Top US Official Says 'Growing Body Of Evidence' Shows COVID-19 Leaked From Chinese Lab
The most 'credible' theory about the origin of COVID-19 is that it escaped from a Chinese laboratory, according to US National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, who made the comment during a Zoom meeting with UK officials.
"There is a growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus," said Pottinger, referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to the Daily Mail, which notes that 'even China's leaders openly admit their previous claims that the virus originated in a Wuhan market are false.'
Pottinger was one of the first US officials to sound the alarm at the White House over the origins of the virus in January 2020, when he initially suspected that the outbreak originated in a Chinese lab - after which Pottinger ordered US intelligence agencies to search for evidence. Good thing he kept this theory to himself, or Twitter may have banned him.
He also slammed the World Health Organization's probe as a ruse - saying "MPs around the world have a moral role to play in exposing the WHO investigation as a Potemkin exercise," referring to the facade villages created in 18th Century Crimea to convince the visiting Russian Empress Catherine the Great that the region was doing well.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory Party leader who attended the meeting, said Mr Pottinger's comments represented a 'stiffening' of the US position on the theory that the virus came from a leak at the laboratory, amid reports that the Americans are talking to a whistleblower from the Wuhan institute.
'I was told the US have an ex-scientist from the laboratory in America at the moment,' he said. 'That was what I heard a few weeks ago.
'I was led to believe this is how they have been able to stiffen up their position on how this outbreak originated.'
He added that Beijing's refusal to allow journalists to visit the laboratory only served to increase suspicion that it was 'ground zero' for the pandemic. 'The truth is there are people who have been in those labs who maintain that this is the case,' he said.
'We don't know what they have been doing in that laboratory. They may well have been fiddling with bat coronaviruses and looking at them and they made a mistake. I've spoken to various people who believe that to be the case.' -Daily Mail
"Even establishment figures in Beijing have openly dismissed the wet market story," Pottinger told the call participants.
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