New whistleblower testimony delivered to Congress has raised allegations that the CIA attempted to offer financial incentives to analysts in order to suppress findings suggesting that COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.

A senior-level CIA officer revealed to House committee leaders that the agency had made efforts to provide financial incentives to six analysts if they altered their position and asserted that the virus had originated from animals rather than a Wuhan laboratory. These revelations were detailed in a letter addressed to CIA Director William Burns.

Chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), and Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Mike Turner (R-Ohio), jointly requested that the CIA produce all related documents, communications, and payment information from the CIA’s COVID Discovery Team by September 26.

The House panel chairs outlined that, according to the whistleblower, six out of the seven team members had concluded, after reviewing intelligence and scientific data, that there was sufficient evidence to make a low-confidence assessment that COVID-19 could have originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. The most senior member of the team held the view that the virus had emerged through zoonosis.

The whistleblower further claimed that the six analysts who supported the lab leak theory were provided with a substantial monetary incentive to change their stance. These analysts were described as experienced officers with significant scientific expertise.

In addition to the documents and information from the CIA, Wenstrup and Turner requested documents and communications between the CIA and other federal agencies, including the State Department, the FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Energy Department.

They also identified former CIA chief operating officer Andrew Makridis as a key figure in the COVID investigation and sought his cooperation for a transcribed interview. Makridis played a significant role in coordinating the agency’s response to COVID before his retirement in 2022, and he currently serves as a senior adviser at Beacon Global Strategies, a strategic advisory firm.

The FBI was the first U.S. intelligence agency to conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely originated from a lab leak. In February, the Energy Department also expressed its belief that a lab leak was a plausible scenario based on new intelligence. However, the broader U.S. intelligence community’s declassified 10-page report on COVID origins in June indicated that while there were “biosafety concerns” and “genetic engineering” activities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, most agencies assessed that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered.

The report also highlighted that several scientists at the Wuhan lab had fallen ill in the fall of 2019 with symptoms “consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19.”

While the CIA and one other intelligence agency have remained unable to pinpoint the exact origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, some former U.S. intelligence officials, including former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, have advocated for the “lab leak theory” as the most credible explanation. Ratcliffe stated in a congressional hearing that the theory was supported by intelligence, scientific evidence, and common sense, emphasizing that, when compared side by side, the evidence for a lab leak was substantial while the support for the natural origins theory was limited. Ratcliffe served as the Director of National Intelligence during the Trump administration.

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