CIA bribed its own team to reject lab-leak theory, whistleblower claims | Hacker News Reader

CIA bribed its own team to reject lab-leak theory, whistleblower claims

science.org

115 pointsmiguelazo54 comments

> The whistleblower alleged the other six team members supporting the lab origin then received “a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” wrote Wenstrup...

> He asserts that the new whistleblower allegation “obviously is bullshit.” Garry similarly says it sounds "ludicrous"...

It definitely sounds like BS to me. If the CIA was putting pressure on its analysts or wanted to have a report come to a certain conclusion, it's not going to do so with a monetary bribe. That's a pretty absurd idea.

There can be sort-of mundane explanations. Like, they were offered a 45-day temporary duty assignment somewhere to hear/study/whatever more about the theory the CIA wanted to be the prevailing one. Someplace where the per-deim compensation is significantly higher than the actual cost.

How would they do it? Rendition flight to a black site? That would make for a better news story.

Why would they need to resort to that? They already have full access to your SF-86 and all the other blackmail material that every government employee with a clearance has to submit, on requesting a clearance. That's not just for background checks. It's leverage. There are any number of things the CIA could do with that information, to make your life unpleasant. They also run background checks on your friends and acquaintances.

Something is off about this to me too. 6/7 people colluding in this way is highly abnormal-- even in the CIA, most people have some amount of integrity.

This smells to me more like one member of the team is salty about not getting an expected yearly bonus and is now claiming the rest of the team received one due to foul play.

When payroll is reviewed, I have no doubt there will be recent changes to pay for 6/7 of the team-- which will give this source enough credibility to not dismiss the rest of their allegations.

I'm not even commenting on whether the lab-leak theory itself is valid, but I do think this particular event is someone playing at shenanigans. When the only tool in your box is a shit-stirring stick...

I think it more likely that 1 out of 7 is a trumper.

>6/7 people colluding in this way is highly abnormal-- even in the CIA, most people have some amount of integrity.

Yes, they probbably thought they were acting with integrity. It wasn't labeled as a bribe, it was a bonus for helping squash "a dangerous conspiracy theory with geopolitical implications", that the recipients happened to at least be open to.

In many of these situations, the people involved think that they are doing the right thing, even CIA officers staging coups or planning asssasintations. Convince someone they're doing the right thing and you can get them to participate in a lot of shady things.

The CIA have been masters of shaping their perception as "well any evil they do is necessary evil", particularly with members of congress

Given that the cia has a lot of control over what it's analysts say, why wouldn't it just order them to say what it wants?

> 6/7 people colluding in this way is highly abnormal-- even in the CIA, most people have some amount of integrity.

I think that might be a cultural expectation thing that you're relying on.

There's many examples of people conspiring together, wittingly and unwittingly

>most people have some amount of integrity

You must be unfamiliar with the type of people attracted to the CIA. Delusions of grandeur would be an understatement.

The whistleblower, who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer, alleges that of the seven members assigned to the CIA team tasked with analyzing COVID-19 origins, six officers concluded that the virus likely originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.

Seems like there should be an easy paper trail on this, right? Why cite the whistleblower? Why not just go straight to the document containing the opinions, wherever that may be?

WTF?

> who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer

Isn’t this just telling us that the outlet was unable to confirm that the “whistleblower” was either generally credible or any kind of insider, while trying to put a positive spin on it?

FWIW, I took that from the official press release from house.gov[0], not this publication.

[0]https://oversight.house.gov/release/testimony-from-cia-whist...

“presents as” is a pretty wild bit, too. They gave the impression of being a spook

It could be any number of Alex Jones guests.

Because we have insane and unconstitutional-yet-enforced laws that criminalize stating facts such as "xyz is employed by the CIA".

The author seems to believe (and is probably correct) that these laws don't apply to stating the impression of spookiness that was given to them.

Yes it's nuts, but the laws in this space are nuts.

> according to a press release today from the office of the Republican leading

> anonymous whistleblower claims

Boy, oh boy do I wish there was a way for an individual to be anonymous but verifiable as a unique individual operating on a consistently used device.

Sybil be damned.

There is PGP you know?

EDIT: obviously this only sort of solves for the "individual" side of your remark but it is something at least.

I don't think they were anonymous to the people they blew the whistle to. I think the people they blew the whistle to are keeping them anonymous to the public.

>Now, Representative Brad Wenstrup (R–OH) ... says his panel and the House’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have heard testimony from a whistleblower “who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer.”

Why would they pay individual employees to reach a certain decision? Everything they do is secret and the people at the top would control what is released and what the final conclusion is anyway. Technically the president could request the original reports, but it’s doubtful they would dig into that level.

I'm reminded of a quote from Henry Kissinger's book Diplomacy: "What political leaders decide, intelligence services tend to seek to justify. Popular literature and films often depict the opposite--policymakers as the helpless tools of intelligence experts. In the real world, intelligence assessments more often follow than guide policy decisions."

We should just tear down all the intelligence agencies and start again. Even if there was fire to go with this smoke, they're going to lie so they can continue to operate with impunity anyway.

Distraction after distraction after distraction

This is consistent with the cover up from Fauci and Collins to incentivize those believing it was lab origin to change their story to proximal origin. https://oversight.house.gov/release/hearing-wrap-up-suppress... The FBI and Department of Energy concluded lab leak as the most likely.

I was making bioweapons in my last job with DARPA visiting us often. We were given funding earmarked to setup operations in China before I left. I did not know we were making bioweapons as they had some good cover stories I stupidly believed.

Um, what?

I am just happy a prototype leaked rather than deployment of a fully developed weapon. We got lucky this time.

"unnamed CIA whistleblower... according to a press release today from the office of the Republican leading a congressional investigation into the pandemic"

The Republican is Representative Brad Wenstrup (R–OH), who chairs the House of Representatives’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. "In December 2020, Wenstrup was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated incumbent Donald Trump."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Wenstrup

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic:

"After Republicans gained a majority of the House of Representatives at the start of the 118th Congress, the House voted to continue the committee, now dubbed Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, was approved as part of the House's rules package on January 9, 2023, by a 220–213 vote. The purpose of the committee was changed to investigate the origins of COVID-19, gain-of-function research, coronavirus-related government spending, and mask and vaccine mandates." "During the committee's first hearing on March 8, Republican Jim Jordan—who is not a member of the committee—baselessly alleged that Anthony Fauci had steered a $9 million grant to two scientists in exchange for them changing their position that the virus had originated in a lab to originating naturally."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Select_Sub...

More cases of a particular party poisoning the well when they can't win any other way.

How many supposedly credible whistleblowers is the GOP up to now?

> How many supposedly credible whistleblowers is the GOP up to now?

That have shown up to testify on the record? I count... zero

If this were true, you'd have hoped the whistleblower would not have been anonymous. There are whistleblower protections, aren't there?

Heh, hows that going for Snowden.

According to the Yakov Smirnoff principle, whistle blower is one of the best professions in Russia.

What Snowden did wasn't covered by the whistleblower laws.

First, under the relevant laws for intelligence community whistleblowers the kinds of actions covered by whistleblowing laws are illegal conduct, fraud, waste, or abuse. It is not clear that all of Snowden's disclosures qualify.

Second, the whistleblower laws only cover public disclosure only if that disclosure is not specifically prohibited by law. If the whistleblowing is about something whose disclosure is specifically prohibited, which would include much of the classified material Snowden disclosed, you have to limit your whistleblowing disclosure to people who are authorized for that material. For an NSA contractor like Snowden that would include the NSA's inspector general and members of some congressional committees and maybe some others.

That wasn't real whistleblowing?

The Obama administration, which is the parent of the current administration was irrationally punitive towards whistleblowers, according to the ACLU.

By my count, the Obama administration has secured 526 months of prison time for national security leakers, versus only 24 months total jail time for everyone else since the American Revolution.

https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/leak-prosecutions-obam...

And just like that it’s gone from the front page of HN even w/50 points in 20 minutes.

It’s a Congressional subcommittee with some less-than-credible members. It’s reasonable to wait for their report instead of relying on a press release from an election denier [1] that references someone “who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer.” (“Presents as”?!)

[1] https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/11/ji...

Forgive me if I read this as “this isn’t my team reporting it so we shouldn’t trust it.”

How many reports over the last few years were based off “anonymous sources?” Funny how those sources were completely trusted and unchecked due to their allegiance to a certain party.

I’m sure as more information comes out it will be disregarded due to the source and the actual content or context will not be reviewed.

There’s a term for it but it slips my mind.

> Forgive me if I read this as “this isn’t my team reporting it so we shouldn’t trust it.”

How a biased third party views a source shouldn't color your own evaluation of its credibility. Individual politicians putting out press releases based on anonymous sources have never been credible. Both sides do it. The informed largely ignore it (unless you're advising a campaign).

There is also gradation in the quality of anonymous sources. Anonymous source providing sworn testimony to a Congressional subcommittee or the DoJ? Very credible. Anonymous source providing intel to a well-regarded newspaper on deep background? Credible. Anonymous source that "presents as" something being relayed by someone on the fringe of their party? Obviously not credible. Doesn't matter if it's Winstrup or AOC.

Again, nobody is saying ignore the subcommittee. Just, ignore this one dude who's putting out uncorroborated press releases.

I appreciate your explanation. I understand better now. Thank you.

Nah I think the phrasing “presents as” is pretty suspicious.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)

The establishment in the government push lies, hard. Then they censor the truth. They label the truth "misinformation".

At least the CIA doesn't try to control (social) media, and control the message. (Sarcasm implied)

Why would the CIA be investigating COVID origin? Is this like the time a bunch of scientists discussing COVID origins internally said "well we don't really have good evidence either way but it's probably natural origin" and certain news sources screamed that they were internally suppressing the lab leak theory?

If I had to guess it could possibly be to figure out how to squelch the blow-back with plausible alternate causation as the gain of function testing may have started in a US college, then shut down by President Obama, then that block may have been possibly side stepped by a few people that may have had some financial incentives and may have had access to alternate funding and may have moved it out of country to maybe avoid scrutiny and then it all blew up. Imagine being financially culpable for the world wide fallout? So I guess it makes sense that it could in theory be treated as a national security issue. That's just a guess though.

That seems like an oddly specific guess. Not saying wrong, not even implausible, just...specific.

So I totally see where you are coming from. To keep things somewhat scientific I ask myself a bunch of questions and roll a 2d20. For every five questions I get one saving roll. Then to filter out the results I consult 3 different magic eight-balls and note the results. I strive to get the lowest P-value otherwise I discard the data. I think all the years of watching "Look Around You" embedded a sense of scientific rigor in me.

I don’t know if you’re talking about this:

https://theintercept.com/2022/01/12/covid-origins-fauci-reda...

… but if so your statement is a thorough mischaracterization.

1. These weren’t just “some scientists”, they were Fauci, Collins, and an inner circle

2. They didn’t say it’s probably natural origin. One puts the probability at 70-30 or 60-40 in favor of a lab leak, and another says

“I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus or one very similar to it to nCoV where you insert exactly 4 amino acids 12 nucleotide that all have to be added at the exact same time to gain this function – that and you don’t change any other amino acid in S2? I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature.”

3. From the house oversight letter:

“ Only three days later, on February 4, 2020, four participants of the conference call authored a paper entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” and sent a draft to Drs. Fauci and Collins.8 Prior to final publication in Nature Medicine, the paper was sent to Dr. Fauci for editing and approval.9 It is unclear what, if any, new evidence was presented or if the underlying science changed in that short period of time, but after speaking with Drs. Fauci and Collins, the authors abandoned their belief COVID-19 was the result of a laboratory leak. It is also unclear if Drs. Fauci or Collins edited the paper prior to publication.”.

There have been repeated queries about what new evidence arose to so firmly convince all parties that the origin was natural and that anyone suggesting a lab leak was an irresponsible and dangerous conspiracy theorist. These queries were never answered. Therefore, it seems like quite a rational conclusion to draw that the lab leak hypothesis was being suppressed, contrary to your slanted language about “certain news sources screaming”.

Is that a rhetorical question? Because it's a national security matter. And certain news sources were sadly correct, as evidence by the NIH emails obtained by US Right to Know via FOIA requests:

https://usrtk.org/category/covid-19-origins/

I wonder what grandparent commenter thinks CIA's job would be... Why wouldn't they, they probably had/have contacts in the Chinese government they can ask "So what's going on?" and figure out if the story is true or a lie (If they don't have contacts they'd be a useless Intelligence Agency)

I love how you are questioning the one piece of factual information that is known with certainty. The CIA did investigate the origin of the virus, as did several other intelligence agencies. There was a report issued by the Director of National Intelligence regarding this and you can read much of it yourself on their website:

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Report-...

If you are actually asking why multiple agencies would investigate this, it seems pretty logical to me: the different agencies have different capabilities, sources and methods that could shed light on a question that could potentially be extremely important to National Security.

This was a question of what the reason was this happened, not doubting that it happened.

It feels to me like if the CIA would investigate a food contamination event. Unless there is suspicion of foul play, why? Or does every US agency do cursory investigations on anything just in case their expertise might be needed?

> if the CIA would investigate a food contamination event

If the contamination possibly had a foreign state's fingerprints on it, sure they would.

This is obvious. CIA is the spy agency. Given that China was stonewalling any attempts to learn about what was going on in WIH, it seems natural for the spies to see what they can learn. They likely have access to many internal Chinese communications.

Also obviously, this isn’t an investigation on just “anything”. This is about the origin of a global pandemic with millions of lives lost and billions-if-not-trillions of dollars of economic impact.

And BTW again your biases show through with your use of the word “cursory”. On what basis do you conclude that the CIA investigation was cursory (or the DoE investigation, etc)? We don’t have access to those reports.

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