US Should Have Spied on Chinese Health Officials From Pandemic’s Onset: House Democrats

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines (C) and other U.S. intelligence officials testify to members of Congress in Washington on March 8, 2022. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

The United States “took too long” to commence espionage efforts against Chinese health officials to learn more about the COVID-19 pandemic from the outset, according to Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee.

In a declassified report (pdf) released Dec. 14, committee members credit intelligence agencies with their early warnings of a potential pandemic but hold that the lack of clandestine intelligence collection as the virus emerged in late 2019 and early 2020 was detrimental to the government’s insight into the situation.

“The IC’s [intelligence community’s] reporting throughout January ‘was based on open source reporting, diplomatic reporting,’ and its own expert assessments were formed on the same basis,” noted Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), House Intelligence Committee chair, in an introduction to the report. “This was helpful, but far less than helpful than it could have been if resources were quickly trained on harder to obtain information.”

According to the report, it wasn’t until Jan. 29, 2020, that a formal directive to begin “ramping up” intelligence collection was issued.

Ill-Prepared

One key finding of the report was that the intelligence agencies’ sluggish intelligence collection efforts in 2020 indicate that the intelligence community is unprepared to handle a future global health crisis.

“Although the Community remains well positioned to use public health information available to it to warn policymakers, it is not sufficiently positioned to collect uniquely valuable intelligence in support of a crisis response,” the report holds. “In the Committee’s view, the IC must undertake fundamental changes to be better prepared for the next pandemic—one that could be far more lethal or devastating than COVID-19.”

Describing the intelligence community’s typical approach to such crises as a “cycle of ‘crisis and complacency,’ Schiff noted: “After each ‘once-in-a-generation’ event, there are calls for major investments and reforms, but the attention is often fleeting. And the promised investments and reforms fail to materialize. It is a pernicious cycle that we may be doomed to repeat, if we do not heed the warnings in this report.”

Placing Blame

Although the report states that its primary focus is the intelligence community’s response to the pandemic, the House Intelligence Committee Democrats also took the opportunity to criticize the Trump administration’s response as well.

While noting that the “vast majority” of the administration’s actions fell beyond the scope of their review, the committee states: “This report will not cover the U.S. government’s failure to quickly develop an effective test for COVID-19, its failure to create an effective task force to run the U.S. government response, nor its failure to distribute personal protective equipment to doctors and nurses on the front lines. Indeed, failures of the administration’s response had a more significant role in Americans’ day to day struggles with the virus than anything the IC did or did not do.”

One such alleged failure, the report says, was the disparity between the Trump administration’s early messaging and the warnings that were issued by the intelligence community.

“The IC’s alarms to the White House and the former president were clear and unmistakable,” the report states. “And yet, in public messaging and in preparation for the impending impact, COVID was downplayed and steps that could have been taken to save lives were ignored.”

On Jan. 22, 2020, then-President Donald Trump commented on the virus’ recent spread to the United States while at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control,” the then-president said at the time. “It’s going to be just fine.”

However, the committee report notes that Trump was not briefed on the matter by intelligence officials until Jan. 23. Further, the Chinese regime had only confirmed that human-to-human transmission of the virus was possible just two days prior on Jan. 20, 2020.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Trump for comment.

COVID-19 Origins

In a separate minority report, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday that COVID-19 “may have been tied to” China’s biological weapons research program and that the intelligence community had misled the public in its efforts to downplay that possibility.

“Based on our investigation involving a variety of public and non-public information, we conclude that there are indications that SARS-CoV-2 may have been tied to China’s biological weapons research program and spilled over to the human population during a lab-related incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV),” the report states. “The IC has failed to adequately address this information.”

The Republicans’ report also noted that, as of yet, the committee has not seen any indication that the virus was intentionally released.

While committee Democrats did not focus on the origins of COVID-19 in their report, they did stress the importance of preparedness for all possibilities in the future.

“[W]hile we do not know whether the virus was the result of a lab accident or natural transmission, one thing is clear—a future pandemic could result from either phenomenon and we need to prepare against both, or against worse, an intentional release,” their report states. “We need to tighten our defenses and stay alert to all possible sources of infection and transmission.”

A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on either report.