[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                   INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF COVID.
                                PART 2:
                  CHINA AND THE AVAILABLE INTELLIGENCE

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

            SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

                                 OF THE

               COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             APRIL 18, 2023

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-19

                               __________

  Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability
  
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]  


                       Available on: govinfo.gov,
                         oversight.house.gov or
                             docs.house.gov
                             
                               __________

                                
                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
51-891 PDF                  WASHINGTON : 2023                    
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------     
                            
               COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

                    JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman

Jim Jordan, Ohio                     Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Ranking 
Mike Turner, Ohio                        Minority Member
Paul Gosar, Arizona                  Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of 
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina            Columbia
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin            Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Gary Palmer, Alabama                 Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia
Clay Higgins, Louisiana              Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Pete Sessions, Texas                 Ro Khanna, California
Andy Biggs, Arizona                  Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
Nancy Mace, South Carolina           Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Jake LaTurner, Kansas                Katie Porter, California
Pat Fallon, Texas                    Cori Bush, Missouri
Byron Donalds, Florida               Shontel Brown, Ohio
Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota        Jimmy Gomez, California
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania            Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico
William Timmons, South Carolina      Robert Garcia, California
Tim Burchett, Tennessee              Maxwell Frost, Florida
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia      Becca Balint, Vermont
Lisa McClain, Michigan               Summer Lee, Pennsylvania
Lauren Boebert, Colorado             Greg Casar, Texas
Russell Fry, South Carolina          Jasmine Crockett, Texas
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida           Dan Goldman, New York
Chuck Edwards, North Carolina        Jared Moskowitz, Florida
Nick Langworthy, New York
Eric Burlison, Missouri

                       Mark Marin, Staff Director
             Mitchell Benzine, Subcommittee Staff Director
                        Marie Policastro, Clerk

                      Contact Number: 202-225-5074

                Miles Lichtman, Minority Staff Director

            Select Subcommittee On The Coronavirus Pandemic

                     Brad Wenstrup, Ohio, Chairman
Nicole Malliotakis, New York         Raul Ruiz, California, Ranking 
Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa           Minority Member
Debbie Lesko, Arizona                Debbie Dingell, Michigan
Michael Cloud, Texas                 Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
John Joyce, Pennsylvania             Deborah Ross, North Carolina
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia      Robert Garcia, California
Ronny Jackson, Texas                 Ami Bera, California
Rich Mccormick, Georgia              Jill Tokuda, Hawaii
                        
                        
                        C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hearing held on April 18, 2023...................................     1

                               Witnesses

                              ----------                              

The Honorable John Ratcliffe, Former Director of National 
  Intelligence, Former U.S. Representative
Oral Statement...................................................     5

Mr. David Feith, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for 
  East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Fellow at the Center for a New 
  American Security
Oral Statement...................................................     7

Dr. Mark Lowenthal, Ph.D., Former Assistant Director of Central 
  Intelligence for Analysis and Production, Former Deputy 
  Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, 
  Former Vice Chairman for Evaluation for the National 
  Intelligence Council
Oral Statement...................................................     9

Written opening statements and the written statements of the 
  witnesses are available on the U.S. House of Representatives 
  Document Repository at: docs.house.gov.

                           Index of Documents

                              ----------                              

  * Report, DNI, Updated Assessment on COVID-19 Origins; 
    submitted by Rep. Dingell.
  * Report, Cell Press, The Origins of SARS-CoV-2: A Critical 
    Review; submitted by Rep. Dingell.
  * White House National Security Strategy; submitted by Rep. 
    Mfume.
  * Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Fact Sheet, SSCP 
    Democrats; submitted by Rep. Ruiz.

Documents are available at: docs.house.gov.

 
                   INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF COVID
                                PART 2:
                  CHINA AND THE AVAILABLE INTELLIGENCE

                              ----------                              


                    Tuesday, April 18, 2023

                        House of Representatives

               Committee on Oversight and Accountability

            Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic

                                                   Washington, D.C.

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:34 a.m., in 
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brad Wenstrup 
(Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
    Present: Representatives Wenstrup, Malliotakis, Miller-
Meeks, Lesko, Cloud, Joyce, Greene, Jackson, McCormick, Ruiz, 
Dingell, Mfume, Garcia, Bera, and Tokuda.
    Also present: Representatives Comer, Jordan, and Moskowitz.
    Dr. Wenstrup. The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus 
Pandemic will come to order. I want to welcome everyone.
    Without objection, the Chair may declare a recess at any 
time.
    Pursuant to Rule 7(d) of the Committee on Oversight and 
Accountability, at the discretion of Chairman Comer, Mr. 
Jordan, a Member of the full Committee, may participate in 
today's hearing for the purposes of questions.
    Further, without objection, I ask unanimous consent for Mr. 
Moskowitz of the full committee to join today for the purposes 
of questions.
    I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening 
statement.
    Today marks the Select Subcommittee's second hearing in our 
series investigating the origins of COVID-19. At our first 
hearing, we heard what we presume for years that in addition to 
this being a scientific question, it is also one of 
intelligence and national security. Former director of the U.S. 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert 
Redfield, who himself is a virologist, while discussing the 
origins testified, ``I do not think that the answer is going to 
come from the scientific community. I think the answer is going 
to come from the intelligence community.''
    As Dr. Redfield stated, and we agree, the intelligence 
community plays an important role in this investigation. We are 
not here to analyze the intelligence ourselves. We are here to 
listen to the experts and follow the facts, and that is exactly 
what we are here to do today: ask those that were actually 
involved in the intelligence process in the earliest days of 
the pandemic about what they saw and how we as Congress should 
proceed. We appreciate each of the witnesses here today.
    I do want to highlight that according to the congressional 
Research Service, this is the first time current or former 
director of national intelligence has testified before the 
Oversight Committee. Welcome. I think it truly shows the 
importance of this issue for Director Ratcliffe to be here 
today, and we thank him.
    We will discuss and examine many aspects of the available 
unclassified intelligence, and it is my sincere hope that this 
hearing moves the ball forward and we can ultimately agree on 
both sides of the aisle that the origins of COVID-19 cannot be 
solved by science alone. Starting in early 2020, there were 
rumblings about the possibility COVID-19 came from a lab likely 
in Wuhan. Every month since then, more and more circumstantial 
evidence has come to light suggesting this is the case.
    On January 15, 2021, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, 
released a fact sheet regarding some intelligence gathered 
surrounding the origins of COVID-19. The fact sheet stated 
three things. First, there were numerous researchers inside the 
Wuhan Institute of Virology that were sick in the fall of 2019. 
While this does not prove COVID-19 came from the lab, it is a 
data point suggesting so. Just two weeks ago, an expert in 
emerging disease outbreaks testified before this Subcommittee 
that researchers in the lab becoming sick would be consistent 
with a research-related lab outbreak.
    Second, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has a published 
record of gain-of-function research, including at low biosafety 
levels, and, again, we know that much of this work was done 
with U.S.-based, EcoHealth Alliance. And we know that EcoHealth 
Alliance has failed to publish all its work and has, in fact, 
refused to share its work with the U.S. Government. In other 
words, U.S.-taxpayer-funded risky research that may have 
sparked a pandemic is being hidden by a U.S. entity in China.
    Third, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has cooperated with 
the Chinese military since at least 2017, including on animal 
laboratory experiments. The Biden Administration did not and 
still has not disagreed with these facts. A senior Biden State 
Department official said, ``No one is disputing the 
information, the fact that those data points exist, the fact 
that they are accurate.'' Ironically enough, the Biden 
Administration takes issue with the fact that the Trump 
Administration released these facts. The same official said, 
``The Trump Administration put spin on the ball.'' I think the 
fact sheet is pretty clear and non-biased. It even stated that 
the U.S. Government does not know exactly where, when, or how 
the COVID-19 virus was initially transmitted to humans. That is 
true. The rest are simply statements of fact derived from 
available intelligence.
    Next, on October 29, 2021, the Office of the Director of 
National Intelligence released its first declassified 
assessment on COVID-19 origins. This stated unequivocally that 
both a laboratory and natural origin are plausible. Since then, 
more reporting has emerged. FBI Director Christopher Wray 
confirmed publicly that the FBI assessed COVID-19 most likely 
originated from a lab incident in Wuhan. And the Wall Street 
Journal reported the Department of Energy now also believes a 
lab leak is the most likely origin.
    The fact that it is these two agencies is important. The 
FBI uses experts in biological threats and was reportedly 
supported by the National Bioforensic Analysis Center, and the 
Department of Energy used its own Z Division experts in 
investigating biological threats. These are both scientific and 
intelligence experts.
    While the specific origin of COVID-19 may not be 100 
percent clear, there is mounting evidence suggesting a research 
or lab-related incident. What is clear, though, is that China 
does not want the globe to know the origins. They dodge and 
duck every legitimate attempt to investigate this question. 
According to the fact sheet, China has systematically prevented 
a transparent and thorough investigation of the COVID-19 
pandemic's origin. According to the ODNI report, China has 
hindered global investigations, resisted sharing information, 
and reported to blaming other countries, including the United 
States. This became even more clear when we received this email 
from the Chinese Embassy last week.
    Without objection, I would ask unanimous consent to enter 
this email into the record.
    Dr. Wenstrup. In it, the Chinese Embassy expresses grave 
concern regarding this hearing and states they firmly oppose 
it. Well, we have some news for Beijing: these intimidation 
tactics will not work. We will not slow down our work, and we 
will not cease. After the hearing, I will be sending a letter 
to the Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. requesting China cease 
intimidation tactics and cooperate with this investigation. I 
extend the invitation to any Member of this Subcommittee to 
join me on that letter. Thank you.
    I would now like to recognize Ranking Member Ruiz for the 
purpose of making an opening statement.
    Dr. Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Understanding the 
origins of the COVID-19 pandemic is important to America's 
public health and our ability to respond to future public 
health threats. In fact, since the first outbreak of COVID-19, 
researchers in the scientific community have worked tirelessly 
to get to the bottom of this very issue with dozens of studies 
that have been conducted or currently under way, and agents in 
the intelligence community have continued their sweeping 
assessment of COVID-19's origins. Thanks to President Biden's 
direction and leadership, we are learning more every day.
    In May 2021, he directed the intelligence community to 
evaluate whether the novel coronavirus could have emerged from 
a laboratory in China, urging our Nation's intelligence 
agencies to do ``everything we can'' to trace the roots of this 
outbreak. Since then, two government agencies have assessed 
with low and moderate confidence that the virus originated in a 
lab, while four government agencies assessed with low 
confidence that the virus came about through natural 
transmission. As it stands, there is no consensus. The reports 
are inconclusive, and more research is needed.
    While our scientist and intelligence communities continue 
their investigations, it is crucial that we empower them to do 
so without extreme partisan rhetoric or political biases that 
cherry pick evidence to push a partisan political narrative 
that vilify public health leaders. Our focus as lawmakers 
should be on developing policies based on current and evolving 
evidence to prevent and prepare for future pandemics and save 
lives. To do right by the American people and our public 
health, we must let our expert communities do their job. And in 
turn, we must develop policies based on evidence, as 
inconclusive as it may be at the moment, that will help us 
prevent the next pandemic no matter which COVID origin theory 
you believe in.
    We must also take a deep dive into the barriers to our 
Nation's ability to research the origins of COVID and respond 
to it. This includes examining how the Chinese Communist 
Party's refusal to cooperate with international investigations 
in December 2019 set us back in our pandemic response, and how 
the Chinese Communist Party's continued spread of 
misinformation and obfuscation of evidence has hindered our 
ability to understand both theories of how this virus came to 
be in the first place. In order to better be prepared for the 
future, it is crucial that we develop forward-looking domestic 
and foreign policies that advance American interests, protect 
our public health, and save lives. This means rejecting the 
isolationist approach President Trump took under the guise of 
``America first'' that decimated the State Department, weakened 
our ability to engage, left a void that rendered America 
vulnerable to China's growing influence. It also abandoned 
state-to-state diplomacy, allowed tensions to intensify, and 
escalated a trade war that fell hardest on American workers. 
Under this approach, America's public health, economy, and 
security ultimately paid the price.
    So now, we must take decisive action to protect our public 
health, economy, and security from the CCP's growing influence 
by investing in competition, deepening collaboration with our 
allies, and furthering the State Department's diplomatic work. 
That means building on the progress we have made with 
legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act to invest in 
innovation, so that we can outcompete China in sectors critical 
to our public health and national defense and strengthening our 
supply chain. And that means building on House Democrats' and 
the Biden Administration's work to bolster our pandemic 
preparedness, public health infrastructure, and international 
and domestic standards for pandemic surveillance to address 
possible animal transmissions, and biomedical research safety 
to address possible lab leaks.
    There is certainly more work to do, and it is my sincere 
hope that we can pursue this work together on a bipartisan 
basis. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how global health 
security, pandemic preparedness, and national security are 
linked, and so as we seek to better understand the virus' 
origins, we must take a scientific and evidence-based approach. 
As a physician and Ranking Member of the Select Subcommittee, I 
take this charge seriously of putting people over politics to 
protect our public health. We should do this work without the 
politicization and extreme partisan rhetoric that get in the 
way of commonsense solutions to the public health challenges we 
face.
    Let us get to work on forward-looking policies that will 
prevent and reduce the harm of future viruses and pandemics 
without vilifying our Nation's public health officials. The 
world is watching what we are doing here today, and it is my 
hope that we rise to the occasion, and that we meet the moment 
with the integrity that our global health and national security 
demand.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, Dr. Ruiz. Pursuant to Committee on 
Oversight and Accountability Rule 9(g), the witnesses will 
please stand and raise their right hands.
    Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony that you 
are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth, so help you God?
    [A chorus of ayes.]
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, please be seated.
    Let the record show that the witnesses all answered in the 
affirmative.
    Our witnesses today are the Honorable John Ratcliffe. 
Director Ratcliffe was most recently the Director of National 
Intelligence, serving as the principal intelligence adviser to 
the President. Prior to that, he served in Congress and as a 
Member of the House Intelligence, Homeland Security, and 
Judiciary Committees. Mr. David Feith. Mr. Feith is currently 
an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American 
Security. He was previously the Deputy Assistant Secretary of 
State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. And Dr. Mark 
Lowenthal. Dr. Lowenthal previously served as the Assistant 
Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production, 
and also as Vice Chairman for Evaluation on the National 
Intelligence Council. The Select Subcommittee certainly 
appreciates you all for being here today. We appreciate your 
service, and we look forward to your testimony.
    Let me remind the witnesses that we have read your written 
statements, and they will appear in full in the hearing record. 
Please limit your oral statements to five minutes. As a 
reminder, please press the button on the microphone in front of 
you so that it is on and the Members can hear you. When you 
begin to speak, the light in front of you will turn green. 
After four minutes, the light will turn yellow. When the red 
light comes on, your five minutes have expired, and we would 
ask that you please wrap up.
    I now recognize Director Ratcliffe to give an opening 
statement.

                     STATEMENT OF JOHN L. RATCLIFFE

                FORMER DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

                       FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE

    Mr. Ratcliffe. Chairman Wenstrup, Ranking Member Ruiz, 
Members of the Committee, it is a pleasure for me to be back in 
the House of Representatives where I spent six years serving on 
the House Intelligence, Judiciary, and Homeland Security 
committees before leaving Congress when I was confirmed by the 
Senate to serve as the Director of National Intelligence in the 
Trump Administration.
    My confirmation was actually the first in-person Senate 
hearing after the COVID-19 pandemic began. And during it, I 
promised to ensure that the intelligence community would be 
laser focused on getting answers to the virus' origins and 
spread. What follows is a brief unclassified overview of what 
the intelligence community learned and knows, a synopsis of the 
relevant challenges that I encountered during this effort and 
where I believe we must go from here.
    First, let me state the bottom-line up front. My informed 
assessment as a person with as much access as anyone to our 
government's intelligence during the initial year of the 
pandemic has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the 
only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by 
science, and by commonsense. From a view inside the IC, if our 
intelligence and evidence supporting a lab leak theory was 
placed side-by-side with our intelligence and evidence pointing 
to a natural origins or spillover theory, the lab leak side of 
the ledger would be long, convincing, even overwhelming, while 
the spillover side would be nearly empty and tenuous.
    Were this a trial, a preponderance of circumstantial 
evidence provided by our intelligence would compel a jury 
finding of guilt to an accusation that coronavirus research in 
Wuhan Labs was responsible for the pandemic. And likewise, the 
Chinese Communist Party would be guilty of going to great 
lengths to cover up the virus' origins, from destroying medical 
tests, samples, and data to intimidating and disappearing 
witnesses and journalists, to lying and coercing global health 
authorities, even spreading propaganda that the virus 
originated here in the United States by the U.S. military.
    Their efforts continue to this day as the Chinese Embassy 
has formally objected to this hearing and this committee's 
efforts to ascertain the truth, and the Chinese Government has 
done all of this, while proving itself incapable of offering 
even a shred of exculpatory evidence. The intelligence 
community's sources on this issue are numerous, diverse, and 
unassailable, and I hope that the recent unanimous 
congressional support to require the declassification of our 
COVID origins material will make some of this available to you 
and the American people.
    Right now, a few of the intelligence community's agencies 
are publicly assessing that COVID-19 virus originated from a 
lab leak in Wuhan. And as the shift continues, the day will 
come when every single agency in the IC will make the same 
assessment, which begs the question, why have they not to this 
point? It is a simple and obvious question that does not have a 
simple answer.
    The challenges that I and other senior Trump Administration 
officials encountered while in office included legitimate 
concerns about our closely held sources and methods of 
intelligence as well as illegitimate roadblocks that related to 
professional conflicts of interest and partisan politics. These 
included the headwinds created when a lab leak assessment was 
initially labeled false and falsely reported with near 
unanimity as a conspiracy theory by conflicted scientists and 
by mainstream press while also being censored as disinformation 
by social media giants.
    Internally, national and electoral politics were also 
influencing the analysis of our intelligence on China within 
the IC as reflected in the January 6, 2021 report by the 
intelligence community's analytic ombudsman. As a career 
nonpolitical official, the ombudsman found, ``Analysts appeared 
reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward 
because they tend to disagree with the Trump Administration's 
policies, saying in effect, I do not want our intelligence use 
to support those policies.''
    To this day, the CIA, which I believe is unquestionably the 
world's premier spy agency with an unrivaled capacity to 
acquire information, has continued to state that it does not 
have enough information to make any formal assessment. To put 
it bluntly, I think this is unjustifiable and a reflection, not 
that the Agency cannot make an assessment with any confidence, 
but that it won't. Some 3 ½years later, the only 
plausible assessment the Agency could make with any level of 
confidence is that a virus, which killed over a million 
Americans, originated in a Chinese lab whose research included 
work for the Chinese military. And such an assessment would 
obviously have enormous geopolitical implications that I 
believe the current Administration does not want to face head 
on.
    Let me close by saying that I think that the search for the 
truth should drive where we go from here. And everyone, from 
our intelligence agencies to members of the Administration, to 
Members of Congress, to public health officials should put 
politics aside and let our intelligence speak the truth about 
what happened. Speak the truth to the Americans who deserve 
that truth, deserve justice, and deserve accountability. And 
only by seeking truth, justice, and accountability for this 
pandemic can we achieve the other equally important goal of 
preventing the next pandemic.
    Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, Director. I now recognize Mr. 
Feith to give an opening statement.

            STATEMENT OF DAVID FEITH, ADJUNCT SENIOR FELLOW

                   CENTER FOR A NEW AMERICAN SECURITY

               FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE

                   FOR EAST ASIAN AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS

    Mr. Feith. Chairman Wenstrup, Ranking Member Ruiz, and 
Select Subcommittee Members, thanks for this opportunity.
    My written testimony that I have submitted has three 
elements. First, it describes how the State Department's East 
Asia Bureau approached the COVID origin issue during the first 
year of the pandemic, from the outbreak to the publication in 
January 2021 of a fact sheet on activity at the Wuhan Institute 
of Virology. Second, it describes the terribly damaging effects 
of our public health establishment's efforts to stigmatize the 
very notion that COVID may have emerged from a laboratory 
accident. This drove underground discussion of a set of risks, 
namely those involved in gain-of-function research, that 
deserves to be at the front and center of our policymaking. 
Third, it offers some oversight and policy suggestions on 
helping to find the origin of COVID, to fix policy and 
intelligence problems raised by these issues, and to tighten 
U.S. science and technology exchanges with China to protect 
national security and to help prevent a next pandemic.
    In my short remarks here, I want to stress the stakes 
involved in whether COVID emerged from nature or from a lab, 
the stakes are almost unimaginably grave. COVID was not some 
immaculate infection. It was not spontaneously generated. It 
came from somewhere, and the details matter. If it emerged 
naturally, it implies certain things about human interactions 
with nature where the risks are sizable enough. But if it 
emerged from a lab, particularly one conducting gain-of-
function virology experiments with technologies invented only a 
few years ago, then this was akin to a Hiroshima event, 
revealing new and modern high-tech risks to human civilizations 
and even to our species.
    This is what makes it such a scandal that many of the most 
influential U.S. Government and academic authorities on 
virology were coordinating to, as one said, disprove any type 
of lab theory. These officials and scientists knew that COVID 
may have come from a lab, they knew that a lab leak could have 
resulted from research in Wuhan funded by the U.S. Government, 
and they knew that if such research were, in fact, part of 
COVID's origin, they could face professional and personal 
embarrassment. So, these officials and scientists evidently 
collaborated to convince the government and the public not to 
investigate the origin of COVID, at least not in a fashion that 
followed the evidence down paths that could point to a lab 
origin.
    The misdirection tactics worked. The lab leak theory became 
stigmatized, driven underground, and yet evidence continued to 
mount in its favor. By late 2020, colleagues at State flagged 
new U.S. Government information that underscored the 
plausibility of a lab leak. Most significant, there were sick 
researchers inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology just before 
the public outbreak in Wuhan. That same Wuhan lab had a long 
record of secrecy about its coronavirus research and 
undisclosed ties with China's military. Working with ODNI, we 
at State arranged to make this information public. Some of our 
colleagues warned us not to. They said not to highlight China's 
gain-of-function research lest we draw attention to the U.S. 
Government's own role in such research and open a Pandora's 
box. It wasn't clear exactly what these colleagues feared, but 
their seeming demand for non-transparency was unpersuasive.
    On January 15, 2021, we published a fact sheet on activity 
at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In the months that 
followed, the lab leak possibility began to force its way into 
the mainstream. By May 2021, President Biden himself recognized 
the significance of the lab leak possibility and ordered a 90-
day review of U.S. intelligence. Unfortunately, progress since 
then has been limited. We now know that the FBI and the 
Department of Energy both assessed that a lab leak is most 
likely. That is important. But we do not need a running 
intelligence community straw poll as much as we need a 
transparent whole-of-government campaign to recognize the 
gravely high stakes of the lab leak possibility and pursue 
appropriate policy reforms. Gain-of-function technologies of 
the kind that emerged only in the last 10 to 15 years, where 
the deadliest viruses can conceivably be fused with the most 
infectious ones, appear to pose a species-level risk to human 
life.
    It has been commonly said for 75 years that nuclear weapons 
could destroy the world or humanity, and so they might, but 
that would likely require many decisions in at least two 
capitals over some sustained period of time. The gain-of-
function risk is that one mistake in one place, let alone one 
deliberate act by some actor, is all that it takes. Once a 
virus of sufficient infectiousness and deadliness escapes a 
lab, there may be nothing humanity can do to stop it.
    This is the stunning tragedy of those experts who 
stigmatized even the notion of a lab leak. Faced with a 
possible dry run of the worst-case pandemic that gain-of-
function science has made the world have to fear, the 
authorities who know the most about this threat did not speak 
up. Many even sought to silence others. This has caused a 
paralytic affect to this day, not only on public awareness, but 
on the policy reforms that we need to protect ourselves from 
lab risks in the future. Overcoming this handicap is a major 
obligation for lawmakers and policymakers going forward.
    As we are trying still to confirm COVID's origin, I would 
quickly note three points. First, the immediate 
declassification test. Congress recently passed a law requiring 
the Biden Administration to declassify intelligence on COVID's 
origin within 90 days. This is a third test for the IC and the 
rest of the interagency after failures to disclose in 2020 and 
2021. There is no doubt that the Administration has far more 
information than has been released publicly.
    Second, the sick researchers still stand alone. The sick 
Wuhan lab researchers identified in the January 2021 fact sheet 
remain the best lead into who or what was patient zero. No 
animal anywhere has been identified as a comparably likely 
source of the outbreak. The Biden Administration, like the 
Trump Administration before it, has more information about the 
sick researchers than has been released. Third, and finally, 
what changed the Department of Energy's mind? The most 
significant fresh piece of intelligence we know about post-2020 
is whatever reportedly motivated the Energy Department's recent 
change of assessment. Maximizing the release of this 
information would clearly shed additional light on the COVID 
mystery. Thank you.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, Mr. Feith. I now recognize Dr. 
Lowenthal to give an opening statement.

                      STATEMENT OF MARK LOWENTHAL

  FORMER ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE FOR ANALYSIS AND 
                               PRODUCTION

   FORMER VICE CHAIRMAN FOR EVALUATION FOR THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE 
                                COUNCIL

    FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INTELLIGENCE AND 
                                RESEARCH

    Dr. Lowenthal. Chairman Wenstrup, Ranking Member Ruiz, 
Members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to 
discuss intelligence and the origins of the COVID pandemic.
    I have spent most of my adult life as an intelligence 
analyst or as a manager of intelligence analysts. I have also 
taught analytical skills to hundreds of new analysts. To be a 
good intelligence analyst, you have to have the ability to deal 
with ambiguity. Very often, analysts are asked to address 
issues for which there may not be a final definitive answer. 
Analysts live in a world where there may be several 
possibilities, each of which has its own degree of certainty 
and uncertainty. This can be very frustrating to policymakers 
who want an answer. Given the available intelligence and our 
own expertise, a specific answer cannot always be determined. 
This seems to be the case at this point in terms of the origin 
of the coronavirus in China.
    There has not been sufficient intelligence to date to make 
a firm judgment as to whether the virus occurred naturally or 
was the result of activity in the lab, whether witting or 
accidental. The ODNI's October 2021 declassified assessment on 
COVID-19 origins, which you both cited, reflects this 
uncertainty. Four intelligence agencies assessed that the virus 
originated naturally with low confidence. One intelligence 
agency believes the virus originated in a lab with moderate 
confidence. Three intelligence agencies are unable to make a 
determination either way. Again, this can be frustrating to 
policymakers, but that is the nature of intelligence.
    One of the points that I stress to new analysts is that you 
want your reader, the policymaker, to understand and appreciate 
your uncertainty as well as your certainty because they will be 
making decisions based on your analysis, and you do not want to 
portray a confidence and a certainty that misrepresents your 
intelligence. Absent greater cooperation and transparency from 
China, which seem highly unlikely, we may never resolve this 
issue with certainty.
    It is important that we look back at the intelligence and 
policy experience from the pandemic and ask ourselves, what can 
we do better next time. I have a few recommendations.
    We should consider creating a national intelligence officer 
for health issues, who, with his or her office, would serve as 
the focal point for U.S. intelligence collection and analysis, 
not only on health issues that threaten the United States, but 
also looking at health issues worldwide, that can be 
destabilizing regionally. The intelligence community likely 
needs to hire analysts with backgrounds in medicine, 
epidemiology, and other areas. There is a section of the 
Centers for Disease Control that has TS/SCI cleared analysts, 
but I think the larger intelligence community needs more in-
house expertise in these issues. Finally, it is important to 
avoid politicizing intelligence efforts on issues like the 
COVID pandemic. The intelligence community prides itself on 
being nonpartisan and objective, and I believe we meet these 
standards on a high consistent basis.
    Intelligence may sometimes be discomforting and may run 
counter to preferred policy preferences, but that does not mean 
that it is partisan or subjective. It becomes increasingly 
difficult for intelligence officers to do their best work when 
they are put under constant partisan pressure or when they are 
consistently accused of being partisan.
    Some people refer to the role of the intelligence community 
as telling truth to power. I find that phrase objectionable as 
it is arrogant, and, more to the point, we do not have truth in 
many cases, but well-sourced, well-thought-out analytic 
conclusions. These will sometimes run counter to the preferred 
views or outcomes of policymakers. That does not mean the 
intelligence has been politicized. It means that intelligence 
is being honest when talking to power. That is a great 
responsibility, and the intelligence community takes it very 
seriously.
    Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you all very much. I now recognize 
myself for a series of questions.
    If you have had the chance to follow the initial workings 
of this Subcommittee to date, you would know that the drive of 
this committee is to perform an after-action review, have 
lessons learned, create a path forward for any future pandemic 
so that we may able to predict, prepare for, protect ourselves, 
and hopefully prevent any future pandemic. This, I believe, 
would be consistent with the suggestion made by Dr. Lowenthal. 
Hopefully, we may produce a product that will allow us to 
certainly be better next time out of this committee.
    It is a fair question, why decisions may have been made. 
Were they based on data, hypothesis? Were there motives to the 
decisions such as personal gain or political game? All fair 
questions.
    Dr. Lowenthal recommended having a national intelligence 
officer for health. In many ways I believe we have this with 
the National Center for Medical Intelligence, but we may need 
to expand their role. It was also suggested that the 
intelligence community hire experts with backgrounds in 
medicine and epidemiology and other specialties. And I agree 
with that, and that is why I have been requesting from ODNI 
information concerning those experts that they have consulted 
during their review of the origins question. I am interested in 
knowing which actual specialists weighed in for each component 
of the IC. If one agency has 20 virologists and another has 
none, that can make a huge difference in analyst outcomes. So, 
I am curious as to why so many agencies have different opinions 
on this. The expertise of those that have contributed to each 
agency matters and makes a difference.
    For this committee, I have stated that honesty is non-
negotiable, and that requires truth. And I understand that 100 
percent certainty in an analysis is difficult to come by, but 
what can be truthful is the level of confidence in an analytic 
summary. Unfortunately, during my time on the Intelligence 
Committee, I have seen cases of what seems to be political 
partisanship. I have seen a situation where analysts came 
forward as whistleblowers, charging that their analyses were 
changed or ignored for political purposes. In other words, 
their analysis stated that things were going badly and yet 
after going up the chain, a politician stated that everything 
was going well.
    Mr. Ratcliffe, as DNI, did you ever feel that information 
was being withheld from you or altered in any way, or did you 
have that concern?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Mr. Chairman, I would say that, fortunately, 
that did not happen very often, but it did happen on occasion, 
and I didn't just feel it. As I referenced in my opening 
remarks, the analytic ombudsman referenced the fact that there 
were times when intelligence was suppressed.
    Dr. Wenstrup. So, why and what kind of information was 
that, if you can share it?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, as it has already been publicly 
available, the ombudsman made specific reference to 
intelligence on China.
    Dr. Wenstrup. So, did this, in your opinion, hamstring your 
ability to conduct your job?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. I think it made it more difficult, but, you 
know, through persistence and some of the things that Mr. Feith 
talked about, we were able to, in looking at the intelligence, 
particularly as it related to COVID origins, to still get to a 
point where we could protect sources and methods and yet make 
some of that intelligence available by declassifying it. And he 
referenced the process whereby we did that through a State 
Department fact sheet.
    Dr. Wenstrup. One of the aspects of this investigation that 
is most important is learning who the IC consulted with during 
the review. They said we want to know what kinds of experts 
each component worked with. I am going to ask each of you, to 
each witness, do you think this question is an important one 
when it comes to origins of COVID?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. I will begin just by saying, it is because 
sometimes, in this case, particularly when we are talking about 
COVID-19, our analytic judgments are framed in part by science. 
And so, who the scientists are and how they are motivated 
certainly is important.
    Mr. Feith. Yes, sir. I would agree and just add the element 
that conflict of interest in general, and with respect to the 
enormous amount of scientific exchange with China are 
especially important as China is central to our national 
security analytical work going forward.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Doctor?
    Dr. Lowenthal. I think it is fair to ask the intelligence 
committee who they consulted with, yes.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Mr. Feith, you were heavily 
involved in this investigation from the side of the State 
Department. While you were gathering information, did you 
struggle to find experts that did not have conflicts of 
interest?
    Mr. Feith. In short, yes, and that problem became clear in 
retrospect also.
    Dr. Wenstrup. And do you believe these same conflicted 
scientists may be briefing the IC today?
    Mr. Feith. I can't speculate about today, but based on the 
experience a few years ago, yes.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Quickly to Director Ratcliffe and 
Dr. Lowenthal. In your opinion, is it acceptable or practical 
to avoid or ignore the truth from Congress of trying not to 
divulge or to shield a covert operation?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. I don't think it is ever appropriate to 
ignore the truth. I think, from the intelligence community 
standpoint, there is an ability to protect sources and methods 
but still meet our obligations to keep Members of Congress 
informed through its proper oversight role.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Doctor?
    Dr. Lowenthal. There is a provision of law that requires 
that Congress be fully and currently informed of all current 
and significant anticipated activities. I am probably the only 
person in this room who was in the Senate chamber when the 
Senate Intelligence Committee was created, so I am an advocate 
for congressional oversight, Mr. Chairman.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Yes, I have read that statute myself, but I 
have had to bring it up and still get fought a few times in the 
Intelligence Committee. So, the next question for the two of 
you, is it important for the IC to try to know all they can 
about the weapons systems of our adversaries, including 
biological weapons?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Absolutely, and in the case of China, the 
intelligence community has publicly addressed China as our top 
national security threat from a nation-state perspective, so 
particularly, that is important with respect to the country of 
China.
    Dr. Lowenthal. Mr. Chairman, yes, this has always been a 
high priority for U.S. intelligence since the committee was 
created in 1947.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Should a virus that killed more 
than one million Americans be an intelligence priority for the 
IC and specifically the CIA and DIA?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Absolutely.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Doctor?
    Dr. Lowenthal. That depends on the policymakers. We don't 
make our priorities. The President and the National Security 
Council determine the priorities for the intelligence 
community, so if they determined it is a priority, then yes, it 
is. If they decide there are higher priorities, then, no, it 
isn't. But this is not a call for the intelligence community. 
This is something that is not understood. We don't set our 
priorities. We were there to respond to the policymakers. I 
helped create the current priority system, and its one we 
derived from the President and his National Security Council 
where are the areas you wanted the most emphasis, knowing that 
inevitably there are going to be areas where we spend less 
attention because we have finite resources.
    Dr. Wenstrup. That is a fair assessment. I would have to 
say as a policymaker that I think it should be a very high 
intelligence priority. That is well taken. Finally, Director 
Ratcliffe, we sent a document request letter to Director Haines 
on February 13. To date we have yet to receive any documents 
from ODNI. Understanding all the appropriate restrictions on 
classified material, as a former director, do you believe it is 
important for ODNI to fully cooperate with our investigation 
and produce the requested documents?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Yes.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I would now like to yield to Ranking Member 
Ruiz.
    Dr. Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Look, understanding how 
COVID-19 came to be as critical to America's public health, I 
want to point out and make clear that we wouldn't even be 
having this hearing in the first place if it wasn't for 
President Biden taking early and decisive action in May 2021 to 
investigate whether the novel coronavirus originated in a lab 
or nature.
    President Biden directed the intelligence community to 
conduct this review to ``do everything we can to trace the 
roots of this outbreak that has caused so much pain and death 
around the world so that we can take every necessary precaution 
to prevent it from happening again.'' In fact, the very 
intelligence that Democrats and Republicans voted to declassify 
last month was collected because of President Biden's directive 
for the intelligence community to use every tool at its 
disposal to investigate COVID-19's origins.
    Dr. Lowenthal, can I get a quick ``yes'' or ``no?'' Was 
President Biden's directive a critical step in advancing our 
understanding of the pandemic's origins?
    Dr. Lowenthal. Yes.
    Dr. Ruiz. I agree, and thanks to this action, we are making 
progress every day in advancing our understanding of the 
pandemic's origins despite continued obstruction from the 
Chinese Communist Party. And while we know more now than we 
ever did before, the fact of the matter is that the 
intelligence community's assessment remains inconclusive on 
whether the virus emerged from either human contact with an 
animal or from a laboratory accident. Various elements of the 
intelligence community have made different assessments, all but 
one of which were made with low confidence, meaning without 
certainty.
    Dr. Lowenthal, you have explained that the function of 
intelligence is to reduce uncertainty. When intelligence on a 
particular issue is divided between two conclusions, what is 
the best course of action for policymakers? Should we prepare 
in the event of both scenarios?
    Dr. Lowenthal. Probably, but policymakers can make their 
own decisions, regardless of the intelligence you give them. We 
are not speaking ex cathedra. We are giving our best 
intelligence and then they are making decisions. But if you had 
two strong possibilities, and I were a policymaker, which I 
have only done once or twice in my career, I would say, yes, 
you should try to protect against both of them.
    Dr. Ruiz. I agree with this, too, and this is exactly the 
approach that President Biden and Democrats have taken, an 
approach that puts people over politics. While our intelligence 
community continues to collect and analyze information that 
will bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, we have worked 
to prevent and better prepare for the next deadly pandemic, so 
that we can keep the American people safe, no matter if this 
threat originates from an animal or a lab.
    In fact, last Congress, Democrats included in the 
Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 significant reforms to 
address pandemic preparedness. This includes provisions to 
enhance safety standards for biomedical research, involving 
pathogens of pandemic potential and to recruit more public 
health workers with epidemiological backgrounds. It also 
includes reforms to prevent undue foreign influence in our 
Nation's biomedical research, such as the requirement that 
participation in foreign talent programs be disclosed to 
receive NIH grants, and a provision directing the Secretary of 
Health and Human Services and national security officials to 
identify and develop strategies that address threats to 
sensitive biomedical research. There are a whole host of other 
commonsense reforms that we passed last Congress as part of 
this package that are outlined on this factsheet.
    Mr. Chairman, permission to enter it into the record.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Without objection.
    Dr. Ruiz. Thank you. And, you know, I find it interesting 
that despite how much my colleagues on the other side of this 
dais have focused their efforts to push a lab leak narrative, 
they voted against these reforms that help prevent lab leaks in 
the future. I also want to point out the good work the 
Administration is doing by partnering with our allies to press 
for strong international standards for biosafety and security 
as part of its national security strategy. And while these are 
all good steps forward, I do think that there is more we should 
do and can do.
    Dr. Lowenthal, what additional steps should we be taking 
from an intelligence and policy perspective to build on this 
work and to better prepare us for future pandemics?
    Dr. Lowenthal. Well, I outlined those in my opening 
statement, Mr. Ruiz, but one of the things you have to remember 
about the intelligence community is we are a volunteer 
organization. I cannot draft doctors any more than the military 
can draft individuals, and so when we go out looking for 
people, looking for experts, we have to hope they want to come 
work for us, but we obviously have gaps. The National Military 
Intelligence Center is there, but they have mostly been devoted 
to supporting the defense establishment, which is fine. I am 
suggesting we need a broader expertise than that.
    But you have to remember, we can only recruit the people 
who come to the recruiting table. This was one of the great 
frustrations in my life, in my last three years at CIA, but we 
have to look at our expertise across the community and we have 
a system for doing that and ask ourselves, where are the gaps, 
and then how do I go hire the people to fill in those gaps?
    Dr. Ruiz. Dr. Lowenthal, I received my medical doctorate at 
Harvard Medical School. I received my master's in public policy 
from Harvard's Kennedy School. And I realized that when I was 
at the Kennedy School, the CIA was there recruiting students to 
join their firm. Yet there was no recruitment happening in the 
public health school, which I later received a master's in 
public health from Harvard School of Public Health or from the 
Harvard Medical School. So, perhaps one of the suggestions 
would be to entertain the career options for public health and 
physicians and medical scientists to join the intelligence 
communities in doing their research as well.
    Dr. Lowenthal. I think that would be a good idea. There 
were also no CIA recruiters when I got my degree from the 
Harvard history department. We have to rethink how we recruit, 
so going to medical schools, public health policy schools would 
be a very good idea.
    Dr. Ruiz. Thank you. I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize the Chairman of the full 
committee, Mr. Comer from Kentucky, for five minutes of 
questions.
    Chairman Comer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank 
each of the witnesses for being here today.
    As I have said from the beginning, discovering the origins 
of COVID-19 is vital to both the public health and national 
security of the United States. Former CDC Director Redfield 
testified last month that this is not simply a scientific 
question but also one of intelligence, and I agree with that. 
And we need to ensure the intelligence is accurate and 
truthful.
    On March 17, 2020, one of the most influential papers of 
all time was published in the scientific journal Nature 
Medicine, entitled ``The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.'' It 
was prompted by Dr. Fauci and written to suppress the lab leak 
hypothesis. This paper stated that no type of lab-based 
scenario is possible. Director Ratcliffe, is that factual?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. It is not.
    Chairman Comer. Mr. Feith, to you, is that statement 
factual?
    Mr. Feith. Based on my understanding, no.
    Chairman Comer. Ten days later, on March 26, the State 
Department produced a memo that stated, ``U.S. scientists 
assess the virus emerged naturally.'' It continued to say, ``A 
lab leak was improbable and not supported by the available 
evidence.'' Director Ratcliffe, are those statements factual?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. They are not.
    Chairman Comer. Mr. Feith, to you, are those statements 
factual?
    Mr. Feith. No, they were, at best, overstated.
    Chairman Comer. Mr. Feith, you were involved in the 
briefing that produced that memo?
    Mr. Feith. I was a recipient of the briefing that the memo 
is an account of.
    Chairman Comer. So, while serving at the State Department 
and investigating the origins of COVID-19, were you ever 
briefed by an author of the proximal origin paper?
    Mr. Feith. Yes, sir.
    Chairman Comer. During the preparation of that memo, which 
I referenced above, do you believe the unnamed scientists had 
apparent conflicts of interest?
    Mr. Feith. In short, yes, especially based on what we know 
since then about them.
    Chairman Comer. Were the authors, were they the ones that 
were briefing the intelligence community, the authors of that?
    Mr. Feith. So, that document is a write-up of a so-called 
analytic exchange that had been hosted by the State 
Department's Intelligence and Research Bureau that day or the 
day before, including a number of U.S. scientists who were 
briefing a range of policymakers from across the interagency.
    Chairman Comer. So, the authors were on the conference call 
with Dr. Fauci on February 1, 2020, where they almost 
universally said COVID-19 may have come from a lab.
    Mr. Feith. That actually I am not sure of, and there is a 
little bit of a difficulty in identifying exactly who was part 
of that State Department briefing just because of the rules 
that we were subject to.
    Chairman Comer. OK. Director Ratcliffe, once you became 
director, did Dr. Fauci relay any of these concerns to you that 
they have come from a lab?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. He did not.
    Chairman Comer. And why do you think he did not?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I would obviously have to speculate, 
but I would point you to Dr. Fauci being perhaps the best 
person to answer that. And there is publicly available 
information that has been obtained through open sources and 
freedom of information where Dr. Fauci and other virologists 
and scientists talk about the fact that it would bring unwanted 
attention to funding sources and the research that was taking 
place using domestic funding sources from the United States, 
and the relationship of certain Western scientists with 
scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology where unsafe 
coronavirus research was taking place in labs that did not have 
appropriate biosafety levels and precautions as had been 
reported.
    Chairman Comer. This is so bad. It just gets worse every 
day. These scientists flipped 180 degrees with no new evidence, 
produced a paper not based on facts, and then may have used 
that paper to brief the intelligence community and suppress the 
lab leak hypothesis. This is a how-to manual in orchestrating a 
cover up by using some of the most powerful and influential 
institutions in our country. If you ask me, this was set in 
motion by Dr. Fauci to hide U.S. funding of gain-of-function 
research and dodge accountability for a virus that has killed 
more than 1 million Americans. This must be investigated. Thank 
you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Mfume from Maryland for 
five minutes of questions.
    Mr. Mfume. Thank you very much, Chair Wenstrup, and my 
thanks also to Ranking Member Ruiz and all others who 
collaborated to make sure that we could have this hearing 
today. I want to thank the witnesses for their participation. 
Mr. Ratcliffe, welcome back.
    Mr. Chairman, the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored in many 
ways that the Chinese Communist Party's growing influence is 
absolutely contrary to America's interests and to America's 
values. If we as a Congress fail to meet this moment, I fear 
that we will undermine, for some time to come, our ability to 
respond to the next public health crisis and to protect 
American interests both at home and abroad. We have got a long 
road ahead of us. However, in the last two years, congressional 
Democrats as the majority party during that time, working with 
President Biden, did lay the groundwork to make sure that we 
take decisive action necessary to safeguard and to advance our 
health, our geopolitical, and our economic interests.
    In October of last year, the Biden Administration announced 
its national security strategy, which includes, as most of us 
know, a three-part plan focused on outcompeting China. And, Mr. 
Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent that that national 
strategy be entered into today's record.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Without objection.
    Mr. Mfume. The first step of the plan was to invest in 
strengthening American competition. President Biden delivered 
on that, rolling out initiatives guided by the bipartisan CHIPS 
and Science Act to strengthen American manufacturing and 
American supply chains, all, mind you, while solidifying 
America's technological leadership on the global stage. The 
State Department also launched, as we know, the China House 
initiative, which brings together China experts from throughout 
the State Department and security officials to help the 
Administration responsibly manage competition between the U.S. 
and China.
    The second step of the plan was to work with America's 
allies with common purpose and with a common sense. President 
Biden delivered, convening, as we know, the leaders of Egypt, 
Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, the EU, Italy, the 
U.K., Mexico, and Canada, to emphasize that combating China's 
global influence must be a team effort to which, by the way, 
they all concurred.
    The third and final part of the plan was to put resources 
to defending America's interests abroad. The President 
delivered, including in his fiscal 2024 budget proposal to the 
Congress, comprehensive investments in the Indo-Pacific 
region's critical infrastructure as well as investments 
focusing on shoring up American defenses in that region.
    Dr. Lowenthal, you are by all counts an expert in 
intelligence matters and have a robust understanding of China's 
influence in the global order. I appreciate the recommendation 
in your written testimony advocating for a national 
intelligence officer. I appreciate the Chair's comments that 
if, in fact, there is a similar position in place that we ought 
to look at expanding that role. Can you tell this committee, 
sir, and the American people what you think is the most 
important tactic that this Congress can use to counter the 
Chinese Communist Party?
    Dr. Lowenthal. Excuse me. I am recovering from a cold. I 
don't have COVID, I promise you. It is less a tactic than a 
strategy. We need a strategy for dealing with China, and it is 
a difficult issue because we are entangled with them 
economically. They are a competitor. They are a rival. That 
doesn't mean that they are necessarily an enemy, but we have to 
figure out how do we outcompete them without resulting in overt 
hostility. And you have to also remember that anything that we 
do is going to have a reaction from the Chinese.
    So, when President Biden tries to control the chip 
industry, for example, so that we are not supplying a rival 
with the technology that they need, which makes good sense to 
me--we did the same thing to the Soviet Union during the cold 
war very successfully--the Chinese interpret that as an act of 
hostility, which if we were all sitting in Beijing, we probably 
agree with.
    It is important, certainly as an intelligence analyst, to 
understand how the other side is going to react, but I think we 
need a strategy, and I think we have elements of that strategy. 
I think the EU, the United States, British, Australian 
alliances, is part of that strategy. I think that that is being 
successful. I think our relationship with India as part of that 
is successful, but also, we have to be prepared just as we were 
during the cold war. This is a long struggle. This is not going 
to wrap up in this Administration or the next administration. 
This is a long-term struggle. But I think if you look at it 
objectively, would you rather be China or the United States, I 
would still rather be the United States.
    Mr. Mfume. Every day.
    Dr. Lowenthal. Every day.
    Mr. Mfume. Every day. Dr. Lowenthal, my time has expired.
    Dr. Lowenthal. I am sorry.
    Mr. Mfume. Mr. Chairman, there is much to be done, 
obviously. I just want to invite colleagues on both sides of 
the aisle here and in the larger body to work together in a 
thoughtful manner to develop national security solutions based 
on putting the American people first. I yield back. Thank you, 
sir.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. I now recognize Ms. Malliotakis 
from New York for five minutes of questions.
    Ms. Malliotakis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the 
witnesses who are here today.
    What is equally as important as the CCP's actions to cover 
up and conceal the origins of COVID is understanding what role 
our government may have played in the origins of this virus and 
to what level, if any, that the health officials and members of 
our media attempted to conceal or hide the truths from the 
American people. The question surrounding American tax dollars 
being used to potentially fund the origins of this virus and 
attempts to suppress them, that is what I am here to focus on 
today.
    In November 2021, Dr. Fauci told Senator Rand Paul, under 
oath, that the NIH did not fund gain-of-function research at 
the Wuhan lab, despite having been explicitly told in an email 
in January 2021 that NIH had a monetary relationship with the 
Wuhan Institute through the EcoHealth Alliance. During the 
committee's initial origins hearing in March, I asked former 
CDC director, Dr. Redfield, whether the NIH was funding or had 
funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute, and he 
told me, ``No doubt,'' NIH was funding this research in Wuhan, 
refuting Dr. Fauci's claims.
    I will start with you, Mr. Ratcliffe. Do you agree with Dr. 
Redfield?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. I do.
    Ms. Malliotakis. Given what we know now, if you were in Dr. 
Fauci's position, would you have denied the NIH's role in gain-
of-function research at the Wuhan lab?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. No.
    Ms. Malliotakis. Do you think that Dr. Fauci lied under 
oath?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. I think that some of Dr. Fauci's testimony 
is inconsistent with some of the intelligence that we have that 
remains classified, as well as inconsistent with some 
information that is publicly available.
    Ms. Malliotakis. Do you think that President Biden should 
declassify all information related to COVID origins, every 
single document, as was requested and passed by the 
legislature?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, with the caveat that we always have to 
be careful about protecting our sources and methods, 
particularly those sources and methods as it relates to what 
the intelligence community uniformly agrees is our No. 1 threat 
from a nation-state actor standpoint. But with that caveat, you 
know, providing as much information about our intelligence as 
possible while preserving those sources and methods should 
absolutely take place as soon as possible.
    Ms. Malliotakis. Actually, let me back up and fill you guys 
in. So, even more troubling, at the time, when my time was 
expiring at the last hearing, Dr. Redfield testified that not 
only did American tax dollars fund gain-of-function research 
through the NIH but also that the Wuhan lab received money from 
State Department, USAID, and the Department of Defense. Do you 
agree with Dr. Redfield's testimony that this funding, which 
very likely played a role in the virus, came from these 
government agencies?
    Mr. Feith. My understanding is consistent with what you 
have read back in terms of the many funding sources that ran, 
you know, from Washington to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 
And certainly if the COVID origin is indeed a lab leak from 
there, it was from, you know, bat coronavirus research 
programs, some of which were funded by the U.S. Government.
    Ms. Malliotakis. OK, because we had previously heard about 
the NIH funding, but up until that hearing, I had not heard 
that it was potentially the State Department, USAID, and the 
Department of Defense that had also funded Wuhan lab 
activities. So, the U.S. Government determined that the Wuhan 
lab collaborated on publications and special projects, top 
secret projects, with the CCP military since at least 2017. 
Knowing this, for what purpose would U.S. Department of Defense 
funding be provided to the Wuhan lab?
    Mr. Feith. Well, I think for a full answer, I defer to 
folks from DOD and from the DOD, you know, biodefense relevant 
components. But in principle, the kind of broad theme of the 
funding, as I always understood it, across different parts of 
our government, NIH and USAID and State and otherwise, was 
based on a certain theory of pandemic prevention by scooping up 
these viruses, playing with them in the lab, and then trying to 
design vaccines in therapies. But there were always warnings 
that this was extremely dangerous work and that the work 
courted exactly the kind of danger that appears to have 
happened in Wuhan.
    And from our perspective, parts of the State Department 
that don't specialize in this, part of what was most troubling 
is that when COVID broke out in Wuhan practically on the 
doorsteps of that lab, we did not have folks from other parts 
of the government raising their hand to educate the non-experts 
across the government in how plausible this was and how it 
needed to be taken seriously. In fact, the folks from the other 
parts of the government that work these issues generally were 
deflecting attention, and that cost us a lot of time and 
understanding that was really damaging.
    Ms. Malliotakis. Well, I have run out of time. Mr. 
Ratcliffe, do you have anything to add to that because I saw 
you nodding your head. If not, I will defer back to the 
Chairman. Thank you.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Now I will recognize Dr. Bera from California 
for five minutes of question.
    Dr. Bera. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A lot happened in the 
last three years. Millions of Americans died. We can go back 
and re-litigate the past. I can go back and look at the prior 
administration that we set up an Office of Pandemic 
Preparedness that was there solely to advise the NSC that was 
disbanded. That was a mistake. We raised alarms at that time. 
We raised preparations. You know, I held the first hearing on 
the novel coronavirus at that time in February 2020. We pushed 
the Trump Administration to do everything they could to get our 
scientists to the hot zone, et cetera.
    So, I can very well argue the lab-leak theory because, you 
know, China did not cooperate. They did not let folks get in 
there, et cetera. You know, I can also make a case for why 
initially folks thought it jumped from an animal to human. At 
this point, I think, you know, as Dr. Lowenthal said, I don't 
think we are ever going to get an answer because I don't think 
China will ever let us get to the hot zone, will ever let us 
interview folks. I don't even think those scientists probably 
are around. I don't think the data that we would have to look 
at is there. So, I think we have to take both theories 
seriously. I think the intelligence community should continue 
to try to get an answer with high confidence.
    But, Mr. Feith, as you accurately pointed out, you know, 
any bad actor out there in the world just saw what a virus did 
to the entire planet. You know, what keeps me awake at night 
are these biothreats, are the fact that a lot of this equipment 
is readily available. I think it is legitimate for this 
committee to discuss and educate ourselves on gain-of-function 
research.
    There is a legitimate reason to do this, to help us develop 
counter tools, et cetera. But we should debate what kind of lab 
should do this, what are lab standards, et cetera. How do you 
make sure labs like Wuhan, which clearly did not have the 
precautions in place, are not doing research that might 
potentially allow something like that. Those are all legitimate 
areas, Mr. Chairman, that we should be thinking about policy 
on, we should be putting protocols in place, et cetera. We 
should be working with the IC to assess these threats.
    You know, Mr. Feith, let me ask you a question. We have to 
work with the international community. There is a reason why 
the U.S. Government partners with labs around the world because 
we do want to have these early warning systems. We do want to 
go to where these novel viruses are emerging, whether manmade 
or naturally jumping from animals to humans, because we would 
rather discover it over there. We would rather have early 
warning systems abroad. Would you agree with that assessment?
    Mr. Feith. I think, broadly, biosurveillance is extremely 
important. You know, as you have said, I think that there are, 
though, especially in light of COVID, clearly very important 
consequential questions about how broadly that kind of pandemic 
preparedness work should apply in terms of creating in 
laboratory environments certain viruses of a sufficient 
lethality and infectiousness that might be completely unlikely 
ever to emerge in nature. But having created them in a lab, we 
have delivered the world the risks that wouldn't have otherwise 
existed except with an infinitesimally small unlikelihood.
    Dr. Bera. So, I think that is accurate. Should we be doing 
that type of work? We can certainly have that debate. And if 
that type of research is taking place, what are the exact 
highest safe standards that have to exist if that research is 
taking place? That said, there is nothing that is going to 
prevent bad actors in other countries and other, you know, 
individuals from doing this type of research. Director 
Ratcliffe, would you agree that we ought to be really concerned 
about biothreats going into the future within Congress?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Absolutely.
    Dr. Bera. And what types of steps would you take? We have 
got to work with the international community to develop those 
standards. We have got to work with the international community 
to try to detect these risks and bad actors early on, and what 
are some recommendations you might have?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, to that point, I would agree with 
that. But the facts that are not in dispute here and have been 
acknowledged by those international organizations, including 
the World Health Organization, was that they were lied to 
initially by Chinese officials and that they were coerced into 
making or not taking certain actions that they later regretted. 
And so, some of those world organizations, like the World 
Health Organization, have corrected and have now tried to bring 
about China's participation.
    I think, you know, from a commonsense standpoint, 
Congressman, to this question about the origins, if China had 
exculpatory evidence that showed that this was of natural 
origins or that there was not a lab leak, you would expect that 
they would share that information with international 
organizations, which they have not. They have not shared it 
with anyone.
    Dr. Bera. A hundred percent, and, again, China has acted 
irresponsibly here. You know, they put the entire world at 
risk. I would not trust them as a legitimate partner at this 
point. That said, we would hope that at some point, if they 
looked back at the damage that happened to their own country, 
that they would be forthright working with us and working with 
the rest of the world to get to the bottom of this and prevent 
the next pandemic. So, I am out of time, but, again, this isn't 
about trusting China. It is about actually preparing and 
preventing the next pandemic.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. Miller-Meeks from Iowa 
for five minutes of questions.
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. Thank you, Doctor, and Chair Wenstrup. I 
will be signing on to the letter just as an aside, so thank you 
for that. And I want to thank my colleague on the other side of 
the aisle, Dr. Bera, for his comments as well.
    Almost two years ago this committee had a hearing into the 
origins of COVID-19. Unfortunately, it was only attended by 
Republicans, but at the press conference following that 
hearing, I could tell that people were thinking of this as a 
partisan issue. And why it is critically important that we 
understand COVID-19 origins is to prevent future outbreaks and 
global pandemics, precisely that, and why. One is that we know 
that there was a lack of disclosure. We know that International 
Health Regulations require 24 hours' notice, and certainly we 
were not notified of this until late January, even though I 
think the evidence points to the virus circulating in the fall 
of 2019.
    We need to know, as previously mentioned, because of 
biosafety laboratory research, is there research being 
conducted. We understand even in the best laboratories there 
can be leaks, but biosafety lab 4 work was occurring in a 
biosafety lab 2. And the international community has a vested 
interest in both disclosure and that the proper type of 
research is occurring in the proper biosafety lab.
    And then four, as previously mentioned, again, and I think 
needs to be underscored, the ethics of the type of research 
that is being performed. This is not a Republican issue, it is 
not a Democrat issue, it is not a United States issue. It is an 
international issue, and the international health organizations 
have a vested interest in disclosure immediately in biosafety 
lab and in the ethics of research.
    And, Mr. Ratcliffe, I want to thank you for testifying 
before the Subcommittee this morning and supporting our 
investigation into the origins of COVID-19. When the former CDC 
Director, Dr. Redfield, testified before this committee last 
month, he stated that when you look at the two departments, the 
FBI and the Energy Department, they have the strongest 
scientific footprint of any of our intelligence agencies. And I 
think the way they got to the answers of low probability and 
moderate probability is their internal scientists did the 
science. And there are some in the media especially who 
insinuate that a low probability or moderate probability means 
no probability.
    With your background and experience as the director of 
National Intelligence, can you elaborate on the scientific 
expertise within the Department of Energy and the FBI and why 
their conclusions on COVID-19 origins would be noteworthy, and 
it doesn't mean not probable?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman. 
So, from initial starting standpoint, as has been talked about, 
some agencies haven't made any assessment at any confidence 
level. When assessments are made, they can be made at a low 
confidence level, they can be made at a moderate confidence 
level, or they can be made at a high confidence level. And in 
this case, you referenced the moderate and low confidence 
levels that the FBI and the Department of Energy respectively 
have made. Those are based on scientific information, and none 
of this is political. None of this is disputed.
    There is currently no environmental source identified for 
COVID-19. There is no intermediate host that has ever been 
identified. There is no reservoir species that has ever been 
identified, and COVID-19 was never known to exist in any animal 
or species before the pandemic began. Those are scientific 
facts that are not disputed, and there is nothing political 
about that that factored into the determinations that have been 
made.
    And I talked about before about this shift taking place, 
the things that I just related early on. The intelligence 
community was briefed by various scientists who said those 
answers will come. They referenced to SARS 1 and MERS outbreaks 
and saying, look, it may take several months, even a year, 
sometimes even longer to identify an intermediate host or a 
species. We are now 3 1/2 years, and every day that passes 
makes it less likely that there is anything that will ever tie 
this to nature, whereas on the other side of the ledger, it is 
overwhelming when you look at China's actions and the 
circumstances surrounding what was going on from a biosafety 
standpoint at Wuhan, the massive number of coronaviruses, the 
massive numbers of bats carrying coronaviruses that were 
brought into Wuhan. All of that weighs heavily into making 
assessments at some confidence level that a lab leak was the 
origin for this pandemic.
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. So, it sounds like that you would 
consider the opinions of these components to be taken 
seriously. And I would say that, in reference to the letter 
from the Chinese Embassy, that at minimal, the WHO now 
recognizing its earlier mistakes would diminish the influence 
of the Chinese Communist Party within the WHO. Thank you, Mr. 
Chair. I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Tokuda from Hawaii for 
five minutes of questions.
    Ms. Tokuda. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You know, as we develop 
policies to better prepare us in the future, it is crucial that 
we do so without fanning the flames of anti-AAPI extremism that 
festered during the pandemic. Anti-Asian rhetoric espoused by 
those at the very top of the Republican Party in the pandemic's 
earliest days have had very real-world consequences on our AAPI 
community here in the United States.
    In an effort to deflect from his Administration's botched 
pandemic response, President Trump looked for a scapegoat and a 
way to score points with his base. And in doing so he 
recklessly villainized AAPI people for his political gain, 
making our community human shields and red herrings to distract 
from his inability to deal on all levels with the public health 
crisis, including understanding in the very earliest days the 
origins of COVID.
    For example, within a matter of days, President Trump using 
the phrase, ``Chinese virus'' on Twitter. Anti-Asian rhetoric 
on the platform grew exponentially, according to a study 
conducted by the University of California, San Francisco. And 
in the summer of 2020, President Trump began referring to 
COVID-19 as ``kung flu'' at campaign rallies across the 
country, ratcheting up vitriol among his right-wing base. This 
hateful rhetoric online has had deadly consequences. According 
to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, hate crimes 
targeting members of our AAPI community increased by 339 
percent from 2020 to 2021. Words, my friend, matter.
    We know that the CCP did not cooperate with international 
efforts to understand the origins of COVID-19, but President 
Trump made it worse. His words helped perpetuate the CCP's 
misinformation campaign and assign blame for the COVID-19 
pandemic on Asian American communities, and, in doing so, 
further hindered our Nation's ability to implement an effective 
evidence-based public health response. We must recognize the 
consequences of our words, the impact they have on the 
communities we serve, and how it shapes the national 
conversation on issues of critical importance to our health and 
our security.
    Dr. Lowenthal, you have warned about the dangers of 
politicizing intelligence and national security. As we seek to 
engage in a thorough fact-based analysis, what are the real-
world consequences of distracting rhetoric and politicizing 
intelligence regarding the virus' origins?
    Dr. Lowenthal. Well, as I said, it makes it very difficult 
for analysts to do their work because if they know that what 
they are writing, or what their briefing is going to go into is 
going to be questioned, not because somebody disagrees with the 
substance but disagrees with why they are being told something, 
it makes it increasingly difficult for analysts to do good work 
because they are worried about the consequences. Nobody wants 
to be vilified, either as an ethnic group or professionally, 
and so that becomes a problem.
    Ms. Tokuda. Thank you, Dr. Lowenthal. There are clearly 
troubling consequences, as you noted, of this rhetoric, both 
for the value and ability for us to do the work, as well as for 
our AAPI community here in the United States, as well as, we 
have all talked about today, our intelligence community's 
efforts. How can we make sure we course correct what has been 
happening to both and ensure the safety of our communities and 
preserve the integrity of our intelligence work as we seek to 
fully understand the origins of COVID?
    Dr. Lowenthal. Well, the issue of vilifying communities is 
beyond the scope of the intelligence community. That is not our 
responsibility. That is a leadership issue. That is a political 
leadership issue. In terms of the partisanship, I mean, you 
have to hope that people on both sides of the aisle recognize 
that analysts are not out there trying to grind an axe. They 
are trying to present the best intelligence they have at the 
time with caveats and with uncertainties and that they are 
doing this not because they are being pusillanimous but because 
they really don't know the answer.
    And again, I have had to deal with senior officials many 
times and I know this is frustrating that, you know, you want 
an answer, and sometimes we just can't give you an answer. And 
that creates a tension between these two communities, between 
the policy community and intelligence committee, but that is 
the reality of a lot of the issues on which we work.
    Ms. Tokuda. Thank you, Dr. Lowenthal. You know, it is my 
definite hope through these discussions that we are having that 
we can put the harmful rhetoric aside that we have seen and 
focus on the work that matters: protecting our Nation's public 
health, and preparing for future public health crises. We can 
be tough on the CCP and their lack of transparency and 
cooperation with pandemic-related investigations, but we must 
do so without putting at risk the safety and well-being of 
Asian Americans and our communities. If we fail to do this, we 
are only strengthening the CCP's efforts to distract and to 
mislead, and gets us no closer to fully understanding the 
origins of COVID and allowing us to do the good work of 
preventing future crises and being able to respond to save 
lives. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize, Mrs. Lesko from Arizona for 
five minutes.
    Mrs. Lesko. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Over 1 million 
Americans died. Millions more got sick, some with long-term 
effects from COVID-19. It is absolutely vital that we determine 
what happened, what did China do. Did people within our own 
government cover up information because they had professional 
conflicts of interest or for political reasons? The Ranking 
Member says COVID-19 should not be a political issue. I agree. 
But with all due respect, sir, I contend that it is you that is 
making this a political issue. You said that the only reason we 
are having this hearing today is because of President Biden 
wanting to get to the bottom of it. With all due respect, are 
you kidding me? You have been in the majority. The Democrats 
have been in the majority for the last two years, and there 
have been no hearings on the origins of COVID while you were in 
the majority.
    My first question is for Mr. Ratcliffe. Mr. Ratcliffe, in 
your testimony you wrote, ``The challenges that I and other 
senior Trump Administration officials encountered while in 
office include legitimate concerns about the closely held 
sources of our intelligence and the sensitive methods used to 
obtain it, as well as illegitimate roadblocks related to 
professional conflicts of interest and partisan politics.'' Can 
you please elaborate on the conflicts of interest you 
encountered?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Thank you, Congresswoman. Good to see you 
again. I referenced in my opening a report from the analytic 
ombudsman. That person, by the way, is a career individual, is 
not a political appointment. That person is charged with 
refereeing disputes about assessments. And it was based on his 
investigation that when it comes to the issue of China, some of 
our intelligence was being suppressed because there were 
analysts within the community that felt like that some of that 
intelligence may be used by the Trump Administration in ways 
that they disagreed with, and that is clearly inappropriate 
under analytic judgment standards. And again, that is not my 
opinion. That is the independent opinion of the analytic 
ombudsman.
    Mrs. Lesko. My next question for you, Mr. Ratcliffe, is you 
mentioned in your written testimony that CIA analysts on China 
were reluctant to bring forth the information. Do you think you 
ever got all of the information that they uncovered from China 
related to COVID-19?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I think that, you know, intelligence 
is such that we are constantly gaining new information even 
where we have limited sources and methods. You know, I do think 
that there were headwinds to get information. I endeavored to 
be made aware of as much as possible. And ultimately, that is 
what led to the process where I worked with Secretary of State, 
Mike Pompeo, on the State Department fact sheet, to put out the 
information about the coronaviruses, their similarity to what 
became COVID-19, researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology 
becoming sick, and the other information that was included in 
that fact sheet so that that information would hopefully drive 
further declassification of intelligence, the American people 
and would drive congressional hearings going forward. 
Unfortunately, that hasn't happened the way that we 
anticipated.
    Mrs. Lesko. Thank you. Mr. Feith, in the January 2021 fact 
sheet on activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which you 
helped to write, it mentions, ``WIV researchers who got sick in 
2019 with COVID-19-like symptoms,'' which we have talked about. 
Can you tell us more about these sick researchers?
    Mr. Feith. I can share the view that I think that the sick 
researchers are probably still today the most potentially 
probative part of the story that we are yet aware of. You know, 
it has been suggested already that the passage of time doesn't 
help in finding a confirmed answer here. And that is certainly 
true, and that is probably true also with respect to some of 
what we would want to know about these sick researchers, and, 
you know, what tests were taken and what material and evidence 
would have been available from the autumn of 2019.
    But still, what we know is that there is additional 
information that the U.S. Government has that was not able to 
be specified at the time in the fact sheet that was released in 
January 2021. But part of the hope in doing the fact sheet, as 
Director Ratcliffe just noted, was that it would bring interest 
and, frankly, pressure and help make the case for additional 
disclosure, including by the Biden Administration once they 
came in, interest by, you know, those with subpoena power 
elsewhere in Washington because it certainly, well, bowled us 
over, frankly, to find in the autumn of 2020 that there was, 
after all, U.S. Government information about a cluster of 
illnesses in that lab, which is exactly what you would expect 
to happen if the origin of COVID came from a laboratory 
accident where a worker became ill, knowingly or not, and then 
took the virus out into the community and had it emerge in 
Wuhan, a place where it is really hard to imagine any 
explanation for a bat coronavirus emerging for the first time 
on Earth unless it walked out the door of the lab.
    Mrs. Lesko. Thank you very much for all of your 
testimonies, and I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. Joyce from Pennsylvania.
    Dr. Joyce. Thank you, Chairman Wenstrup, and thank you to 
our witnesses for appearing here today.
    Let me be clear. The work that this Subcommittee is 
conducting is critical to ensure that the destruction that was 
caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and our 
subsequent response is never again repeated. To quote from the 
Lancet COVID-19 Commission, ``Identifying COVID-19 origins 
would provide greater clarity into not only the causes of the 
current pandemic but also the vulnerabilities to future 
outbreaks and strategies to prevent them.''
    Beginning with my service on the House China Task Force and 
throughout our investigation on this Subcommittee, I have had 
consistent concerns with the NIH biomedical research security 
and how the NIH interacts with other elements of our government 
on research that could raise national security concerns. For 
this reason, last Congress I introduced the SAFE Biomedical 
Research Act, which did become law, that required both the NIH 
and HHS at large to consult with the director of the Office of 
National Security within the Department of HHS, and the 
Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, the director 
of National Intelligence, the director of the FBI, and the 
heads of other appropriate agencies on a regular basis 
regarding biomedical research conducted or supported by the NIH 
that may affect or be affecting other matters of national 
security.
    Director Ratcliffe, since this was not law when you served, 
do you feel that these requirements would have been beneficial 
to ensure research being conducted by the NIH was being 
properly vetted for national security risks?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Yes.
    Dr. Joyce. Overall, what was your experience with the NIH, 
and were they cooperative during the initial outbreak on 
matters such as lab-leak theory?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. To be candid, some of the information that 
came from officials there was inconsistent with what later 
became intelligence and later became publicly known through 
open-source intelligence. As has been discussed here, there are 
questions about relationships, including scientists from the 
NIH, and whether or not they had an interest in one theory over 
another and how that would have been or should have been 
disclosed.
    Dr. Joyce. In December 2022, then chairman of the House 
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Adam Schiff, 
released an unclassified report on the origins of COVID-19, 
where he wrote, ``At the onset, it is important to note that 
the first warning signs of an emerging novel virus will almost 
always come from public health authorities and their 
unclassified reporting.'' Director Ratcliffe, to your 
knowledge, what mechanisms and processes exist between the 
intelligence community and public health authorities, such as 
the CDC, to coordinate the aforementioned dissemination of 
knowledge about the identification of novel diseases, 
particularly in countries like China?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, with respect to China, particularly, 
it is not unusual for local officials to actually suppress 
intelligence from national leaders until the problem can be 
arrested or remediated. Sometimes lives depend on that. It is 
one of the interesting things about the events that took place 
and the fact that, as Mr. Feith testified, researchers became 
sick within the Wuhan Institute of Virology with symptoms that 
were consistent with COVID-19.
    There has been public reporting about intelligence that 
those researchers became patients and were hospitalized. So, 
without confirming the accuracy of that, what I would submit to 
you is, if that is, in fact, the case and those 
hospitalizations took place, the lab results and tests from 
those patients, if submitted for genetic sequencing, would be 
dispositive of the issue of whether or not those initial or 
patient zeros worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. I 
would submit to you that in China, there are not HIPAA 
considerations that prevent the Chinese government from 
accessing that. I would submit to you that if this took place, 
they have the answers to that. And I would submit to you that 
if the answers were exculpatory in nature, that information 
would have been shared by the Chinese government, which it has 
not.
    Dr. Joyce. Had that information been shared early, could 
this have been a regional, a local endemic, as opposed to 
unleashing this pandemic onto the world?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Absolutely. That is just one of many 
factors, and unfortunately, actions that the Chinese government 
took or did not take, they misled. I referenced their 
conversations with the World Health Organization. They urged 
that a public health epidemic not be declared earlier. They 
misled international scientists about human-to-human 
transmissibility and what they knew about the COVID-19 virus. 
All of those things could have minimized and prevented the 
spread of this disease and surely would have saved millions of 
lives globally.
    Dr. Joyce. Had China cooperated and not suppressed actions 
by the World Health Organization, could this have pandemic have 
not spread worldwide?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Yes.
    Dr. Joyce. Again, I thank you for appearing today, and, Mr. 
Chairman, I yield.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Greene from Georgia for 
five minutes.
    Ms. Greene. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like for the 
record to address something that one of our colleagues across 
the aisle was talking about, which was Asian hate in reference 
to President Trump. President Trump never spoke any language of 
racism or hate. He did, however, call, and many of us have 
called the COVID-19 virus the Wuhan flu, the China virus, 
because we feel it originated from China. I would like to also 
state for the record that many viruses and diseases are named 
after the area that they come from, like the West Nile Virus 
from West Nile, Uganda, Rocky Mountain spotted fever from the 
Rocky Mountains, Marburg virus for Marburg, Germany, Zika 
fevers from the Zika forests of Uganda, Japanese encephalitis, 
German measles, and I could go on and on and on.
    We are really tired of the racism and name calling, and it 
needs to end, but we are really talking about the origins of 
COVID-19 here today, which is shocking to me, because honestly, 
we have been talking about the origins of COVID-19 for 3 1/2 
years. And every commonsense American that I know pretty much 
understands where it came from, came from the Wuhan Institute 
of Virology and doesn't really care if the intelligence 
community says it did or didn't.
    I would like to point out that here we are, the 
intelligence community is able to figure out immediately who 
was leaking classified information in a Discord chat, but yet 
still doesn't want to say whether it came from the lab or 
didn't come from the lab. The intelligence communities seem to 
release or not release information based on how the information 
will affect the government that it seems to protect. Yet, 
unfortunately, so many times it doesn't release or not release 
the information the people that it serves, and, I will remind 
everyone, is paid for by the taxpayers of America.
    I would like to point out that the State Department fact 
sheet on January 15, 2021 knew a lot of information about the 
Wuhan Institute of Virology, so that means our intelligence 
community knew a whole lot more before that. They knew the U.S. 
Government believes that there were several research 
researchers inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick 
in the autumn of 2019 before the CCP first reported cases of 
COVID-19. They also knew that the CCP was preventing 
journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from 
accessing the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They also knew that 
starting in 2016, well before this, the Wuhan Institute of 
Virology was researching the bat coronavirus with the closest 
relationship to SARS-CoV-2, 96.2 percent similar. The Wuhan 
Institute of Virology has published record of dangerous gain-
of-function research, and the State Department memo also said 
that the U.S. Government determined the Wuhan Institute of 
Virology collaborated on publications and secret projects with 
the CCP military since at least 2017.
    And you know what else we know? We know that Dr. Fauci and 
the NIH funded through grants EcoAlliance with the gain-of-
function research. We know that for a fact our government paid 
for it. Our taxpayers, unfortunately, unknowingly paid for it. 
So, we know all this to be true, and we know it was going on at 
the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
    Mr. Lowenthal, with your dedication to being an analyst of 
information, why is it so hard to determine whether COVID-19 
came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology or not?
    Mr. Lowenthal. Because the Chinese will not give us access 
to the information that we need. If they gave us the kind of 
access that Mr. Feith was talking about, if they gave us 
samples, if they gave us access to the records. And you will 
never be sure with the Chinese whether they are giving you the 
access that you want. We are never going to be able to say with 
a high degree of certainty.
    May I respond to something else that you said in your 
comments, Ms. Greene? There was a vast, vast difference between 
tracking a leak on a social media site and determining the 
origins of this disease, and to compare the two is entirely 
fallacious, ma'am.
    Ms. Greene. Dr. Lowenthal, you have said that you keep your 
intelligence claims and information nonpartisan. In 2018, Mr. 
Lowenthal, you were quoted in the New York Times saying that, 
``President Trump is the best President that Russia ever had.'' 
That sounds pretty political to me.
    Mr. Lowenthal. But I was no longer an intelligence officer 
at the time, ma'am. I am a private citizen.
    Ms. Greene. Well, I think you have a difficult time keeping 
your political opinions out of your political analyst. Mr. 
Ratcliffe, you are quoted as saying, ``To this day, the CIA, 
unquestionably the world's premier spy agency, with an 
unrivaled capacity to acquire information and near limitless 
resources to do so, has continued to state that it does not 
have enough information to make any formal assessment. To put 
it bluntly, this is unjustifiable and a reflection, not that 
the Agency cannot make an assessment with any confidence, but 
that it won't.'' Could you elaborate, please, Mr. Ratcliffe?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I have talked about the overwhelming 
evidence on intelligence on one side of the ledger that 
supports that the lab leak is the only plausible assessment at 
this point in time, and that, conversely, that there really at 
this point isn't anything that ties COVID-19 to nature. I 
talked about the fact that no environmental source, no 
intermediate host, no reservoir species, nothing has ever been 
published that COVID-19 existed in any animal or species before 
the pandemic began. We make assessments all the time in the 
intelligence community with a fraction of the intelligence that 
we have available to us here.
    Again, I think this is a matter of won't, not can't. And I 
think that, you know, that is unjustifiable when we are talking 
about a million Americans dead and as many as 10 or 15 million 
worldwide. And this contradiction that the current 
Administration is taking through the intelligence community and 
that you have heard here today that we will never know the 
answer to this unless the Chinese cooperate is a contradiction 
with those that say our goal here is also to prevent a future 
pandemic. We will never be able to prevent it if we don't get 
the answers that we need with respect to how this happened in 
the first place.
    Ms. Greene. Thank you, Mr. Ratcliffe. I think it is an 
issue of won't, not can't as well. And perhaps we need to look 
deeper into whether was China trying to sway possibly an 
election, a Presidential election, or was it some type of bio 
weapon? I yield back. Thank you.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mrs. Dingell from Michigan 
for five minutes of questions.
    Mrs. Dingell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to both 
you and Ranking Member Ruiz for holding this hearing because I 
do think this hearing matters more than anyone does. 
Unfortunately, discussions, debates, and investigations in this 
country have become highly politicized in every arena. OK, in 
the Congress, we expect it, but I hope we can minimize it on 
this committee because I am worried about the next virus that 
is already out there. We are reading about them popping up 
everywhere right now, and I think we all want to be prepared.
    What worries me the most is what is happening in the 
scientific community, where the exchanging of ideas, research, 
and shared data has found clues, discovered cures, reached 
consensus. And this arena is becoming so highly politicized 
between virologists and researchers, public health officials, 
national security experts, and oh, yes, the politicians, that I 
think we are in trouble. To quote the Wall Street Journal this 
morning, ``These divisions and a lack of transparency from 
Beijing have hobbled efforts to determine how the virus first 
infected humans.'' I hope our committee can work together to 
address that.
    So, today I want to focus on a couple things I think we can 
all agree on and raise a couple of other issues. First, China 
has not been forthcoming. I think all three witnesses would 
agree to that, and I think everybody on this panel would agree 
to that. I strongly echo my colleagues' calls from both sides 
of the aisle that we need greater transparency from the Chinese 
Communist Party regarding the Wuhan Institute of Virology, 
especially if we want to prevent further pandemics, and the 
further we get away, the more complicated it becomes.
    Second, here is the reality. With respect to our witnesses, 
I do not believe that we have certainty in either direction as 
to how this virus started. Lots of us have opinions. Lord knows 
how many papers have been written, intelligence investigations 
undertaken, studies abound. And as we have heard today, some 
are firmly in the camp that it was a lab leak. Some say it 
appears to be a zoonotic transmission from an animal. I have 
been up endless nights. I am not a scientist but tried to study 
it, talk to people. But I think here is a fact: no one 
definitely knows.
    A report by the Senate Republicans that was released 
yesterday on the pandemic's origins said, ``After 18 months of 
research, the team that worked on the Senate report 
acknowledged it was unable to definitely pinpoint the source of 
the pandemic, which has killed''--everybody here has talked 
about the million Americans, but it has killed 6.9 million 
people worldwide. We should all be worried about this and want 
to stop the next one.
    I think there are areas of agreement. While the 
intelligence community has not reached a conclusion on the 
exact origins of the pandemic, there appears to be a scientific 
consensus that this specific virus does not appear to have been 
developed as part of biological warfare. Now, let me be really 
clear. This doesn't mean we don't have to worry about other 
forms of biological warfare, but in this instance, the Office 
of the Director of National Intelligence's declassified 
statement states, ``We judge the virus was not developed as a 
biological weapon,'' and other scientists, there seems to be in 
consensus on that.
    Next, some of my colleagues have pointed to the fact that 
the bat coronavirus, known as coronavirus RaTG13, shares 96--
percent sequence similarity to the SARS-CoV-2, which is the 
virus that was responsible for COVID-19. To be clear, there is 
scientific consensus that this four, while everybody would say, 
oh well, that is where it should be, that four-percent 
difference represents decades of evolutionary distance from the 
virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. To put it in 
perspective, the National Human Genome Research Institute has 
found that fruit flies are nearly 60 percent genetically 
similar to us as humans. We are different than fruit flies.
    And third, while my Republican colleagues have attempted to 
draw conclusions based on reports of the Wuhan Institute of 
Virology researchers falling ill with symptoms consistent with 
COVID-19, the Office of Director of National Intelligence 
Declassified Assessment clearly indicates this is not 
diagnostic of the pandemic's origins. In fact, for the record, 
in November 2019, I had a 103 fever for three weeks. I ended up 
at infectious disease doctors at the University of Michigan and 
here, and no one knows what it was, and all the [inaudible] are 
located in Wuhan, but that is anecdotal. That is not a fact. We 
don't have facts. And I also want to say that, you know, in 
2018, we were getting warnings from the State Department of the 
lack of safety at the Wuhan lab and what were people doing. So, 
I am going to ask one question quickly.
    Dr. Lowenthal, is there any reason to doubt the validity of 
the intelligence community's determination on anything I just 
described?
    Dr. Lowenthal. No.
    Mrs. Dingell. So, I guess I am going to have to conclude 
because I am out of time. I could keep going. But I would like 
to submit both the declassified Office of the Director of 
National Intelligence Assessment and the peer review paper 
published by more than 20 leading virology researchers titled, 
``The Origins of the SARS-CoV-2: a Critical Review,'' into the 
record. And last, I would like to ask the Chairman if he might 
ask his Republican colleagues on the Senate side if they would 
share their study for the Members to read.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Without objection, and the other is public.
    Mrs. Dingell. So, I think it would be good for all of us to 
circulate it. With that, I want us all to work together. I take 
this virus very seriously. I don't want to see it again. So, we 
are not going to solve it partisanly. We are going to solve it 
working together. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. Jackson from Texas for 
five minutes of questions.
    Dr. Jackson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. 
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
    For over two years many Americans, just like myself, have 
been demanding an investigation into China's role in the 
development of this virus and their efforts to cover up the 
virus after the fact, that it was released leading to this 
global pandemic that have killed millions and destroyed 
billions of lives. We have been demanding that for a while. I 
am glad we are doing this now. I think we are way behind the 
power curve on this.
    But I just want to start off by saying, other than the 
Chinese government, the entities most aggressively trying to 
actively spread misinformation about the origins of COVID, 
trying to actually create and spread what they would have you 
believe, was scientific evidence or scientific opinion, and I 
am referring, in particular, to things like the Proximal 
Origins document, a document that was intended to provide 
fodder to harass, label, threaten, cancel, destroy anyone with 
any other opinion, specifically an opinion that this came from 
a lab, from the Wuhan lab in particular, an opinion that we 
know now was accurate. The people that were most interested in 
doing just this, were people like Anthony Fauci, Francis 
Collins, and others at NIH. It was Peter Daszak in EcoHealth 
Alliance. It was Dr. Tedros at the WHO, and, of course, it was 
our unbiased and purely factual cable news networks like CNN 
and MSNBC.
    Director Ratcliffe, do you know if there were any instances 
of the U.S. intelligence agencies, did they share information, 
did they collaborate with any of the entities that I have 
mentioned or the individuals that I have mentioned, to either 
suppress or get out information that was contrary to what we 
are talking about today that we know to be the facts?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. As I understand your question, Congressman, 
were any of the scientists or individuals associated with any 
of those groups, did they have----
    Dr. Jackson. Were there interactions with the intelligence 
agencies?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. They did have interactions. I don't know the 
answer to all of them, but some of the individuals that I know, 
for instance, Dr. Peter Daszak, Dr. Farrar, Dr. Garry, I 
believe were all at some point in time briefing various 
entities or agencies within the intelligence community about 
this virus.
    Dr. Jackson. One of the things I am wondering is, I am 
wondering like, you know, if we are looking back now, we are 
realizing that some of these intelligence agencies probably had 
information, enough information to make a solid determination 
that this most likely came from the lab in Wuhan as far back as 
a year or more ago. My question is, were they sharing this 
information with these people that were putting out contrary 
information that were being propped up as the experts, that 
were giving us things like Proximal Origin, using it as 
evidence to completely undermine what I think the intelligence 
agencies knew to be the truth a long time ago.
    And I ask that because you may have realized, you know, 
after the fact, because I think you had mentioned at one point 
that even within the intelligence agencies, you as the Director 
of National Intelligence were being kept in the dark on some 
things, are not being fully briefed or maybe not being read 
into everything that was going on because people that were 
subordinate to you were doing things maybe politically 
motivated, or they were saying that they thought they didn't 
want to draw politics into it. But I think, in my opinion, they 
were politically motivated themselves.
    Was there any effort on the intelligence on the side of the 
intelligence agencies to correct what was misinformation, what 
they knew to be misinformation at the time?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I can only speak, you know, to the 
personal knowledge that I have. And, you know, the efforts that 
I engaged in was, as we found information and intelligence that 
was inconsistent with things that were some of the individuals 
that had consulted with the intelligence community had stated. 
We went through a process to declassify as much of that so that 
you would be aware, or the State Department fact sheet that has 
been referenced a number of times about researchers being sick 
at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, coronaviruses, including 
the one most similar in nature to what became COVID-19 and the 
Chinese military's involvement. Those were all pieces of 
intelligence that I worked to get out publicly with Secretary 
of State Pompeo through a declassification process.
    So, from my standpoint, my personal knowledge was where we 
became aware of inconsistencies like that, we did our best to 
make that information available publicly.
    Dr. Jackson. Thank you. I mean, I guess what I am a little 
bit worried about is, I am just worried that there was a 
process here where the intelligence agencies were purposely not 
sharing information or not coming, you know, coming forth with 
the information that they knew to be true because they were 
being influenced politically by what was going on in the White 
House or elsewhere.
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Yes, and I think that, you know, as again, 
there were instances that were documented by the analytic 
ombudsman that reflect the fact that when it came specifically 
to China, the country of China, that some of our intelligence 
and our analytic judgments were impacted by partisan politics 
and the desire for intelligence not to be used by one party as 
opposed to another.
    Dr. Jackson. Right. And I bring this up because I think it 
happens in this Administration for the last two years. It has 
happened in the military. I think it happens in our 
intelligence agencies. These are people that we pay to be 
nonpartisan, to protect us. We pay them because of their 
expertise so that they can make sure that our national security 
is intact. And I think that if there is any of that going on 
behind the scenes, we need to get to that. People do not have 
to be making decisions based on their political beliefs or 
their political alignments if it is going to impact, you know, 
something like, you know, our response to COVID.
    Mr. Ratcliffe. I agree completely.
    Dr. Jackson. Thank you. I yield back, sir.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Garcia from California 
for five minutes.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to 
our witnesses. I do want to start, Mr. Chairman, by just 
responding to one of the Committee Members who just made some 
comments trying to link the origins of COVID to some of the 
national security leaks that are very concerning that we have 
been discussing recently. It is important to note that this 
committee itself cannot have credibility to discuss sensitive 
intelligence information if Members of the Majority are going 
to publicly defend people who continue to leak top secret 
information, which is in violation of their oaths of office.
    These Members of the Committee have defended Jack Teixeria, 
who has been arrested for leaking classified information. It is 
very clear just to clarify that he was no whistleblower. He 
wasn't telling the truth, trying to serve the public. And all 
the evidence shows that he has recklessly shared classified 
information to impress friends in a private chat of which there 
were also racist memes and jokes. If he is found guilty, should 
be held fully accountable under law, and anyone who defended 
him should be ashamed. And so, again, we want to ensure that if 
we are going to actually talk about important information, 
origins of COVID, we should actually focus on COVID, on the 
pandemic, and not trying to link this to someone who betrayed 
our country. I yield back the remainder of my time. Thank you.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Cloud from Texas for five 
minutes of question.
    Mr. Cloud. Thank you all for being here today. Thank you, 
Chair, for continuing this investigation. It is so important to 
where we need to go in the future.
    You know, Director Ratcliffe, you mentioned some of the 
stuff coming up with that China did to cover up a lot of what 
happened. We know they hoarded PPP, they silenced the centers, 
they blocked investigations into the Wuhan Lab. They have, as 
you mentioned, blamed service members. They have destroyed 
data. And so, where we don't have maybe definitive evidence of 
the origin, it certainly seems like we have evidence of a cover 
up.
    Now, you know, I am not aggrieved by that. I am not 
surprised that godless communist countries do bad things. What 
has been extremely concerning and surprising, I think, to a lot 
of Americans is to see how certain aspects of our government 
has in a way misled them through the last few years. And you 
have mentioned that you have pretty high confidence that this 
did not have natural origins. Now we have the Department of 
Energy and the FBI now say that the lab leak is the most likely 
scenario as well, which, you know, you mentioned all the 
apparatuses at our intelligence, world class, world leading 
tools that our intelligence community has. And it boggles the 
mind of the American people to see that three years later, the 
intelligence community is finally coming around to where the 
American people were, you know, about three years ago.
    Can you elaborate on how you developed your degree of 
confidence to the extent that you can? I realize there is 
information you cannot share, but----
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I have talked a little bit about it 
today, but I think, you know, this highlights one of the, you 
know, the comments that the Congresswoman from Michigan was 
making earlier about, no one can know with certainty. I 
actually agree with that at this point in time, but we don't 
have to, in making intelligence community assessments. We have 
to have some level of confidence. It can be low, it can be 
moderate, or it can be high.
    So, I have been very clear that when we look at all of our 
intelligence, much of it is circumstantial, and with 
circumstantial evidence, you can never know with certainty, but 
that doesn't mean that you cannot make an assessment with some 
level of confidence. And the more I have learned about this and 
the more I have seen, and again, as the person who had more 
access to our intelligence for the first year as much as anyone 
in our government, my level of confidence became higher. The 
things that others were supporting for a natural origins 
approach have fallen away. And some of the people that were 
promoting that had been revealed to have had conflicts of 
interest in perhaps promoting that as a theory. But again, I go 
back to the fact that at this point in time, 3 1/2 years later, 
no scientist in the world can point to anything from an 
environmental standpoint that ties COVID-19 to nature.
    On the other side of the equation, you have all of the 
things that we have talked about, China's obfuscation and the 
fact that they have the best access to the intelligence that 
would be diagnostic and dispositive, and yet they have shared 
none of that with us. And if they had any that was indicative 
or diagnostic that this was naturally occurring, why wouldn't 
they share that? If there was no one to blame for this 
pandemic, why wouldn't they share that information? I think the 
answer is that they don't know the answer or they don't want to 
know the answer because, like me, they know that the 
intelligence certainly points to lab leak as the most plausible 
assessment, the only one supported by intelligence, science, 
and common sense at this point.
    Mr. Cloud. Now, you developed this high degree of 
confidence. Could you speak about when? Was it earlier or later 
in the process?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. You know, when I became the Director of 
National Intelligence, I had seen the prior assessments. I had 
been a Member of Congress on the Intelligence Committee. I said 
show me all of the intelligence that we have, and I was frankly 
surprised how little we had supporting natural origins, how 
much we had, circumstantial or otherwise, that supported the 
lab leak. And over time, again, some of the explanations for 
natural origins became less and less likely. Again, I was told 
that some of this would appear over a course of months, we have 
now been 3 1/2 years and we haven't identified an intermediate 
host, a reservoir source or species, any of those things.
    So, pretty rapidly, which is why I talked about the process 
that Mike Pompeo, Secretary Pompeo, when I went through to 
declassify some of this, with the hope that the next 
administration would declassify more information while 
protecting our sources and methods and that this body would 
hold hearings. Unfortunately, two years went by without any 
hearings in this body into the origins of COVID. So, you know, 
I am grateful that we are getting there, but these are things 
that should have taken place a long time ago.
    Mr. Cloud. Now, you have alluded that even as the DNI, you 
had trouble sometimes getting information from the intelligence 
community, and could you speak to that?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I think there was, at times, 
reluctance. And, you know, as I have commented, that, you know, 
the independent analytic ombudsman found that there were 
instances where, particular to China, some intelligence was 
being suppressed so that it could not be used to support 
policies that the administration in which I was serving, the 
Trump Administration, could use that. And that was improper, 
you know, and I think I have addressed that.
    Mr. Cloud. Yes. I mean, to me, that is one of our major 
concerns from an oversight perspective, is looking into, you 
know, an intelligence agency that seems to have gone wayward in 
some of these aspects. And, Dr. Lowenthal, while I certainly 
appreciate some of your comments, I think the intelligence 
committee may have drifted since then, you know, and so it is 
important that we look into this. I am sorry, my time is up. 
Thank you, Chair.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. McCormick from Georgia 
for five minutes.
    Dr. McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Honorable 
Ratcliffe, thank you for your service in Congress. Also, thank 
you for your service as former Director of National 
Intelligence during a tumultuous time during the origins of 
this disease process. Recently, Director Wray confirmed the FBI 
report stated that COVID-19 pandemic was likely the result of a 
lab incident in Wuhan. Based on your knowledge, do you agree 
with the report from the Department of Energy as well?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. I agree with both the FBI and the Department 
of Energy.
    Dr. McCormick. Thank you. In your testimony you stated, 
``Our intelligence has led to a demonstrable shift whereby a 
few of the intelligence community's 18 agencies are now 
publicly accessing the COVID-19 virus originated from a lab 
leak in Wuhan. And as this shift continues, the day will come 
when every single agency in the intelligence community will 
make the same assessment.'' Do you think there is another 
Federal agency close to following on the side of the Wuhan lab 
leak theory in the near future, and if so which one?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, you know, again, I am not in the 
intelligence community now but of course have friends that are 
career individuals still serving in agencies. You know, my 
understanding is that in most of the agencies there is a shift. 
More and more analysts believe that lab leak is the most 
plausible, if not the only plausible, assessment to make, and 
that it is a minority in most agencies that are holding on to 
the idea that this is naturally occurring.
    You know, I would hope as I talked about the fact that the 
CIA would make an assessment at some confidence level, and 
based upon my personal knowledge of conversations about 
analysts within that agency, I believe that a great majority of 
those analysts do support the Department of Energy and the FBI 
analysis, and it is a minority opinion that is currently 
holding back the CIA from making that assessment that a lab 
leak is the most plausible.
    Dr. McCormick. And certainly in your estimate in the last 
year, is there some new information that occurred, or do you 
think the CIA could have come to that conclusion probably about 
a year ago or so?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I think all agencies within the United 
States intelligence community could have made an assessment at 
some confidence level a year ago on this in favor of a lab 
leak. My understanding, specifically from the Department of 
Energy, that there was new intelligence that persuaded them to 
make their assessment of a lab leak. So, new intelligence is 
always being gained. But again, from my standpoint, the more 
time that passes, the further we get without anything tying 
COVID-19 to nature, as I talked about--no environmental source, 
no intermediate host, no reservoir species, none of that--it 
makes it less and less likely that this was a natural origin.
    Dr. McCormick. I think as a physician of emergency medicine 
and as a scientist, I think I thoroughly agree with that 
assessment, and, in fact, I think it could have been reached a 
long time ago in my opinion. I think the fact that we are even 
having this conversation is absurd. It is very easy to identify 
whether there are animals in the wild that have or have not 
this disease. The fact that the Chinese have had literally 
spent years, and incredible efforts trying to obtain that 
information and have received zero information supporting one 
theory, whereas we know there is an incredible amount of 
evidence on the other side of that, points to one thing, and 
that is a CCP cover-up. This, unfortunately, leads me to the 
conclusion that the efforts of this Administration, Dr. Fauci, 
the WHO and multiple bureaucracies are willfully or ignorantly 
colluding with the CCP. That is what bothers me.
    Director Ratcliffe, as you know, this committee was formed 
on the basis that we would seek the truth to create 
recommendations to face the future pandemics. With that being 
said, I have one last question for you. In your opinion, what 
reason could the Administration public officials in many of our 
Federal agencies have for hiding the truth from the American 
people? And if you can't speak to that, what effect do you 
think this has on the American people's trust of their public 
health officials and the government?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I would say that, you know, China has 
been identified as our No. 1 nation-state adversary. They have 
been described by the current Administration as a strategic 
competitor, but our intelligence clearly tells us they are an 
adversary. Their public actions very clearly dictate that they 
are an adversary. And I think that the current Administration, 
for whatever reason, has been reluctant to confront China on 
any number of issues or transgressions that have taken place 
publicly from spying: a spy balloon that flew over the country, 
threats against legislators in this body from landing in 
Taiwan. The list is long. And there hasn't been an effort by 
the current Administration other than to say we are not seeking 
conflict with China, and I think that that has continued with 
respect to this issue into COVID origins.
    Dr. McCormick. I agree with you. I don't think we can learn 
from this if we are not being honest. We can't prepare for the 
next pandemic if we are not being honest. We have obvious 
answers that we want to ignore. I think we have been biased. I 
think we have to really acknowledge this if we are going to 
prepare for the next virus. Mr. Chair, I think we cannot 
disallow that we have already had multiple viruses from animals 
in the past, but we are not doing what we need to prepare for 
with Wuhan leaks and disallowing gain-of-function. With that I 
yield.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Moskowitz from Florida 
for five minutes of questions.
    Mr. Moskowitz. Mr. Chairman, thank you. The American people 
deserve to know the origins of the COVID-19 virus. I happen to 
believe, based on the evidence that is available, that it is 
most likely that it came out of the lab than not. But for the 
families who lost loved ones to COVID, they don't have an 
answer. For the businesses that were shut down, they don't have 
an answer. For the folks in nursing homes who couldn't have 
their loved ones visit them, they don't have an answer.
    And I know all of this because I am the only one in 
Congress who ran a COVID-19 response operation as the Director 
of Emergency Management for the state of Florida. I am the only 
one who had to go to China to buy masks and buy nasal cannula 
oxygen, and buy ventilators, and having to buy viral media and 
universal media, and having to get all of that stuff from 
around the world, competing with everybody but Antarctica, 
because this country was not prepared to take on a pandemic. 
Those families deserve to know. My dad, like some others, was 
diagnosed with cancer during COVID-19. We couldn't be with him 
in the hospital during treatment. Those families have a right 
to know. Students who weren't in school have a right to know. 
But also, I think the American people have a right to know why 
so much misinformation was spread about COVID-19 in this 
country by President Trump.
    Let me just read some of the greatest hits from President 
Trump. ``China has been working very hard to contain the 
coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their 
efforts and transparency. It would all work out well. In 
particular, on behalf of the American people, I want to thank 
President Xi.'' OK. ``I just spoke to President Xi last night, 
and you know, we are working on the problem, the virus. It is a 
very tough situation. I think he is going to handle it. I think 
it is handled very well. We are helping wherever we can.''
    ``Just had a long conversation with the President of China. 
He is strong, sharp, powerful, focused on leading the counter-
attack to the coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, 
even building hospitals in a matter of days. Great discipline, 
and taking place in China.'' ``President leads strongly in a 
very successful operation. We are working closely with China to 
help.
    ``I think China was very, you know, professionally run in a 
sense. They have got everything under control. I really believe 
they are going to have it under control very soon.'' ``You 
know, in April, supposedly it is going to die with the hotter 
weather, and that is a beautiful date to look forward to. But 
China, I can tell you, is working very hard.'' ``We have very 
few people in this country with COVID, and, you know what? They 
are getting better. They are all getting better. I think the 
whole situation will work out well.''
    ``We pretty much shut it down coming from China. You know, 
we only have 15 people with COVID, and you know, 15, within a 
couple of days, it is going to go down to zero. That is a 
pretty good job we have done. It is going to go away, hopefully 
at the end of the month, and if not, hopefully soon after 
that.''
    I could keep going. This goes on and on. And every day it 
goes on, there were more and more cases in this country, and so 
we have to find out why the President was spreading that 
information. We heard about this paper, Proximal Origins paper, 
in the committee, and we heard from Members that this paper 
specifically said that they didn't want to investigate the lab 
leak at all. That is not true. Here is the quote from the 
paper, ``We must, therefore, examine the possibility of an 
inadvertent laboratory release of SARS-CoV-2.'' So, I don't 
know why we continue to spread this misinformation. I also 
think one of the things we should learn, because the document 
that Mr. Ratcliffe has been reading from as part of his 
testimony suggests analysts appeared reluctant to have their 
analysis on China brought forward because they tend to disagree 
with Trump Administration policies. One of the things I also 
think we should investigate is, did the professionals not share 
the information they had with the President because they didn't 
trust the President because every single day he was going out 
saying this stuff, or better, going out and telling people they 
can drink bleach, or they should just go out and put light in 
the body and we will get rid of COVID. I mean, this went on for 
a long period of time.
    So yes, we need to investigate. We need to investigate the 
origins of COVID. We need to know what we knew when, and we 
need to share that with the American people. And we need to 
know why President Trump, who was in charge when COVID 
happened, he was in charge when COVID got out of control, why 
he didn't tell the American people the truth. I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Jordan from Ohio for five 
minutes.
    Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Ratcliffe, I think 
Dr. McCormick was on to the right question. Seems to me the 
fundamental question is why. Why did they lie to us? You point 
this out in your testimony. Why is it taking so long for every 
government agency to admit what we all know. Because belief in 
a lab leak as the origin at the start of this is not a 
conspiracy theory, is it, Mr. Ratcliffe?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. No.
    Mr. Jordan. Why has it taken so long then? I mean, you knew 
that early on, right? You were confirmed, I think, May 2020, 
and you knew that within weeks that this thing came from a lab. 
In fact, I think in your testimony, you say a lab leak is the 
only explanation, the only credible explanation. If this were a 
trial, the preponderance of the evidence is all on the side of 
the lab leak. You knew that within weeks. So, why did the 
government not tell us the truth?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I think, you know, when you look at 
the intelligence community report that the Biden Administration 
put out in October 2021, they acknowledged that China's refusal 
to cooperate. But the report in a way ignores what I think is 
the inescapable fact and reality that if the CCP had anything 
exculpatory, anything at all, anything that would be helpful to 
showing that no one was to blame for this----
    Mr. Jordan. Right.
    Mr. Ratcliffe [continuing]. That this occurred naturally, 
that they would share that. And, you know, why not share data 
samples, research? Everything that tends to show that they had 
access to that would tend to show that this was naturally 
occurring and tend to show that lab leak theory really was a 
conspiracy theory, but they didn't do that because they 
couldn't do that. And to me, that is why making an assessment 
with some level of confidence is something that should have 
been done a long time ago by the intelligence community. Yes, 
we need to protect sources and methods. It is why Mike Pompeo 
and I labored over how much of this can we put out, hoping that 
it would drive the next administration coming in to declassify 
more information, which they haven't, and would drive 
congressional hearings into the origins of this, which it 
didn't.
    Mr. Jordan. Here is what gets me. So, the Director of 
National Intelligence knew this thing came from a lab, the 
Secretary of State knew this thing came from a lab, common 
sense tells you this thing came from a lab, and, frankly, even 
the guys who called us names knew it came from a lab because we 
have their emails. We have their emails from the start. Mr. 
Garry says, ``I don't know how this happens in nature. It would 
be easy to do in a lab.'' Mr. Anderson says, ``This is not 
consistent with evolutionary.'' Everyone knew at the get-go, 
you knew at the get-go, and yet, they tell us just the 
opposite. Why?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, you left out the top public health 
official, a virologist, Dr. Redfield, who testified.
    Mr. Jordan. Dr. Redfield knew. He has testified, yes.
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Also testified. So, you had the top 
diplomat, the top of the intelligence community, the top public 
health official all telling you with some confidence level that 
the most likely origin of this was a lab leak, and I think 
that, you know, unfortunately, for political reasons and 
political narratives, it was difficult.
    Mr. Jordan. So, did you talk with Dr. Fauci during this 
timeframe? When you get in, in May and over the next several 
months, did you talk to Dr. Fauci anytime?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. No.
    Mr. Jordan. Never spoke with Dr. Fauci?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. No.
    Mr. Jordan. Do you find that strange when he is out saying 
something directly contrary to the Secretary of State, to the 
Director of National Intelligence, and to the top virologist, 
Dr. Redfield, that Dr. Fauci wouldn't talk with you?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Yes. To be clear, there were folks within 
the Coronavirus Task Force that were communicating, you know, 
medical and scientific information to the intelligence 
community, not me directly. But none of that information was 
frankly consistent with what we have talked about what the 
intelligence showed. Again, some of those individuals, to 
include Dr. Fauci, were promoting the idea that this was 
natural origins. And notwithstanding, you know, the language 
that was read, they were referring to it publicly as a 
conspiracy theory in certain conversations and interviews.
    Mr. Jordan. Dr. Collins called us conspiracy theorists if 
you believed in the lab as the origin. Tell me, why do you 
think Fauci and Collins took that? I got my theory, and I think 
I am right, but I would like to hear from the Director of 
National Intelligence what he thinks Fauci and Collins' 
motivation for sharing false information with the American 
people.
    Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I think the best evidence of that is 
their own conversations, which say that they didn't want 
unwarranted or unwanted, or I think the term was unwanted 
attention, to the relationships that were taking place between 
Western virologists and those working within the Wuhan 
Institute of Virology and funding sources for some of that 
research into----
    Mr. Jordan. Yes, our money to a lab in China that wasn't up 
to code, that was doing gain-of-function research, and that is 
where this thing came from. That is what they didn't want us to 
know. Do you agree with that, Mr. Ratcliffe?
    Mr. Ratcliffe. I do agree with that.
    Mr. Jordan. That is important. Thank you. I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now like to yield to Ranking Member Ruiz 
for a closing statement if he would like one.
    Dr. Ruiz. Thank you. As I have said since the Select 
Subcommittee's first hearing, our efforts to understand the 
origins of the COVID-19 pandemic should remain evidence based 
and free from politicization, partisan rhetoric, and 
conspiratorial accusations without proof that seek to vilify 
our Nation's public health officials. We should not politicize 
intelligence and turn the origins questions into a partisan 
blame game. Instead, we must let our Nation's scientists and 
intelligence professionals do the work necessary to promote our 
understanding of the pandemic origins without political 
interference.
    And while the experts were to determine how the coronavirus 
came to be, we should focus on putting people over politics. We 
should develop forward-looking evidence-based policies that 
will keep the American people safe from future pandemics. And 
we should take an intelligent strategic approach to competition 
with China and the challenges posed by the Chinese Communist 
Party. Instead of fanning the flames of extreme rhetoric, we 
should build on the progress we made over the past two years 
under President Biden to ensure America's interests flourished 
domestically and abroad.
    Now, more than ever, we must double down on our commitment 
to scientific integrity and put the needs of the American 
people above political theater. Let's reject extreme partisan 
rhetoric and work together to save lives. The American people 
deserve nothing less. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. You know, I have served on the 
Intelligence Committee, and as a physician, when the pandemic 
began, no doubt I took an extreme interest into what was going 
on. Mostly what I was interested in was what was going on 
physiologically, causing so many people to die, interested in 
finding out ways that we could maybe find treatments for people 
that actually worked and started doing research. Lockdown came, 
nothing else to do. Just sitting at home. Sitting at home going 
back and forth with another doctor from Ohio who actually got 
on the phone with infectious disease doctors in China.
    We began our COVID-19 origins investigation in February 
2020, and we found an article during that time that I had never 
seen before, medical article, research article, published by 
Ralph Baric from North Carolina and Dr. Zhengli Shi from China, 
an article that showed that they were able to create a chimera, 
which is gain-of-function research, where you take one virus, 
parts of it, put it on another virus and make it more 
infectious. I will never forget. I am not the one who found it 
first. The other doctor did, and he called me and said, you 
won't believe this and sent it to me. And I thought, oh my 
gosh, this is extremely alarming.
    Fast forward, after a FOIA request was able to reveal some 
emails from Dr. Fauci, Kristian Andersen, and others, going to 
the end of February 2020, Kristian Andersen said, ``This thing 
looks engineered.'' Immediately, Dr. Fauci reacts. He contacts 
his deputy, ``BE READY.'' I am paraphrasing. And I can't 
remember exactly what the email said, but I do know the email 
had an attachment to it, and it had the attachment of that very 
article about the creation of a chimera.
    Oh, my goodness, I would hope that when Dr. Fauci saw that 
or became aware of it, maybe he just became aware of it, I 
don't think so, but maybe he did, that he was as alarmed as I 
was. So, you take that article. The statement from Kristian 
Andersen saying, ``This thing looks engineered.'' And what does 
this very group do within weeks? Come out and say it came from 
nature. It came from nature. Dr. Andersen, we found, had said 
that he was focused, he was going to focus to disprove the lab 
leak theory. Why? Why? What is the motive for that? That is 
very reasonable to ask that question.
    Mr. Moskowitz I guess wasn't here for the other hearings. 
He is not on this Subcommittee regularly, so he doesn't 
understand that that is actually what Kristian Andersen said, 
that I am going to focus to disprove the lab leak theory. And 
they wrote Proximal Origins, got it published. How can we not 
question this motive? And if we are going to do all that we say 
we want to do with this committee to move forward, we have to 
consider these types of things, the motives, whether they are 
political or personal, so that we don't let someone else do 
that again in the future.
    As I mentioned, I am on the Intelligence Committee, so I am 
able to get intelligence that others weren't able to get, and 
under Chairman Schiff, there was an unwillingness to 
investigate this altogether. The good news is, in the 
Intelligence Committee, that rift is now gone and we work 
together very well. But at that time, since there was two 
separate reports coming out of the Intelligence Committee in 
the House, Democrats in their report they concluded there was 
no need to search any further for the origins. What good would 
that do? Well, that has changed, fortunately, in this committee 
and across the entire Congress, and apparently with the 
President of United States as well.
    And I am glad he ordered the 90-Day commission, but to 
date, I have seen less from the commission than I have seen on 
my own work on the Intelligence Committee. And when I ask 
questions of some of the people from the IC, they tell me it is 
their policy not to answer my question.
    Dr. Lowenthal, you referenced it before, you know what the 
statute is. They cannot have that type of policy, and that is 
why we want to know more. And fortunately, I have been able to 
work through some of that to some degree with Director Haines, 
and I give her credit for being open. But overall, let me just 
say this. I am grateful for this opportunity that we now have 
in the House. It is long overdue, and I am grateful to Speaker 
McCarthy for putting this Select Subcommittee together. And I 
am grateful for Dr. Ruiz. He has been a friend for a long time. 
We have worked on a lot of health issues together as 
physicians, and I believe that if we continue to work together, 
we can produce a product.
    You know, the pain of this pandemic in one way or another 
has understandably evoked emotions from everyone on this 
committee and everyone in Congress and everyone across America. 
But at the end of the day, I do believe we can and we must 
produce a product of truth and accountability. And I will keep 
repeating what I am after: I want us to be able to predict a 
pandemic, prepare for a pandemic, protect ourselves from a 
pandemic, and prevent a pandemic if we can. And with that, I 
yield back.
    I want to thank all of you for being here today and for 
being witnesses for us. I greatly appreciate what you have done 
and what you have said and participating, and with that, this 
meeting is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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