According to new testimony before Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency paid hush-money to six officers who were investigating the origins COVID-19 to cover up their conclusion that it likely originated in a Chinese laboratory.

U.S. House members on the Select Subcommittee on Coronavirus Pandemic, and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence stated on Tuesday that a “highly credible” anonymous senior-level CIA official alleged six members of the federal agency tasked to investigate the origins of SARS-CoV-2 had found that the virus was likely originating in a Wuhan lab.

The House committee chairmen Brad Wenstrup, R-OH, and Mike Turner, R-OH, wrote: “According the whistleblower at the end its review, six out of seven members of Team believed that the intelligence and science was sufficient to make a lower confidence assessment that COVID-19 came from a lab in Wuhan, China.”

The CIA whistleblower claimed that after the officers had concluded their investigation, the agency offered financial incentives for six of the seven investigators to change their narrative about the virus. This was revealed in a letter to CIA director William Burns on Tuesday.

The letter went on to say that “the seventh member of Team, who was also the most senior officer, was the only officer to believe COVID-19 came from zoonosis.” The whistleblower also claims that the other six team members were offered a substantial monetary incentive in order to reach the public conclusion of uncertainty.

The committee also sent a letter to Andrew Markridis in which it requested that he take part in a voluntary transcribed interview on September 26th, 2023. The whistleblower claimed that Markridis played a “central role” in the COVID investigation’s formation and conclusion.

Markridis retired in 2022, after his agency had completed its response to COVID.

The lawmakers also set a date for the CIA, on that same day, to hand over all documents pertaining to the COVID Discovery Teams. This includes all pay histories, which include any awards of financial incentives or performance-based bonuses.

In early this year, the FBI and Department of Energy were the first federal agencies to determine with moderate confidence that a lab accident in Wuhan was most likely the cause of the pandemic.

In June, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report that had been long-awaited about possible links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the origins of COVID. The report concluded that three lab workers became sick in 2019, but their symptoms were not “diagnostic of COVID-19.”

“The I.C. The report stated that there was no evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had done any genetic engineering that involved SARS-CoV-2 or a close relative, or a virus backbone that was closely related enough to be the cause of the pandemic.

In April, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Congress that “a laboratory leak is the only plausible explanation supported by our intelligence and science.”

If our intelligence, and evidence, supporting a laboratory leak were placed side-by-side with our intelligence, and evidence, pointing to natural origins, or spillover theories, the lab leaked side of the ledger, would be long and convincing — even overwhelming. The spillover side, on the other hand, would be almost empty and tenuous,” said Ratcliffe.