr. Ratcliffe?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I have talked about the overwhelming
evidence on intelligence on one side of the ledger that
supports that the lab leak is the only plausible assessment at
this point in time, and that, conversely, that there really at
this point isn't anything that ties COVID-19 to nature. I
talked about the fact that no environmental source, no
intermediate host, no reservoir species, nothing has ever been
published that COVID-19 existed in any animal or species before
the pandemic began. We make assessments all the time in the
intelligence community with a fraction of the intelligence that
we have available to us here.
Again, I think this is a matter of won't, not can't. And I
think that, you know, that is unjustifiable when we are talking
about a million Americans dead and as many as 10 or 15 million
worldwide. And this contradiction that the current
Administration is taking through the intelligence community and
that you have heard here today that we will never know the
answer to this unless the Chinese cooperate is a contradiction
with those that say our goal here is also to prevent a future
pandemic. We will never be able to prevent it if we don't get
the answers that we need with respect to how this happened in
the first place.
Ms. Greene. Thank you, Mr. Ratcliffe. I think it is an
issue of won't, not can't as well. And perhaps we need to look
deeper into whether was China trying to sway possibly an
election, a Presidential election, or was it some type of bio
weapon? I yield back. Thank you.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mrs. Dingell from Michigan
for five minutes of questions.
Mrs. Dingell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to both
you and Ranking Member Ruiz for holding this hearing because I
do think this hearing matters more than anyone does.
Unfortunately, discussions, debates, and investigations in this
country have become highly politicized in every arena. OK, in
the Congress, we expect it, but I hope we can minimize it on
this committee because I am worried about the next virus that
is already out there. We are reading about them popping up
everywhere right now, and I think we all want to be prepared.
What worries me the most is what is happening in the
scientific community, where the exchanging of ideas, research,
and shared data has found clues, discovered cures, reached
consensus. And this arena is becoming so highly politicized
between virologists and researchers, public health officials,
national security experts, and oh, yes, the politicians, that I
think we are in trouble. To quote the Wall Street Journal this
morning, ``These divisions and a lack of transparency from
Beijing have hobbled efforts to determine how the virus first
infected humans.'' I hope our committee can work together to
address that.
So, today I want to focus on a couple things I think we can
all agree on and raise a couple of other issues. First, China
has not been forthcoming. I think all three witnesses would
agree to that, and I think everybody on this panel would agree
to that. I strongly echo my colleagues' calls from both sides
of the aisle that we need greater transparency from the Chinese
Communist Party regarding the Wuhan Institute of Virology,
especially if we want to prevent further pandemics, and the
further we get away, the more complicated it becomes.
Second, here is the reality. With respect to our witnesses,
I do not believe that we have certainty in either direction as
to how this virus started. Lots of us have opinions. Lord knows
how many papers have been written, intelligence investigations
undertaken, studies abound. And as we have heard today, some
are firmly in the camp that it was a lab leak. Some say it
appears to be a zoonotic transmission from an animal. I have
been up endless nights. I am not a scientist but tried to study
it, talk to people. But I think here is a fact: no one
definitely knows.
A report by the Senate Republicans that was released
yesterday on the pandemic's origins said, ``After 18 months of
research, the team that worked on the Senate report
acknowledged it was unable to definitely pinpoint the source of
the pandemic, which has killed''--everybody here has talked
about the million Americans, but it has killed 6.9 million
people worldwide. We should all be worried about this and want
to stop the next one.
I think there are areas of agreement. While the
intelligence community has not reached a conclusion on the
exact origins of the pandemic, there appears to be a scientific
consensus that this specific virus does not appear to have been
developed as part of biological warfare. Now, let me be really
clear. This doesn't mean we don't have to worry about other
forms of biological warfare, but in this instance, the Office
of the Director of National Intelligence's declassified
statement states, ``We judge the virus was not developed as a
biological weapon,'' and other scientists, there seems to be in
consensus on that.
Next, some of my colleagues have pointed to the fact that
the bat coronavirus, known as coronavirus RaTG13, shares 96--
percent sequence similarity to the SARS-CoV-2, which is the
virus that was responsible for COVID-19. To be clear, there is
scientific consensus that this four, while everybody would say,
oh well, that is where it should be, that four-percent
difference represents decades of evolutionary distance from the
virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. To put it in
perspective, the National Human Genome Research Institute has
found that fruit flies are nearly 60 percent genetically
similar to us as humans. We are different than fruit flies.
And third, while my Republican colleagues have attempted to
draw conclusions based on reports of the Wuhan Institute of
Virology researchers falling ill with symptoms consistent with
COVID-19, the Office of Director of National Intelligence
Declassified Assessment clearly indicates this is not
diagnostic of the pandemic's origins. In fact, for the record,
in November 2019, I had a 103 fever for three weeks. I ended up
at infectious disease doctors at the University of Michigan and
here, and no one knows what it was, and all the [inaudible] are
located in Wuhan, but that is anecdotal. That is not a fact. We
don't have facts. And I also want to say that, you know, in
2018, we were getting warnings from the State Department of the
lack of safety at the Wuhan lab and what were people doing. So,
I am going to ask one question quickly.
Dr. Lowenthal, is there any reason to doubt the validity of
the intelligence community's determination on anything I just
described?
Dr. Lowenthal. No.
Mrs. Dingell. So, I guess I am going to have to conclude
because I am out of time. I could keep going. But I would like
to submit both the declassified Office of the Director of
National Intelligence Assessment and the peer review paper
published by more than 20 leading virology researchers titled,
``The Origins of the SARS-CoV-2: a Critical Review,'' into the
record. And last, I would like to ask the Chairman if he might
ask his Republican colleagues on the Senate side if they would
share their study for the Members to read.
Dr. Wenstrup. Without objection, and the other is public.
Mrs. Dingell. So, I think it would be good for all of us to
circulate it. With that, I want us all to work together. I take
this virus very seriously. I don't want to see it again. So, we
are not going to solve it partisanly. We are going to solve it
working together. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. Jackson from Texas for
five minutes of questions.
Dr. Jackson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
For over two years many Americans, just like myself, have
been demanding an investigation into China's role in the
development of this virus and their efforts to cover up the
virus after the fact, that it was released leading to this
global pandemic that have killed millions and destroyed
billions of lives. We have been demanding that for a while. I
am glad we are doing this now. I think we are way behind the
power curve on this.
But I just want to start off by saying, other than the
Chinese government, the entities most aggressively trying to
actively spread misinformation about the origins of COVID,
trying to actually create and spread what they would have you
believe, was scientific evidence or scientific opinion, and I
am referring, in particular, to things like the Proximal
Origins document, a document that was intended to provide
fodder to harass, label, threaten, cancel, destroy anyone with
any other opinion, specifically an opinion that this came from
a lab, from the Wuhan lab in particular, an opinion that we
know now was accurate. The people that were most interested in
doing just this, were people like Anthony Fauci, Francis
Collins, and others at NIH. It was Peter Daszak in EcoHealth
Alliance. It was Dr. Tedros at the WHO, and, of course, it was
our unbiased and purely factual cable news networks like CNN
and MSNBC.
Director Ratcliffe, do you know if there were any instances
of the U.S. intelligence agencies, did they share information,
did they collaborate with any of the entities that I have
mentioned or the individuals that I have mentioned, to either
suppress or get out information that was contrary to what we
are talking about today that we know to be the facts?
Mr. Ratcliffe. As I understand your question, Congressman,
were any of the scientists or individuals associated with any
of those groups, did they have----
Dr. Jackson. Were there interactions with the intelligence
agencies?
Mr. Ratcliffe. They did have interactions. I don't know the
answer to all of them, but some of the individuals that I know,
for instance, Dr. Peter Daszak, Dr. Farrar, Dr. Garry, I
believe were all at some point in time briefing various
entities or agencies within the intelligence community about
this virus.
Dr. Jackson. One of the things I am wondering is, I am
wondering like, you know, if we are looking back now, we are
realizing that some of these intelligence agencies probably had
information, enough information to make a solid determination
that this most likely came from the lab in Wuhan as far back as
a year or more ago. My question is, were they sharing this
information with these people that were putting out contrary
information that were being propped up as the experts, that
were giving us things like Proximal Origin, using it as
evidence to completely undermine what I think the intelligence
agencies knew to be the truth a long time ago.
And I ask that because you may have realized, you know,
after the fact, because I think you had mentioned at one point
that even within the intelligence agencies, you as the Director
of National Intelligence were being kept in the dark on some
things, are not being fully briefed or maybe not being read
into everything that was going on because people that were
subordinate to you were doing things maybe politically
motivated, or they were saying that they thought they didn't
want to draw politics into it. But I think, in my opinion, they
were politically motivated themselves.
Was there any effort on the intelligence on the side of the
intelligence agencies to correct what was misinformation, what
they knew to be misinformation at the time?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I can only speak, you know, to the
personal knowledge that I have. And, you know, the efforts that
I engaged in was, as we found information and intelligence that
was inconsistent with things that were some of the individuals
that had consulted with the intelligence community had stated.
We went through a process to declassify as much of that so that
you would be aware, or the State Department fact sheet that has
been referenced a number of times about researchers being sick
at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, coronaviruses, including
the one most similar in nature to what became COVID-19 and the
Chinese military's involvement. Those were all pieces of
intelligence that I worked to get out publicly with Secretary
of State Pompeo through a declassification process.
So, from my standpoint, my personal knowledge was where we
became aware of inconsistencies like that, we did our best to
make that information available publicly.
Dr. Jackson. Thank you. I mean, I guess what I am a little
bit worried about is, I am just worried that there was a
process here where the intelligence agencies were purposely not
sharing information or not coming, you know, coming forth with
the information that they knew to be true because they were
being influenced politically by what was going on in the White
House or elsewhere.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Yes, and I think that, you know, as again,
there were instances that were documented by the analytic
ombudsman that reflect the fact that when it came specifically
to China, the country of China, that some of our intelligence
and our analytic judgments were impacted by partisan politics
and the desire for intelligence not to be used by one party as
opposed to another.
Dr. Jackson. Right. And I bring this up because I think it
happens in this Administration for the last two years. It has
happened in the military. I think it happens in our
intelligence agencies. These are people that we pay to be
nonpartisan, to protect us. We pay them because of their
expertise so that they can make sure that our national security
is intact. And I think that if there is any of that going on
behind the scenes, we need to get to that. People do not have
to be making decisions based on their political beliefs or
their political alignments if it is going to impact, you know,
something like, you know, our response to COVID.
Mr. Ratcliffe. I agree completely.
Dr. Jackson. Thank you. I yield back, sir.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Garcia from California
for five minutes.
Mr. Garcia. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to
our witnesses. I do want to start, Mr. Chairman, by just
responding to one of the Committee Members who just made some
comments trying to link the origins of COVID to some of the
national security leaks that are very concerning that we have
been discussing recently. It is important to note that this
committee itself cannot have credibility to discuss sensitive
intelligence information if Members of the Majority are going
to publicly defend people who continue to leak top secret
information, which is in violation of their oaths of office.
These Members of the Committee have defended Jack Teixeria,
who has been arrested for leaking classified information. It is
very clear just to clarify that he was no whistleblower. He
wasn't telling the truth, trying to serve the public. And all
the evidence shows that he has recklessly shared classified
information to impress friends in a private chat of which there
were also racist memes and jokes. If he is found guilty, should
be held fully accountable under law, and anyone who defended
him should be ashamed. And so, again, we want to ensure that if
we are going to actually talk about important information,
origins of COVID, we should actually focus on COVID, on the
pandemic, and not trying to link this to someone who betrayed
our country. I yield back the remainder of my time. Thank you.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Cloud from Texas for five
minutes of question.
Mr. Cloud. Thank you all for being here today. Thank you,
Chair, for continuing this investigation. It is so important to
where we need to go in the future.
You know, Director Ratcliffe, you mentioned some of the
stuff coming up with that China did to cover up a lot of what
happened. We know they hoarded PPP, they silenced the centers,
they blocked investigations into the Wuhan Lab. They have, as
you mentioned, blamed service members. They have destroyed
data. And so, where we don't have maybe definitive evidence of
the origin, it certainly seems like we have evidence of a cover
up.
Now, you know, I am not aggrieved by that. I am not
surprised that godless communist countries do bad things. What
has been extremely concerning and surprising, I think, to a lot
of Americans is to see how certain aspects of our government
has in a way misled them through the last few years. And you
have mentioned that you have pretty high confidence that this
did not have natural origins. Now we have the Department of
Energy and the FBI now say that the lab leak is the most likely
scenario as well, which, you know, you mentioned all the
apparatuses at our intelligence, world class, world leading
tools that our intelligence community has. And it boggles the
mind of the American people to see that three years later, the
intelligence community is finally coming around to where the
American people were, you know, about three years ago.
Can you elaborate on how you developed your degree of
confidence to the extent that you can? I realize there is
information you cannot share, but----
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I have talked a little bit about it
today, but I think, you know, this highlights one of the, you
know, the comments that the Congresswoman from Michigan was
making earlier about, no one can know with certainty. I
actually agree with that at this point in time, but we don't
have to, in making intelligence community assessments. We have
to have some level of confidence. It can be low, it can be
moderate, or it can be high.
So, I have been very clear that when we look at all of our
intelligence, much of it is circumstantial, and with
circumstantial evidence, you can never know with certainty, but
that doesn't mean that you cannot make an assessment with some
level of confidence. And the more I have learned about this and
the more I have seen, and again, as the person who had more
access to our intelligence for the first year as much as anyone
in our government, my level of confidence became higher. The
things that others were supporting for a natural origins
approach have fallen away. And some of the people that were
promoting that had been revealed to have had conflicts of
interest in perhaps promoting that as a theory. But again, I go
back to the fact that at this point in time, 3 1/2 years later,
no scientist in the world can point to anything from an
environmental standpoint that ties COVID-19 to nature.
On the other side of the equation, you have all of the
things that we have talked about, China's obfuscation and the
fact that they have the best access to the intelligence that
would be diagnostic and dispositive, and yet they have shared
none of that with us. And if they had any that was indicative
or diagnostic that this was naturally occurring, why wouldn't
they share that? If there was no one to blame for this
pandemic, why wouldn't they share that information? I think the
answer is that they don't know the answer or they don't want to
know the answer because, like me, they know that the
intelligence certainly points to lab leak as the most plausible
assessment, the only one supported by intelligence, science,
and common sense at this point.
Mr. Cloud. Now, you developed this high degree of
confidence. Could you speak about when? Was it earlier or later
in the process?
Mr. Ratcliffe. You know, when I became the Director of
National Intelligence, I had seen the prior assessments. I had
been a Member of Congress on the Intelligence Committee. I said
show me all of the intelligence that we have, and I was frankly
surprised how little we had supporting natural origins, how
much we had, circumstantial or otherwise, that supported the
lab leak. And over time, again, some of the explanations for
natural origins became less and less likely. Again, I was told
that some of this would appear over a course of months, we have
now been 3 1/2 years and we haven't identified an intermediate
host, a reservoir source or species, any of those things.
So, pretty rapidly, which is why I talked about the process
that Mike Pompeo, Secretary Pompeo, when I went through to
declassify some of this, with the hope that the next
administration would declassify more information while
protecting our sources and methods and that this body would
hold hearings. Unfortunately, two years went by without any
hearings in this body into the origins of COVID. So, you know,
I am grateful that we are getting there, but these are things
that should have taken place a long time ago.
Mr. Cloud. Now, you have alluded that even as the DNI, you
had trouble sometimes getting information from the intelligence
community, and could you speak to that?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I think there was, at times,
reluctance. And, you know, as I have commented, that, you know,
the independent analytic ombudsman found that there were
instances where, particular to China, some intelligence was
being suppressed so that it could not be used to support
policies that the administration in which I was serving, the
Trump Administration, could use that. And that was improper,
you know, and I think I have addressed that.
Mr. Cloud. Yes. I mean, to me, that is one of our major
concerns from an oversight perspective, is looking into, you
know, an intelligence agency that seems to have gone wayward in
some of these aspects. And, Dr. Lowenthal, while I certainly
appreciate some of your comments, I think the intelligence
committee may have drifted since then, you know, and so it is
important that we look into this. I am sorry, my time is up.
Thank you, Chair.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. McCormick from Georgia
for five minutes.
Dr. McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Honorable
Ratcliffe, thank you for your service in Congress. Also, thank
you for your service as former Director of National
Intelligence during a tumultuous time during the origins of
this disease process. Recently, Director Wray confirmed the FBI
report stated that COVID-19 pandemic was likely the result of a
lab incident in Wuhan. Based on your knowledge, do you agree
with the report from the Department of Energy as well?
Mr. Ratcliffe. I agree with both the FBI and the Department
of Energy.
Dr. McCormick. Thank you. In your testimony you stated,
``Our intelligence has led to a demonstrable shift whereby a
few of the intelligence community's 18 agencies are now
publicly accessing the COVID-19 virus originated from a lab
leak in Wuhan. And as this shift continues, the day will come
when every single agency in the intelligence community will
make the same assessment.'' Do you think there is another
Federal agency close to following on the side of the Wuhan lab
leak theory in the near future, and if so which one?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, you know, again, I am not in the
intelligence community now but of course have friends that are
career individuals still serving in agencies. You know, my
understanding is that in most of the agencies there is a shift.
More and more analysts believe that lab leak is the most
plausible, if not the only plausible, assessment to make, and
that it is a minority in most agencies that are holding on to
the idea that this is naturally occurring.
You know, I would hope as I talked about the fact that the
CIA would make an assessment at some confidence level, and
based upon my personal knowledge of conversations about
analysts within that agency, I believe that a great majority of
those analysts do support the Department of Energy and the FBI
analysis, and it is a minority opinion that is currently
holding back the CIA from making that assessment that a lab
leak is the most plausible.
Dr. McCormick. And certainly in your estimate in the last
year, is there some new information that occurred, or do you
think the CIA could have come to that conclusion probably about
a year ago or so?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I think all agencies within the United
States intelligence community could have made an assessment at
some confidence level a year ago on this in favor of a lab
leak. My understanding, specifically from the Department of
Energy, that there was new intelligence that persuaded them to
make their assessment of a lab leak. So, new intelligence is
always being gained. But again, from my standpoint, the more
time that passes, the further we get without anything tying
COVID-19 to nature, as I talked about--no environmental source,
no intermediate host, no reservoir species, none of that--it
makes it less and less likely that this was a natural origin.
Dr. McCormick. I think as a physician of emergency medicine
and as a scientist, I think I thoroughly agree with that
assessment, and, in fact, I think it could have been reached a
long time ago in my opinion. I think the fact that we are even
having this conversation is absurd. It is very easy to identify
whether there are animals in the wild that have or have not
this disease. The fact that the Chinese have had literally
spent years, and incredible efforts trying to obtain that
information and have received zero information supporting one
theory, whereas we know there is an incredible amount of
evidence on the other side of that, points to one thing, and
that is a CCP cover-up. This, unfortunately, leads me to the
conclusion that the efforts of this Administration, Dr. Fauci,
the WHO and multiple bureaucracies are willfully or ignorantly
colluding with the CCP. That is what bothers me.
Director Ratcliffe, as you know, this committee was formed
on the basis that we would seek the truth to create
recommendations to face the future pandemics. With that being
said, I have one last question for you. In your opinion, what
reason could the Administration public officials in many of our
Federal agencies have for hiding the truth from the American
people? And if you can't speak to that, what effect do you
think this has on the American people's trust of their public
health officials and the government?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I would say that, you know, China has
been identified as our No. 1 nation-state adversary. They have
been described by the current Administration as a strategic
competitor, but our intelligence clearly tells us they are an
adversary. Their public actions very clearly dictate that they
are an adversary. And I think that the current Administration,
for whatever reason, has been reluctant to confront China on
any number of issues or transgressions that have taken place
publicly from spying: a spy balloon that flew over the country,
threats against legislators in this body from landing in
Taiwan. The list is long. And there hasn't been an effort by
the current Administration other than to say we are not seeking
conflict with China, and I think that that has continued with
respect to this issue into COVID origins.
Dr. McCormick. I agree with you. I don't think we can learn
from this if we are not being honest. We can't prepare for the
next pandemic if we are not being honest. We have obvious
answers that we want to ignore. I think we have been biased. I
think we have to really acknowledge this if we are going to
prepare for the next virus. Mr. Chair, I think we cannot
disallow that we have already had multiple viruses from animals
in the past, but we are not doing what we need to prepare for
with Wuhan leaks and disallowing gain-of-function. With that I
yield.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Moskowitz from Florida
for five minutes of questions.
Mr. Moskowitz. Mr. Chairman, thank you. The American people
deserve to know the origins of the COVID-19 virus. I happen to
believe, based on the evidence that is available, that it is
most likely that it came out of the lab than not. But for the
families who lost loved ones to COVID, they don't have an
answer. For the businesses that were shut down, they don't have
an answer. For the folks in nursing homes who couldn't have
their loved ones visit them, they don't have an answer.
And I know all of this because I am the only one in
Congress who ran a COVID-19 response operation as the Director
of Emergency Management for the state of Florida. I am the only
one who had to go to China to buy masks and buy nasal cannula
oxygen, and buy ventilators, and having to buy viral media and
universal media, and having to get all of that stuff from
around the world, competing with everybody but Antarctica,
because this country was not prepared to take on a pandemic.
Those families deserve to know. My dad, like some others, was
diagnosed with cancer during COVID-19. We couldn't be with him
in the hospital during treatment. Those families have a right
to know. Students who weren't in school have a right to know.
But also, I think the American people have a right to know why
so much misinformation was spread about COVID-19 in this
country by President Trump.
Let me just read some of the greatest hits from President
Trump. ``China has been working very hard to contain the
coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their
efforts and transparency. It would all work out well. In
particular, on behalf of the American people, I want to thank
President Xi.'' OK. ``I just spoke to President Xi last night,
and you know, we are working on the problem, the virus. It is a
very tough situation. I think he is going to handle it. I think
it is handled very well. We are helping wherever we can.''
``Just had a long conversation with the President of China.
He is strong, sharp, powerful, focused on leading the counter-
attack to the coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well,
even building hospitals in a matter of days. Great discipline,
and taking place in China.'' ``President leads strongly in a
very successful operation. We are working closely with China to
help.
``I think China was very, you know, professionally run in a
sense. They have got everything under control. I really believe
they are going to have it under control very soon.'' ``You
know, in April, supposedly it is going to die with the hotter
weather, and that is a beautiful date to look forward to. But
China, I can tell you, is working very hard.'' ``We have very
few people in this country with COVID, and, you know what? They
are getting better. They are all getting better. I think the
whole situation will work out well.''
``We pretty much shut it down coming from China. You know,
we only have 15 people with COVID, and you know, 15, within a
couple of days, it is going to go down to zero. That is a
pretty good job we have done. It is going to go away, hopefully
at the end of the month, and if not, hopefully soon after
that.''
I could keep going. This goes on and on. And every day it
goes on, there were more and more cases in this country, and so
we have to find out why the President was spreading that
information. We heard about this paper, Proximal Origins paper,
in the committee, and we heard from Members that this paper
specifically said that they didn't want to investigate the lab
leak at all. That is not true. Here is the quote from the
paper, ``We must, therefore, examine the possibility of an
inadvertent laboratory release of SARS-CoV-2.'' So, I don't
know why we continue to spread this misinformation. I also
think one of the things we should learn, because the document
that Mr. Ratcliffe has been reading from as part of his
testimony suggests analysts appeared reluctant to have their
analysis on China brought forward because they tend to disagree
with Trump Administration policies. One of the things I also
think we should investigate is, did the professionals not share
the information they had with the President because they didn't
trust the President because every single day he was going out
saying this stuff, or better, going out and telling people they
can drink bleach, or they should just go out and put light in
the body and we will get rid of COVID. I mean, this went on for
a long period of time.
So yes, we need to investigate. We need to investigate the
origins of COVID. We need to know what we knew when, and we
need to share that with the American people. And we need to
know why President Trump, who was in charge when COVID
happened, he was in charge when COVID got out of control, why
he didn't tell the American people the truth. I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Jordan from Ohio for five
minutes.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Ratcliffe, I think
Dr. McCormick was on to the right question. Seems to me the
fundamental question is why. Why did they lie to us? You point
this out in your testimony. Why is it taking so long for every
government agency to admit what we all know. Because belief in
a lab leak as the origin at the start of this is not a
conspiracy theory, is it, Mr. Ratcliffe?
Mr. Ratcliffe. No.
Mr. Jordan. Why has it taken so long then? I mean, you knew
that early on, right? You were confirmed, I think, May 2020,
and you knew that within weeks that this thing came from a lab.
In fact, I think in your testimony, you say a lab leak is the
only explanation, the only credible explanation. If this were a
trial, the preponderance of the evidence is all on the side of
the lab leak. You knew that within weeks. So, why did the
government not tell us the truth?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I think, you know, when you look at
the intelligence community report that the Biden Administration
put out in October 2021, they acknowledged that China's refusal
to cooperate. But the report in a way ignores what I think is
the inescapable fact and reality that if the CCP had anything
exculpatory, anything at all, anything that would be helpful to
showing that no one was to blame for this----
Mr. Jordan. Right.
Mr. Ratcliffe [continuing]. That this occurred naturally,
that they would share that. And, you know, why not share data
samples, research? Everything that tends to show that they had
access to that would tend to show that this was naturally
occurring and tend to show that lab leak theory really was a
conspiracy theory, but they didn't do that because they
couldn't do that. And to me, that is why making an assessment
with some level of confidence is something that should have
been done a long time ago by the intelligence community. Yes,
we need to protect sources and methods. It is why Mike Pompeo
and I labored over how much of this can we put out, hoping that
it would drive the next administration coming in to declassify
more information, which they haven't, and would drive
congressional hearings into the origins of this, which it
didn't.
Mr. Jordan. Here is what gets me. So, the Director of
National Intelligence knew this thing came from a lab, the
Secretary of State knew this thing came from a lab, common
sense tells you this thing came from a lab, and, frankly, even
the guys who called us names knew it came from a lab because we
have their emails. We have their emails from the start. Mr.
Garry says, ``I don't know how this happens in nature. It would
be easy to do in a lab.'' Mr. Anderson says, ``This is not
consistent with evolutionary.'' Everyone knew at the get-go,
you knew at the get-go, and yet, they tell us just the
opposite. Why?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, you left out the top public health
official, a virologist, Dr. Redfield, who testified.
Mr. Jordan. Dr. Redfield knew. He has testified, yes.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Also testified. So, you had the top
diplomat, the top of the intelligence community, the top public
health official all telling you with some confidence level that
the most likely origin of this was a lab leak, and I think
that, you know, unfortunately, for political reasons and
political narratives, it was difficult.
Mr. Jordan. So, did you talk with Dr. Fauci during this
timeframe? When you get in, in May and over the next several
months, did you talk to Dr. Fauci anytime?
Mr. Ratcliffe. No.
Mr. Jordan. Never spoke with Dr. Fauci?
Mr. Ratcliffe. No.
Mr. Jordan. Do you find that strange when he is out saying
something directly contrary to the Secretary of State, to the
Director of National Intelligence, and to the top virologist,
Dr. Redfield, that Dr. Fauci wouldn't talk with you?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Yes. To be clear, there were folks within
the Coronavirus Task Force that were communicating, you know,
medical and scientific information to the intelligence
community, not me directly. But none of that information was
frankly consistent with what we have talked about what the
intelligence showed. Again, some of those individuals, to
include Dr. Fauci, were promoting the idea that this was
natural origins. And notwithstanding, you know, the language
that was read, they were referring to it publicly as a
conspiracy theory in certain conversations and interviews.
Mr. Jordan. Dr. Collins called us conspiracy theorists if
you believed in the lab as the origin. Tell me, why do you
think Fauci and Collins took that? I got my theory, and I think
I am right, but I would like to hear from the Director of
National Intelligence what he thinks Fauci and Collins'
motivation for sharing false information with the American
people.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I think the best evidence of that is
their own conversations, which say that they didn't want
unwarranted or unwanted, or I think the term was unwanted
attention, to the relationships that were taking place between
Western virologists and those working within the Wuhan
Institute of Virology and funding sources for some of that
research into----
Mr. Jordan. Yes, our money to a lab in China that wasn't up
to code, that was doing gain-of-function research, and that is
where this thing came from. That is what they didn't want us to
know. Do you agree with that, Mr. Ratcliffe?
Mr. Ratcliffe. I do agree with that.
Mr. Jordan. That is important. Thank you. I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now like to yield to Ranking Member Ruiz
for a closing statement if he would like one.
Dr. Ruiz. Thank you. As I have said since the Select
Subcommittee's first hearing, our efforts to understand the
origins of the COVID-19 pandemic should remain evidence based
and free from politicization, partisan rhetoric, and
conspiratorial accusations without proof that seek to vilify
our Nation's public health officials. We should not politicize
intelligence and turn the origins questions into a partisan
blame game. Instead, we must let our Nation's scientists and
intelligence professionals do the work necessary to promote our
understanding of the pandemic origins without political
interference.
And while the experts were to determine how the coronavirus
came to be, we should focus on putting people over politics. We
should develop forward-looking evidence-based policies that
will keep the American people safe from future pandemics. And
we should take an intelligent strategic approach to competition
with China and the challenges posed by the Chinese Communist
Party. Instead of fanning the flames of extreme rhetoric, we
should build on the progress we made over the past two years
under President Biden to ensure America's interests flourished
domestically and abroad.
Now, more than ever, we must double down on our commitment
to scientific integrity and put the needs of the American
people above political theater. Let's reject extreme partisan
rhetoric and work together to save lives. The American people
deserve nothing less. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. You know, I have served on the
Intelligence Committee, and as a physician, when the pandemic
began, no doubt I took an extreme interest into what was going
on. Mostly what I was interested in was what was going on
physiologically, causing so many people to die, interested in
finding out ways that we could maybe find treatments for people
that actually worked and started doing research. Lockdown came,
nothing else to do. Just sitting at home. Sitting at home going
back and forth with another doctor from Ohio who actually got
on the phone with infectious disease doctors in China.
We began our COVID-19 origins investigation in February
2020, and we found an article during that time that I had never
seen before, medical article, research article, published by
Ralph Baric from North Carolina and Dr. Zhengli Shi from China,
an article that showed that they were able to create a chimera,
which is gain-of-function research, where you take one virus,
parts of it, put it on another virus and make it more
infectious. I will never forget. I am not the one who found it
first. The other doctor did, and he called me and said, you
won't believe this and sent it to me. And I thought, oh my
gosh, this is extremely alarming.
Fast forward, after a FOIA request was able to reveal some
emails from Dr. Fauci, Kristian Andersen, and others, going to
the end of February 2020, Kristian Andersen said, ``This thing
looks engineered.'' Immediately, Dr. Fauci reacts. He contacts
his deputy, ``BE READY.'' I am paraphrasing. And I can't
remember exactly what the email said, but I do know the email
had an attachment to it, and it had the attachment of that very
article about the creation of a chimera.
Oh, my goodness, I would hope that when Dr. Fauci saw that
or became aware of it, maybe he just became aware of it, I
don't think so, but maybe he did, that he was as alarmed as I
was. So, you take that article. The statement from Kristian
Andersen saying, ``This thing looks engineered.'' And what does
this very group do within weeks? Come out and say it came from
nature. It came from nature. Dr. Andersen, we found, had said
that he was focused, he was going to focus to disprove the lab
leak theory. Why? Why? What is the motive for that? That is
very reasonable to ask that question.
Mr. Moskowitz I guess wasn't here for the other hearings.
He is not on this Subcommittee regularly, so he doesn't
understand that that is actually what Kristian Andersen said,
that I am going to focus to disprove the lab leak theory. And
they wrote Proximal Origins, got it published. How can we not
question this motive? And if we are going to do all that we say
we want to do with this committee to move forward, we have to
consider these types of things, the motives, whether they are
political or personal, so that we don't let someone else do
that again in the future.
As I mentioned, I am on the Intelligence Committee, so I am
able to get intelligence that others weren't able to get, and
under Chairman Schiff, there was an unwillingness to
investigate this altogether. The good news is, in the
Intelligence Committee, that rift is now gone and we work
together very well. But at that time, since there was two
separate reports coming out of the Intelligence Committee in
the House, Democrats in their report they concluded there was
no need to search any further for the origins. What good would
that do? Well, that has changed, fortunately, in this committee
and across the entire Congress, and apparently with the
President of United States as well.
And I am glad he ordered the 90-Day commission, but to
date, I have seen less from the commission than I have seen on
my own work on the Intelligence Committee. And when I ask
questions of some of the people from the IC, they tell me it is
their policy not to answer my question.
Dr. Lowenthal, you referenced it before, you know what the
statute is. They cannot have that type of policy, and that is
why we want to know more. And fortunately, I have been able to
work through some of that to some degree with Director Haines,
and I give her credit for being open. But overall, let me just
say this. I am grateful for this opportunity that we now have
in the House. It is long overdue, and I am grateful to Speaker
McCarthy for putting this Select Subcommittee together. And I
am grateful for Dr. Ruiz. He has been a friend for a long time.
We have worked on a lot of health issues together as
physicians, and I believe that if we continue to work together,
we can produce a product.
You know, the pain of this pandemic in one way or another
has understandably evoked emotions from everyone on this
committee and everyone in Congress and everyone across America.
But at the end of the day, I do believe we can and we must
produce a product of truth and accountability. And I will keep
repeating what I am after: I want us to be able to predict a
pandemic, prepare for a pandemic, protect ourselves from a
pandemic, and prevent a pandemic if we can. And with that, I
yield back.
I want to thank all of you for being here today and for
being witnesses for us. I greatly appreciate what you have done
and what you have said and participating, and with that, this
meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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