A recently enacted law will still allow redactions to keep certain highly classified information secret
US President Joe Biden has signed a bill that orders the federal government to declassify documents related to the genesis of the Covid-19 pandemic, the White House suggesting “potential links” between the virus and a high-security research lab in China.
Biden put his name to the legislation Monday night, after it passed through both houses of Congress unopposed earlier this month. The law requires the office of the director of national intelligence to release information about the origins of the health crisis and stipulates that a declassified report must be given to lawmakers within 90 days.
“We need to get to the bottom of the origins of Covid-19 to make sure we can better prevent future pandemics,” the president said in a statement, adding that his office “continue to review all classified information” related to the pandemic, including all “potential links with the Wuhan Institute of Virology”, a large Chinese laboratory.
However, while Biden noted that the intelligence community would share “as much information as possible”, he also invoked his power to “to protect against the disclosure of information that would injure national security”, stating that certain recordings should be kept secret. Until he confirmed the president had signed the bill on Monday, the White House declined to reveal whether Biden supported the measure.
A number of senior officials have suggested that Covid-19 may have originated from a leak from the lab in Wuhan, China, with FBI Director Christopher Wray recently saying the virus ” most likely “ left the establishment. Although he did not cite any publicly available evidence, his comments followed reports that the Department of Energy had also changed its position on the origins issue, now supporting the lab leak theory, but only with “low confidence”.
At least four other US federal agencies and one “national intelligence group” judged the pandemic likely spread from animals to humans through natural means, while two remain undecided, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Beijing has repeatedly denied claims that the virus escaped from the Biosafety Level 4 lab – which stores deadliest pathogens under strict security protocols – dismissing the theory as a way to smear the image from China abroad. Foreign Ministry officials have accused Washington of “spreading myths” on the pandemic, and recently called on the World Health Organization to launch a new origins survey in the United States, mirroring similar surveys conducted in China.
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