Biden signs law requiring US intelligence release documents on COVID origins
Biden orders US intelligence to release ALL documents on the origins of COVID and any links to the Wuhan lab
Joe Biden signed a new law into law Monday that could shed light on links between the coronavirus pandemic and a Wuhan lab in China where it originated.
The measure requires all US intelligence related to that link and the origins of COVID-19 to be declassified.
“We need to get to the bottom of the origins of Covid-19,” Biden wrote in a statement. She noted that any published material should also “include potential links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
“By implementing this legislation, my administration will declassify and share as much information as possible,” he added.
President Joe Biden signed into law a bill on Monday requiring US intelligence to release all materials related to the origins of COVID-19, including potential links to the infamous lab in Wuhan, China.
The bill passed unanimously in the House and Senate before going to the White House.
Biden’s signing now directs Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to declassify any information the US intelligence community has collected related to the origins of the COVID-19 virus.
The debate in Washington, DC over China’s intentional leaking of the virus from a laboratory in Wuhan recently reignited. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the Energy Department assessed, albeit with little confidence, that the pandemic likely stemmed from the alleged Chinese lab leak.
Beijing denies this assessment.
The president says he believes in the goal of Congress to make available as much information as possible about where and how the coronavirus pandemic originated.
But he said the national security risks would still have to be assessed when it comes to what his administration chooses to release to the public.
“By implementing this legislation, my administration will declassify and share as much information as possible, consistent with my constitutional authority to protect against the release of information that would harm national security,” Biden said in a declassification statement.
Lawmakers are embroiled in a highly politicized debate over the origins of the coronavirus, which has plunged the world into a three-year pandemic since the first cases were reported in Wuhan in late 2019.
It comes as Republicans, and even some Democrats, have pushed Biden to be tougher on growing threats from China.