WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence agencies are debunking a conspiracy theory, saying they have concluded that the new coronavirus was "not manmade or genetically modified." But they say they are still examining a notion put forward by the president and aides that the pandemic may have resulted from an accident at a Chinese lab.
The statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the clearinghouse for the web of U.S. spy agencies, comes as President Donald Trump and his allies have touted the theory that an infectious-disease lab in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Chinese outbreak, was the source of the global pandemic, which has killed more than 230,000 people worldwide.
"It's a terrible thing that happened," the president said Thursday. "Whether they made a mistake or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one, or did somebody do something on purpose?"
In a statement released earlier Thursday, the national intelligence office said that agencies "will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."
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Intelligence agencies, the statement said, concur "with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified."
"We just got hit by a vicious virus that should never have been allowed to escape China," Trump said Thursday during an Oval Office meeting with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.
Trump criticized China for restricting domestic travel to slow the virus but not international travel to keep it from spreading abroad.
"Certainly it could have been stopped," Trump said. "They either couldn't do it from a competence standpoint, or they let it spread."
"It got loose, let's say, and they could have capped it."
Trump addressed the lab theory last month, saying, "More and more, we're hearing the story." Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added at the time, "The mere fact that we don't know the answers -- that China hasn't shared the answers -- I think is very, very telling."
Pompeo also pressed China to let outside experts into the lab "so that we can determine precisely where this virus began."
On Wednesday, he said that the United States still had not "gained access" to the main campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
PENALTIES WEIGHED
U.S. officials have said the Chinese government should "pay a price" for its handling of the pandemic.
Trump has expressed interest in an idea pushed by Michael Pillsbury, an informal China adviser to the White House, that Beijing could be sued for damages, with the United States seeking $10 million for every death. At a news conference this week, Trump said the administration was discussing a "very substantial" reparations claim against China -- an idea that Beijing has already denounced.
"President Trump is demanding to know the origins of the virus and what Xi Jinping knew when about the cover-up," Pillsbury said.
George Sorial, who formerly served as a top executive at the Trump Organization and is involved in a class-action lawsuit against China, told The Washington Post that he and senior White House officials have discussed limiting China's sovereign immunity. Legal experts say an attempt to limit China's sovereign immunity would be extremely difficult to accomplish and may require congressional legislation.
Some administration officials also have discussed having the United States cancel part of its debt obligations to China, two people with knowledge of internal conversations said. It was not known if the president has backed this idea.
Asked about this on Thursday, Trump said "you start playing those games and that's tough." He said canceling interest payments to China could undermine the "sanctity of the dollar," but he added that there were other ways to levy extreme penalties on China, such as raising $1 trillion by imposing tariffs on Chinese imports.
Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., are among members of Congress who have drafted legislation to strip China and other foreign governments of immunity if they took intentional acts to conceal or distort information about the coronavirus that led to damage in other countries.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., also has floated waiving interest payments to China for any holdings of U.S. debt, "because they have cost our economy already $6 trillion and we could end up being an additional $5 trillion hit."
SUSPICIONS, NO EVIDENCE
Scientists say the virus arose naturally in bats. Even so, Pompeo and others have pointed fingers at an institute that is run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It has done research tracing the likely origins of the SARS virus, finding new bat viruses and discovering how they could jump to people.
"We know that there is the Wuhan Institute of Virology just a handful of miles away from where the wet market was," Pompeo said two weeks ago. The institute has an address 8 miles from the market that is considered a possible source.
U.S. officials say the American Embassy in Beijing flagged concerns about potential safety issues at the lab in Wuhan in 2018, but they have yet to find any evidence the virus originated there nearly two years later.
Cotton has accused the Chinese government of concealing information about the virus. Early on, he questioned whether the virus had originated at the Wuhan market. He remains skeptical of China's official explanation.
"From the start of this outbreak, I've maintained that the two most likely origins for the China virus are natural transmission and a laboratory accident," Cotton said in a written statement. "Currently, all the circumstantial evidence points to an accident in the Wuhan labs: They studied the bats in question and researched coronaviruses. Our diplomats in China were worried about laboratory safety there, and China has a history of bad laboratory safety in general."
"Finally, the Chinese Communist Party's coverups, lies, disinformation, and whistleblower intimidation haven't inspired much confidence that the virus didn't come from those labs," the statement continued. "We should continue to follow the scientific evidence where it leads and ultimately hold China accountable for its responsibility in the spread of this deadly disease."
The Chinese government said Thursday that any claims that the coronavirus was released from a laboratory are "unfounded and purely fabricated out of nothing."
Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang cited the institute's director, Yuan Zhiming, as saying the lab strictly implements bio-security procedures that would prevent the release of any pathogen.
"I would like to point out again that the origin of the virus is a complex scientific issue, and it should be studied by scientists and professionals," Geng said.
"The U.S. should know that their enemy is the virus, not China.... They should focus on containment at home and international cooperation, instead of smearing China and shifting the blame onto China."
Scientists studying the virus for months have made clear they believe it wasn't manmade but are still working to determine a point at which it may have jumped from animals to humans.
Early attention focused on the live-animal market in Wuhan where the first cases were reported in December. But the first person identified with the disease had no known connection to that market.
SCIENTISTS AT ODDS
Kristian Andersen, who studies the virus at Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif., puts the odds of it being accidentally released by the Wuhan lab at "a million to 1," far less likely than an infection in nature.
But virus expert David O'Connor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said he thinks too little is known to rule out any source, except the idea the virus was man-made. Finding the source is important, he said, because it may harbor the next pandemic virus.
No evidence supports the theory that the coronavirus originated "in a laboratory either intentionally or by accident," Daniel Lucey, an expert on pandemics at Georgetown University who has closely tracked what is known about the origins, wrote this week.
But Richard Ebright, a microbiologist and biosafety expert at Rutgers University, has argued that the probability of a lab accident was "substantial," pointing to a history of such occurrences that have infected researchers. The Wuhan labs and other centers worldwide that examine naturally occurring viruses have questionable safety rules, he said, adding, "The standards are lax and need to be tightened."
The U.S. was providing funding to the Wuhan lab for its research on coronaviruses, Michael Morell, former acting director and deputy director of the CIA, said Thursday.
He said State Department cables indicate that there have been concerns in past years among U.S. officials about the safety protocols at that lab. If the virus did escape from a Chinese lab, it not only reflects negatively on China but also on the United States for providing research funding to a lab that has safety concerns, Morell said during an online forum hosted by the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security at George Mason University.
"So if it did escape, we're all in this together," Morell said. "This is not a gotcha for China. This is a gotcha for both of us."
Information for this article was contributed by Zeke Miller, Deb Riechmann and Malcom Ritter of The Associated Press; by Mark Mazzetti, Julian E. Barnes, Edward Wong and Adam Goldman of The New York Times; by Jeff Stein, Carol D. Leonnig, Josh Dawsey, Gerry Shih, Michael Birnbaum and Ashley Parker of The Washington Post; and by Frank E. Lockwood of the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette.
A Section on 05/01/2020