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Newly released U.S. intelligence memo reveals plans for independent COVID origins study · U.S. Right to Know articles

Newly released intelligence records show that as recently as January 2025, the U.S. intelligence community planned to create an independent panel of outside experts to study how the COVID-19 pandemic began, suggesting government officials considered the question sufficiently unresolved to warrant additional review even after years of investigation and the public release of a 2023 intelligence assessment. The records, obtained by U.S. Right To Know through a Freedom of Information Act <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/USRTK-v-ODNI-070725.pdf">lawsuit</a> against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, include what appears to be a never-before-released National Intelligence Council <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/DOC-3_NICM_2025-00350-A_Updated_COVID-19_Assessment_-_SOURCED_Final_Redacted.pdf">memorandum</a> dated Jan. 17, 2025 titled “Updated IC Assessments of COVID-19 Origins.” An earlier NIC <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/DOC-2_MEM_2023-23822_COVID_Origins_Gaps_Final_Redlines_Redacted.pdf">memo</a>, dated October 2023, was also included in the release. Much of the readable portions of the 14-page January 2025 memo contain information already publicly known. But page 5 states what appears to be new information – that “the IC plans further engagements with outside experts to establish a new panel to conduct an independent study on the origins of COVID-19.” The document does not identify who would serve on the panel, whether it was ever created or whether any independent study was ever completed. The ODNI’s disclosure also makes clear that intelligence officials continued to view the origins question as unresolved nearly five years after the pandemic started and almost two years after Congress passed the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/619">COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023</a>, which required the declassification of intelligence related to potential links between the pandemic and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The January 2025 memo also incorporates the CIA’s shift toward assessing that a “research-related incident” origin of the pandemic is more likely than a natural spillover event. The agency’s shift, with low confidence, toward a lab-leak position was widely <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/25/us/politics/cia-covid-lab-leak.html">reported</a> the same month, as incoming CIA Director John Ratcliffe became President Donald Trump’s choice to head the agency. “Since our last assessment in 2023, the IC has continued to evaluate new information from … open sources, revisit previous reporting, and consult with diverse technical experts to increase our understanding of the cause of the pandemic,” the memo states. “These efforts have led the CIA to decide to more precisely define its position.” News <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/01/25/cia-covid-origins-fauci-republicans-lab-leak/">reports</a> at the time stated that the CIA’s shift wasn’t due to new intelligence, however. The newly released document also provides a fuller picture than many public accounts at the time. It notes that the CIA joined the FBI and Department of Energy in favoring a laboratory-event origin while emphasizing that both hypotheses remain plausible and that four other intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council continued to favor a natural-origin explanation. The 2025 memo additionally states that two intelligence agencies “have changed their confidence levels in some of their judgments because of new reporting.” The identities of those agencies and the underlying intelligence explaining why confidence levels shifted are redacted, however. Despite congressional mandates requiring the declassification of COVID-origin intelligence under both the 2023 law and last year’s <a href="https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/congress-may-order-spy-agencies-to-consider-declassifying-evidence-on-covid-origins/">National Defense Authorization Act of 2026</a>, substantial portions of the newly released records remain blacked out.  The ODNI released the documents this week in response to a <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/USRTK-v-ODNI-070725.pdf">lawsuit</a> filed in July 2025 stemming from U.S. Right to Know’s FOIA <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ODNI-FOIA-5.24.25.pdf">request</a> two months earlier. The request sought all of the agency’s COVID-origin assessments produced since ODNI's <a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Report-on-Potential-Links-Between-the-Wuhan-Institute-of-Virology-and-the-Origins-of-COVID-19-20230623.pdf">last public report</a> on the matter in June 2023. The release comes amid renewed public interest in COVID origin intelligence and speculation in social media discussions and some press <a href="https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15904593/cia-tulsi-gabbard-bill-pulte-mkultra.html">reports</a> that outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard may seek to release additional COVID-related intelligence before leaving office. The latest records from ODNI – and all documents related to COVID origins and biomedical research obtained by U.S. Right To Know – can be found <a href="https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/foi-documents-on-origins-of-sars-cov-2-risks-of-gain-of-function-research-and-biosafety-labs/">here</a>. Lewis Kamb is an investigative reporter at U.S. Right to Know.  He was the first national FOIA Reporter for NBC News and spent nearly a decade reporting for the Seattle Times, where he was part of the reporting team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the failures behind the Boeing 737 MAX crashes.