U.S. intelligence agencies began warning that Covid-19 could become a pandemic just weeks after the coronavirus was first reported in China, but they missed an opportunity to better understand its spread because they didn’t quickly begin spying on Chinese health officials who were hiding what they knew, says a newly declassified report by the House Intelligence Committee.
The report partly vindicates the CIA and other U.S. spy agencies, noting that they raised the specter of a pandemic well before the World Health Organization declared one on March 11, 2020. And it adds to the body of evidence showing that then-President Donald Trump misled the public about what he was hearing from advisers about the seriousness of the virus. The intelligence warnings summarized in the report debunk Trump’s contention that intelligence officials described the virus “in a very non-threatening, or matter of fact, manner.”
“We would be moving heaven and earth if we lost a million people as a result of some terrorist incident,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the frequent Trump critic who chairs the Intelligence Committee, said in an interview.
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