I'm the FBI agent who led the Covid lab leak investigation... here's what my colleagues are too afraid to tell you

An FBI scientist who led the investigation into the Covid lab leak theory has revealed why he is confident China was behind the pandemic. 

The FBI, CIA and Energy Department all say it is most likely that the virus emerged at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but only the former says it has 'moderate confidence' this was the case.

Dr Jason Bannan, a registered Democrat, is speaking out to counter the claim that the lab leak theory is a right wing conspiracy.

Dr Bannan said his team found Shi Zhengli, a lead coronavirus researcher at the WIV dubbed the 'bat lady', and her team were performing risky experiments on SARS-CoV-2's closest known relatives for at least three years before the pandemic.

They also found the WIV had 'thousands' of samples of coronaviruses, many of which were not disclosed, and that much of the research was carried out in labs that had improper safety precautions for coronaviruses, raising the risk of an escape.

Speaking in a personal capacity, Dr Bannan — who served at the agency for more than two decades before retiring in 2022 — revealed to Vanity Fair: 'To me, there is enough scientific evidence to say it is likely this was a lab incident.'

He added: 'The science speaks volumes.'

More than 7million people are estimated to have died from Covid globally so far.

Dr Bannan spent more than 20 years as an FBI scientist, winning the FBI Director's Award in 2009 for outstanding scientific advancement for his work on the anthrax investigation.

He spent 11 of those years serving as the senior scientist on the FBI's forensic response section within the lab division, where he also investigated Covid's origins.

He retired in 2022, and has now spoken up as a private citizen to counter what he called inaccurate claims that Covid emerged naturally.

Dr Bannan said it was also his aim to combat bias toward a natural spillover event as the likely origin of the pandemic, which he said continued to be espoused in Government reports.

He added: 'How and where the SARS-CoV-2 virus became well adapted to humans is the question that compels scientists to examine the laboratory origin.'

Some of the information in the FBI report remains classified, but Dr Bannan has now shared the published studies that led to the FBI's judgement that Covid likely came from a lab.

He revealed the Bureau had analyzed a 2017 dissertation by graduate student Lei-Ping Zeng, who worked at the WIV under Zhengli, in which he described developing a system to swap out components of different SARS-related coronaviruses to create chimeras that was hard to detect.

He stated how much of the work was done in low-containment BSL-2 laboratories, with no specialized air filtration or full gowns. In the US, this work would need to be done in a BSL-3 lab, with controlled airflow and protective clothing.

A separate thesis from June 2019, and by Zhengli's student Yu Ping, details work on 2,800 coronaviruses stored in the lab — with almost a third of these testing positive for coronaviruses.

Dr Bannan said the revelations highlight a 'lack of candor' among scientists at the WIV about their research, suggesting they had been secretly tweaking viruses in unsafe conditions 'for years'. 

Classified information also shows that three scientists working at the WIV, Yu Ping, Ben Hu and another researcher, fell ill with Covid-like symptoms in fall 2019.

Hu and Ping have denied that they fell ill during this time frame, but US government sources briefed on the information say this is the case.

Dr Bannan also said that studies published online reveal how there were thousands of viruses in the labs' vaults that were yet to be detailed publicly.

He noted a paper from February 2019 by Zhengli, on strains of coronaviruses, which contained a circular diagram on the evolution of three groups of bat viruses.

It was comparable to the thesis from June 2019, which used the same circular diagram but showed this displaying a fourth group of nine viruses.

The thesis added that it was based on 'bat samples collected from 20 regions of China from 2011 to 2016 that were available in the laboratory'.

It was not clear why the fourth group of viruses were omitted initially, but proponents of the theory Covid came from the wild say this may happen if results are incomplete, research is ongoing, or there is a lack of interest from scientific journals.

The WIV had so many samples of coronaviruses because scientists from there had repeatedly visited a cave in Yunnan, China, to collect contaminated bat guano.

The cave first came of interest to the Institute in 2012, when six miners there caught a mystery illness — and three died.

One of the samples from that cave was called Ra4991, onto which much suspicion has settled that this might be the initial strain of Covid.

A February 2020 paper by Zhengli which analyzed the viral strains that had likely contributed to the first SARS outbreak in 2002 suggested that RaTG13 was 96.2 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2.

But this paper ommitted that RaTG13 was actually Ra4991, which had simply been renamed. An update was later published clarifying the error, but Dr Bannan said that this alarmed officials at the FBI.

Dr Bannan says the virus is not similar enough to be the coronavirus, but that it builds a picture that the virus could have escaped from the lab.

An FBI spokesperson said in a statement: 'The FBI has long assessed that the origin of the Covid pandemic was likely a laboratory incident in Wuhan. 

'Led by the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, work began in early 2020 when FBI experts in such fields as virology, immunology, microbiology, biochemistry, and forensics began examining this issue. FBI agents and analysts studied intelligence and conducted over 200 interviews of more than 80 people since the beginning of the pandemic.'

In comparison, no such evidence has been found to support the natural origins of Covid hypothesis despite extensive studies on sites such as the Wuhan live animal market.

It comes amid a renewed push to investigate the origins of the Covid pandemic, with senator Rand Paul subpoenaed 14 government agencies for records related to the US government's funding of research at the WIV.

And Tulsi Gabbard, now head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, has pledged to further review and could declassify more information.