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https://nypost.com/2024/12/26/us-news/spy-bosses-silenced-defense-department-fbi-scientists-from-briefing-biden-on-covid-lab-leak-evidence/

Spy bosses ‘silenced’ Defense Department, FBI scientists from briefing Biden on COVID lab leak evidence

Spy chiefs “silenced” researchers in the Defense Department and FBI who discovered strong evidence that COVID-19 most likely leaked from a Chinese lab, The Post has learned.

As a result, their findings were kept out of an August 2021 report to President Biden on the origins of the global pandemic.

That report concluded that the virus behind COVID “was probably not genetically engineered.”

After the pandemic erupted in Wuhan, China, three scientists from the Defense Intelligence Agency began trying to figure out exactly where it came from — whether SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats into humans, or whether the virus was man-made and came from a lab accident.

The “zoonotic origin” theory was backed by powerful members of the public health establishment, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, and questions about a possible “lab leak” were repeatedly dismissed as a conspiracy theory.

But the researchers’ analysis compiled dozens of data points in favor of a lab leak — compared with a “paucity of evidence supporting the natural origin theory,” a source familiar with their investigation told The Post.

The analysis was conducted by John Hardham, Robert Cutlip and Jean-Paul Chretien, three scientists in the Defense Intelligence Agency’s National Center for Medical Intelligence, which is tasked with examining potential biological weapons threats and dangerous infectious diseases.

Among their damning findings:

The COVID virus contained a feature allowing for easier transmission to humans that was constructed in a manner similar to that described in a years-old Chinese study

A Chinese military researcher applied for a patent for a COVID-19 vaccine just weeks after the virus was first sequenced in 2020. (He later died after falling from the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology’s roof, according to US investigators.)

WIV researchers worked with US researchers who trained them to construct viruses without leaving a trace of them being engineered.

Rather than amplifying these findings, they were all but ignored as Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines was preparing her report on COVID origins — which Biden ordered in May 2021.

“The scientists who had the subject matter expertise were silenced,” the source said, noting that Biden and others remained “completely unwitting” about the evidence that SARS-CoV-2 likely leaked out of a lab.

The spy chiefs further forbade the scientists from sharing the information with Congress — even after Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) expressly requested them in a March 2021 letter — or from rebutting a since-disgraced May 2020 paper — prompted by Fauci — that sought to discredit the lab leak theory.

“That was going to be the basis of an official intelligence product,” another source familiar with the probe said.

They were also told not to share their findings with the FBI — which was the only US intelligence agency agency that concluded a lab leak was the most likely theory behind COVID, the sources added.

All three were informed that the FBI was “off the reservation” when it became the sole agency to conclude the lab leak theory was likely, according to comments previously reported by the Australian newspaper.

FBI scientist Jason Bannan and his team running the parallel probe were also never offered an invitation to the White House briefing, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the scientists getting sidelined.

“Being the only agency that assessed that a laboratory origin was more likely, and the agency that expressed the highest level of confidence in its analysis of the source of the pandemic, we anticipated the FBI would be asked to attend the briefing,” Bannan said.

“I find it surprising that the White House didn’t ask.”