Biden administration has to declassify COVID origin documents by Sunday

The Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines must declassify information relating to links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of COVID-19 by Sunday, June 18. The release is mandated by the COVID-19 Origins Act which Congress passed unanimously and President Biden signed into law in March. 

The law requires the release of information regarding: 

• Activities at the institute on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army.

• Coronavirus research or other related activities at the lab.

DNI Haines must also declassify information about individual researchers at the institute who got sick in the fall of 2019, including: 

• Their name.
• Symptoms.
• Whether they were hospitalized.
• Whether they were involved in, or exposed to coronavirus research.

The law states the DNI must submit a declassified report to Congress which can only have redactions that protect intelligence-gathering sources and methods. 

Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Mike Braun, R-Ind., who sponsored the bill, wrote a letter to President Biden reminding him of the deadline. 

“The American people deserve to know how this pandemic began, and their democratically elected representatives have expressed their will unanimously,” the letter stated.

When President Biden signed the bill, he also said it was important to release as much information as possible to help prevent future pandemics.  

“In implementing this legislation, my administration will declassify and share as much of that information as possible, consistent with my constitutional authority to protect against the disclosure of information that would harm national security,” the president said in a statement. 

But Hawley and Braun took issue with the way President Biden described the redactions his administration would make.

“The act does not allow for redactions based on your administration’s view of ‘national security’ broadly defined, as you claimed in your signing statement. Rather, the act only provides for much narrower redactions to protect intelligence sources and methods,” the senators wrote. 

FBI Director Christopher Wray has repeatedly said he believes the pandemic most likely began in a lab. This release will be the first time the American people can see some of the information the FBI used to draw that conclusion.