The content of the 2-year-old cable, which leaked earlier this year, served as the foundation for unsubstantiated allegations from members of the Trump administration and Congress that the coronavirus may have escaped from the laboratory at the epicenter of the virus.
The January 2018 cable, obtained by the Washington Post after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, noted that ties between WIV and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston could help alleviate the shortage and that, The US-based institution was reportedly training technicians to work at WIV.
A second cable on the April 2018 WIV quoted a French official as saying that “French experts have provided biosafety guidance and training to the laboratory, which will continue.”
Parts of both cables are written.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was one of the loudest in suggesting that the deadly virus may have escaped from WIV.
Although Pompeo still speaks strongly against the Chinese government for his role in not containing the pandemic outbreak and lack of transparency, the secretary recently appeared to move away from the theory that the virus originated in a laboratory. In an interview in mid-May, he acknowledged, “We know it started in Wuhan, but we don’t know where or from whom, and those are important things.”
While both Pompeo and President Donald Trump earlier this year claimed that they had seen evidence linking the outbreak to a Wuhan lab, the assessments by scientists and those circulating among the United States’ intelligence exchange allies have postulated that it is “very unlikely” that the virus originated in a laboratory. The United States intelligence community has said it is investigating both possibilities.
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