‘Who ‘made’ coronavirus?’ Former CIA officer goes over speculations

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Philip Giraldi, former CIA Operations Officer who worked on counter-terrorism in Europe and the Middle East speculated in an article over the possibility that the Covid-19 virus might have been ‘developed’ in a laboratory to be used as a biological weapon.

In an opinion piece, he hypothesized that the Israel-based Galilee Research Institute’s claim to have come close to creating the vaccine for the novel coronavirus seemed to arouse ‘skepticism’ especially in the scientific community.

“Some scientists are skeptical that a new vaccine could be produced so quickly to prevent a virus that existed only recently. They also have warned that even if a vaccine is developed it would normally have to be tested for side effects, a process that normally takes over a year and includes using it on infected humans,” he said in an article published by the Strategic Culture Foundation.

However, a European Union task force called EUvsDisinfo has said the Strategic Culture Foundation’s website is based in Russia and helps proliferate Moscow’s disinformation campaign.

Calling the Strategic Culture Foundation an ‘unfounded foundation’ EUvsDisinfo says: “The ‘progressive idea’ of the Strategic Culture Foundation is that authoritarianism is good. Powerful, potent, populist potentates – Kim Jong-Un, Putin, Maduro, Xi, can always rely on the support of the authors. As long as it suits the Kremlin, that is.”

Philip Giradli’s article is supposed to be one among the many that help in running this site associated with disinformation campaigns.

In complete contrast of the popular conspiracy theory that proclaims that the Covid19 virus was leaked out of a Chinese virology lab, Giradli merely theorised in the article that if the novel coronavirus was leaked out of laboratory, it could have been at the hands of the United States of America, in partnership with Israel.

However, both these notions aren’t backed by any scientific evidence or research and stand at the position of being controversial propaganda.

A few lines from his piece were pulled out of context in an article published by Tehran-based PressTV, which posted his speculation in a way that seemed like a fact.

“There is another theory,” Giradli wrote in his piece, “The Trump Administration has been constantly raising the issue of growing Chinese global competitiveness as a direct threat to American national security and it might be possible that Washington has created and unleashed the virus in a bid to bring Beijing’s growing economy and military might down a few notches.”

“It is hard to believe that even the Trump White House would do something so reckless, but there are precedents for that type of behavior,” he said.

The ‘precedent’ he mentioned was the computer virus called Stuxnet which was allegedly developed as a joint venture between the US and Israeli government to sabotage Iran’s nuclear research program.

Finally concluding his article Giradli finishes with his closing speculation that if we were to believe in the theory that Covid19 was developed and leaked out of a lab in the US or in Israel, then, “the intent clearly would have been to create a biological weapon that would damage two nations (China and Iran) that have been designated as enemies.”

However, scientists so far have refuted the assertions over the laboratory origin story of Covid-19. With limited evidence available from the Wuhan wet market, experts around the world are still trying to trace the accurate origins of the zoonotic disease.

Note: This article had originally carried out the Tehran-based ‘PressTV’ version of the story that has been hyperlinked above. After third-party fact checker, Lead Stories, raised an issue over the article’s credibility, we reviewed our work alongside facts and revised the piece. This is the corrected version.

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