John Ratcliffe

I would submit to you that if this took place, they have the answers to that.

that this occurred naturally, that they would share that.

the efforts of this Administration, Dr. Fauci, the WHO and multiple bureaucracies are willfully or ignorantly colluding with the CCP.

I believe that a great majority of those analysts do support the Department of Energy and the FBI analysis.

My informed assessment as a person with as much access as anyone to our government's intelligence during the initial year of the pandemic has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our…

Yes, and I think that, you know, as again, there were instances that were documented by the analytic ombudsman that reflect the fact that when it came specifically to China, the country of China, that some of our intelligence and our…

To be candid, some of the information that came from officials there was inconsistent with what later became intelligence and later became publicly known through open-source intelligence.

the intelligence certainly points to lab leak as the most plausible assessment, the only one supported by intelligence, science, and common sense at this point.

My informed assessment... is that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence.

Absolutely, and in the case of China, the intelligence community has publicly addressed China as our top national security threat.

I think this is a matter of won't, not can't. And I think that, you know, that is unjustifiable when we are talking about a million Americans dead and as many as 10 or 15 million worldwide.

I agree with both the FBI and the Department of Energy.

Well, with the caveat that we always have to be careful about protecting our sources and methods, particularly those sources and methods as it relates to what the intelligence community uniformly agrees is our No. 1 threat from a…

The fact that the Chinese have had literally spent years, and incredible efforts trying to obtain that information and have received zero information supporting one theory, whereas we know there is an incredible amount of evidence on the…

I don't think it is ever appropriate to ignore the truth.

To this day, the CIA, unquestionably the world's premier spy agency, with an unrivaled capacity to acquire information and near limitless resources to do so, has continued to state that it does not have enough information to make any…

Unfortunately, that hasn't happened the way that we anticipated.

I do agree with that.

the most likely origin of this was a lab leak, and I think that, you know, unfortunately, for political reasons and political narratives, it was difficult.

The more time that passes, the further we get without anything tying COVID-19 to nature... it makes it less and less likely that this was a natural origin.

I think, you know, when you look at the intelligence community report that the Biden Administration put out in October 2021, they acknowledged that China's refusal to cooperate.

Should a virus that killed more than one million Americans be an intelligence priority for the IC and specifically the CIA and DIA? Absolutely.

I believe that if we went below an advisory level of 2,500, I believe that the government of Afghanistan would likely collapse.

If there's something out there that's bigger or faster and stronger, we have really got to answer that question.

The Trump administration got that wrong or lied about it.