Chinese informant allegedly alerted FBI to Wuhan lab leak in early 2020: Report



FBI Director Christopher Wray waited until February 2023 to speak publicly about the bureau's assessment that COVID-19 "most likely" came from the infamous lab in Wuhan, China, where the apparent patients zero executed dangerous gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses.

According to a new report from Michael Shellenberger's investigative outfit, Public, the FBI may have known about a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology years prior — as early as March 2020.

Multiple sources recently spoke to Public, indicating a Chinese national serving as an informant for the FBI in Wuhan revealed to their handler on the bureau's Chinese Intelligence Squad that a "person working at the Virology Institute lab in Wuhan, China was infected, left the building, and spread the virus outside the lab in Wuhan."

It's unclear whether this walking biohazard was one of the WIV researchers the Wall Street Journal first reported were hospitalized in November 2019 "with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness" before the outbreak.

"It didn't have anything to do with the wet market or the bat soup story they were going with," the informant reportedly told the FBI.

Public's sources indicated this information would likely have circulated amongst the 25 people in the Chinese Intelligence Squad. Additionally, the squad would have taken it seriously, granted "the [confidential human source] was from Wuhan, had been vetted, and the person had provided information on three prior occasions that they were able to corroborate as true and reliable."

Another source stressed the lab leak information was regarded as "good intel."

The sources who provided these insights asked Public to keep their identities under wraps, indicating they are only now speaking out "out of concern over abuses of power within the FBI."

This is not the first posthumous blow dealt in recent days to the zoonotic origins theory once advanced by Anthony Fauci and those involved in his seeming cover-up.

On Thursday, the watchdog group U.S. Right to Know published documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests concerning the controversial 2018 "DEFUSE" grant application submitted by Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

According to USRTK, the genome of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, closely resembles the blueprints for the pathogens detailed in the research proposal.

The watchdog indicated that the newly published drafts and notes concerning the grant application reveal researchers, such as University of North Carolina Prof. Ralph Baric, planned on

  • inserting furin cleavage sites at the S1/S2 junction of the spike protein;
  • assembling synthetic viruses in six segments;
  • identifying coronaviruses up to 25% different from SARS;
  • and selecting for receptor binding domains well-suited to infecting human receptors.

The proposed furin cleavage site is of special significance because virologists have yet to find it in other related coronaviruses. Many scientists have even expressed doubt that furin cleavage sites are naturally occurring.

USRTK previously reported that in January 2020, Danish evolutionary biologist and Scripps Research Institute immunology professor Kristian G. Andersen raised the matter of a gain-of-function study that "looked like a how-to manual for building the Wuhan coronavirus in a laboratory."

Andersen reportedly directed British evolutionary biologist and virologist Edward Holmes' attention to the "furin cleavage site between the S1 and S2 junctions," which had features characteristic of genetic engineering.

Holmes responded by saying, "F***, this is bad."

On Jan. 31, 2020, Andersen wrote to then-Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, saying, "You have to look very closely at the genome to see features that are potentially engineered. … I should mention that after discussions earlier today, Eddie [Holmes], Bob [Garry], Mike [Farzan], and myself all find the genome to be inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory."

Fauci downplayed the lab-leak theory on cable news and at the White House podium. Peter Daszak co-signed a Feb. 19, 2020, statement in the Lancet deriding suggestions that the virus might have leaked from the WIV as "conspiracy theories."

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Glenn: Why Are They Admitting to the COVID Lab Leak NOW?

Glenn: Why Are They Admitting to the COVID Lab Leak NOW?

China began stockpiling PPE months before COVID-19 outbreak, former government officials say



China began stockpiling personal protective equipment (PPE) months before the COVID-19 outbreak, according to former and current U.S. government officials.

The damning accusations stem from an analysis conducted by Dr. Tom McGinn and Col. John T. Hoffman.

McGinn is a Senior Health Advisor at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Hoffman is a Senior Research Fellow at the Food Protection and Defense Institute (FPDI) – a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence at the University of Minnesota. Hoffman also served in the U.S. Army – where he specialized in anti-terrorism and developing ways to protect military supply chain systems from attacks. Hoffman was also an advisor to the U.S. Department of Justice.

McGinn and Hoffman didn't believe the narrative that the COVID-19 outbreak emerged from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market – better known as the Wuhan wet market.

The duo examined a Customs and Border Protection database that tracks goods entering the United States. They discovered that China began piling up PPE way before China notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak on Dec. 31, 2019.

"You can go and look about three years back [at import data]," Hoffman told the Telegraph. "This is not the normal up and down that occurs."

McGinn and Hoffman presented their findings to the Department of Homeland Security's Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office. However, the government agency passed on an investigation, claiming that the information reflected typical PPE supply fluctuations.

Believing that they were on the verge of uncovering a potential narrative-buster, Hoffman then contacted HCA Healthcare – the largest health system in the United States that operates 211 hospitals and around 2,000 clinics. HCA Healthcare stated that the pattern was highly unusual.

An HCA Healthcare representative revealed that surgical gowns and drapes were in such short supply in late September 2019 that the medical necessities were on backorder.

Hoffman said, "I asked HCA folks if this had happened anytime recently. The answer was no — they could not remember ever seeing so much of this stuff on back order."

The Telegraph reported, "PPE exports to the U.S. fell by around 50 percent between August and September of 2019, in a significant drop which raised alarm bells at key U.S. government agencies. China also started to buy up global PPE stocks in Europe, Australia, and the U.S. around the same time, experts said."

David Asher – a former State Department official who investigated nuclear biological and chemical weapons proliferation and development issues – declared that the Chinese government was snatching up PPE supplies.

Asher told the Telegraph, "It was a persistent uptick [of Chinese purchasing]. And it was significant enough that my colleagues at DHS heard about it from American companies that manufacture PPE, and most importantly from U.S. hospitals reporting they weren’t able to get the normal supply of masks, gloves, gowns, and goggles."

The report added that China – the biggest manufacturer of PPE in the world – started "severely restricting" the export of medical gowns and masks months before the COVID-19 outbreak.

If China was hoarding PPE months before the COVID-19 outbreak, that revelation would give more credence to the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab leak theory than the wet market narrative.

British bio-security expert claims Wuhan lab-leak theory 'accepted as likely behind closed doors' in government



The British government is taking steps to increase bio-security and protect against "natural zoonosis and laboratory leaks," Prime Minister Boris Johnson informed the House of Commons Tuesday.

Johnson's announcement comes as a British expert on chemical and biological counterterrorism involved with crafting the U.K.'s bio-security strategy claims most people within the government believe the lab-leak theory is the most likely explanation for the origins of COVID-19.

The Telegraph reports that the government has asked for evidence before drafting a new bio-security strategy, which will cover "accidental release and dual-use research of concern, where life science research is capable of being misapplied to do harm."

Former British Army officer Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is one person who has submitted evidence for the strategy.

He told the Telegraph that the "official view" within the government is that a lab leak "is as likely as anything else to have caused the pandemic."

"A lot of people like myself think it is more likely. I think attitudes have changed a little bit. The zoonotic transfer theory just didn’t make sense," he said.

Over the past two years, it has come to light that Chinese researchers in Wuhan had been collecting and performing risky experiments on dangerous bat coronaviruses with funding from U.S. taxpayers. After the first major COVID-19 outbreak was traced to Wuhan in early 2020, some scientists speculated that the virus may have been engineered and could have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Prominent public health officials around the world later asserted it was more likely that the virus developed in nature, but an animal host for the SARS-CoV-2 virus — from which the virus would make the evolutionary leap to human beings — was never discovered.

With that context, Johnson's request that the U.K. re-evaluate its strategies to prevent laboratory leaks appears to at least imply that British officials find the lab-leak origins theory credible enough to take precautions against any such thing happening in the U.K.

“There is a huge amount of concern about coming out publicly, but behind closed doors most people think it’s a lab leak," de Bretton-Gordon told the Telegraph. "And they are coming round to the fact that even if they don’t agree with that, they must accept it’s likely, and they must make sure the policies are in place to stop it.”

“My view, that I’ve put to the Government already, is that we cannot afford emotionally, physically or financially, to go through another pandemic. We must now get on the front foot,” he added.

Video reportedly shows live bats at Wuhan lab, contradicting WHO investigation



The Wuhan Institute of Virology had live bats inside the Chinese biosafety level 4 laboratory in recent years, according to unearthed video revealed by Sky News Australia on Sunday. This discovery directly contradicts what World Health Organization investigators said earlier about the origins of COVID-19, dismissing the notion as a baseless conspiracy theory.

The eye-opening report included footage said to be taken from inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2017. The video allegedly shows bats being held in a cage at the Wuhan lab. Another purported scene from inside the premises shows a scientist feeding a worm to a bat.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Footage proves bats were kept in Wuhan lab www.youtube.com

Live bats inside the Wuhan lab is a contradiction to what was said by zoologist Peter Daszak, who was a member of the World Health Organization. Daszak was named to the WHO investigation team sent to China in January to investigate the origins of COVID-19.

Daszak is the president of the non-profit research organization Ecohealth Alliance, which received grants from the National Institutes of Health.

"EcoHealth's bat research in China was entirely funded through the $3.7 million NIH grant," NPR reported. "A small portion — about $76,000 per year — was used to pay the Wuhan lab for its on-the-ground work."

Daszak personally thanked Dr. Anthony Fauci for dismissing the possibility that the origin of the coronavirus pandemic may have been from a lab leak, according to leaked emails.

"I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology," Daszak wrote in the email to Fauci. "From my perspective, your comments are brave, and coming from your trusted voice, will help dispel the myths being spun around the virus' origins."

"He has worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to test bats for coronaviruses with the potential to spill over into people," science journal Nature wrote about Daszak in December 2020.

At the same time Daszak joined the WHO investigative team, he publicly lampooned the idea that the coronavirus pandemic origin may have been from a lab leak. Daszak emphasized that the Wuhan lab doesn't have "live or dead bats" on-premises.

"This is a widely circulated conspiracy theory," Daszak tweeted in December 2020. "This piece describes work I'm the lead on & labs I've collaborated w/ for 15 yrs. They DO NOT have live or dead bats in them. There is no evidence anywhere that this happened. It's an error that I hope will be corrected."

@simonbchen This is a widely circulated conspiracy theory. This piece describes work I'm the lead on & labs I've co… https://t.co/9EejJRn8Hp

— Peter Daszak (@PeterDaszak) 1607611995.0

In a since-deleted tweet from December 2020, Daszak reiterated that no live bats were sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"No BATS were sent to Wuhan lab for genetic analysis of viruses collected in the field," Daszak wrote. "That's now how this science works. We collect bat samples, send them to the lab. We RELEASE bats where we catch them!"

The WHO report failed to mention there were bats at the Wuhan Institute of Virology - and the investigative team di… https://t.co/0q0fz41RUX

— Sharri Markson (@SharriMarkson) 1623596012.0

National Review shared reports from Taiwan News, which claimed the Wuhan Institute of Virology reportedly filed patents for bat cages. There is also reports from the Daily Caller referring to an alleged archived version of the Chinese Academy of Science website claiming that the Wuhan facility has "126 cages for Japanese white rabbits, 340 cages for SD and Wistar rats, inbred strains, closed groups, mutant strains, and genetically engineered mice. There are 3,268 cages, 12 ferrets, 12 bats, and two species of cotton bollworm and beet armyworm, totaling 52 strains."

The newly unearthed video was reportedly recorded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which released the video to mark the launch of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in May 2017. The voice in the alleged video "speaks about the security precautions that are in place if 'an accident' occurs and reveals there had been 'intense clashes' with the French Government during the construction of the laboratory."

"The animal room in the P4 facility can handle a variety of species, including primate work with SARS-CoV-2," the video states.

The alleged video also shows "hundreds" of mice cages at the Wuhan lab.

The exposé on the Wuhan lab from Vanity Fair claimed that the Chinese military "engineered mice with humanized lungs" to test viruses on them in 2019, only months before the coronavirus pandemic erupted. The bombshell report said researchers with the Chinese military studied the humanized lungs to evaluate their "susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2."

During the G7 summit, the head of the World Health Organization said that the lab leak theory should not be ruled out.

When WHO director general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was asked about the possibility of a lab leak as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, he responded, "Every hypothesis should be open."

Ghebreyesus added that China had not cooperated fully, and added that Beijing should provide more "transparency and cooperation" to help discover the origin of the virus out of "respect" for the dead.

"I think the respect these people deserve is knowing what the origin of this virus is so that we can prevent it from happening again," he said.

In February, members of the WHO investigation team said it is "extremely unlikely" that coronavirus leaked from the lab in Wuhan, instead they said it was likely spread naturally from animals to humans, possibly from a wet market in Wuhan.

"Our initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway and one that will require more studies and more specific targeted research," Dr. Peter Ben Embarek from the World Health Organization said.

State Department: Wuhan lab researchers may have had COVID in fall of 2019; 'secret projects with China's military' conducted at virology institute



The U.S. State Department said on Friday that it had new evidence that may point to coronavirus emerging from a laboratory in Wuhan. The report also hinted that researchers at the Chinese lab might have been infected with COVID-19 before the first identified case of the outbreak.

In the new State Department report, the U.S. government presents a case that coronavirus may have originated and escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The State Department says it "has reason to believe that several researchers inside the Wuhan Institue of Virology became sick in autumn 2019." The State Department fact sheet states that the lab workers experienced "symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses."

The World Health Organization claims that the first cases of coronavirus were discovered on Dec. 31, 2019. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission in China reported a cluster of "cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China." These cases of pneumonia were later identified as the novel coronavirus. The first COVID-19 death was reported on Jan. 11.

China has maintained that the birthplace of COVID-19 is a wet market in Wuhan.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology is China's first biosafety level-4 laboratory. Wang Yanyi, the director of the Wuhan Institute for Virology, admitted in May that the lab has three live strains of bat coronavirus, but denied the possibility that the COVID-19 originated from WIV.

Professor Shi Zhengli, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, added that the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 didn't match any of the lab samples she had previously studied in Wuhan.

Zhengli has stated in the past that none of the lab's staffers and students were infected. The State Department said the new evidence of infected lab staff "raises questions about the credibility" of Zhengli's claims of "zero infection" of WIV staffers.

"Starting in at least 2016 – and with no indication of a stop prior to the COVID-19 outbreak – WIV researchers conducted experiments involving RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2% similar)," the fact sheet reads. "The WIV became a focal point for international coronavirus research after the 2003 SARS outbreak and has since studied animals including mice, bats, and pangolins."

The State Department contends that "secret projects with China's military" were conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. "The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017," the report said.

The U.S. government claims that the Chinese Communist Party has "prevented independent journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from interviewing researchers at the WIV, including those who were ill in the fall of 2019."

The report alleges that the Wuhan Institute of Virology "has not been transparent or consistent about its record of studying viruses most similar to the COVID-19 virus."

The State Department report cites that China has had "several previous virus outbreaks," including a 2004 SARS outbreak in Beijing.

"The U.S. government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus—known as SARS-CoV-2—was transmitted initially to humans," the State Department acknowledges. "We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China."

Over a year since the COVID-19 outbreak, the CCP finally allowed a research team to investigate the origins of COVID-19. This week, a group sent to Wuhan by the World Health Organization will attempt to determine how the coronavirus pandemic began.

The U.S. State Department said, "WHO investigators must have access to the records of the WIV's work on bat and other coronaviruses before the COVID-19 outbreak."

In 2018, U.S. State Department officials, who had visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology twice, informed Washington that there were major safety concerns regarding the lab's research into coronaviruses in horseshoe bats.