By Eric Mack | Sunday, 03 May 2020 www.newsmax.com
China’s malfeasance in unleashing the global coronavirus pandemic on the world, which has killed more than 245,185 to date, was detailed in a 15-page dossier authored by “Five Eyes” intelligence.
China accidentally leaked the COVID-19 from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, lied in a “deadly denial of human-to-human transmission” until Jan. 20, obfuscated whistleblower reports, censored internet reports in a cover-up, and withheld important scientific information – including virus samples – to help other countries treat the disease, according to a memo leaked to Australia’s The Daily Telegraph.
All told, it is a scathing rebuke of President Xi Jinping’s China issued by Five Eyes’ consortium of intelligence from the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
China’s handling is an “assault on international transparency,” the memo stated, adding researchers who blew the whistle on the outbreak early have been either silenced, allegedly jailed, or have mysteriously disappeared, per the report.
On Sunday, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said “enormous evidence” shows the novel coronavirus began in a laboratory and that Beijing has refused to give international scientists access to learn what happened.
“I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan,” Pompeo said on ABC’s “This Week.” “These are not the first times that we’ve had a world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab.”
Pompeo stopped short of saying the virus was man-made, noting that he agreed with a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that ruled out genetic modification or it having been man-made.
“I’ve seen what the intelligence community has said,” said Pompeo. “I have no reason to believe that they’ve got it wrong.” Pompeo declined to say whether the Chinese intentionally released the virus.
Also, evidence potentially pointing to China’s negligence has been destroyed, Five Eyes intelligence found.
“At the end of this, when the dust settles, it is also clear that there has to be a re-evaluation by the West of its relationship with China, both in terms of dependency but also because of the many treaties and agreements and rules that China broke by keeping silent over the true nature of the coronavirus, despite the fact that it was in its early days,” Tory Member of Parliament Bob Seely told MailOnline.
“That breach of trust has come at the cost of tens of thousands of lives in Europe and throughout the world, and a devastating impact on our economy and the lives of people in Britain but also in other Five Eyes and other free states.”
President Donald Trump has vowed a thorough U.S. investigation into intelligence reports of the virus having leaked from a lab accident in Wuhan, instead of the earliest reports it originated in a nearby wet market where live animals are slaughtered and sold for food.
Trump had originally praised China’s response to the coronavirus before it came overseas, killing more than 67,492 in the U.S., and intelligence reports began uncovering the scale of China’s malfeasance and cover-up.
The Wuhan lab, which had been granted $3.7 million by the Obama administration and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s U.S. National Institutes of Health, had lax safety protocols and conducted “risky” research in studying severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and other infectious coronaviruses.
Intelligence details how China downplayed the outbreak early on, while scrambling to cover its tracks on failures to contain it, including “destroying” lab samples, disinfecting wet market animal stalls, censoring whistleblower reports online of “silent carriers,” and shunning countries seeking samples of the virus for its own medical research, per the report.
China’s National Health Commission reportedly ordered virus samples destroyed and issued a “no-publication order” on research Jan 3.
“There is little doubt that China misled the world at a critical early phase of COVID-19,” Seely, who sits on Parliment’s foreign affairs select committee, told MailOnline. “Its aggression and threats to others now – both to individuals and countries – is an attempt to hide that.
“It is really clear that we need a reappraisal of our relationship with China. We need to work with China now to solve COVID-19 for the good of our people and the world.”
While not finalizing a concrete dollar figure to date, Trump has vowed to seek retribution from China, a country it has been hard on imposing tariffs on trade in order to leverage a massive trade deal. The U.S. has long held a large trade deficit with China, Trump lamented.
Among the revelations in the intelligence report, per the Telegraph:
- The lab had a sample with 96% genetic match to COVID-19 as early as 2013.
- “Risky” research bat-derived coronaviruses
- Asymptomatic carriers were “kept silence” early by China.
- Chinese search engines were censored to snuff out reports on the outbreak.
- The World Health Organization denied human-to-human transmission until late January, despite evidence to the contrary found by neighboring countries.
- China locked down travel within its country from Wuhan in the Hubei Province, but publicly criticized other country’s travel bans on China.
“Millions of people leave Wuhan after the outbreak and before Beijing locks down the city on Jan. 23,” the Five Eyes memo read, per the Telegraph. “Thousands fly overseas. Throughout February, Beijing presses the U.S., Italy, India, Australia, Southeast Asian neighbors and others not to protect themselves via travel restrictions, even as the PRC [People’s Republic of China] reimposes severe restrictions at home.”
The intelligence sharing of the five English-speaking nations has come into question amid the United Kingdom’s contracting Huwaei, a Chinese telecommunications company, to work on its nationwide 5G network. The Trump administration has been pressing the U.K. to reconsider, particularly because China’s government holds forced technology transfer sway over its businesses.
“There are clearly questions that need to be answered about the origin and spread of the virus, not least so we can ensure that we are better prepared for future global pandemics,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman told the Telegraph.
Among the search terms bleached from Chinese Internet service, starting Dec. 31:
- “SARS variation.”
- “Wuhan Seafood market.”
- “Wuhan Unknown Pneumonia.”
Among the whistleblowers to be silenced or have since disappeared, per intelligence:
- Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher Huang Yanling, thought to be patient zero, disappeared and her biography was deleted from the lab’s website. The institute denied she is patient zero, saying she is alive. But no one has heard from her.
- Held in extrajudicial detention centers are: businessman Fang Bin, lawyer Chen Qiushi, and former state TV reporter Li Zehua.
Scientist Dr. Shi Zhengli was leading the partially U.S.-funded study of coronavirus bat viruses at the WIV lab.
A comprehensive timeline of Chinese disinformation campaign on the coronavirus is ongoing online at the Center for Security Policy.
“China behaved like authoritarian regimes do, attempted to conceal and hide and confuse,” Pompeo said on ABC. “It employed the World Health Organization as a tool to do the same.”
The secretary said China continued to block access by health experts from the WHO, as well as U.S. scientists, from getting access to samples of the virus needed for study.
“This is an ongoing threat, an ongoing pandemic,” Pompeo said. “The Chinese Communist Party continues to block access to the Western world, the world’s best scientists, to figure out exactly what happened.”Related Stories:
- National Security Group Details China’s Coronavirus Deceptions
- Trump Confident of Virus’ Roots in Wuhan Lab
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