{"id":1716721,"date":"2022-10-30T08:15:10","date_gmt":"2022-10-30T12:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1716721"},"modified":"2022-10-30T08:18:41","modified_gmt":"2022-10-30T12:18:41","slug":"propublica-report-covid-likely-escaped-from-lab-xi-jinping-personally-helped-cover-it-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/propublica-report-covid-likely-escaped-from-lab-xi-jinping-personally-helped-cover-it-up\/","title":{"rendered":"ProPublica Report: COVID Likely Escaped From Lab, Xi Jinping Personally Helped Cover It Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fpropublica-report-covid-likely-escaped-from-lab-xi-jinping-personally-helped-cover-it-up%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1716721&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/d5b19d68-fe41-4baf-a3be-367bae3ee9dc-1110x740-1.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Yesterday, Republicans on the Senate HELP Committee <a href=\"https:\/\/hotair.com\/john-s-2\/2022\/10\/27\/gop-report-argues-lab-leak-theory-is-most-likely-explanation-of-covid-19-n506272\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">released a report<\/a> concluding that the most likely origin of COVID-19 was as the result of a lab leak. Today, ProPublica has a new report based on five months of work looking into what the committee was investigating. The focus is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese lab at the center of the suspicion about Covid\u2019s origin. What the ProPublica story confirms is that in November 2019 the WIV was a \u201cbiocomplex in crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The insights in the story are the result of 15 months of investigation by the team behind the Senate HELP Committee report. One of the people on the team was Toy Reid, a man who worked for the RAND Corporation and for the State Department. Reid speaks several languages including Japanese and Chinese and is said to have mastered the subtle art of \u201cparty speak\u201d the way that Chinese apparatchiks write their reports to avoid directly mentioning anything that might cause someone <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/senate-report-covid-19-origin-wuhan-lab\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">to lose face<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>As part of his investigation, Reid took an approach that was artful in its simplicity. Working out of the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington and a family home in Florida, he used a virtual private network, or VPN, to access dispatches archived on the website of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). These dispatches remain on the internet, but their meaning can\u2019t be unlocked by just anyone. Using his hard-earned expertise, Reid believes he unearthed secrets that were hiding in plain sight\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Like many scientific institutes in China, the WIV is state-run and funded. The research carried out there must advance the goals of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As one way to ensure compliance, the CCP operates 16 party branches inside of the WIV, where members including scientists meet regularly and demonstrate their loyalty.<\/p>\n<p>Week after week, scientists from those branches chronicled their party-building exploits in reports uploaded to the WIV\u2019s website. These dispatches, intended for watchful higher-ups, generally consist of upbeat recitations of recruitment efforts and meeting summaries that emphasize the fulfillment of Beijing\u2019s political goals. \u201cThe headlines and initial paragraphs seem completely innocuous,\u201d Reid says. \u201cIf you didn\u2019t take a close look, you\u2019d probably think there\u2019s nothing in here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>But scrolling through these seemingly innocuous reports, Reid noticed a change of tone in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/senate-report-covid-19-origin-wuhan-lab\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fall of 2019<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u2026in the fall of 2019, the dispatches took a darker turn. They referenced inhumane working conditions and \u201chidden safety dangers.\u201d On Nov. 12 of that year, a dispatch by party branch members at the BSL-4 laboratory appeared to reference a biosecurity breach.<\/p>\n<p>once you have opened the stored test tubes, it is just as if having opened Pandora\u2019s Box. These viruses come without a shadow and leave without a trace. Although [we have] various preventive and protective measures, it is nevertheless necessary for lab personnel to operate very cautiously to avoid operational errors that give rise to dangers. Every time this has happened, the members of the Zhengdian Lab [BSL4] Party Branch have always run to the frontline, and they have taken real action to mobilize and motivate other research personnel.<\/p>\n<p>Reid studied the words intently. Was this a reference to past accidents? An admission of an ongoing crisis? A general recognition of hazardous practices? Or all of the above? Reading between the lines, Reid concluded, \u201cThey are almost saying they know Beijing is about to come down and scream at them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And that, in fact, is exactly what happened next, according to a meeting summary uploaded nine days later.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The messenger who arrived at the WIV was Dr. Ji Changzheng, the \u201ctechnology safety and security director for the Chinese Academy of Sciences.\u201d He came with a message <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/senate-report-covid-19-origin-wuhan-lab\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">from Xi Jiinping<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p data-pp-blocktype=\"copy\" data-pp-id=\"54.0\">The WIV\u2019s deputy director of safety and security spoke next, summarizing \u201cseveral general problems that were found over the course of the last year during safety and security investigations, and [he] pointed to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/23169482-wu-yi-bing-du-suo-kai-zhan-an-quan-gong-zuo-pei-xun-zhong-guo-ke-xue-yuan-wu-yi-bing-du-yan-jiu-suo#document\/p2\/a2164597\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">severe consequences that could result from hidden safety dangers.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-pp-blocktype=\"copy\" data-pp-id=\"55.0\">But what drew Reid\u2019s full attention was the word Ji used to describe the important \u201cwritten instructions\u201d he was relaying from Beijing: \u201cpishi.\u201d When China\u2019s senior leaders receive written reports on a worrying or important issue, they will write instructions in the margins, known as pishi, to be carried out swiftly by lower-level officials. As Reid interpreted it, the pishi that Ji arrived with that day appeared to have come directly from Xi, arguably China\u2019s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. To Reid, it suggested that Xi himself had been briefed on an ongoing crisis at the WIV.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>To verify that Dr. Ji wasn\u2019t just name dropping, Reid looked at nine other routine visits he had made to other facilities prior to the visit to the WIV. In none of those cases did he mention a \u201cpishi\u201d suggesting that the WIV visit was more serious. But here\u2019s what may be the killer paragraph <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/senate-report-covid-19-origin-wuhan-lab\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in this story<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Vanity Fair and ProPublica examined research from Chinese academics on pishi and separately got three experts on CCP communications to review the WIV meeting summary. All agreed that it appeared to be urgent, nonroutine and related to some sort of biosafety emergency. Two also agreed that it appeared Xi himself had issued a pishi\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Another longtime CCP analyst said it was not possible to conclude from the document that Xi and Li had actually issued a pishi related to a specific incident, or even that they had been informed of one. Ji, in her view, might well have been invoking their names without their knowledge to underscore the importance of his message. However, she said that, given the party\u2019s preference for positive communications, the acknowledgment of a \u201c\u2018complex and grave situation\u2019 means \u2018We are facing something really bad.\u2019\u201d She also said that the language of the summary implied that the situation in question was happening\u00a0<em>at that time.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So there was a serious security issue at the WIV in November 2019, serious enough for a special visit and maybe even a direct message from Xi Jinping. And there\u2019s more.\u00a0One of the issues mentioned in the report released yesterday was just how quickly Chinese scientists were able to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/senate-report-covid-19-origin-wuhan-lab\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">work up a vaccine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The interim report also raises questions about how quickly vaccines were developed in China by some teams, including one led by a military virologist named Zhou Yusen. The report called it \u201cunusual\u201d that two military COVID-19 vaccine development teams were able to reach early milestones even faster than the major drug companies who were part of the U.S. government\u2019s Operation Warp Speed program.<\/p>\n<p>Vanity Fair and ProPublica spoke to experts who said that the timeline of Zhou\u2019s vaccine development seemed unrealistic, if not impossible. Two of the three experts said it strongly suggested that his team must have had access to the genomic sequence of the virus no later than in November 2019, weeks before China\u2019s official recognition that the virus was circulating.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>There\u2019s also computer evidence suggesting an attempt to republish all of the material on the WIV website in November 2019:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Vanity Fair and ProPublica analyzed the WIV website and found that there may have been an after-the-fact attempt to reframe the events of November 2019. On Nov. 11, the WIV appeared to republish the entire section of its website containing institutional and party branch news. Every dispatch from prior dates, even those from several years earlier, contains underlying data that indicates that it was changed on that day.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Was this routine or was it an attempt to clean things up in advance of Dr. Ji\u2019s visit six days later?<\/p>\n<p>When I wrote about the report yesterday I found the contents not terribly convincing because they lacked the kind of detail contained in this ProPublica report. Having read the ProPublica story, this does seem to be a pretty major advance in what we know. Specifically, something bad happened at the WIV in the fall of 2019, probably a biosafety emergency and the government was worried about it. If it had nothing to do with the coronavirus the timing would be one hell of a coincidence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, Republicans on the Senate HELP Committee released a report concluding that the most likely origin of COVID-19 was as the result of a lab leak. Today, ProPublica has a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1716725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1716721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1716721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1716725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1716721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1716721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1716721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}