WASHINGTON — A 90-day intelligence review into the origins of COVID-19 ordered by President Joe Biden is expected to end largely where it began, without high confidence in how the coronavirus first emerged, government officials told McClatchy.
Biden will receive a classified briefing in the last week of August on the findings of the report, which he ordered in May after learning that a large amount of unprocessed genetic data held by the U.S. intelligence community might yield new insight into how the coronavirus developed.
When the review began, intelligence agencies did not expect it to end with a “high confidence assessment” — a term that spy agencies use to describe their level of confidence in the analysis. Just weeks away from the president’s deadline, that view has not changed, according to several government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
