The Wuhan coronavirus “lab leak” origin theory, which at one time was considered such “fake news” that social media posts mentioning it were subject to deletion/censoring by Big Tech, is now believed to be as credible as the zoonotic transfer origin theory by Biden administration officials, according to a Friday evening report by CNN.

As Scott Hounsell wrote Thursday, since Sen. Rand Paul grilled Dr. Anthony Fauci about gain-of-function research conducted in conjunction with the Wuhan Institue of Virology and a potential lab leak origin, attitudes have shifted dramatically among scientists and government officials on the topic. For one day after Paul decimated Fauci in front of the country, Fauci-stans claimed that Sen. Paul had been pwned by the elderly bureaucrat. Then a group of virologists, including Dr. Ralph Baric – the UNC researcher who’d conducted numerous studies with Dr. Shi Zhengli – wrote an open letter urging the re-examination of the lab leak theory, citing China’s failure to cooperate and provide original data to the World Health Organization. Baric’s change of heart opened the floodgates, and since then we learned that we’ve been lied to, or given “misinformation,” about a number of things.

We learned that:

• The State Department knew as early as 2017 that the People’s Liberation Army was funding and conducting research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
• NIH/NIAID funded gain-of-function research with Chinese scientists for at least a decade before the outbreak of the pandemic
• Chinese military scientists took part in NIH/NIAID-funded research
• The Wuhan Wet Market was not “ground zero” for the outbreak
• Dr. Peter Daszak, who’d directed hundreds of millions of dollars of gain-of-function research and partnered with the WIV, served as a Facebook fact-checker on COVID-19 origins

We’ve learned even more than that, but those are the items that are confirmed by either the mainstream media, the administration, or the WHO.

Today’s drip, drip from the White House is the latest, but surely not the last, “clarification” or “update” or whatever they want to term it on the matter.

Ironically, earlier Friday White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was grilled by Fox News’ Peter Doocy about the administration’s efforts to squelch free speech online under the guise of “combating misinformation.” Doocy brought up the fact that just months ago people/media outlets sharing information about a potential lab leak origin on Facebook would have their posts removed and/or “strikes” issued against their pages, and now that theory is considered as credible as animal-human transfer. Of course, Psaki gaslighted Doocy – incredibly, asking for data to back up his assertion – instead of answering the question.

Anyway, back to the CNN story, placed by “anonymous sources.” As background, on May 26 Biden directed the country’s intelligence agencies to conduct a 90-day review into the virus’s origin and was expected to receive a 45-day progress report this week. The revelation that “officials” now consider the lab leak theory credible is surprising in light of a June 27 Wall Street Journal piece that set low expectations for the review:

Biden administration officials are cautioning that a 90-day review into the origins of the Covid-19 virus may not produce a definitive explanation as intelligence agencies take on the challenge of unraveling the global pandemic.

Spy agencies conducting the review have yet to find conclusive evidence that would settle the debate over whether the virus came from human contact with an infected animal or was leaked from a Chinese government virology lab, a person familiar with the efforts said.

Mr. Biden “is mindful of the fact that after 90 days we may not have an absolutely definitive answer, but he wanted a focused, intense, time-bound effort,” a senior administration official said.

CNN’s report begins:

Senior Biden administration officials overseeing an intelligence review into the origins of the coronavirus now believe the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is at least as credible as the possibility that it emerged naturally in the wild….

A memo distributed to the intelligence community on June 11 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and obtained exclusively by CNN, tasked officials with obtaining more data on both the animal and lab leak theories, citing “key intelligence needs” that could help determine the origins of the virus.

The memo called for more examination of several topics including any “detections of the virus in wild or domestic animals,” the “breadth of high-risk Chinese and regional wildlife activities,” any viruses that “could serve as the backbone for genetic engineering purposes,” and the “breadth of Chinese biological research and related activities.”

The memo also called on the intelligence community to study the “breadth of Chinese actions that may have inhibited World Health Organization or other origins investigations.”

Now you have to wonder why the memo was leaked to CNN. Having reviewed a great deal of material on these issues from sources, it could very well be that the Biden administration knows that information showing that viruses that “could serve as the backbone for genetic engineering purposes” will absolutely be found at WIV and that the “breadth of Chinese biological research and related activities,” specifically regarding the use of viruses as weapons, will be rather large. I would also wager that there will be overwhelming evidence of a massive cover-up by Beijing, or, “actions that may have inhibited World Health Organization or other origins investigations” in that intel assessment and, most importantly, the administration knows they won’t be able to sweep it all under the rug.

By incrementally publicly shifting the administration’s position/belief on China’s culpability and how much US intelligence and diplomatic agencies knew about China’s activities before the pandemic, Biden/Harris et al are setting the stage to falsely claim, “Trump and his people tried to keep all of this from you and run a politically-motivated, racist investigation; our administration brought you the truth and is going to hold China accountable.” I hope that’s not true, but all indications point in that direction.