- U.S. intelligence officials considered the COVID-19 origins question unresolved enough to plan an independent expert panel as recently as January 2025.
- The CIA shifted to favoring a lab-leak origin with low confidence, citing no new intelligence but a re-evaluation of existing evidence.
- China continues to block independent access to Wuhan data, preventing any conclusive determination.
- The ODNI memo, obtained through a USRTK FOIA lawsuit, reveals that two intelligence agencies changed their confidence levels due to new reporting—though details remain redacted.
- Congressional mandates requiring declassification of COVID origins intelligence have resulted in substantial portions of records remaining blacked out.
The origins question that refuses to settle
Nearly five years after COVID-19 emerged from Wuhan, China, the U.S. intelligence community as recently as January 2025 considered the pandemic's origins sufficiently unresolved to warrant creation of a new independent panel of outside experts.
Newly released records obtained by U.S. Right to Know through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reveal a National Intelligence Council memorandum dated Jan. 17, 2025, stating that "the IC plans further engagements with outside experts to establish a new panel to conduct an independent study on the origins of COVID-19."
The document—coming after years of congressional investigations, intelligence assessments and the 2023 COVID-19 Origin Act requiring declassification—underscores what critics call a troubling pattern: government institutions that publicly claimed closure on the origins question while privately acknowledging the matter remains fundamentally unresolved.
CIA's long-awaited shift
The January 2025 memo incorporates the CIA's decision to favor a "research-related incident" origin over natural spillover—a shift made public the same month as John Ratcliffe became President Donald Trump's choice to head the agency.
The agency's assessment, delivered with "low confidence," was not based on new intelligence but rather on re-examination of existing evidence about the virus's scientific properties and conditions inside China's virology labs. The CIA stated it "continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios remain plausible."
The FBI and Department of Energy had already favored a lab-leak origin. Four other intelligence agencies and the NIC itself continued favoring a natural-origin explanation. Two unnamed agencies "changed their confidence levels in some of their judgments because of new reporting"—though those details remain redacted.
China's persistent stonewall
China's refusal to grant independent scientists access to Wuhan or share raw data has made conclusive determination likely impossible. The WHO's 2021 origins team labeled a lab leak "extremely unlikely"—a conclusion WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus himself later walked back, acknowledging in July 2021 that China's data withholding meant a lab accident "could not be ruled out."
The WHO then established the Scientific Advisory Group on Origins of Novel Pathogens to continue the investigation. China rejected SAGO's requests for data on Wuhan's coronavirus research laboratories and the animal species sold at the Huanan market in 2019.
"We will not accept such an origin-tracing plan as it, in some aspects, disregards common sense and defies science," said Zeng Yixin, Vice Minister of the National Health Commission, in 2021.
Chinese authorities dismissed the January 2025 CIA report as lacking credibility and politically motivated. Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu stated the U.S. should "stay away from conspiracy theories."
Congressional mandates and continued secrecy
Despite the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023 and the National Defense Authorization Act of 2026 requiring declassification of origins-related intelligence, substantial portions of the newly released ODNI records remain blacked out.
The records—obtained through a July 2025 lawsuit stemming from USRTK's FOIA request—include what appears to be the first publicly revealed NIC memorandum on the subject. An earlier October 2023 memo was also released.
The document does not identify who would serve on the proposed independent panel, whether it was ever created, or whether any independent study was completed.
Historical context: Why this story matters
The persistence of the origins question nearly five years after the pandemic began carries profound implications for public trust, scientific transparency and national security policy.
Gain-of-function research: The Wuhan Institute of Virology conducted research on SARS-like coronaviruses in collaboration with U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance, funded through federal grants. A 2018 grant application to DARPA sought to insert novel cleavage sites into coronaviruses—denied as too risky.
Institutional credibility: The WHO initially dismissed the lab-leak hypothesis as "extremely unlikely," then later acknowledged crucial information gaps. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who originally promoted the zoonotic spillover hypothesis with "completely open mind," conceded in 2023 that the natural origin "hasn't been definitively proven."
Congressional findings: The House "After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic"—a 527-page report summarized through AI—found the pandemic likely originated from a laboratory accident, criticized EcoHealth Alliance and Dr. Peter Daszak as unfit for taxpayer funding, and deemed NIH funding of gain-of-function research at WIV potentially illegal.
An unfinished investigation
The January 2025 ODNI memo confirms what critics have long argued: The question of COVID-19's origins remains fundamentally unresolved—not because evidence doesn't exist, but because China has refused to provide it and U.S. institutions have failed to compel its disclosure.
The CIA's shift toward a lab-leak origin, even with low confidence, represents a significant institutional recalibration. Yet with substantial portions of intelligence assessments still redacted despite congressional declassification mandates, the American public remains denied the full truth about how a pandemic that killed millions began.
Until China permits independent access to Wuhan—and until U.S. intelligence agencies release unredacted assessments—the origins question will remain what it has always been: a matter of inference, not certainty.
Sources for this article include:
Please contact us for more information.
