THE probe into the origins of Covid was the biggest intelligence failure since Pearl Harbour and the cover-up was bigger than Watergate, a federal investigator has said.
David Asher, who was working in the Trump administration as Covid exploded across the world in 2020, was told any investigation “would lead us to the gates of hell”.
AlamyDr. David Asher appears at a Republican-led forum on the origins of Covid[/caption]
ReutersA security guard keeps watch outside Wuhan Institute of Virology during the visit by the WHO team in 2021[/caption]
EPADr Shi Zhengli – dubbed ‘Batwoman’ for her research on bat coronaviruses – at the Wuhan Institute of Virology[/caption]
APChina’s Wuhan lab has been at the centre of the lab leak theory since Covid emerged just miles from the facility[/caption]
Speaking to The Sun for our new documentary The Covid Files: Inside the Wuhan lab leak scandal, Mr Asher compared the outbreak to the Watergate scandal which took down President Richard Nixon in the 1970s.
The bioweapons investigator said: “Watergate was nothing compared to this.”
Watch the documentary in full on our YouTube channel here
Mr Asher accused US scientists of helping orchestrate an “outrageous” cover-up and “whitewashing” the lab theory.
“This is the Chernobyl of biology,” he added.
Like many others, Mr Asher has called for a 9/11-style commission to find the truth – and claims the classified intelligence on the Covid origins “would make your head explode”.
Five years after the UK was first plunged into lockdown, the world still has no answers about where the virus that killed more than seven million people came from.
The CIA, FBI and the US Department of Energy have all backed a lab leak as the most likely explanation – with many pointing the finger at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
China‘s Wuhan lab has been at the centre of the lab leak theory since Covid emerged just miles from the facility – which was famous for its research on bat coronaviruses.
Many believe Covid leaked from the US-funded lab during risky virus tests.
Despite years of searching, a natural origin has never been found.
In the US State Department, Mr Asher said he was repeatedly told by sources in China that Covid did not appear natural right from the start.
He told us: “I’m not a whistleblower, I can only talk about what I saw – and what I saw was patently outrageous.
“The cables indicated the was this huge influenza surge.
“This starts spreading quite rapidly – a clear indication, whether you are a spook or not, that something was wrong with this influenza-like illness that was not influenza.
“As soon as I saw the cables on that from our Embassy… I said ‘I think we’ve got to look into this’.”
When he spoke to a top biologist in US national security, Mr Asher was told that China was in “meltdown”.
“It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see this thing was supernatural,” he said.
Mr Asher described the virus as “Frankenstein’s monster” thanks to its telltale signs of genetic manipulation.
APCovid killed millions worldwide in the pandemic[/caption]
AFPStaff members line up at attention as they prepare to spray disinfectant at Wuhan Railway Station[/caption]
AFPA woman wearing a face mask holds a baby that wears a protective shield in Wuhan[/caption]
Scientists have repeatedly said that Covid was “exquisitely matched”, “completely pre-adapted” and “supercharged” for humans.
From day one, bioweapons boffins in the State Department probed whether Covid had been engineered in a lab in Wuhan – information that was kept from the public.
Weeks before the pandemic was declared, China shut down scientist’s analysis and testing of Covid samples for “violating national security”, Mr Asher claimed.
And he believes Chinese president Xi Jinping engineered Covid to “control the world order, spark chaos and sow seeds of uncertainty”.
Mr Asher points out that China had already stated it was looking at creating biological weapons at a world conference in 2011.
One person’s conspiracy is another person’s strategy
David Asher
He said: “At the time, when I talked to people who were there, they were like, ‘it was shocking’.
“It was almost like China was dropping the death card, like Apocalypse Now, ‘if you mess with us, this is what could happen to you’.
“I don’t think Covid was released as a weapon, or they would have released it, say, outside the Pentagon.
“But could it have been a laboratory accident involving programmes they were running with reckless abandon? Absolutely.”
While investigating the origins, Mr Asher was told it was like “opening Pandora’s box”.
He said he was warned “we could arrive at the gates of hell” if they probed too deeply.
“We had never heard anything like that,” Mr Asher added.
Like Mr Asher, arms control official Thomas DiNanno was warned not to “open a can of worms” by probing the origins of Covid.
The SunDavid Asher was a State Department adviser under the Trump administration in 2020[/caption]
I was with Trump when he confronted Xi – I know Covid was a lab leak
EXCLUSIVE by Imogen Braddick, Assistant Foreign Editor
ARROGANT scientists engineered Covid in a lab – and underestimated its danger before it leaked, the former head of America’s top health agency has claimed.
Dr Robert Redfield, 73, spent his career preparing for a catastrophic pandemic – and was “aggressively” silenced when he voiced fears Covid may have leaked from a lab in China.
Speaking to The Sun for our documentary The Covid Files: Inside the Wuhan lab-leak scandal, Dr Redfield lifted the lid on the early days of the pandemic in 2020 that killed millions.
The ex-chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed how he was in the White House with Donald Trump when he called China’s president Xi Jinping.
From his home in Maryland, the top virologist told how Don demanded that Xi allow the US to send a team to China to probe the origins of the mystery bug sweeping the country.
Dr Redfield told us: “I went to ask President Trump if he would call the president of China, which he did. I was there in the Oval Office.
“But we never got an answer on any of our requests.”
He believes his counterpart in China “felt limited in what he could say” about the pandemic.
If Xi had allowed a team of experts into the country, Dr Redfield says the pandemic would have taken a very different path, and potentially saved lives.
Dr Redfield said: “It would have changed our entire public policy.
“If we had got in, I would have learned, probably within a week, that this virus was very human-to-human transmissible.
“I think they already knew that. They’re scientists and doctors. They knew it was highly infectious for humans.”
READ MORE HERE
His job in the State Department was to pour through intelligence on China’s biological weapons programmes every day.
And he said all classified intelligence points to a lab leak.
But US government officials were “uncomfortable” with the level of questioning over the origins of Covid, he claimed.
By Britain’s second lockdown in November 2020, many dismissed the laboratory leak as a conspiracy theory, but in America and China the idea was fast gaining pace.
Even a group of scientists who produced a paper – known as Proximal Origins – had their suspicions.
Their hugely influential research rejected the idea of a lab accident.
Could it have been a laboratory accident involving programmes they were running with reckless abandon? Absolutely
David Asher
Emails, obtained by investigative journalist Emily Kopp, show that another author, Eddie Holmes, said Covid “seemed to have been pre-adapted for human spread since the get go”.
In the years since the publication of Proximal Origins, thousands of people – including scientists – have signed a petition calling for it to be retracted.
The paper has been described as an attempt to cover-up the lab leak theory – forming part of a wider campaign designed to shame anybody who questioned the so-called scientific consensus.
Thousands of documents and emails – uncovered by US Right to Know – appear to reveal a carefully crafted plan by top scientists to ignore the possibility Covid may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan.
Lord Matt Ridley, co-author of Viral which investigates the origins of Covid, described the situation as “extraordinary”.
And Mr Asher, who has led major US State Department investigations, concluded: “One person’s conspiracy is another person’s strategy.”
ReutersSecurity guards keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology[/caption]