When the first news of the mysterious epidemic appeared in Wuhan, the United States was supposed to launch an espionage operation in China to gain greater knowledge of the virus and understand its danger. This is what we read in a new report from the Democratic-led House Intelligence Committee, which points the finger at the lack of covert intelligence operations in late 2019 and early 2020 when Covid emerged in China. He concludes that US intelligence services lack “the general capacity to deal with the onset of a pandemic”. In early January 2020, US intelligence learned of the virus but did not have the time or “level of anxiety” to organize an espionage operation to gather information that Beijing was not leaking to the world at the time. The report concludes, “The intelligence community needs to do better at analyzing vast amounts of data, identifying unusual trends in healthcare activities that indicate the disease has not yet been detected or is being maintained by health authorities.”
In his introduction, Adam Schiff, a Democrat who chairs the committee until next January when the new Republican majority takes office, said that “in 2020, the intelligence community was not prepared to give an early warning or a comprehensive view of the pandemic.” However, it is acknowledged that the 007s in January and February of that year gave “clear and consistent warnings”, well before President Donald Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency in March 2019.
“Prone to fits of apathy. Introvert. Award-winning internet evangelist. Extreme beer expert.”
