WASHINGTON — According to a federal watchdog, the Central Intelligence Agency is not fully cooperating with an inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly regarding the theory that it may have been sparked by a lab mishap.
In a letter obtained by The Post, Intelligence Community Inspector General Christopher Fox asserted that CIA Director John Ratcliffe has not provided essential documents. These records are crucial for investigating claims that the US government might have participated in what a recent agency official described as a “cover-up” related to the pandemic’s beginnings.
The watchdog’s investigation is focused on whether analysts, appointed by then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to analyze alleged intelligence mishaps during President Biden’s tenure, faced obstruction.
Fox has previously sought answers from Ratcliffe regarding allegations that analysts’ digital activities and interactions with whistleblowers were being monitored. To date, he reports he has not received satisfactory responses.
The Inspector General expressed concern over the CIA director’s insistence that there was no evidence of illegal surveillance of the analysts collaborating with Gabbard’s team, known as the Director’s Initiatives Group.
Fox also claimed the CIA was not complying with the federal law that compels the agency to “coordinate” with the IC Office of Inspector General for its oversight of such matters “as appropriate.”
The June 16 letter was sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and laid out Fox’s issues with the CIA after the Iowa Republican drew attention to the “serious” allegations put forward by the agency officer who testified to a Senate committee the month before.
“Americans deserve a full accounting of COVID-19’s origins and the Intelligence Community’s (IC) response, especially whether whistleblowers were unlawfully monitored amid fallout from the virus,” Grassley told The Post.
“I appreciate the IC Inspector General’s ongoing work in this regard. However, it’s very concerning to me that entities within the Intelligence Community are obstructing the Inspector General’s honest efforts to perform a thorough investigation. Sunlight is the best disinfectant; the IC must come clean to the American people.”
Fox’s letter also clashed with Ratcliffe’s public statements regarding the origins of COVID-19. The CIA director has called for further transparency. As former DNI, he had been one of the only officials supporting the theory that the virus emerged from a lab accident in Wuhan, China, in late 2019.
But CIA special operations officer James Erdman III testified to Congress on May 13 that the US Intelligence Community exerted improper influence over assessments of COVID origins — and “illegally monitored” analysts tasked by Gabbard with looking into the matter.
That resulted in a 2023 CIA assessment that refused to take a side on the origins question — despite most of the analysts involved favoring the lab-leak hypothesis.
“Six of the seven technical experts say, ‘Yep, we still think it’s a lab leak,’” Erdman said of their deliberations. “And they were sticking to their guns. Management changed the analytic line.”
In the hearing, Erdman testified to the Senate Homeland Security Committee that Dr. Anthony Fauci and other IC leaders “influenced” the CIA and others involved in COVID intelligence analyses to suppress evidence that the virus most likely resulted from a lab leak in China.
“Dr. Fauci’s role in the cover-up was intentional,” he said, claiming the then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) put forward “a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials and scientists” to prejudice intelligence assessment products in favor of a natural origin to SARS-CoV-2.
The CIA officer also testified that there “were Americans being spied upon illegally while executing duties directed by the president and under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence” as the DIG conducted a review of the assessments that Fauci and others swayed in 2020 and 2021.
At the time of Erdman’s testimony, a CIA spokesperson accused the Senate committee of having “acted in bad faith by subpoenaing an Agency officer … despite having already obtained closed-door testimony from the individual previously.”
The FBI, Energy Department and other federal officials determined that COVID-19 most likely originated in a lab leak years before the CIA changed its position from neutral.
That January 2025 CIA assessment, which was declassified by Ratcliffe but begun under former President Joe Biden’s spy chief William Burns, made it the third agency to back the lab leak theory.
“One of the things that I’ve talked about a lot is addressing the threat from China on a number of fronts, and that goes back to why a million Americans died and why the Central Intelligence Agency has been sitting on the sidelines for five years in not making an assessment about the origins of COVID,” Ratcliffe told Breitbart News at the time.
“I’ve been on record, as you know, in saying I think our intelligence, our science, and our common sense all really dictates that the origins of COVID was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he said.
Four other agencies including the National Intelligence Council maintain a zoonotic theory of pandemic’s origins — that the highly contagious virus naturally mutated from bats to infect humans, likely via an intermediary like pangolins — is the most likely cause.
As early as May 2020, scientific papers were circulating inside the IC that backed the lab leak theory, but senior National Intelligence Council officers allowed Fauci to “inject himself” into the debate as a subject-matter expert, overruling intelligence analysts, Erdman noted.
A former IC intelligence analyst also told The Post Thursday that “the IC analysts were essentially in lockstep with the WHO’s position, which was the same as the Chinese’s” and that Fauci wasn’t the only “compromised” official who influenced their work.
Ralph Baric, who along with a Wuhan Institute of Virology scientist helped author a “blueprint” for engineering SARS-CoV-2, also consulted for the IC’s Biological Sciences Expert Group.
“It is highly plausible Fauci et al provided synthetic viral capability the Chinese government could use for military purposes,” the ex-intel analyst said, “Baric directly; Fauci indirectly via grants.”
“My concern is,” the ex-intel analyst said, “that I think there is a very pervasive Chinese influence at the IC at different levels,” adding that Fauci and others got “played like a Stradivarius [violin].”
“What needs to be uncovered is who’s driving this natural origin thing and suppressing all this other stuff with the lab leak and why?” the former analyst said.
An April 22 assessment from the IC OIG, which was also obtained by The Post, noted that Fox’s office had recently received new allegations of “conflicts of interest” marring past COVID intelligence products.
That assessment also “identified that external agencies have information IC OIG does not currently possess, and that such information is likely material to a comprehensive assessment of allegations relating to the origin of COVID-19.”
“This special review confirms the existence of serious allegations regarding the integrity of U.S. Government personnel and processes related to the assessment of the origin of COVID-19,” it concluded.
Reps for the CIA did not respond to a request for comment.