[Washington Times] Army Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, revealed in prepared Senate testimony this week that some U.S. intelligence agencies — not identified by name — believe the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic may have been genetically modified in a laboratory and not transmitted naturally from an animal host in China, where it was first identified.Limited and fragmentary information on the virus origin led to multiple theories on the virus origin among the 17 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, he said. Despite the uncertainty, all agencies claim the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 was not developed as a biological weapon.
But Gen. Berrier added without elaborating that "most agree that it was not genetically engineered." That suggests more than one intelligence agency has information pointing to the COVID virus still spreading worldwide as containing human-produced genetic modifications.
It was the first time a government official disclosed on the record declassified intelligence indicating the coronavirus behind the pandemic could have been manipulated in a laboratory, a charge the Chinese government has fiercely denied.
The DIA’s National Center for Medical Intelligence is the most forward-leaning within U.S. government circles in asserting the virus came from a Chinese laboratory. The DIA medical unit is said to base its assessment on intelligence related to Chinese military experiments. Other intelligence is based on military activities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, considered one likely source for the virus outbreak that first emerged in late 2019 in the city of Wuhan.
A 2015 book by a group of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) medical specialists and obtained by the State Department alleged that the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was caused by a genetically-modified bat coronavirus known as SARS-CoV. One PLA doctor stated that the virus was weaponized and used to attack China."It can be seen that the new human virus ecological gene weapon is very close to the natural state, so it is difficult to detect and prevent and control," states a translated portion of the book obtained by Inside the Ring. "It often enters the attacked party in a very ’natural’ state, which makes it more difficult to identify."
Another sign of possible genetic manipulation of the COVID coronavirus was outlined in a 2013 medical journal article by a group of scientists who included the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s director Shi Zhengli, dubbed the "Bat Woman of Wuhan" for her research.
The article in Nature Medicine stated that Ms. Shi and nine others had genetically engineered a "SARS-like" chimeric and hybrid virus from bats. The virus was intended to help research whether such viruses could infect humans.