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GERMANY'S spy bosses believe there is a 80 to 90 per cent chance that Covid-19 leaked from a Chinese lab, a report claims.
Foreign-focused spooks in Berlin made the bombshell claim the deadly disease was highly likely to have accidentally got out of Wuhan Institute of Virology.
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Spooks also thought the Wuhan Institute was carrying out sick experiments where viruses were modified to become more transmissible to humans - for research.
Two German newspapers claim to have now uncovered that assessment made by BND - Germany's Federal Intelligence Service - as part of an espionage operation called Project Saaremaa.
Watch the documentary in full on our YouTube channel here
Project Saaremaa was launched in 2020 to find the origins of the virus and found that it had likely come from the lab, newspapers Die Zeit and Sueddeutscher Zeitung found in the report.
Spies also found indications of safety violations occurring at the lab.
The operation was ordered by Angela Merkel's office and was only shared with the CIA last year.
The American agency said in January that a "research-related origin" of Covid was more likely than a natural origin.
Although, neither the German assessment or the American one was definitive in saying the virus had come from a lab.
Both the BND and outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz declined to comment to German media.
China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said that tracing Covid should be led by scientists.
Mao said: "The conclusion that a laboratory leak is extremely unlikely was reached by the China-WHO joint expert team after on-site visits to relevant labs in Wuhan and in-depth discussions with researchers.
I was in Oval Office with Trump at start of pandemic - no one was closer to Chinese officials than me & I believe Covid was engineered in lab
"This authoritative scientific conclusion has been widely recognised by the international community and the scientific community.
"China firmly opposes any form of political manipulation on the issue of Covid-19 origin tracing."
The Biden administration and then-Covid czar Anthony Fauci had repeatedly dismissed the lab-leak theory as a conspiracy, insisting the virus likely jumped naturally from animals to humans.
The move to declassify the CIA's findings was ordered by President Donald Trump’s pick for CIA director, John Ratcliffe.
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Ratcliffe has long championed the lab-leak theory, previously calling it “the only theory supported by science, intelligence, and common sense.”
Scientists remain divided, with many believing the virus likely jumped from bats to humans via an intermediate host, such as raccoon dogs or civet cats, at a Wuhan market.
The CIA, FBI and the US Department of Energy have all backed a lab leak as the most likely explanation - with many pointing the finger at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
China's Wuhan lab has been at the centre of the storm since Covid emerged just miles from the facility - which was famous for its research on bat coronaviruses.
The CIA, however, has been cautious, stating it “will continue to evaluate any new information” that could shift its assessment.
Following a two-year investigation involving dozens of interviews and high-profile hearings, a Congressional Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released its final report in January.
It said: "Four years after the onset of the worst pandemic in 100 years, the weight of the evidence increasingly supports the lab leak hypothesis.
"By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced."
‘This is the Chernobyl of Biology’ Sun documentary exposes Wuhan ‘lab leak’ behind Covid… and US’s shock role in it
By Imogen Braddick, Assistant Foreign Editor
FEW of us had heard of the Chinese city of Wuhan when the world was first paralysed by Covid-19 five years ago.
Today, the sprawling metropolis is synonymous with the pandemic that claimed 227,000 lives in the UK — along with its sinister labs where top secret biological experiments are carried out.
Within the first few days of Britain’s initial lockdown in March 2020, as millions were confined to their homes, questions were already being asked about whether Wuhan’s Institute of Virology could be behind the outbreak.
Now, as the country marks the five-year anniversary of Covid-19, an exclusive documentary by The Sun reveals the experts, scientists and investigators who not only believe the virus was caused by a lab leak, but that American scientists helped to cover up the scandal.
Our documentary took me to the heart of the origins of Covid and explores whether China was trying to cover up the creation of a biological weapon by blaming the pandemic on a wet food market 17 miles away.
We also reveal that, while scientists publicly insisted the disease came from “natural” sources, behind the scenes they were exchanging messages about a laboratory leak.
One expert told us: “Watergate was nothing compared to this.
“This is the Chernobyl of biology.”
English (US) · 