[ZERO] Over the span of five days in 2021, the CIA abruptly changed its opinion on the origins of COVID-19 from a laboratory to neutral, a newly released document confirms. Originally, CIA analysts concluded that COVID-19 likely came from a high-level laboratory in Wuhan, China located near where the first cases were detected in late 2019, senior CIA officer James Erdman III told lawmakers in May. Over the span of five days in 2021, however, Edman says the agency changed its stance to 'neutral.'
Then in September of 2024 during a private briefing between intelligence officials and members of Congress, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) inquired as to how the agency came to the conclusion that lab-origin vs. natural origin were about equal, according to yesterday's document release by outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard.
In response, an unnamed CIA employee told Wenstrup that "he made the call to stop the shift to lab because [redacted] had come in the day before they were ready to publish which made them back off the call," according to a summary of the briefing compiled by an intelligence official.
As the Epoch Times notes further, officials said in a declassified assessment based on information through August 2021 that only one agency - which was not the CIA, based on details since made public - favored a lab origin for COVID-19.
An updated assessment released in mid-2023 states that the CIA was unable to determine the origin of COVID-19 because both the lab and natural origin theories "rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting."
The CIA said in 2025 that a lab origin for COVID-19 was "more likely." The Trump administration maintains that COVID-19 came from the lab in China.