While top US officials are preparing to meet their Chinese counterparts for their first meeting during the Biden administration, the former chief investigator of the State Department, who oversaw the task force on the origin of the COVID-19 virus, told Fox News said he not only believed the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but that it was possibly the result of research the Chinese military, or People’s Liberation Army, had done on a bioweapon.
“The Wuhan Institute of Virology is not the National Institute of Health,” David Asher, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told Fox News in an exclusive interview. ‘It operated a secret, classified program. In my opinion, and I’m just one person, my opinion is that it was a biological weapons program. ‘
Asher has long been a “follow the money” man who has worked on some of the most classified intelligence investigations for the state department and the treasury under both the Democratic and Republican governments. He led the team that discovered the international nuclear procurement network run by the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, AQ Khan, and discovered important parts of North Korea’s secret uranium enrichment. He believes the Chinese Communist Party has been involved in a massive cover-up for the past 14 months.
“And if you believe, like me, that it was a weapon vector that went wrong, was not deliberately released, but evolved and then somehow leaked, it became the greatest weapon in history,” said Asher during a panel discussion at the Hudson Institute: The Origins of the COVID-19: Policy Implications and Lessons for the Future. ‘You took out 15 to 20 percent of global GDP. You killed millions of people. The Chinese population was barely affected. Their economies rumbled to be number one in the entire G20. ”
Asher says the behavior of the Chinese government reminds him of other criminal investigations he has overseen.
“Motivation, cover-up, conspiracy, all the characteristics of guilt are related to this. And the fact that the initial group of victims surrounded the institute that did the very dangerous, if not dubious research, is important, ”said Asher, who involved the Chinese government during the SARS outbreak in 2003 as chief representative of the State Department. has.
Initially, China said that the COVID-19 virus originated in the Wuhan seafood market – but the problem with China’s theory: the first case has nothing to do with the market. Last fall, the U.S. acquired intelligence indicating that there was an outbreak among several laboratory scientists in Wuhan with flu-like symptoms that made them take off in November 2019 – before China reported its first case. Asher and other experts from the Hudson Institute panel said that China had announced in 2007 that it would launch genetic bioweapons with controversial research increases to make the viruses more lethal.
The Chinese stopped talking publicly in 2016 about their research in the Wuhan laboratory. This, Asher believes, is when the People’s Liberation Army joined and switched from biodefence research to bio-offense. That same year, China’s leading state television commentator
“We entered an area of Chinese bioware, and we also used things like viruses. I mean, they made a public statement to their people that this is a new priority under the Xi national security policy, “Asher points out.
According to Asher, in 2017, the Chinese no longer spoke publicly about the coronavirus investigation “disease vectors that could be used for weapons”. At the same time, the military began funding the research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“I doubt it’s a coincidence,” Asher said.
Meanwhile, U.S. researchers on bioweapons are still focusing on older bioweapons such as anthrax. An important turning point in the search for how to defend against coronavirus bioweapons was, among other things, controversial research on “gaining function” and a breakthrough in the Netherlands that surprised the scientific community.
‘I remember meeting in The Hague with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs the day the news broke that a laboratory in the Netherlands funded by the National Institutes of Health had made a profit from functional research on highly pathogenic bird flu specifically to increase the transmissibility of that very dangerous flu virus, ”recalls Andy Weber, the former assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs under President Obama.
The Obama administration quickly imposed a moratorium on this type of research, fearing it could become a playbook for terrorists. The Trump administration lifted the moratorium in 2017, but stopped NIH funding to the Wuhan Laboratory in April 2020 after the pandemic began.
According to experts, biosafety has long been concerned about China’s biosafety level 4 laboratories.
“China has been involved in this type of virus research since 2003, the SARS outbreak,” said Miles Yu, a government official who co-authored with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a recent paper on the virus. origin. ‘The standard of China’s biosafety is very low and is very dangerous. So it’s an accident waiting to happen. ”
When the team that the WHO sent to Wuhan in February visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology, they did not put on biosafety suits and spent 3 hours inside, but reportedly did not have access to the scientists or data they needed. had to completely rule out that the virus had escaped from the laboratory.
At the time, Wang Wenbin, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said: “It should be noted that virus traceability is a complex scientific matter, and that our experts must be given sufficient space to conduct scientific research.” He added: “China will continue to work with the WHO in an open, transparent and responsible manner, making its contribution to better prevent future risks and protect the lives and health of people in all countries.”