Collins, Colleagues Demand Intelligence Community’s Complete COVID-19 Origins Assessments

Washington, D.C., - U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) joined seven of her colleagues in sending a letter requesting that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) immediately submit to Congress the Intelligence Community’s (IC) detailed COVID-19 origins individual agency assessments. The Senators also requested a detailed briefing from the ODNI regarding how it valued each IC member’s evaluation of COVID origins. The letter comes on the heels of recent reporting of the U.S. Department of Energy’s assessment that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory, a stance also shared by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“…We write to request that you immediately deliver to Congress each IC assessment used and relied upon by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) for its consensus publications,” the Senators wrote.  “Congress should be able to review the independent evaluations without filters, ambiguity or interpretations of the intelligence. There is clear bipartisan support in Congress to make these assessments available immediately in full as evidenced by the unanimous March 1, 2023 Senate passage of the COVID-19 Origin Act to declassify information related to the origin of COVID-19…”

“Secondly, we request a detailed briefing about the process ODNI used to synthesize and develop each final publication and how records from non-IC elements, such as those from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were obtained and included in the analysis,” the Senators continued.  “We request to be briefed about how ODNI ensured that the conclusions represented in the final publications were the most accurate analysis of intelligence derived from all sources…By shielding the independent IC element results, ODNI failed to accurately inform the American people that the FBI and DOE assessed that the first SARS-CoV-2 human infection was most likely the result of a laboratory-associated incident…”

In addition to Senator Collins, the letter was co-signed by U.S. Senators Roger Marshall (R-KS), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Mike Braun (R-IN), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Rick Scott (R-FL), and Roger Wicker (R-MS).

To read the full letter, click HERE.

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