The United States “took too long” to commence espionage efforts against Chinese health officials to learn more about the COVID-19 pandemic from the outset, according to Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee.
In a declassified report (pdf) released Dec. 14, committee members credit intelligence agencies with their early warnings of a potential pandemic but hold that the lack of clandestine intelligence collection as the virus emerged in late 2019 and early 2020 was detrimental to the government’s insight into the situation.
“The IC’s [intelligence community’s] reporting throughout January ‘was based on open source reporting, diplomatic reporting,’ and its own expert assessments were formed on the same basis,” noted Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), House Intelligence Committee chair, in an introduction to the report. “This was helpful, but far less than helpful than it could have been if resources were quickly trained on harder to obtain information.”…