What did US intelligence services really know about the 'Chinese virus'?

By Pepe Escobar, for the Strategic Culture

Translation by Patricia Zimbres, for 247

Hybrid Warfare 2.0 against China, a bipartisan US operation, is already reaching its fever pitch. Its 24/7 full-spectrum infowar arm blames China for everything related to the coronavirus – which also serves as a diversionary tactic against any informed criticism of the United States' tragic lack of preparedness.  

A hysteria He reigns, as one would expect. And this is just the beginning.

A deluge of lawsuits is imminent – ​​such as the one filed in Florida's Southern District by the Berman Law Group (linked to Democrats) and Lucas-Compton (linked to Republicans). In short: China has to shell out tons of money. Something on the order of at least $1,2 trillion, which – in a surreal irony – is the value of US Treasury bonds held by Beijing, up to $20 trillion, as demanded by a lawsuit filed in Texas.  

The prosecution's argument, as Scott Ritter, in a memorable outburst, reminded us, comes directly from Monty PythonThat's exactly how it works:

"If she weighs the same as a duck..."  

…it's made of wood! 

"And therefore..." 

"A witch!!!!!"

In terms of Hybrid Warfare 2.0, the current narrative, very much in the CIA style, says that evil China never told us, the civilized West, that there was a terrible virus on the loose. If they had warned us, we would have had time to prepare. 

But they lied and cheated—incidentally, trademarks of the CIA, according to Mike Pompeo himself. "We lied, we stole, we cheated." And they hid everything. And they censored the truth. They, therefore, wanted to infect us all. Now, they will have to compensate us for all the economic and financial damage we are suffering, and pay for all our dead. It's all China's fault. 

And all this noise and fury forces us to go back to the end of 2019 to check what the United States intelligence services actually knew at that time about what would later be identified as Sars-Cov-2.

"This product does not exist."

The gold standard remains the matter  According to ABC News, information collected in November 2019 by the National Center for Medical Information (NCMI), a subsidiary of the Pentagon's Defense Information Agency (DIA), already warned of a highly contagious virus that had spiraled out of control in Wuhan, based on a "detailed analysis of intercepted communications and satellite imagery."

An unnamed source told ABC that "analysts concluded it would be a catastrophic event," adding that the information had been "passed on multiple times" to the DIA, the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even the White House. 

It's no wonder the Pentagon was forced to issue the proverbial denial – in Pentagon-speak, with Colonel R. Shane Day, director of the NCMI at the DIA, acting as spokesperson: "In the interest of transparency during the current public health crisis, we can confirm that the news report about the existence/publication of a product/assessment by the National Center for Medical Information regarding the coronavirus in November 2019 is incorrect. This NCMI product does not exist." 

Well, if this "product" existed, Pentagon director and former Raytheon lobbyist Mark Esper would be informed of the fact. He was duly questioned about it by George Stephanopoulos of ABC.

Question: "Did the Pentagon receive an intelligence report from the DIA's National Center for Medical Information about Covid in China last November?"

Esper: "Ah, I don't remember, George," (...) But we have many people who follow this matter closely."  

Question: This report was produced in November and sent to the NSC in early December with the goal of assessing the impact on military readiness, which, of course, would make the document important to you and for a possible spillover in the United States. So, if this information had been passed to the National Security Council in December, you would have been informed, wouldn't you? 

Esper: "Yes (...) I have no knowledge of that."

So, "this product doesn't exist"? Was it invented? Could this be a trap set by the Deep State/CIA to catch Trump? Or are the usual suspects lying, in true CIA style? 

Let's examine some important background information. In 12 NovemberA couple from Inner Mongolia were admitted to a hospital in Beijing for treatment of pneumonic plague.  
The Chinese Center for Disease Control, on Weibo – the Chinese Twitter – informed the public that the chances of it being a new plague were "extremely low"The couple was placed in quarantine.

Four days later, a third case of pneumonic plague was identified: a man, also from Inner Mongolia, unrelated to the couple. Twenty-eight people who had been in close contact with the man were quarantined. None of them had symptoms of the plague. Pneumonic plague has symptoms respiratory failure similar to that of pneumonia.

Although the Centers for Disease Control repeatedly stated that "There is no reason for concern regarding the risk of infection," it is clear that many remained skeptical. It is possible that the Center publicly confirmed, on November 12th, the existence of three cases of pneumonic plague. But then, Li Jifeng, a doctor at Chaoyang Hospital where the three Mongolian patients were hospitalized, published in a private post On WeChat, it was revealed that they had actually been transferred to Beijing on November 3rd. 

The main point of Li Jinfeng's post – later removed by censors – was: "I am very used to diagnosing and treating most respiratory illnesses (...) But this time, I kept searching but couldn't understand which pathogen had caused the pneumonia. I only thought it was a rare disease, but I didn't have much information beyond the patients' history." 

Even if that were the case, the central issue is that the three cases in Inner Mongolia appear to have been caused by a detectable bacterium. Covid-19 is caused by the Sars-Cov-2 virus, not a bacterium. The first case of Sars-Cov-2 was only detected in Wuhan, between mid- and late December. And it was only last month that Chinese scientists were able to reliably trace the first real case of Sars-Cov-2 to November 17th – a few days after the three Mongolian patients were hospitalized.

Knowing exactly where to look 

It is beyond question that the United States intelligence services, in this case the NCMI, were unaware of what was happening in China, considering the CIA's espionage and the fact that these discussions were openly taking place on Weibo and WeChat. Therefore, if the NCMI's "product" is not a lie, if it truly exists, it would have only found evidence, back in November, of some vague cases of pneumonic plague.

So, that was what the warning to the DIA, the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and the White House was about. It's impossible that the issue at hand was the coronavirus. 

The burning question that must be asked is: how could the NCMI, back in November, have known everything about a viral pandemic if Chinese doctors, without a shadow of a doubt, only identified the first cases of a new type of pneumonia on December 26th? 

Add to that the question of why the NCMI would be so interested in this particular flu season in the first place – from the plague cases treated in Beijing to the first signs of a "mysterious pneumonia outbreak" in Wuhan. 

There may have been subtle signs of a slight increase in activity at clinics in Wuhan in late November and early December. But at that time, no one—not Chinese doctors, not the government, let alone US intelligence services—could have known what was really happening.  

China could not have been "covering up" what was only identified as a new disease on December 30th and immediately reported to the WHO. Then, on January 3rd, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, contacted the authority in charge of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Chinese doctors sequenced the virus. And it was only on January 8th that it was established that it was SARS-CoV-2 – which causes COVID-19.

This chain of events reopens, once again, a powerful Pandora's box. We had the very opportune... Event 201the intimate relationship between Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the WHO, and also with the World Economic Forum and the Johns Hopkins galaxy in Baltimore, which includes the Bloomberg School of Public Health; the digital identity/vaccine combo of ID2020; or DarkWinter – that simulated a smallpox bio-attack against the United States, even before Iraq was accused of the anthrax attack in 2001; US ​​senators selling their stocks after receiving privileged information from the CDC; more than 1.300 top executives abandoning their very comfortable perks in 2019, for "predicting" a total market collapse; the Fed dumping money from helicopters as early as September 2019 – as part of QE4.
Then, as if to validate the ABC News story, Israel enters the scene. Israel's intelligence services They confirm that they had indeed been warned by US intelligence in November about a potentially catastrophic pandemic in Wuhan (again: how could they possibly have known this in the second week of November, at such an early stage?) And NATO allies were warned – in November – as well.

The crux of the matter is explosive: the Trump administration, as well as the CDC, were warned at least four months in advance – from November to March – and could have prepared sufficiently for the arrival of Covid-19 in the United States. And they did nothing. The whole "China is a witch" narrative falls apart.

Furthermore, the Israeli revelation confirms what is nothing short of extraordinary: the United States intelligence services already knew about SARS-CoV-2 about a month before the first confirmed cases were detected by doctors at a hospital in Wuhan. Divine intervention?

This could only have happened if US intelligence knew, with absolute certainty, about a chain of prior events that would necessarily lead to the "mysterious outbreak" in Wuhan. And not only that: they knew exactly where to look. Not in Inner Mongolia, nor in Beijing, nor in Guangdong province.

It's never too much to repeat the question in full: how could US intelligence have known about the disease a month before Chinese doctors detected an unknown virus? 

Mike Pompeo, with his "We lied, we stole, we cheated" statement, may have given the game away when he publicly stated that Covid-19 was a "live drill." Adding the ABC News report and Israeli reports together, the only possible and logical conclusion is that the Pentagon – and the CIA – already knew beforehand that a pandemic was inevitable.

There is the smoking gun, the irrefutable proof. And now, the United States government is throwing all its weight behind trying to take every possible step to—proactively and retroactively—blame China.