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CIA Director John Ratcliffe discussed his “day one” priority during an interview with Breitbart News shortly after Thursday’s 74-25 Senate confirmation vote.
Ratcliffe held nothing back when discussing the threat from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including the importance of assessing and publicizing the origins of COVID.
“I know from conversations with the president about where his priorities are and where he wants things to be as it concerns foreign threats to America’s national security posture, and it starts with China,” he told Breitbart.
“One of the things that I’ve talked about a lot is addressing the threat from China on a number of fronts, and that goes back to why a million Americans died and why the Central Intelligence Agency has been sitting on the sidelines for five years in not making an assessment about the origins of COVID. That’s a day-one thing for me,” he stated.
Ratcliffe reminded the outlet of his assessment in 2020 while serving as the Director of National Intelligence. “I’ve been on record as you know in saying I think our intelligence, our science, and our common sense all really dictates that the origins of COVID was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But the CIA has not made that assessment or at least not made that assessment publicly. So I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure that the public is aware that the agency is going to get off the sidelines.”
While there is consensus that the virus came from China, disagreement on how it came about has been a controversial topic since the pandemic began. During the Biden-Harris administration, there were rumors about CIA officials taking bribes to deny that the virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The agency never took a formal position on the virus’s origin, but it appears that Ratcliffe is determined to provide transparency to the American people.
Ratcliffe also discussed other aspects of how he plans to deal with China and provide President Trump with important facts and intelligence to support his negotiations and communications with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“As President Trump deals with President Xi, he needs to be armed with the very best intelligence and to be able to talk about China in a way that if they caused or contributed to the death of a million Americans, the president needs to be armed with that,” Ratcliffe remarked.
He defended a 2023 Wall Street Journal op-ed he co-wrote with former Deputy Director of National Intelligence Cliff Sims, that detailed the threat from China. Ratcliffe was accused of politicizing and overstating the matter.
He told the outlet, “Well, fast forward four years later, the FBI director says in his exit interview that China is the biggest threat of our generation and gets praised for saying that. Well, we were saying that four years ago. So, really putting the focus on that and continuing that is really going to be something President Trump needs.”