Covid-19 > Were there two lab leaks at Wuhan triggering the Covid pandemic?

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Senate GOP report raises possibility of two lab leaks triggering COVID

By Steven Nelson, NYPost

April 17, 2023 6:04pm  Updated

WASHINGTON — The COVID-19 pandemic may have started with two separate leaks at Chinese labs doing risky “gain of function” research, a Republican senator said Monday.

A report released by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) raises the prospect that millions of lives could have been saved — including those of more than 1 million Americans — if not for a “coverup” by the Chinese government during a theorized initial outbreak.

“This report concludes most likely this was two leaks [including] a lab leak in the September-October [2019] timeframe, even as early as July or August,” the medical doctor turned senator told a small group of journalists ahead of the release of the 301-page document.

“We’ve concluded that [China] started vaccine development in November 2019. And then another lab leak seems to be most sensible explanation,” he said. “There are key data points that are being held back that could help us prove that.”

Dr. Robert Kadlec, a cofounder of the Operation Warp Speed program that rapidly developed US COVID-19 vaccines in 2020, drafted the report titled “Muddy Waters: The Origins of COVID-19” with about a dozen Republican aides on the Senate Health Committee and additional outside consultants.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

AFP via Getty Images

The theory that there were two lab leaks, with the first one’s effect going unrecognized by the global community as the Chinese government raced ahead with early vaccine development, is unproven and Marshall says he welcomes debate and the exploration of other possibilities.

The theory rests on scientific conjecture about some previously reported details — including an assessment of the amount of work that would have had to predate a Feb. 24, 2020, vaccine patent filed by Dr. Zhou Yusen, a Chinese military scientist who later died under mysterious circumstances. Investigators concluded that the vaccine development would have had to start in November 2019, using Operation Warp Speed’s course as a benchmark.

A pre-November series of additional events adds weight to the theory, Marshall said, including the deaths of 11 Iranian athletes, publicly reported in 2020. Some of the athletes reportedly attended the Olympics-style World Military Games in held Wuhan, China, in October 2019.

There are additional scientific clues, according to the report.

There is much more on this story at the NY Post.

‘Deep State’ Memo that Rattled McMaster’s National Security Council Finally Released

Whether or not Deep State has been working to undermine Trump has been occupying my mind for a few days now. It seems obvious that they have been pulling his strings one way or another, and I wondered if they were not satisfied with that. 

It then occurred to me that if they completely undermined Trump and got him impeached, that they would then have Pence to deal with. The next question is, is Pence Deep State? We will know if Deep State goes for Trump's jugular. 

The usual caution: The report below came from RT.

U.S. President Donald Trump with National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster (L)

© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

A controversial memo penned by a former National Security Council staffer has been released. The document states, among other accusations, that the “deep state” is trying to undermine President Donald Trump.

A copy of the “POTUS & Political Warfare” memorandum, dated May 2017, was published by Foreign Policy on Thursday.

Rich Higgins, who served as the director of strategic planning for the NSC, was the author of the seven-page memorandum. He resigned from the NSC in July after National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster discovered he was behind the memo.

Although it does not mention McMaster’s name specifically, the NSC chief is purportedly one of the people described in the memo as trying to restrain Trump, an unnamed source with first hand knowledge of the memo and events, said, according to Foreign Policy.

“The administration has been maneuvered into a constant back-pedal by relentless political warfare attacks structured to force him to assume a reactive posture that assures inadequate responses,” the memo stated.

“Having become the dominant cultural meme, some benefit from it while others are captured by it; including ‘deep state’ actors, globalists, bankers, Islamists, and establishment Republicans,” the document reads.

After the memo reached McMaster, Higgins, who was working in the strategic planning office, was forced to resign by McMaster’s deputy, Ricky Waddell. Waddell told Higgins that if he didn’t resign, his security clearance would be revoked.

McMaster allegedly determined some NSC staffers that were holdovers from former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s brief tenure were the type of people he had been looking to replace. This also led to the firing of top NSC intelligence official Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Derek Harvey, who controlled the NSC’s Middle East portfolio, according to Foreign Policy.

The most notable change resulting from the shake up is the removal of the president’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, from his seat on the security council.

An unnamed source with first hand knowledge of the memo described McMaster’s decision-making after reviewing the document and discovering his inclusion, Foreign Policy reported.

“It was about H.R. McMaster,” the source said. “So, when he starts reading it, he knows it’s him and he fires [Higgins].”

The memo was purportedly first discovered by McMaster and the NSC after a search for staffers who were believed to be giving information to conservative author and activist Mike Cernovich, who seemed to have uncanny knowledge of operations at the NSC.

A subsequent “routine security” audit of NSC staffers’ communications eventually led to the finding of the memo, unnamed sources said, according to Foreign Policy. A different unnamed source explained the email audit as a McCarthyist-type leak investigation targeting staffers who had communication with Cernovich.

“McMaster was just very, very obsessed with this, with Cernovich,” an unnamed senior administration official told Foreign Policy. “He had become this incredible specter.”

Trump eventually saw the memo and was “furious” after learning the author was fired by McMaster, an unnamed senior White House official said.

“He is still furious,” the senior official added.

The fallout from the document has magnified McMaster’s difficulties at the NSC since taking over from Flynn. One unnamed source familiar with the NSC staff stated that the NSC chief “doesn’t really have any allies,” Foreign Policy reported. “It doesn’t seem as though he has the ear of the president, which is obviously essential to his survival.”

On Wednesday, the billionaire Sheldon Adelson-backed Zionist Organization of America, the oldest pro-Israel group in the United States, unleashed a report calling for McMaster’s reassignment to a post not dealing with issues concerning Israel or Iran. The group accuses McMaster of being a threat to Trump due to his firing of Flynn-era NSC staffers. Adelson contributed $5 million to Trump’s inaugural committee before he was sworn in as president.