Lawmakers Interested in ‘Top Secret’ Coronavirus Report Pointing to Wuhan Lab Source

Lawmakers are interested in a classified report which allegedly supports the theory the Chinese coronavirus originated from Wuhan’s Lab of Virology.

“I think a lot of us think various oversight committees probably should have been made aware of [the report] a little bit sooner,” House Energy and Commerce Committee member Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) told CNN.

“We want to get answers… because we think they have a bigger piece of the puzzle than we originally thought back in March,” Griffith added.

CNN reported the document has been available to lawmakers since last year but are unhappy they were not able to access it sooner:

The document has been quietly available to key lawmakers on Capitol Hill since last year, according to two congressional sources. But some Republicans on Capitol Hill are expressing frustration that they didn’t have access to the document sooner. GOP members of the Energy and Commerce committee have pressed the Energy Department in recent weeks for more information about the report, which is classified “top secret.”

The top secret report was published by researchers at the government-backed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in May 2020 and alleges the coronavirus escaped from the Wuhan lab, “according to four people familiar with the document.”

Sinclair Broadcast Group first reported on the document May 3. A Livermore spokeswoman “confirmed the existence of the report but declined” to provide any more information to Sinclair, “Because the report you are referring to is classified,” she said. “It would be inappropriate for our lab to discuss this.”

Sinclair reported the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory intelligence unit, dubbed the “Z Division,” published the report, as its “existence” was previously unknown.

Meanwhile, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Feith, who investigated the lab leak scandal, stated Wednesday  governments, educational institutions, and companies can’t be sure they aren’t unknowingly working with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military if they’re doing science and technology exchange in China.

When former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was questioned in March if he could say the U.S. believed the Chinese military was involved with research at the Wuhan Lab, Pompeo replied, “That’s correct, and it is a high-confidence assessment that that’s the case.”

The CCP’s militarization of science is supported by the State Department’s fact sheet released January 2021:

Secrecy and non-disclosure are standard practice for Beijing. For many years the United States has publicly raised concerns about China’s past biological weapons work, which Beijing has neither documented nor demonstrably eliminated, despite its clear obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention.

Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.