Shane Harris on the ODNI’s Coronavirus Assessment
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 November 2021
⏱️ 39 minutes
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Summary
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has issued a declassified assessment of the origins of the coronavirus, and it’s a bit of a muddle. Was it a lab leak? They don't really know. Was it naturally occurring? They're not quite sure.
They do know a few things. It wasn't a bioweapon, and we're not going to find out any real answers until China starts cooperating. To chew over the ODNI’s report, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Shane Harris of the Washington Post, who wrote a story about the assessment last week. They talked about what the Intelligence Community could agree on, what it couldn't agree on, why the people with the minority opinion were more confident than the people with the majority opinion, and what we can and can't say about the coronavirus.
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Transcript
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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | So, they also point out that they think in addition to this not having any definitive evidence |
| 0:39.9 | that it didn't come from nature is the fact that Chinese officials didn't seem to have |
| 0:44.5 | any foreknowledge that the virus existed before researchers at the lab had isolated it |
| 0:51.1 | or after what we're seeing in the general population. |
| 0:53.3 | So there's there I think you're actually getting into some of the more classified intelligence |
| 0:56.8 | where there's no indication. |
| 0:58.4 | And I think this is proven from my reporting that Chinese officials didn't seem to know |
| 1:03.8 | ahead of time anything about they seem surprised by it as well. |
| 1:10.0 | I'm Benjamin Witteson. |
| 1:11.6 | This is the LawFair podcast November 2nd, 2021. |
| 1:17.5 | The office of the director of national intelligence has issued an unclassified assessment of the |
| 1:24.0 | origins of the coronavirus and guess what? |
| 1:29.0 | It's a bit of a model. |
| 1:30.7 | Was it a lab leak? |
| 1:31.9 | They don't really know. |
| 1:33.9 | Was it naturally occurring? |
| 1:35.6 | They're not quite sure. |
... |
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