IN the early days of the pandemic, any debate on the origins of Covid – and whether it was lab leak – was aggressively silenced.
When America’s top virologist dared to question whether the virus was natural, he was blasted with death threats, labelled a racist and sent envelopes of white powder.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology was thrust into the spotlight after a mystery virus emerged just miles from the facility[/caption]
A mountain of circumstantial evidence pointing to a Wuhan lab leak has piled up year after year[/caption]
Former Congressman Brad Wenstrup, who chaired the committee investigating the origins of Covid, and The Sun’s Imogen Braddick in Ohio[/caption]
Thanks to the outrageous lack of investigation by governments, it’s taken the tenacity of a small group of journalists, scientists and whistleblowers to painstakingly uncover clues.
After investigating the origins for nearly five years, I spoke to some of them about for The Sun’s new documentary The Covid Files: Inside the Wuhan lab-leak scandal.
Watch the documentary in full on our YouTube channel here
As a mountain of circumstantial evidence pointing to a lab leak has piled up year after year, a search for an animal origin has been fruitless.
After interviewing scientists, top government advisers, intelligence officials, whistleblowers and campaigners, I believe Covid most likely accidentally leaked from a lab.
And I’m not alone.
This year, after endless months of trying to find the truth about where Covid came from, the CIA finally revealed that it believes Covid did leak from a lab in China.
It marks a huge turning point after years of denial – following in the footsteps and conclusions of the FBI and the Department of Energy.
Former government investigator David Asher told me the classified intelligence on the origins “would make your head explode”.
And Dr Robert Redfield, the former head of America’s top health agency, said: “Our intelligence community knows a lot more than what’s in the public domain.”
The CIA admit having inconclusive evidence – but that applies to any of us trying to investigate the origins.
We are trying to piece together where Covid came from as China still refuses to cooperate.
And closer to home in the US, we discovered an apparent cover-up by some of the scientific community in a desperate bid to keep funding flowing and avoid damaging reputations.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this thing looked supernatural
David Asher
It turned out that the US government was funding the lab in Wuhan – and the exact type of research that many believe sparked the pandemic.
And – although it took several years – the American virus-hunting firm that was working with the Chinese lab has now been banned from receiving any more taxpayer cash.
Biosafety activist group White Coat Waste’s Justin Goodman rightly pointed out that all money leaves a paper trail.
It marked a tiny win in the fight to find the origins of Covid.
But there are still many unanswered questions – and no conclusive evidence.
‘Ready made’ for humans
As part of my own reporting, I travelled from the UK to Washington and Ohio to speak to the individuals who were in the White House with Donald Trump during the pandemic – and the people fighting for answers today.
As the world was grappling with a mystery virus in April 2020, Trump stood at a podium and uttered the words “lab leak”.
Blasted as a conspiracy theory by Anthony Fauci – America’s top doc at the time – the possibility of a lab leak was immediately shut down.
Anyone who challenged the idea that the mystery virus ravaging the world may not have come from a busy wet market in Wuhan was ridiculed.
One of those who stuck their head above the parapet and pushed for an investigation into a potential lab leak was Dr Robert Redfield.
As the head of the Centers for Disease Control of Prevention at the time, Dr Redfield told me what I’ve heard time and time again – the mystery virus swirling in Wuhan was “ready-made” to infect humans.
If the DEFUSE proposal had been patented, Covid would violate that patent. That is how closely the genome of the virus matches what is proposed in that grant
Emily Kopp
This, scientists say, was an immediate red flag that something was not right.
Viruses that spill over from nature usually take a long time to mutate as they move through different species.
When Covid emerged, it spread like wild fire.
As former State Department adviser David Asher told me: “It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this thing looked supernatural.”
Speaking to us at his Maryland home, Dr Redfield said the fact that it was “ready-made” for humans immediately raised alarm bells for him.
With the lab’s close links to the Chinese military, the top doc believes the virus was being designed as part of a vaccine programme.
This meant it needed to be highly infectious, asymptomatic and does not create long-term immunity – the exact same features as Covid, Dr Redfield pointed out.
The Sun’s Imogen Braddick and US Right to Know’s investigative reporter Emily Kopp in Washington[/caption]
‘Smoking gun’
In his words, it was “very purposeful research” with a key goal in mind.
For Dr Redfield, a string of decisions at the Wuhan lab in September 2019 also raised concerns.
This included handing over control to the military, deleting the lab’s database of sequences in a “highly irregular” move, and putting out a contract for a new ventilation system.
Unclassified intelligence also revealed a potential clue – researchers at the Wuhan lab fell sick in late 2019 with Covid-like symptoms.
And US scientists – in collaboration with the lab – planned to engineer viruses with the same unique features of Covid.
Some described this proposal – called DEFUSE – as the “smoking gun”.
The Sun’s investigation into the origins of Covid
- ‘Smoking gun’ docs show US scientists planned to make viruses in Wuhan with SAME features of Covid year before outbreak
- Pentagon was told SIX times that Covid was lab leak at start of pandemic – but buried the truth, ex-intel official says
- US government backed shock Wuhan lab plan to collect 500,000 viruses months before Covid… and KNEW it was dangerous
- Wuhan Covid ‘lab leak’ firm given $60m US taxpayer funding for MORE virus tests
- Covid was ‘perfectly adapted’ to infect humans when virus emerged in Wuhan which ‘proves’ lab leak
- Bombshell clues that ‘prove’ China hid Covid lab leak in ‘cover up of the century worse than Watergate’
- Crumbling sewers, no PPE, & filthy cages – Inside ‘chaotic & crowded’ Wuhan labs which may have unleashed Covid
- Wuhan Covid ‘lab leak’ scientists were ‘bitten by bats & sprayed with blood’
- China’s OWN scientists discussed ‘problems’ with Wuhan lab days after Covid outbreak
- Secret memo shows how panicked China ordered labs to destroy Covid samples
- Wuhan lab chief ‘ordered scientists not to talk about Covid origins’ in leaked email
- France ‘warned Wuhan lab could be turned into a ‘biological arsenal’ by Chinese military four years before Covid ‘leak’
It was DRASTIC – a team of scientists and sleuths investigating Covid’s origins – who uncovered the document.
Many have told me it is the “blueprint” for the virus that ravaged the world.
Investigative journalist Emily Kopp said: “If the DEFUSE proposal had been patented, Covid would violate that patent.
“That is how closely the genome of the virus matches what is proposed in that grant.”
Some have dismissed the growing pile of circumstantial evidence as coincidental.
But it’s very simple to connect the dots – especially when an animal origin has never been found.
As former Congressman Brad Wenstrup told me from his office in Ohio: “How can you not rule it out?”
Brad Wenstrup chaired the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and ruled that Covid was likely a lab leak in his final report[/caption]
The Sun spoke to Robert Redfield, the former director of the CDC, at his home in Maryland[/caption]
‘Watergate was nothing’
Yet as evidence and clues have trickled out, it appears there has been an astounding effort to suppress the possibility of a lab leak.
“I’m not joking when I call it ‘Wuhangate’ or ‘Watergate of Medicine’,” Mr Asher boldly claimed.
“I mean, Watergate was nothing.”
As the world came to a standstill and bodies piled up in March 2020, a group of virologists published a paper now referred to as Proximal Origins.
Examining whether the virus spilled over naturally or came from a lab, the virologists concluded it was “not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus”.
The hugely influential paper was read three million times within weeks of publication.
Science writer Matt Ridley – co-author of Viral on the origins of Covid – told me that it even convinced him.
And it was this paper that helped push the lab leak theory – and any scientific debate over the origins – to the outer fringes.
But we now know that some of the virologists who wrote the paper had their doubts about a natural origin.
Through Freedom of Information requests, Kopp got her hands on Slack messages.
It revealed that some of the authors were speaking privately about the possibility of a lab leak before the paper was published.
Scientist Kristian Anderson – one of the authors – said a lab origin was “friggin likely”.
Another author, Eddie Holmes, said Covid “seemed to have been pre-adapted for human spread since the get go”.
They privately admitted there was “strange research going on”. Yet the paper failed to acknowledge a lab leak as a hypothesis at all.
And publicly, the authors dismissed a lab leak as a conspiracy theory.
The question is, why?
I have long asked why certain individuals don’t want to find out what caused this catastrophic pandemic – and what it is they could possibly be hiding.
The experts I spoke to believe it boils down to money and reputation.
Finding the truth
In the years since the publication of the paper, thousands of people – including scientists – have signed a petition calling for it to be retracted.
The paper has been described as an attempt to cover-up the lab leak theory – forming part of a wider campaign designed to shame anybody who questioned the so-called scientific consensus.
Thousands of other documents and emails – uncovered by US Right to Know – appear to reveal a carefully crafted plan by top scientists to ignore the possibility Covid may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan.
Lord Ridley described the situation as “extraordinary”.
And Mr Asher, who has led major US State Department investigations, told me: “One person’s conspiracy is another person’s strategy.”
Although we still don’t know the truth, it appears, as Dr Redfield says, that the tide has been slowly turning and the mainstream consensus is now that this was a lab leak.
For the families of the seven million dead, we must fight for answers – regardless of where the virus came from.
As Kopp told me, it will take political will and a public outcry, but the enormity of the pandemic demands that we try.
So, we have to try.
With Trump as president and the CIA backing a lab leak, will the truth finally come out?
Assistant Foreign Editor Imogen Braddick and Justin Goodman from White Coat Waste Project[/caption]
The Sun spoke to Dr Li-Meng Yan, a Chinese virologist, at a secret location in the United States[/caption]
