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Friday, May 01, 2020

Trump more & more desperate in run-up to his November presidential election


NYT:


Trump Officials Are Said to Press Spies to Link Virus and Wuhan Labs

Some analysts are worried that the pressure from senior officials could distort assessments about the coronavirus and be used as a weapon in an escalating battle with China


Volunteers disinfecting the Qintai Grand Theater in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus outbreak began

Credit - Aly Song/Reuters
 

WASHINGTON — Senior Trump administration officials have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the origin of the coronavirus outbreak, according to current and former American officials. The effort comes as President Trump escalates a public campaign to blame China for the pandemic.

Some intelligence analysts are concerned that the pressure from administration officials will distort assessments about the virus and that they could be used as a political weapon in an intensifying battle with China over a disease that has infected more than three million people across the globe.

Most intelligence agencies remain skeptical that conclusive evidence of a link to a lab can be found, and scientists who have studied the genetics of the coronavirus say that the overwhelming probability is that it leapt from animal to human in a nonlaboratory setting, as was the case with H.I.V., Ebola and SARS.

Mr. Trump’s aides and Republicans in Congress have sought to blame China for the pandemic in part to deflect criticism of the administration’s mismanagement of the crisis in the United States, which now has more coronavirus cases than any country. More than one million Americans have been infected, and more than 60,000 have died.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a former C.I.A. director and the administration’s most vocal hard-liner on China, has taken the lead in pushing American intelligence agencies for more information, according to current and former officials.

Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser who reported on SARS outbreaks as a journalist in China, has pressed intelligence agencies off and on since January to gather information that might support any origin theory linked to a lab.

And Anthony Ruggiero, the head of the National Security Council’s bureau tracking weapons of mass destruction, expressed frustration during one videoconference in January that the C.I.A. was unable to get behind any theory of the outbreak’s origin. C.I.A. analysts responded that they simply did not have the evidence to support any one theory with high confidence at the time, according to people familiar with the conversation.

The C.I.A.’s judgment was based in part on the fact that no signs had emerged that the Chinese government believed the outbreak came from a lab. The Chinese government has vigorously denied that the virus leaked from a lab while pushing disinformation on its origins, including suggesting that the American military created it.

Any American intelligence report blaming a Chinese institution and officials for the outbreak could significantly harm relations with China for years to come. And Trump administration officials could use it to try to prod other nations to publicly hold China accountable for coronavirus deaths even when the pandemic’s exact origins cannot be determined.

The State Department declined to answer questions about Mr. Pompeo’s role. Spokesmen for the White House and the National Security Council declined to comment.

In a statement released on Thursday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that the intelligence community “will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

Intelligence agencies, the statement said, concur “with the wide scientific consensus that the Covid-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified.”

NBC News reported earlier that administration officials had directed intelligence agencies to try to determine whether China and the World Health Organization hid information early on about the outbreak.


Chinese soldiers this month in Wuhan after the city’s travel ban was partly lifted

Credit - Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock
 

For months, scientists, spies and government officials have wrestled with varying theories about how the outbreak began, and many agree on the importance of determining the genesis of the pandemic. In government and academia, experts have ruled out the notion that it was concocted as a bioweapon. And they agree that the new pathogen began as a bat virus that evolved naturally, probably in another mammal, to become adept at infecting and killing humans.


A few scientists and national security experts have pointed to a history of lab accidents infecting researchers to suggest it might have happened in this case, but many scientists have dismissed such theories.

“We do not believe any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible,” five scientists wrote in a paper published in March in Nature Medicine.

Mr. Trump has spoken publicly about the administration’s “very serious investigations” of the virus’s origin and China’s culpability. Those inquiries took on new urgency in late March, when intelligence officials presented information to the White House that prompted some career officials to reconsider the lab theory. The precise nature of the information, based in part on intercepted communications among Chinese officials, is unclear.

The current and former officials did not say whether Mr. Trump himself, who has shown little regard for the independent judgments of intelligence and law enforcement officials, has pressured the intelligence agencies. But he does want any information supporting the lab theory to set the stage for holding China responsible, according to two people familiar with his thinking.

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NST:

Covid-19 not man-made or genetically modified: US intelligence

An older man is wheeled towards an ambulance on April 30, 2020 at NYU Langone Hospital in New York City. With over 304,000 confirmed cases and over 18,000 deaths, New York City has been the epicenter of coronavirus deaths

Stephanie Keith/Getty Images/AFP
 

WASHINGTON: The US intelligence community said Thursday it had concluded that the novel coronavirus that has swept the globe originated in China but was not man-made or engineered.

"The entire Intelligence Community has been consistently providing critical support to US policymakers and those responding to the Covid-19 virus, which originated in China," the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement.

"The intelligence community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified."

The statement came after US President Donald Trump suggested on Monday that he might seek damages from China over the outbreak.

News reports say Trump has tasked US spies to find out more about the origins of the virus, at first blamed on a Wuhan, China wet market selling exotic animals like bats, but now thought possibly to be from a virus research laboratory nearby.

6 comments:

  1. http://ktemoc.blogspot.com/2020/04/dr-p-forster-of-cambridge-university.html?m=1

    Aren't you among the ones desperately peddling the accusation that the US is the one who spread the Virus?

    Trump may be playing nasty, he's not the one who started this fairy tale.

    He's just hitting back, and nobody can accuse him of being a nice guy.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Mfers, like u, always play to twist the chronology of event as if everyone tracking the issue is as insidious in actions & nefarious in intentions!

      Right from the beginning of covid-19 pandemic, US/Trump has started this fairy tale of 'Wuhan' virus!

      Remembered the blame labelled on the Wuhan wet market?

      Mfer, if u care to search the historical pandemic records of China, from the beginning of written records till now, NO any pandemics/diseases were ever recorded as been spread from any wet markets in China. & how long has wet market exists in Asia?

      Most of the blurred & superiority complex infused Westerners have resolved ad nauseam about wild life bat meat in the wet market been the source of the covid-19.

      The failure of this argument is WHY now & not before! Do the SARS-CoV-2 ONLY now been mutated 'maturely' to start jumping from bat to human?

      Didn't the Nipah incident remind everyone that there must be an intermediate host, like pig?

      & how many Palau natives have died of coronavirus for consuming bat meat?

      When the blackgoating failed, the next target was the Wuhan b4 lab!

      & that happened only after the Fort Derrick toxic leak was selectively selected from most of the US media! How convenience was to blame the Fort Detrick accident to poor sewage linkage construction. CDC, a non military outfit had to investigate about this top secret bioweapon lab ONLY after surroundings residents outcry.

      If ever ANY b4 lab that deserves a thorough investigation about weaponized coronavirus, Fort Derrick should be the #1 candidate!

      Trump is hitting back bcoz his reelection for 2nd term depends on a military strategy that the potus has been playing out so many times in time of home crisis!

      He is just taking a page out of Bush junior's wmd, with Oz Morrison as his barking dog!

      Delete
    2. Is it totally out of the loop to consider that the virus could have come from the US ? We have every right to explore this :

      1. who is patient zero ? some suggestions seem to point to a reservist soldier from the US by the name of Maatje Benassi who took part in the Military Game in Wuhan in Oct last year. She and 4 other US soldiers came down with fever while staying at Oriental Hotel in Wuhan. Instead of having their fever treated in Wuhan, they were flown back immediately to the US in a special biohazard plane and promptly kept out of public sight. This incident itself raised not quite a few eyebrows.

      2. at least 72 employees of the Oriental Hotel in Wuhan were found infected with Covid19 ten days to a couple of weeks after the 5 soldiers left for the US.

      3. George Webb, a US investigative journalist, had managed to track down the movement of Maatje Benassi prior to her coming to Wuhan. CNN had aired a snippet of Webb being interviewed by a reporter. Webb in that snippet asked whether Maatje Benassi ever worked in a hospital located near to a biochem lab in Fort Detrick which mysteriously was sealed up and closed down without any warning. No answer was forthcoming although the query was very direct asking about Maatje Benassi.

      4. Fort Detrick is a United States Army Medical Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland. ... It also hosts the National Cancer Institute-Frederick (NCI-Frederick) and is home to the National Interagency Confederation for Biological Research (NICBR) and National Interagency Biodefense Campus (NIBC).

      5. After the shut-down of the biochem lab in Fort Detrick, people staying in the vicinity of Maryland area began to suffer inexplicable severe pneumonia-like symptoms and thousands have died, which the authority had attributed to 'normal flu season deaths' although it now admitted that the number of deaths had hiked up by at least 20,000 MORE compared to previous flu season mortality. The reason given to this unusual number of deaths and the severity of the illness is " e-cigerrete vaping ".

      6. In a recent House Oversight Committee query, the Director of the US CDC, Robert Redfield, had admitted that some of the dead near Fort Detrick were exhumed and he reported that some of those who were presumed died of the flu were erroneous and in actual fact, they now know that they had died from a coronavirus.

      7. It was then revealed that because of this discovery of the result of the exhumed bodies, the report is now listed as classified and only personnel with special clearance are allowed to be involved.

      8. After more than half a year of hiding, Maatje Benassi now emerged on a recent CNN interview. She appeared agitated in this interview, with tears in her eyes, complaining of the stress she had undergone these past few months. CNN did not ask her any question about the fever she had while in Wuhan, whether she had undergone an antibody or FCR testing for Covid19 infection, or what happened to her 4 other colleagues who also had come down with fever together with her. CNN also failed to ask her if she had indeed worked in a hospital near Fort Detrick.

      Based on all that can be gleamed from such above reports, many are exploring the scenario that an accidental leak came from the Fort Detrick lab due to careless handling which necessitated the sealing off of the biochem lab. Another scenario which is being entertained is that the virus had been artificially created in that Fort Detrick lab and it was accidentally leaked out/used as bioweapon.

      The fact that ONLY the US had ALL of the 5 strains of the Covid19, with China having only 3 strains, gave added credence that Covid19 originated from the US, not China.












      2.

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  2. ccp said this is a scientific issue that shd leave it to scientist, but refuse any independent investigation, while their propagandist, not necessarily chinese eg nyt wp keep accusing trump as if the virus spread from california bat, some even threatened to boycott australia bat oppps beef just because some (only some, not all since ccp propagandist r everywhere) in aussie want the truth. ccp lover in msia no diff, they talk 5 army, california bat, mother of 2 etc as if breakout is not first happened in wuhan.

    of course trump is looking for a scapegoat for his lousy slow action, however most probably the scapegoat is not a scapegoat but a right one, the virus originator ie ccp, thats y ccp filter all research report on the same subject n refuse any independent investigation, same like telling the world backside no shit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oui…

      Mfer, shows proof to substantiate yr farts lah!

      Wakakakaka…

      "scientific issue that shd leave it to scientist, but refuse any independent investigation"

      What independent investigation?

      As in yr pedophilia label?

      The real scientific proof will come out from the California autopsies done on those deaths claimed to be caused by the super flu around Dec 2019.

      The cause of the death, the timeline & the type of SARS-CoV-2 variant will be a good start!

      That's scientific for sleep pretender like u.

      Delete
  3. A leaked Republican Party memo with its detailed 57-page strategy document addressed to its candidates the methods how to aggressively attack China on the coronavirus crisis.

    The memo includes advice on everything...from how to tie Democratic candidates to the Chinese government to how to deal with accusations of racism. The memo emphasized that to avoid being accused of racism, the Republican candidates must remember to say that the Chinese are not to be blamed, the attack should be focused on CCP.

    Their 3 main line of assault :

    1. To accuse China of causing the virus by "covering it up'
    2. To accuse Democrates on being 'soft on China'
    3. To push for sanctions on China for its role in 'spreading this pandemic'.

    The document urges the Republican candidates to 'stay relentlessly on message against China when responding to any questions about the virus'

    When asked whether the spread of the coronavirus is Trumph's fault, the candidates are advised to respond by pivoting to China, to deviate attention from Trump.

    " Don't defend Trump other than the China TRAVEL BAN - attack China" the memo states.

    Republicans have indicated they plan to make China a centerpiece of the 2020 campaign, based on polling which shows that China-focused attacks would be effective.

    Trump and his neocons hawks are desperate to win the presidential reelection at all cost.

    (South China Morning Post has featured this leaked document but it was front paged for a mere half a day, unlike its China-bashing articles which lingered for days, hehe and the article is now hidden somewhere obscure. Another site highlighting this leaked memo is the Politico site )

    ReplyDelete