A Heritage Foundation-linked group is suing the CIA over records of its investigation into COVID-19 after a whistleblower said analysts were paid to change their conclusions.
The Oversight Project, a government watchdog launched by the Heritage Foundation, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the CIA last week. The lawsuit seeks to compel the agency to produce records of its investigation into the origins of COVID-19, according to a copy of the suit obtained by The Daily Caller.
“This is an action under the Freedom of Information Act (‘FOIA’), 5 U.S.C. § 552, to compel production of CIA records relating to allegations that members of the CIA’s COVID Discovery Team, a group of employees tasked with analyzing the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, received monetary incentives to change their position on the origins of the virus,” the suit says.
The Oversight Project began seeking CIA records after a whistleblower testified to Congress that the agency offered payment to its analysts to change their findings about COVID-19’s origin. The CIA’s official finding about the origin of the illness are inconclusive.
Assessments from the Energy Department and the FBI said a leak from a lab in Wuhan, China, is the most likely origin of the virus. Five other agencies said the disease likely spread first from natural transmission, or that it spread to humans from animals through a wet market or some other vector.
House investigators into the origins of COVID-19 said in September that a senior-level CIA officer has said the agency offered money to its COVID investigators to change their conclusions. Republicans on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have requested more information from the CIA regarding its investigation.
“According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” Ohio Rep. Brad Wenstrup, who chairs the subcommittee, and Ohio Rep. Mike Turner, who chairs the Intelligence committee, said in a statement.
Oversight Project chief counsel Kyle Brosnan said the CIA and Biden administration are refusing to turn over important information about the origins of COVID-19.
“A CIA whistleblower has made serious allegations that the agency bought off employees of the agency to further obstruct efforts to get to the truth of the virus’s origins. This obstruction cannot stand and we’re fighting in federal court to get to the bottom of this,” Brosnan said, according to the New York Post.