当乔·拜登总统指导美国情报机构在对新冠肺炎的起源进行了90天的深入挖掘后，他没有向国家的间谍和突击队发出信号，让他们从政府大楼的侧面下来，或者跳伞进入武汉的实验室。
官员们对美国广播公司新闻(ABC News)表示，在评估了他们面前的情报和原始数据后，拜登和他的高级官员们清楚地意识到，大量信息尚未得到充分分析——这是可能掌握已夺走350多万人生命的病毒线索的潜在证据。《纽约时报》首次报道了未经审查的情报的存在。
“他们也许错过了什么过去?我们现在能收集什么?我们能下什么决心?我们该怎么办呢?”中央情报局和国防部前高级官员米克·马尔罗伊问道;特朗普总统政府大部分时间的副助理国防部长;和美国广播公司新闻撰稿人。
英特尔官员现在必须“加倍努力”分析数据，拜登本周说。
埃文·武奇/美联社
乔·拜登总统在登上空军一号前往克利夫兰之前戴上了他的太阳镜
据美国广播公司新闻报道，早在2019年感恩节，美国情报官员就警告说，一种传染病正在中国武汉地区蔓延，改变了生活和商业模式，并对人口构成威胁2020年4月报告根据来自四个来源的信息，简要介绍了秘密报告。
那年秋天，武汉病毒研究所的几名研究人员在第一个确诊病例爆发前就生病了，国务院1月份表示，症状“与新冠肺炎病和常见的季节性疾病一致”，然后寻求医院护理。根据《华尔街日报》。
“早期就有关于COVID的警告，”马尔罗伊说，“这可能是当局现在要考虑的事情之一。”
直到2019年12月31日，世界卫生组织中国办公室才获悉武汉发现“不明原因”的“肺炎病例”。
然而，在2019年夏末秋初，卫星图根据哈佛医学院2020年6月的一项研究，与美国广播公司独家分享的数据显示，武汉主要医院周围的汽车流量急剧上升，这表明病毒可能在世界警觉之前就已经存在并渗透到该地区。
总统下令进行的彻底审查将包括使用计算机化的人工智能系统和分析师来挖掘从原始声明到社交媒体评论的一切，以及存储在庞大的美国情报界以及中情局、国家安全局和国防情报局等组织中的被截获的电话和电子通信等机密记录。
“我们已经获得了很多信息，但还有很多东西需要学习，”杰米·梅茨尔，前国家安全克林顿政府的官员，世卫组织现任顾问和大西洋理事会高级研究员，告诉美国广播公司新闻。梅兹尔领导着一个由二十多名科学家组成的小组，该小组长期以来一直呼吁对新冠肺炎的起源进行更深入、独立的调查，包括潜在的实验室泄漏。
盖蒂图像，文件
2020年1月17日，中国湖北武汉，医护人员将病人转移到金银滩医院。当地的
拜登政府高级官员的共识是，大流行源于两种方式之一:病毒是通过人类与受感染动物的接触而出现的;或者，从实验室事故——偏离世卫组织领导的小组的报告今年春天，这使得实验室泄漏理论“极不可能”
专家说，这两种理论都是可行的。
他新坚持的“全面、透明、基于证据”的国际调查，以及来自中国的“获得所有相关数据和证据”，与世卫组织世界卫生大会(WHO World Health Assembly)不谋而合——在该大会上，调查的下一步措施已经提出——并提高了盟友和美国机构的赌注。
中国外交部发言人赵立坚周四对重新燃起的调查实验室泄漏理论的兴趣作出回应，指责拜登政府玩弄政治，推卸自己在呼吁进一步调查乔维奇的来源方面的责任，并表示拜登的命令表明，美国“不关心事实和真相，也对认真的科学来源追踪不感兴趣。”
“我们对围绕新冠肺炎起源的谁、什么、在哪里、何时、如何以及为什么知之甚少，”前国务院官员大卫·阿什尔(David Asher)在美国广播公司新闻(ABC News)本周获得的对国会办公室的私人简报中表示。他曾在特朗普政府时期领导国务院对这一流行病的起源进行调查。"我把它比作大理的一幅画，画中的钟已经融化，但时间并没有静止。"
期待已久的由世卫组织牵头的三月报告对新冠肺炎的起源没有得出明确的结论。批评者认为中国政府抵制透明度压制公平独立的调查。
世卫组织发言人表示，该小组正在“审查”报告中的建议，并为下一阶段的研究做准备。
诺埃尔·塞利斯/法新社通过盖蒂图像，文件
保安站在封闭的华南海鲜批发市场前，那里有卫生权威
但是世卫组织的授权有限，没有多边监管或传讯权——让全球社会来制定战略。
“如果中国阻止了，那么世界其他地区将别无选择，只能走另一条路，”梅茨尔说。
专家说，未来的法医工作有一个微妙的平衡。
哈佛医学院教授约翰·布朗斯坦博士说:“某些数据来源的可用性可能会消失，告诉我们病毒的抗体可能会减弱。”谁领导了卫星研究。
“但是，”美国广播公司新闻撰稿人布朗斯坦补充说，“我们现在对病毒有了新的理解——当我们回顾过去时，我们可以利用这种背景。”
Untapped US intelligence to be probed for clues to COVID-19 origin: Sources
When President Joe Bidendirected U.S. intelligence agencieson a 90-day deeper dig into the origins of COVID-19, he wasn't signaling for the nation’s spies and commando teams to rappel down the side of government buildings, or parachute into Wuhan’s labs.
After assessing the intelligence and raw data before them, it became apparent to Biden and his top officials that a large cache of information had yet to be fully analyzed, officials told ABC News -- potential evidence that could hold clues to the virus that has claimed the lives of more than 3.5 million people. The existence of unexamined intelligence was first reported by the New York Times.
"What did they maybe miss in the past? what can we collect now? what determination can we make? And what are we going to do about it?" asked Mick Mulroy, a former top official with the CIA and Defense Department; a deputy associate defense secretary for much of President Trump’s administration; and an ABC News contributor.
Intel officials must now "redouble their efforts" to analyze the data,Biden said this week.
As far back as Thanksgiving 2019, U.S. intelligence officials warned a contagion was moving through China's Wuhan region, changing life and business patterns, and posing a threat to the population, ABC Newsreported in April 2020, based on information from four sources briefed on the secret reporting.
That fall, several researchers inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology took ill, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms "consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illnesses," the State Department said in January, and then sought hospital care,according to The Wall Street Journal.
"There were warnings about COVID early on," Mulroy said, "and that's likely one of the things authorities will look at now."
It wasn't until Dec. 31, 2019, that the World Health Organization's China office was informed of "cases of pneumonia" of "unknown cause" detected in Wuhan.
In late summer and early autumn of 2019, though,satellite imageryshared exclusively with ABC showed dramatic spikes in auto traffic around major hospitals in Wuhan -- suggesting the virus may have been present and percolating through the region much earlier than when the world was alerted, according to a June 2020 Harvard Medical School study.
The thorough review ordered by the president will include using computerized artificial intelligence systems and analysts to mine everything from raw statements to social media comments, classified records like intercepted phone and electronic communications stored throughout the sprawling U.S. intelligence community, and among organizations like the CIA, National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency.
"There's a lot of information we have gained, but there's much more to be learned," Jamie Metzl, a formernational securityofficial in the Clinton administration, current adviser to the WHO and Atlantic Council senior fellow, told ABC News. Metzl leads a group of two dozen scientists, which has long called for a deeper, independent probe into COVID-19's origins, including a potential lab leak.
Consensus among top officials in the Biden administration is that the pandemic originated in one of two ways: the virus emerged from human contact with an infected animal; or, from a laboratory accident -- diverging from theWHO-led team's reportthis spring, which ruled the lab-leak theory "extremely unlikely."
Both theories are viable, experts said.
His new insistence on a "full, transparent, evidence-based" international probe with "access to all relevant data and evidence" from China coincides with the WHO's World Health Assembly -- where next steps in the investigation have been raised -- and ups the ante on both allies and American agencies.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijiian responded to the rekindled interest in investigating the lab leak theory Thursday, accusing the Biden administration of playing politics and shirking its own responsibility in calling for further probing of Covid's origins, and saying Biden's order showed the U.S. “does not care about facts and truth, nor is it interested in serious scientific origin tracing."
"We know way too little about the who, what, where, when, how and why surrounding COVID-19 origins," David Asher, a former State Department official who led the department's investigation into the pandemic's origins under the Trump administration, said at a private briefing to congressional offices this week obtained by ABC News. "I compare it to a Dali painting where the clocks have melted but time has not stood still."
The long-awaited March WHO-led report came to no firm conclusions on COVID-19's origins. Critics argued the Chinese government's resistance to transparencymuzzled a fair and independent investigation.
A WHO spokesperson said the group is "reviewing the recommendations" from the report, and preparing for the next phase of study.
Butthe WHO has a limited mandate, with no multilateral regulatory or subpoena power -- leaving the global community to strategize.
"If China blocks that then the rest of the world will have no choice but to take an alternative route," Metzl said.
There's a delicate balance in the forensic work ahead, experts say.
"The availability of certain data sources might go away, telling antibodies for the virus can wane," said Dr. John Brownstein, the Harvard Medical School professorwho led the satellite research.
"But," Brownstein, an ABC News contributor, added, "we're now empowered with a new understanding of the virus -- and we can leverage that context as we look back."
