Mick Hartley

The latest on the Wuhan lab-leak cover-up, from the Times:

German spies were almost certain that the Covid pandemic originated in a Wuhan laboratory, only for successive chancellors to bury the potentially explosive intelligence assessment, according to reports.

Investigations by the newspapers Zeit and Süddeutsche Zeitung found that the chancellery of Angela Merkel commissioned the foreign intelligence agency, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), to assess the origins of the virus in 2020.

The BND analysed public data and material obtained as part of an intelligence operation codenamed Saaremaa. This included scientific data from Chinese research institutions, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

It was said to have found evidence of high-risk experiments that artificially modified naturally occurring viruses, and numerous breaches of laboratory safety regulations. The BND’s president at the time, Bruno Kahl, briefed the chancellery while Merkel was still in office. The laboratory thesis was seen to be accurate with a probability of “80 to 95” per cent.

However, according to reports, Merkel decided to keep the assessment secret. Kahl is said to have informed the chancellery again after Olaf Scholz took over the government in 2021, without the results finding their way to the public.

"Mutti" Merkel knew what was for the best.