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C.I.A. Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid’s Origins
The C.I.A. has said for years that it did not have enough information to conclude whether the Covid pandemic emerged naturally from a wet market in Wuhan, China, or from an accidental leak at a research lab there.
But the agency issued a new assessment this week, with analysts saying they now favor the lab theory.
That shift is based on “the available body of reporting,” although the other theory remains plausible, a spokeswoman for the agency said, adding that the agency will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting.
Some American officials say the debate matters little: The Chinese government failed to either regulate its markets or oversee its labs. But others argue it is an important intelligence and scientific question.
John Ratcliffe, the new director of the C.I.A., has long favored the lab leak hypothesis. He has said it is a critical piece of intelligence that needs to be understood and that it has consequences for U.S.-Chinese relations.
The announcement of the shift came shortly after Mr. Ratcliffe told Breitbart News he no longer wanted the agency “on the sidelines” of the debate over the origins of the Covid pandemic. Mr. Ratcliffe has long said he believes that the virus most likely emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Officials said the agency was not bending its views to a new boss, and that the new assessment had been in the works for some time.
In the final weeks of the Biden administration, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, ordered a new classified review of the pandemic’s origin. As part of that review, the agency’s previous director, William J. Burns, told analysts that they needed to take a position on the origins of Covid, though he was agnostic on which theory they should embrace, a senior U.S. intelligence official said.
Another senior U.S. official said it was Mr. Ratcliffe’s decision to declassify and release the new analysis.
There is no new intelligence behind the agency’s shift. Rather it is based on the same evidence it has been chewing over for months.
The analysis, however, is based in part on a closer look at the conditions in the high security labs in Wuhan province before the pandemic outbreak, according to people familiar with the agency’s work.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, questions have swirled around whether the two labs handling coronaviruses in Wuhan had followed safety protocols strictly enough.
The agency made its new assessment with “low confidence,” which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and contradictory.
Even in the absence of hard intelligence, the lab leak hypothesis has been gaining ground inside spy agencies. But some analysts question the wisdom of shifting a position in absence of new information.
Former officials say they are not averse to a new examination of the Covid origins intelligence by the Trump administration. President Biden ordered a new review of the intelligence early in his administration after officials told the White House they had still-unexamined evidence.
Mr. Ratcliffe has raised questions about politicization in the intelligence agencies. Mr. Ratcliffe, who was the director of national intelligence in the first Trump administration, argued in an essay for Fox News in 2023 that the C.I.A. did not want to embrace the lab leak to avoid geopolitical problems for the Biden administration.
“The real problem is, the only assessment the agency could make — which is that a virus that killed over a million Americans originated in a C.C.P.-controlled lab whose research included work for the Chinese military — has enormous geopolitical implications that the Biden administration does not want to face head-on,” he said in the piece, which was written with Cliff Sims, a top aide. C.C.P. refers to China’s Communist Party.
Mr. Ratcliffe said on Thursday, when he was sworn in, that a look at the origins of Covid was a “Day 1” priority.
“I think our intelligence, our science and our common sense all really dictate that the origins of Covid was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he told Breitbart. “But the C.I.A. has not made that assessment or at least not made that assessment publicly. So I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure that the public is aware that the agency is going to get off the sidelines.”
Senior intelligence officials in the Biden administration defend their process and methodology. They have said that no intelligence was suppressed and insist that politics did not play into their analysis.
These officials say that there are powerful logical arguments for both the lab leak and the natural causes theories, but that there simply is no decisive piece of intelligence on either side of the issue.
To boost the natural origins theory, intelligence officers would like to find the animal that passed it to a human or find a bat carrying what was the likely ancestor of the coronavirus that causes Covid.
Similarly, to seal the lab leak, the intelligence community would like to find evidence that one of the labs in Wuhan was working on a progenitor virus that directly led to the epidemic.
Neither piece of evidence has been found.
But Mr. Ratcliffe has promised a more aggressive C.I.A., and it is possible that he will order more actions to penetrate the labs in Wuhan or the Chinese government in a search for information.
It will not be an easy secret to steal. The senior ranks of the Chinese government do not know, and do not want to know, American officials have said. So if there is intelligence, it is probably hidden in a place that is hard to get to.
Intelligence officials interviewed in recent weeks say it is possible that such a piece of evidence exists in a lab in China, at least in theory. But, they said, it is still more likely that the answers to questions surrounding the virus’s origins will come through a scientific breakthrough, not an intelligence revelation.
Under the Biden administration, the intelligence community leaned toward the theory that the virus came from the market. But officials readily admitted it was hardly a sure thing.
Five agencies, including the National Intelligence Council and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed that natural exposure most likely caused the epidemic. But they said that they had only low-confidence in their assessment.
Until now, two agencies, the F.B.I. and Department of Energy, thought a lab leak was more likely. But their theories are different. The F.B.I. believes the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Energy Department put its bet on another lab, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control.
Officials would not say if the C.I.A. believes one lab or the other was the more likely source of the virus.
The man accused of sparking the deadly Palisades fire in Los Angeles was upset over a failed relationship and his lack of plans for New Year’s Eve – and he ranted about being angry at the world before the initial blaze was ignited, according to court documents filed by prosecutors.
Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, has pleaded not guilty to starting what became one of the most destructive wildfires in California history. It began on 7 January 2025 in the hillside neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades and Malibu and killed 12 people. Prosecutors say Rinderknecht started a fire on 1 January that burned undetected deep in root systems before flaring back up a week later.
Rinderknecht’s trial will begin on 8 June. His attorneys say he is being used as a scapegoat for the Los Angeles fire department’s failure to fully extinguish the earlier blaze.
An outline of the prosecutors’ strategy – with details about the defendant’s alleged state of mind on the night before the first fire began – appears in a 29 April pre-trial memo filed by the US attorney’s office.
Witnesses reported that Rinderknecht had been driving erratically while on Uber routes around the Palisades on New Year’s Eve, said prosecutors. His passengers described him as “angry, intense, driving erratically, and ranting about being ‘pissed off at the world,’” the memo said, echoing a criminal complaint against Rinderknecht that had previously been filed.
According to court filings, Rinderknecht ranted to passengers about Luigi Mangione, the accused murderer of UnitedHealthcare chief executive officer Brian Thompson; capitalism; and vigilantism. In an interview with investigators on 24 January, when asked why someone might commit arson in the Palisades, Rinderknecht “responded that it would be out of resentment of the rich enjoying their money as ‘we’re basically being enslaved by them,’” and again referenced Mangione’s alleged crime, the documents said.
Prosecutors additionally said Rinderknecht was distraught over a failed relationship and upset about thwarted plans for New Year’s Eve.
In an email responding to those allegations, Rinderknecht’s attorney Steve Haney said: “My client maintains his innocence as he has from the beginning, and we look forward to clearing his name at trial.
“The offered motive that my client started a fire on [New Year’s] Eve because he did not have date speaks for itself.”
Haney held a news conference in March to call for Rinderknecht’s release from jail in light of evidence he said shows he is not responsible for the blaze. Haney pointed to a deposition in which a firefighter testified that he noticed the ground was still smoldering from the fire on 2 January 2025 and alerted supervisors that there were hotspots. That testimony was gathered as part of a lawsuit filed by fire victims against the city.
A battalion chief had testified that he walked the perimeter of the burn area four times throughout the day and ensured all hotspots were out.
Jaime Moore, the fire department chief who was appointed in October, has said he is concerned about the differences in the firefighters’ testimonies and commissioned an independent report on how the 1 January 2025 fire was handled.
Haney has said this evidence was not available to the defense when Rinderknecht was indicted.
Federal prosecutors say the man accused of starting one of the most destructive fires in California history was fascinated by fire and by Luigi Mangione, who became a populist hero to some after he was charged with murdering a health insurance executive.
Jonathan Rinderknecht, 30, is accused of intentionally setting a fire in the Santa Monica Mountains that later exploded into the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes across the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles in January last year.
A trial memorandum released by federal prosecutors last week paints a portrait of Mr. Rinderknecht in the weeks before the fire as a lonely and erratic man who was angry at the world, particularly the rich.
Federal prosecutors say that in December 2024, the month before the fire, Mr. Rinderknecht had been living alone in an apartment in North Hollywood and working as an Uber driver.
He seemed to have followed the case of Mr. Mangione, who is charged with fatally shooting Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, in New York City on Dec. 4, 2024.
In the wake of the shooting, Mr. Mangione became a folk hero to some people, who saw him as striking a blow against the health insurance industry and its profits. (Mr. Mangione is set to stand trial on a second-degree murder charge in September.)
Mr. Rinderknecht searched for Mangione-related news, using the search terms “free Luigi Mangione,” “lets take down all the billionaires” and “reddit lets kill all the billionaires,” according to court documents.
When investigators later asked Mr. Rinderknecht why someone might commit arson in the Palisades, he said it would be out of resentment of the rich, and he compared such a fire to the murder for which Mr. Mangione was charged. “We’re basically being enslaved by them,” he told investigators.
Mr. Rinderknecht was arrested in October and has been charged with three arson-related counts. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers maintain that the fire was sparked by fireworks. Mr. Rinderknecht is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles. His trial is set for June.
His lawyer, Steven Haney, pushed back on federal prosecutors’ latest narrative. He said that they were politicizing the case and offering “wild motives and conspiracy theories.” He said that the focus on Mr. Mangione revealed a lack of concrete evidence.
“If fascination with Luigi Mangione is evidence of arson, the U.S. attorney’s office is going to need a much bigger courtroom — because they’ll have to indict half the country,” he said in an email.
Prosecutors pointed to other factors that might have affected Mr. Rinderknecht’s state of mind on New Year’s Eve, just before prosecutors say the fire was set.
Mr. Rinderknecht was unable to secure plans for the evening and “exhibited extreme anger, indignation and frustration” about that, according to an affidavit. He was upset about his relationship with a co-worker whom he had dated earlier in the year. He shared information about his feelings toward her with ChatGPT more than 50 times, according to the court documents.
On Dec. 30, the woman asked Mr. Rinderknecht for space. He then left her “two manic voice mails,” according to the affidavit. He reached out to two other people to try to make alternate plans, but neither came through.
On New Year’s Eve, he drove several Uber passengers, who later recalled that he had been driving erratically, ranting about Mr. Mangione, capitalism and vigilantism. He dropped off his final passenger in Pacific Palisades and hiked up a trail, where he listened to a French rap song about despair. (The music video for the song shows the singer lighting things on fire, prosecutors note.)
He was obsessed with fire, prosecutors say. A few months before the Palisades fire, he asked ChatGPT to generate images of people running away from a burning forest. On Dec. 5, he viewed images of a wildfire in Southern California caused by arson. On Dec. 29, he filmed fire engines leaving a Hollywood station and said out loud, presumably to himself, “They’re coming for you, bro,” and warned himself to get his mind in order and “not be liking this craziness,” according to the court documents.
Prosecutors say that just after midnight he lit a fire in the chaparral, and then repeatedly called 911. He watched as fire trucks arrived and took videos of their efforts. That blaze, known as the Lachman fire, was not fully put out; it rekindled amid terrible winds seven days later and became known as the Palisades fire, prosecutors say.
General view of Arrowhead Stadium, in Kansas City, Missouri, which will be hosting some of the World Cup matches this summer.
Jamie Squire/Getty Images North America
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Jamie Squire/Getty Images North America
With only six weeks to go before the start of the World Cup, hotels at most of the cities hosting the tournament are facing a major problem: Bookings are running far below what they had expected.
For some metro areas such as Kansas City, bookings are running even below what a typical June or July would bring, according to an industry survey released on Monday by the American Hotel and Lodging Association. The report was conducted last month and a spokesperson said it’s based on 205 respondents “representing hotel operators and owners, many of whom own multiple hotel portfolios across the country and across multiple World Cup markets.”
AHLA said the disappointing bookings stem from fewer than expected international travelers and large cancellations by FIFA — the organizer of the World Cup — leaving hotels with an unexpectedly large number of empty rooms.
“Despite more than 5 million tickets sold (for World Cup matches), this demand has not yet translated into strong hotel bookings,” the AHLA said in the report.
The disappointment comes after the hotel industry was bracing for a strong summer in 2026. The World Cup is taking place across the U.S., Canada and Mexico — with 11 U.S. cities hosting games. In addition, the U.S. is celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which was also expected to bring an influx of foreign visitors.
Overseas visitors are critical to the hotel industry, the AHLA says, because they tend to spend more — and stay longer.
But the AHLA warned nearly 80% of hotel bookings across host cities are running below initial forecasts, according to its survey. In Kansas City, 85% to 90% of hotels reported bookings below projections.
World Cup organizers in Kansas City pushed back to the survey, telling The Athletic that embassy staff in countries such as the Netherlands are deploying additional staff to the city in anticipation of a high number of visitors. An tournament organizers in the city still stand by their ambitious projection to attract 650,000 visitors over the course of the World Cup, CEO of Visit KC and the Kansas City Sports Commission, Kathy Nelson, told KCUR in an interview.
KC26, the host committee, did not immediately reply to a request for comment from NPR.
There were bright spots, however, for host cities Miami and Atlanta. About half of survey respondents in the capital of Georgia reported bookings in line or ahead of projections, while about 55% of respondents in Florida’s biggest metro city reporting stronger-than-expected projections.
Japan supporters celebrate after their team beat Spain at a 2022 World Cup game held at the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha, Qatar, on Dec. 1, 2022.
Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images
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Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images
Not coming to America
The survey results appear to be another sign that overseas travelers are not planning to come to the U.S. in the numbers once expected as a result of a slew of factors including tighter immigration policies by the U.S. administration.
“Even with global anticipation building, the path to the U.S. for many World Cup travelers feels increasingly less like a red-carpet welcome,” the AHLA said in its survey. “There is a perception that international travelers may face lengthy visa wait times, increased visa fees, and lingering uncertainty around entry processing.”
The AHLA also cited other factors such as the strong U.S. dollar and concerns about airport screening as “contributing to a growing sense that visiting the U.S. for the World Cup may be more complicated and costly.”
FIFA has continued to tout the “unprecedented” demand for the tournament, and has said it expects the World Cup to break attendance records.
Meanwhile, White House spokesman Davis Ingle told NPR last week for a story on World Cup demand that the tournament “will no doubt be one of the greatest and most spectacular events in the history of mankind,” and that “President Trump is focused on ensuring that this is not only an incredible experience for all fans and visitors, but also the safest and most secure in history.”
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