The U.S. intelligence community was slow to respond to the threat posed by the emerging COVID-19 pandemic in the first weeks of 2020, a report released Thursday by the House Intelligence Committee concluded. It also said U.S. officials were slow to collect the kinds of intelligence required to inform policymakers in the early phase of the outbreak in China.
The report, the result of a two-and-a-half-year review conducted by the Democrat-led congressional body, concluded that the sprawling U.S. intelligence community was ill-equipped to respond to the fast-moving crisis.
“The intelligence community as a whole did not pivot quickly enough to train its unique assets at this deadly problem set,” committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff wrote in a letter accompanying the release of a declassified version of the report.
