According to The Wall Street Journal, which broke the news first, the findings have been sent to the White House and important members of Congress.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s “Z Division” was created to assist intelligence agencies in comprehending the significance of Soviet nuclear weapons tests. But the terrorist attacks of 9/11 would alter its purpose.
Twenty years later, as the Z Division tries to address the query that researchers, medical professionals, and regular Americans have regarding the causes of the COVID-19 pandemic: How did it take place?
Scientists from the Z Division and other experts from the Energy Department’s national laboratory complex came to the conclusion that the pandemic most likely began with an unintentional laboratory leak in Wuhan, China, in a recent classified intelligence report.
According to The Wall Street Journal, which broke the news first, the findings have been sent to the White House and important members of Congress.
Scientists and others are pushing the claim that the virus most likely emerged through natural means, like animal-to-human transmission, in response to the report, which has sparked a backlash against the Biden administration.
The White House has not endorsed the Energy Department’s findings on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, but four agencies have concluded with “low confidence” that the virus was initially transmitted from an animal to a human.
A fifth intelligence agency believes with “moderate” confidence that the first human infection was linked to a lab. FBI Director Christopher Wray has assessed that the origin of the pandemic was “most likely a potential lab incident” in Wuhan.
The FBI’s work on determining where the pandemic originated is continuing, but many details related to the investigation remain classified.
The Energy Department has since changed its mind, as evidenced by its new assessment, which is based on unidentified new information. The department had previously stated that it was unsure of the virus’s mode of transmission.
However, even these new conclusions were reached with “low confidence,” indicating that either insufficient data was available or the information on which the assessment was based was insufficiently reliable.
In Beijing, China, workers battling the COVID-19 pandemic pass by a closed store close to a neighborhood where residents are being monitored for health issues.
One of the 18 organisations and agencies that make up the American intelligence community is the Energy Department. A division of the department is dedicated to the study of biological weapons. When questioned about the intelligence assessment, the White House remained silent.
However, according to The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, the Z Division and other experts from the American national laboratory complex carried out the analysis. Officials from the Department of Energy came to the conclusion that the virus’s spread was probably the result of a lab leak after initially being uncertain about the origins of COVID-19 due to the new intelligence assessment.
A 1965 agreement between the CIA and the Atomic Energy Commission led to Z Division’s residence in the Department of Energy’s nuclear complex.
A special projects branch was created under the terms of the agreement to house laboratory scientists and engineers who assisted intelligence agencies in understanding the significance of Soviet nuclear weapons tests.
They examined radiological samples from Soviet and later Chinese nuclear tests. Z Division began a programme to monitor nuclear proliferation in the middle of the 1970s, and it looked at how India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa, and other countries were pursuing nuclear weapons.
The Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s nuclear proliferation programme is run by Matthew Bunn, a former adviser to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “In its heyday, it was really a storied place, especially for understanding foreign nuclear weapons programmes,” Bunn said.
They are, in my opinion, one of the crown jewels of American nuclear intelligence. Bunn referred to Z Division as “more or less” the intelligence branch of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California because it was in charge of having a top-secret understanding of the political and organisational aspects of foreign weapons programmes and the leaders in charge of them, in addition to having a deep understanding of nuclear weapons technology and other threats. So you would send a new ambassador to Z Division to receive the best briefing on that programme when they were going to a foreign country with nuclear weapons, Bunn explained.
According to Energy Department documents, Z Division’s mission, along with that of the rest of the Lawrence Livermore lab, the Department of Energy, and the larger intelligence community, underwent a significant change following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.
According to a Lawrence Livermore lab report from 2021, Susan Allen, a Z Division molecular biologist and intelligence analyst, was giving a briefing on 9/11 in downtown Washington when news of the World Trade Center attack arrived.
In passing, Allen claimed to have noticed “the gaping hole caused by the crashed American Airlines flight 77” at the Pentagon. Allen took a flight on September 18.
The report stated that once she was back at the lab, “she started researching al-Qaeda and the potential for a bio-terror attack.” She spent several weeks assisting the biological weapons team of Z Division before being sent to Washington to assist the American intelligence community.
News of the first confirmed death resulting from anthrax-laced letters sent to prominent journalists and elected officials broke the day Allen arrived. The lab report stated that she worked 15-hour days for the following few weeks to identify the letters’ origin, giving advice to the government and inspecting facilities and mail-handling procedures in the process.
Allen stated that after working as hard as you could all day and into the evening, you went to your hotel, passed out, and got up the following morning to repeat the process. “It was satisfying in the sense that you felt like you were making a contribution to your country and doing something worthwhile.”
The Wall Street Journal reported in June 2021 that Z Division researchers had helped prepare a report on the origins of COVID-19 that concluded the theory that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab in Wuhan is plausible and deserves further investigation.
The study was prepared in May 2020 by the Lawrence Livermore Lab‘s Z Division and was drawn on by the State Department when it conducted an inquiry into the pandemic’s origins. A Morning Consult poll released Tuesday found that nearly half of Americans believe the virus was caused by a lab leak in China, while just 26% believe the virus moved naturally from animals to humans. The share of Americans who believe the lab theory has held steady since June 2021.