BY EKATERINA BLINOVA

 

The US Energy Department has claimed that the COVID pandemic most likely stemmed from a laboratory leak, the Wall Street Journal broke on Sunday, citing a classified intelligence report provided to the White House and US lawmakers.

"It is becoming clearer by the day that the government of the United States has become so delusional with its own lies that it is becoming violent against anyone exposing them," Scott Bennett, former US Army psychological warfare officer and US State Department counterterrorism analyst, told Sputnik.

"It is becoming so toxic that every nation which in the past enjoyed friendship with the United States is now disconnecting all association, like someone backing away from a snarling, rabid dog about to bite," he continued.

The US Energy Department and the FBI have alleged that the coronavirus spread "via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory," according to the US media report co-authored by Michael R. Gordon.

However, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that there’s "a variety of views" in the US intelligence community about whether the virus originated naturally or in a lab and he "can’t confirm or deny" the Wall Street Journal report.

 

"Jake Sullivan, along with the other practiced and professionally polished liars and propagandists from the US intelligence community, is attempting to obfuscate, confuse, and shuffle the 'shell game' of facts concerning the COVID-19 issue," Bennett remarked.

 

US Media Flip-Flopping on COVID Origins

Meanwhile, the coverage of the pandemic's origins has prompted a lot of controversy in the US mainstream media over the past three years. It was then-President Donald Trump who attempted to pin the blame on China for the COVID outbreak, specifically pointing the finger at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

The Chinese government rubbished the claim at the time, with Wang Yanyi, an immunologist and director of the institute, revealing that WIV first received a clinical sample of the unknown virus that later became known as SARS-CoV-2 on December 30, 2019.

For his part, Trump's COVID czar Dr. Anthony Fauci resolutely rejected the notion that the coronavirus was created in a lab during a White House press conference on April 17, 2020. He insisted that available evidence on the origins of the virus is "totally consistent with a jump from a species from an animal to a human."

When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed in May 2020 that there is "enormous" evidence that the virus came from a virology laboratory in Wuhan, US Democratic lawmakers subjected him to criticism and demanded that he unveil proof. Otherwise, they insisted, the Trump administration should quit hyping questionable information. The US mainstream media ridiculed Trump's Wuhan lab theory as a conspiracy story, as no evidence had been presented to corroborate the allegations.

However, when Joe Biden assumed office, the Democrats and Dr. Fauci made a sudden U-turn, and called for an investigation into the alleged lab leak version. Thus on May 11, 2021, Fauci told US lawmakers that the possibility of the virus having escaped from the Chinese lab "certainly exists." The US Big Media and Big Tech followed the suit and shifted the goalposts on what previously they claimed to be a crackpot idea.

On June 8, 2021, Gordon co-authored a WSJ article citing a May 2020 classified study by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California that alleged that the hypothesis claiming the virus leaked from a Chinese lab in Wuhan was "plausible" and deserved further investigation.

On June 20, 2021, Jake Sullivan threatened China with "international isolation" if it failed to allow a "real" investigation into the origins of the virus. However, China's Foreign Ministry denounced the probe and accused Washington of "political manipulation and blame shifting."

The then-Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said that Sullivan's statement was nothing short of a "blatant threat," which China objected to and wouldn't accept.

If the US really wants to get to the bottom of the pandemic outbreak, Zhao continued, it should shed light on a National Institutes of Health (NIH) report suggesting coronavirus existed in the US as early as December 2019 and disclose the real situation of the biological lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The Chinese have also repeatedly urged Washington to lift the veil of secrecy on what exactly is going on in hundreds of US overseas bio-laboratories supervised by the Pentagon.

"While I agree that the COVID virus originated in a lab, I remain unconvinced that the lab was in China," Philip Giraldi, former CIA station chief, now an executive director of the Council for the National Interest, told Sputnik. "The argument that it originated in the US military's chemical and biological weapons facility at Fort Detrick Maryland and was deliberately weaponized and released in China to weaken that country's economy and military is somewhat compelling."

 

Meanwhile, on September 2, 2021, the Washington Post broke that the US intelligence community’s probe into the origins of COVID-19 produced "no detectable insight into how the pandemic started." 

Judging from the August 27, 2021, intelligence summary, four intelligence community elements said the outbreak occurred naturally (up from two in May) while just one agency maintained, "with moderate confidence," that a lab accident was to blame. The media outlet said it was unclear whether it was the FBI or the Defense Intelligence Agency that believed that the virus escaped the Wuhan lab. "It doesn’t matter. The bottom line is, our spies have no idea what happened in Wuhan," the report pointed out.

Gordon's Record: Untrustworthy Militarist?

Remarkably, Gordon's latest "bombshell" has failed to produce any evidence of SARS-CoV-2 origins from the Chinese lab even though it claims that the Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of "new intelligence." However, US officials declined to give details on "the fresh intelligence," the report added.

What apparently is more important is that the Energy Department made its judgment with "low confidence." Moreover, over the past two years, the US intelligence community has not changed its views on the pandemic's origins. 

According to Gordon's report, only one intelligence agency – the FBI – still maintains that the lab leak was to blame, while four agencies along with a national intelligence panel are still saying that the pandemic was likely the result of a natural transmission. It appears that nothing has changed much in the perception of the issue by the US intelligence community despite the emergence of "fresh intelligence."

Sputnik's interlocutors, who have monitored the development of the US media COVID origins saga from the start, draw attention to the fact that Washington is using the Wuhan lab leak theory as nothing short of a tool to exert pressure on Beijing.

 

"The main reason the US intelligence-military-government complex is using Michael R. Gordon is simply because he is a dependable, convenient and loyal propagandist," said Bennett. "Gordon was a military and diplomacy correspondent for The New York Times for 32 years, and during the invasion of Iraq was the only newspaper reporter embedded with the allied land command under General Tommy Franks; and wrote about Iraq President Saddam Hussein's alleged nuclear weapons program in September 2002."

Remarkably, it seems that it's not the first time that Michael R. Gordon has "broken" news in the interests of the US establishment.

On September 8, 2002, Gordon co-authored the frontpage New York Times story hyping up the idea that Iraq was trying to get special aluminum tubes for its nuclear weapons program. The story relied on some intelligence sources and Iraqi defectors and created an atmosphere of gloom and doom. According to his critics, Gordon's piece came in handy for the Bush administration’s advertising intervention in Iraq.

Later, however, it turned out that the Iraq WMD story was utterly false and aluminum tubes were actually meant for artillery, not for nuclear centrifuges. Interestingly enough, Gordon was up in arms about the US withdrawal from Iraq: he particularly criticized the policy in his November 2006 article titled "Get Out of Iraq Now? Not So Fast, Experts Say."

According to some reports, Gordon used to be the "mouthpiece" for the US military faction in Iraq, led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, that promoted the escalation. In 2007, the US reporter peddled speculations, relying heavily on US anonymous sources, that the Iranian government was allegedly sending weapons to Iraq.

Gordon's name is also associated with the NYT’ botched "vector analysis" of September 17, 2013, that traced the flight paths of two rockets, recovered in the suburbs of Damascus after the August 21, 2013 gas attack, back to a Syrian government forces' base 9.5 kilometers away. However, the story fell apart after rocket scientists analyzed the rockets and determined that they had a maximum range of about 2 km. Still, the botched "bombshell" almost pushed the Obama administration into yet another Mideast conflict.

n April 2014, Gordon was at it again, claiming that the population of Donbass, which was disgusted by the February 2014 military coup d'etat in Kiev and protested against the violent overthrow of democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich on February 22, 2014, was "directed" by Russia's armed "green men" and intelligence forces. To back his claims the journalist showed grainy photographs provided by the Kiev neo-Nazi caretaker regime.

However, the media piece co-authored by Gordon and his colleagues Andrew Higgins and Andrew E. Kramer obviously played into the hands of the post-coup authorities in Kiev which sought justification for the forthcoming violent attack on the eastern Ukrainian protesters, as US investigative journalists stressed at the time. In the following eight years, the Kiev regime ruthlessly shelled Donbass, killing peaceful civilians including elderly, women and children under the false premise that it was fighting against the "Russian military."

Timing of Gordon's Article

 

"I believe most Americans who are following the COVID story after all this time are very skeptical of anything the White House says relating to the issue. The first priority of the government is, after all, to protect itself and it might well be lying just as it is lying about Nord Stream," Giraldi noted.

 

The timing of Gordon's latest peace deserves special attention. He released his new Wuhan lab article exactly at the time when China made public its peace proposals for Ukraine. It appears that the Ukraine peace deal does not fit the plans of the Biden administration, the US military and defense contractors, who are said to have capitalized enormously on Washington's proxy war in the Eastern European state. In addition, Washington is still trying to force China into severing its strategic partnership with Russia in a failed bid to isolate Moscow.

What's more, the attempts to peddle the Wuhan origins of COVID coincide with a series of stories about Team Biden's role in the Nord Stream sabotage by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, who is allegedly not done with his reporting yet. 

The Russian Defense Ministry's investigation into the Pentagon's experiments with deadly viruses and dangerous pathogens in Ukraine and post-Soviet space is also underway. Indeed, it appears that Washington has a lot to answer.

 

"It is becoming increasingly clear that all elements of the United States government, the Congress, the military, the intelligence community, and the Biden administration are becoming nervous - if not fearful - as they are backed into a corner by the continual emergence of evidence confirming the connection between the COVID-19 issue and the United States in general. Materials and documents obtained since Russia’s [special military operation in] Ukraine has essentially served as evidence of crimes against humanity and violations of the bioweapons convention, which Russia has submitted to the United Nations and demanded an open and transparent investigation," Bennett concluded.

 

READ MORE:

https://sputniknews.com/20230227/wuhan-lab-leak-yarn-returns-how-us-reporter-pours-gasoline-into-washingtons-war-machine-1107846929.html

 

JOE BIDEN AND HIS MINIONS BLEW UP THE NORD SEA PIPELINES. 

 

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This story is a follow up to Seymour Hersh’s original report on the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. To read the full report, subscribe to Hersh’s Substack here.

    Seymour Hersh: The Cover-Up The Biden Administration continues to conceal its responsibility for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines. 

 

 

It’s been six weeks since I published a report, based on anonymous sourcing, naming President Joe Biden as the official who ordered the mysterious destruction last September of Nord Stream 2, a new $11-billion pipeline that was scheduled to double the volume of natural gas delivered from Russia to Germany. The story gained traction in Germany and Western Europe, but was subject to a near media blackout in the US. Two weeks ago, after a visit by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Washington, US and German intelligence agencies attempted to add to the blackout by feeding the New York Times and the German weekly Die Zeit false cover stories to counter the report that Biden and US operatives were responsible for the pipelines’ destruction.

Press aides for the White House and Central Intelligence Agency have consistently denied that America was responsible for exploding the pipelines, and those pro forma denials were more than enough for the White House press corps. There is no evidence that any reporter assigned there has yet to ask the White House press secretary whether Biden had done what any serious leader would do: formally “task” the American intelligence community to conduct a deep investigation, with all of its assets, and find out just who had done the deed in the Baltic Sea. According to a source within the intelligence community, the president has not done so, nor will he. Why not? Because he knows the answer.

Sarah Miller—an energy expert and an editor at Energy Intelligence, which publishes leading trade journals—explained to me in an interview why the pipeline story has been big news in Germany and Western Europe. “The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in September led to a further surge of natural gas prices that were already six or more times pre-crisis levels,” she said. “Nord Stream was blown up in late September. German gas imports peaked a month later, in October, at 10 times pre-crisis levels. Electricity prices across Europe were pulled up, and governments spent as much as 800 billion euros, by some estimates, shielding households and businesses from the impact. Gas prices, reflecting the mild winter in Europe, have now fallen back to roughly a quarter of the October peak, but they are still between two and three times pre-crisis levels and are more than three times current US rates. Over the last year, German and other European manufacturers closed their most energy-intensive operations, such as fertilizer and glass production, and it’s unclear when, if ever, those plants will reopen. Europe is scrambling to get solar and wind capacity in place, but it may not come soon enough to save large chunks of German industry.” (Miller writes a blog on Medium.)

In early March, President Biden hosted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Washington. The trip included only two public events—a brief pro forma exchange of compliments between Biden and Scholz before the White House press corps, with no questions allowed; and a CNN interview with Scholz by Fareed Zakaria, who did not touch on the pipeline allegations. The chancellor had flown to Washington with no members of the German press on board, no formal dinner scheduled, and the two world leaders were not slated to conduct a press conference, as routinely happens at such high-profile meetings. Instead, it was later reported that Biden and Scholz had an 80-minute meeting, with no aides present for much of the time. There have been no statements or written understandings made public since then by either government, but I was told by someone with access to diplomatic intelligence that there was a discussion of the pipeline exposé and, as a result, certain elements in the Central Intelligence Agency were asked to prepare a cover story in collaboration with German intelligence that would provide the American and German press with an alternative version for the destruction of Nord Stream 2. In the words of the intelligence community, the agency was “to pulse the system” in an effort to discount the claim that Biden had ordered the pipelines’ destruction.

At this point, it must be noted that Chancellor Scholz, whether or not he was alerted of the destruction of the pipeline in advance—still an open question—has clearly been complicit since last fall in support of the Biden Administration’s cover-up of its operation in the Baltic Sea.

The agency did its job and, with the help of German intelligence, concocted and planted stories about an ad hoc “off the books” operation that had led to the destruction of the pipelines. The scam had two elements: a March 7 report in the New York Times citing an anonymous American official claiming that “[n]ew intelligence…suggests” that “a pro-Ukrainian group” may have been involved in the pipeline’s destruction; and a report the same day in Der Zeit, Germany’s most widely read weekly newspaper, stating that German investigative officials had tracked down a chartered luxury sailing yacht that was known to have set off on September 6 from the German port at Rostock past Bornholm island off the coast of Denmark. The island is a few miles from the area where the pipelines were destroyed on September 26. The yacht had been rented from Ukrainian owners and manned by a party of six: a captain, two divers, two divers’ assistants, and a doctor. Five were men, and one a woman. False passports were involved. 

The two publications included cautions in their stories noting that, as the Times put it, “there was much they did not know.” The new information was, however, also said to have given officials “increased . . . optimism” that a firm conclusion about the perpetrators would be reached. But it would take a long time, according to various senior officials in Washington and Germany. The message was that the press and the public should stop asking questions and let the investigators unravel the truth. Which, of course, would never come. Holger Stark, the author of the report in Die Zeit, went a step further and noted that there were some “in international security services” who had not excluded the possibility that the yacht story “was a false flag operation.” Indeed, it was.

“It was a total fabrication by American intelligence that was passed along to the Germans, and aimed at discrediting your story,” I was told by a source within the American intelligence community. The disinformation professionals inside the CIA understand that a propaganda gambit can only work if those on receiving are desperate for a story that can diminish or displace an unwanted truth. And the truth in question is that President Joe Biden authorized the destruction of the pipelines and will have a difficult time explaining away his action as Germany and its Western European neighbors suffer as businesses are shuttered amid high day-to-day energy costs.

Ironically, the most telling evidence about the weakness of the New York Times report came from one of three Times reporters whose bylines were on the story. A few days after publication of the story, the reporter, Julian Barnes, was interviewed on the popular Times podcast The Daily by host Michael Barbaro. Here’s the transcript:

 

HOST: Who exactly was responsible for this attack? And how did you and our colleagues go about figuring that out?

REPORTER: Well, I think what happened was for much of the investigation, we weren’t asking exactly the right questions.

HOST: Hmm. And what were the right questions?

REPORTER: Well, we had logically been focused on countries.

HOST: Mm-hmm.

REPORTER: All those states that we just went through, did Russia do it? Did the Ukraine state do it? And that was just hitting dead end after dead end. We weren’t finding officials who were telling us that there was credible evidence pointing at a government. So my colleagues Adam Entous, Adam Goldman, and I started asking a different question. Could this have been done by non-state actors?

HOST: Hmm.

REPORTER: Could this have been done by a group of individuals who were not working for a government?

HOST: Kind of like freelance saboteurs. So where did you take this new question?

REPORTER: Well, we started asking, who might these saboteurs be? Or if we couldn’t answer that, who might they be aligned with? Could they be pro-Russian saboteurs? Could they be other saboteurs? And the more we talk to officials who had access to intelligence, the more we saw this theory gaining traction.

HOST: Mm-hmm.

REPORTER: And my initial thought that this could be pro-Russian saboteurs turned out to be wrong. And we learned that it was most likely a pro-Ukrainian group.

HOST: Hmm. So in other words, a group of people who did this on behalf of Ukraine. What do you learn that makes you think that’s what happened?

REPORTER: Michael, I should be very clear that we know really very little, right? This group remains mysterious. And it remains mysterious not just to us, but also to the US government officials that we have spoken to. They know that the people involved were either Ukrainian, or Russian, or a mix. They know that they are not affiliated with the Ukrainian government. But they know they’re also anti-Putin and pro-Ukraine.

HOST: So after all this investigative reporting, what you find is that the culprit here is a group of people who want the same thing as Ukraine, but aren’t officially tied to the government of Ukraine. But I’m curious how certain you are that these individuals are not connected to the Ukrainian government?

REPORTER: Well, the intelligence right now says they’re not. And while officials are telling us that the president of Ukraine and his key advisors did not know, we can’t be certain that that’s true or that somebody else didn’t know.

 

The Times reporters in Washington were at the mercy of White House officials “who had access to intelligence.” But the information they received originated with a group of CIA experts in deception and propaganda whose mission was to feed the newspaper a cover story—and to protect a president who made an unwise decision and is now lying about it.

 

READ MORE:

https://scheerpost.com/2023/03/22/seymour-hersh-the-cover-up/

 

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