The Intelligence Community’s Covid Origin Coverup

By Jeff Carlson & Hans Mahncke

Hi everyone. On a recent episode of HardFacts, we mentioned our intention to write up the story of Fauci’s behind-the-scenes war with Trump advisor Peter Navarro. But as we went back to revisit our work we realized it might be worthwhile to preface that story with a deeper dive into the actions from the Intelligence Community in the early days of the Covid outbreak as these events are in many ways closely related.

We've said for some time now that the focus needs to shift outwards and upwards to those in government - including the various federal agencies and individuals along with the Department of Defense - and the Intelligence Community who worked so hard to hide all this information from the public for the last four years. We know that the Department of Defense provided millions in funding to EcoHealth, NIH and NIAID. But why did they do so? What was that money used for and where did it go? How much of this funding was funneled to the Wuhan lab? And why was EcoHealth DoD funding quietly reinstated after Congress had just pulled that funding? 

We also know that the CIA worked to falsely reshape the debate on the origin of Covid to point away from a lab leak and towards a natural origin. A senior-level CIA officer even told Congress that the Chief Operating Officer of the CIA provided financial inducements to six CIA analysts to change their minds on the origin question. Originally, the six analysts had concluded that Covid came out of a lab but they later amended their conclusion to say that the origin could not be determined. Why did this happen and what was driving the pressure on the analysts to reverse their opinions? Why was it so important for the CIA – and for the wider intelligence community – to cover up the truth about Covid?

Further questions are raised by an April 2020 internal memo from the State Department that was released by US Right To Know. That early memo, which was a formal analysis, stated that out of five possible origins for Covid, a lab leak was by far the most likely. The authors complained that "The most logical place to investigate the virus origin [the Wuhan Institute of Virology] has been completely sealed off from outside inquiry by the CCP. A gag order to both places was issued on 1/01/2020, and a Major General from the PLA took over the WIV since early Jan." The memo also strongly suggested that alternative theories had been introduced to prevent a lab leak from being investigated. The memo, which focused almost entirely on the likelihood of a lab leak, contained a large amount of information that was not known publicly at the time it was written.

The analysis by the State Department in the Spring of 2020 didn’t pull any punches. It concluded that a leak from the Wuhan Lab likely caused the pandemic. The memo also noted that "all other possible places of virus's origin have been proven false" and stated that "all other proposed theories are likely to be a decoy to prevent inquiry to WCDC and WIV." This information from the State Department, along with their conclusion of a lab leak, should have blown apart the Natural Origin Narrative just as it was forming. But it seems that the Intelligence Community wouldn’t allow that to happen. Why do we say this? Because it appears that the Intelligence Community intentionally derailed the State Department’s early April 2020 conclusion before it could even become public. As we’ll see, they did so through a statement issued through then-Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell's office on April 30, 2020.

The timing of the Intelligence Community’s April statement might - and we emphasize might - have been chalked up to incredibly fortuitous timing on the part of the Intelligence Community - except for one very important data point. Although the State Department memo had never been seen before March 2022, it had been reported on. In almost real-time. An April 28, 2020, article by Bill Gertz at the Washington Times stated that “A Wuhan laboratory is the “most likely” source of the COVID-19 outbreak now ravaging the globe, according to a U.S. government analysis that catalogs the evidence and concludes that other explanations for the origin of the coronavirus are less credible.” Gertz’s article perfectly described the State Dept memo and even included some direct quotes from the then non-public memo such as “All other possible places of the virus’ origin have been proven to be highly unlikely.”

Gertz’s article should have been a blockbuster discovery. It would have totally discredited the Natural Origin Narrative - or at least allowed for early and crucial pushback on the Natural origin narrative that was just starting to be falsely promoted by Government and Health officials with willing help from the media. But that possibility was almost immediately derailed by the Intelligence Community who suddenly rushed to counter Gertz's reporting of the State Department memo.

On April 30, 2020 - less than two days after Gertz published his article - the Intelligence Community suddenly issued a "Statement on the Origins of COVID-19" through the office of the DNI - who at the time was Richard Grenell. Like everything the IC does, they were very careful. But they also wrote the statement in a manner that would be interpreted exactly as they wanted it to be. Notably, they included the crucial claim that "The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified."

As we’ll discuss in more depth in our next post, the timing of the Intelligence Community Statement also appeared to be targeting Trump. Shockingly, it appears that Grenell did not prep Trump - who seemed utterly blinded-sided by its release during a live press conference. Indeed, towards the end of the clip Trump confirmed that he’d personally seen evidence that Covid originated at the Wuhan lab. But his claim was totally discredited in real time by the IC statement that was quietly released by Grenell. The media used the statement as proof that Covid had a natural origin, just as the IC knew it would do.

The IC’s statement was widely used by government officials and the media to push back on any and all Lab Leak theories — just as the Intelligence Community knew it would be. Particularly as the so-called "scientific consensus" was becoming wedded to pushing the Natural Origin Narrative at the time. Remember that Fauci had begun promoting the so-called proof of Natural Origin, Proximal Origin at the same time in April 2020. And Fauci, the WHO and the NIH-funded "scientific community" were all collectively condemning any who wanted to explore a lab leak.

Although the Intelligence Community statement said they would continue to investigate, they effectively validated the Natural Origin Theory in their statement — despite the fact that the State Department had totally dismissed a zoonotic origin just a few days or weeks earlier. As a result, the Natural Origin theory persisted and those of us who were examining a far more obvious lab leak continued to be dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

One other point to be noted is the simple fact that in April 2020 there was no “wide scientific consensus” that the virus was neither manmade nor genetically modified. But after the IC statement, coupled with Fauci's April endorsement of Proximal Origin, that narrative swiftly became adopted.

No mention of the government analysis by the State Department was ever noted by the Intelligence Community. It's also telling that the later, more formal Intelligence Community report (released in a laughable two-page form) in late August 2021 still promoted a Natural Origin rather than a lab leak more than a full year later, stating that "Four Intelligence Agencies and the National Intelligence Council assess with low confidence that the initial infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with the virus or a closely-related virus."

There’s another problem as well. We know that the FBI was told very early in 2020 by a highly reliable informant that Covid leaked from the Wuhan lab. But we also recently discovered that the FBI had established a task force by late March or early April 2020 and had “obtained proposals and progress reports” for the NIH grant to EcoHealth that likely funded the construction of SARS-CoV-2. Making matters even more interesting, EcoHealth was the FBI’s “subject or target” in their probe. In other words, the FBI was told at the onset that Covid came from a lab leak and were investigating EcoHealth as being the entity behind the creation of the Covid virus no later than early April - but more likely in March 2020.

But according to Ebright, who was asked to help the FBI understand the intricate details contained within the EcoHealth work, the FBI’s Covid taskforce was shut down “almost immediately after it obtained NIH grant proposals and progress reports that pointed to direct involvement of NIH (Fauci) and EcoHealth (Daszak) in funding the research that constructed SARS-CoV-2.” Although we don’t have an exact date, given that Ebright last met with the FBI task force sometime in May 2020, it’s likely the task force was forcibly disbanded by the end of May 2020 and no later than June 2020 - putting an end to the only real investigation into the origin of Covid.

All of these events transpired in the crucial first six months of 2020. And they appear to be part of a choreographed, intertwined effort by the Intelligence Community to establish the Natural origin narrative - and simultaneously forestall any real investigation into a leak from the Wuhan Lab. We know the Intelligence Community has been lying to us all along. Did they lie to Trump as well? It’s beginning to look like they did.

We’ll have a follow-up post in the next few days that will delve into Fauci’s early role - along with his behind-the-scenes battles with Trump’s advisor Peter Navarro.