A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) whistleblower made bombshell claims against the U.S. intelligence agency on Tuesday relating to the origins of COVID-19.
The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence announced that members heard testimony from a CIA whistleblower who alleged that the CIA "offered six analysts significant monetary incentives to change their position on COVID-19's origin."
"The whistleblower, who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer, alleges that of the seven members assigned to the CIA team tasked with analyzing COVID-19 origins, six officers concluded that the virus likely originated from a lab in Wuhan, China," the House's Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic said in a press release. "The CIA, then however, allegedly offered financial incentives to six of the experts involved in the investigation to change their conclusion in favor of a zoonotic origin."
In a statement to Newsweek on Tuesday, Tammy Kupperman Thorp, a spokesperson for the CIA's office of public affairs said, "At CIA we are committed to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity, and objectivity. We do not pay analysts to reach specific conclusions. We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them. We will keep our Congressional oversight committees appropriately informed."
The announcement on Tuesday comes several months after the Wall Street Journal obtained classified intelligence reports in February, which found that the U.S. Department of Energy determined that COVID-19 likely originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.
According to the Wall Street Journal's report, the Department of Energy came to a "low confidence" conclusion on the origins of COVID-19, while the FBI also previously determined with "moderate confidence," that the novel virus may have stemmed from a lab in Wuhan.
In the press release on Tuesday, House's Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner said that among the seven individuals on the CIA team investigating the origins of COVID-19, the whistleblower said that one member, who was the most senior, believed it originated from zoonosis.
"The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position," Turner and Wenstrup said in a joint statement.
Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene responded to the CIA whistleblower's revelations on Tuesday saying on X, formerly Twitter, "The taxpayer funded CIA used taxpayer's dollars to pay off people to lie about the origins of taxpayer funded and lab created COVID."
Correction, 9/15/23, 12:30 p.m. ET: This article was updated to correct the spelling of Marjorie Taylor Greene's first name.
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