FBI Director Christopher Wray appeared yesterday on Fox News, providing no new intelligence on the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, but doing his best to channel the infamous Joe McCarthy in distorted suggestions about the malevolent Chinese role in killing over a million Americans.
Wray stated: “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan. Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab.” Wray pointed out that the FBI has specialists who focus on “the dangers of biological threats, which include things like novel viruses like COVID, and the concerns that they [are] in the wrong hands [of] some bad guys, a hostile nation state, a terrorist, a criminal.” OK, now, wait for it!
Wray casually concluded that the virus has killed “millions of Americans” and “that’s precisely what that capability was designed for.”
As supporting evidence for his conclusion, he pointed to China’s suspiciously uncooperative role in working with the World Health Organization’s investigation: “I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we’re doing, the work that our U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing. And that’s unfortunate for everybody.” (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-director-says-covid-pandemic-most-likely-originated-chinese-lab )
Asked today about the new outbreak of the “lab leak” theory, China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said that the laboratory leak theory “is extremely unlikely,” and that that was the conclusion of a joint China-WHO expert group which visited the Wuhan laboratory facilities. She added that “when intelligence agencies engage in scientific issues, they politicize the source-tracing issue.” She insisted that the U.S. “cannot discredit China” and “will only further lower its own credibility.” She called upon “the U.S. to respect science and facts, stop politicizing the origin-tracing of the novel coronavirus, stop engaging in political and intelligence-based tracing, and stop interfering with and undermining the international community’s solidarity” in the fight against COVID. (https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/2511_665403/202303/t20230301_11033506.html )
RT, in its coverage, reported that the FBI “took the additional step of transcribing Wray’s comments into a series of tweets, apparently hoping to amplify the director’s claims online.”
Apparently, all is fair in whipping up anti-China hysteria, and Wray’s modern FBI makes J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI appear as a fortress of rectitude. In Joe McCarthy’s days, it worked to finally silence him with the question, “Have you no shame?” It is pretty clear that, in these curious times, that is not a consideration for such as Wray.
