Let Lawyers Hunt for Covid’s Origin
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says Let Lawyers Hunt for Covid’s Origin
Will we ever know where Covid-19 came from? Not if the last word comes from the U.S. intelligence community, which reported to the White House this week that China’s fault is plausible but unprovable. Beijing has refused to cooperate with inquiries, which it has characterized as “origin tracing terrorism.” The Chinese Foreign Ministry even denounced the equivocal intelligence report: “If they want to baselessly accuse China, so they better be prepared to accept the counterattack from China.”
For the rest of the world, getting to the bottom of the question is essential to assigning blame and preventing pandemics. Fortunately, we have an institution dedicated to getting to the bottom of thorny factual disputes: the U.S. judicial system. Our judiciary is respected globally for its impartiality and scrupulous adherence to due process. Civil discovery gives litigants the tools to compel production of evidence, backed by the threat of sanctions or even default judgment, so Beijing would be unable to stonewall. With so many losses caused by the pandemic, U.S. litigants have a powerful incentive to bring cases, prosecute them aggressively, and test liability through adversarial presentation. Several such cases have already been filed.
But those suits and others like them face a high hurdle: the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The FSIA is the reason at least eight lawsuits were dismissed or withdrawn on grounds that foreign states are generally shielded from litigation in U.S. courts. Yet that immunity isn’t a constitutional mandate, only a matter of congressional discretion. Congress can legislate exceptions, and has done so.
Lawmakers should enact a new FSIA exception denying sovereign immunity to nations that fail to inform, or deliberately misinform, the global community of the nature and scope of a local epidemic that becomes a global pandemic.
Questions Abound
- What practical use could it do?
- How would US hold China accountable?
- And what if the result was negative?
For starters, lawyers don’t make judgments and we do not know what medical experts would say.
Regardless, it is absurd to believe China would honor a subpoena request by the US any more than the US would honor a subpoena by China.
But let’s assume conviction in the absence of subpoenaed data because China would not bother to show up.
What then? How precisely would the US hold China accountable?
Are we to presume China would not retaliate?
Let’s Make it Totally Fair!
Let’s make it completely fair by rescinding FSIA across the board, not just when it benefits the US.
What about Bush’s and Powell’s lies about weapons of mass destruction that lead to a treasonous invasion of Iraq.
Let’s hold Obama, Bush, Trump, Cheney, Hillary and countless US officials responsible for actions that destroyed Libya, Syria, and Iraq in undeclared wars.
What about US sanctions on Venezuela and Iran that punished innocent civilians?
Dare I suggest Pompeo is nothing but a blowhard hypocrite?
US Intelligence Comments
- Four IC elements and the National Intelligence Council assess with low confidence that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus—a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2. These analysts give weight to China’s officials’ lack of foreknowledge, the numerous vectors for natural exposure, and other factors. ‘
- One IC element assesses with moderate confidence that the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology. These analysts give weight to the inherently risky nature of work on coronaviruses.
- Analysts at three IC elements remain unable to coalesce around either explanation without additional information, with some analysts favoring natural origin, others a laboratory origin, and some seeing the hypotheses as equally likely.
- Variations in analytic views largely stem from differences in how agencies weigh intelligence reporting and scientific publications, and intelligence and scientific gaps.
None of the US intelligence agencies believe China created a biological weapon, and only one out of eight believes it came from a China lab.
Eight out of eight believe it was either an accident or natural.
Source: US Unclassified Covid Report
Addendum Questions
A reader asked:
- What is the message value to China (and other nations/rogue states) of doing nothing, if in fact, they are guilty as hell?
- What is the message value to the ‘intelligence’ services of accepting whatever they say, if in fact, they are highly politicized?
What is the message of “presumption of guilt” when the intelligence community and allies disagree?
What is the message of insisting the US court system is the place to handle all national disputes in which the US and US alone gets to decide via Congress what is disputed?
What is the international fairness in which there is no place to hold the US accountable for anything but every means of the US to hold anyone and everyone else to US sanctions and witch hunts?
US presidents have so abused the sanction system that I welcome and openly root for ways the EU and others can escape the Swift payment system that allows the US to set sanction policy for the world.
Question 2 is spot on. Everything is politicized.
Practically Speaking
What would knowing the origin of the virus change, on a practical basis?
What would we or anyone else do differently if we discover:
1. The virus originated in a lab
2. Occurred naturally
3. Unknown
Regarding unknown, it is not even clear China knows. For example a worker at the lab may have been infected from the outside.
Regardless, How does the answer change anything? If if doesn’t, who cares other blame games and curiosity?
Whether it’s 1, 2, or 3, the risks of working with viruses in a lab are certainly better understood. And it’s not just China. The US is involved in gain of function research as well.
Unless China knows for sure, there is no way to find out conclusively, and we only create a mess in making the charge. US domestic politics should not drive this.
Assume for a second China actually believes it occurred naturally or is uncertain itself. People whose minds are made up would never accept that.
At this point, if China doesn’t know, given the passage of time, no one will ever conclusively know.
Pompeo’s Interest
Pompeo is not interested at all in the truth. He is interested in making a case out of China with the outcome predetermined, and in a manner that is more than a bit dangerous and hypocritical.
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have seen suggested way back is lab staff as a side perk are able to
take benign test animal carcasses and sell for a supplementary income.
Bat for dinner – yum – imagine tastes like chicken, but bat was carrying more of a surprise than ever
could have been expected to the Wuhan food market. So essentially error of human nature.
keeping all away and systematically silencing people and destroying
evidence. Surely looks like the smoke that there ain’t no smoke without
fire situation.
bit of a shady guy with skeleton s on the path behind him, maybe that’s
a resumé. a snowflake for a pres would be worse. And he’s been solid
with Trump, but if he’s pres, not the same radical pressers ie no
bouncing ideas around about people injecting disinfectant would only be a
bonus.
The history of a virus or bacteria which causes disease will
give you the evolutionary history of the pathogen and lead to revelations
on how it became dangerous to humans. It will show what mutations it had to
make to move it from the original host to us. From a practical point of view it
is evident that knowing how it became as it is will help us fight against it
and more importantly if others in the same family could take the same path.
1. The virus
originated in a lab
2. Occurred naturally
3. Unknown
That is precisely what needs to be understood. If it occurred
naturally we need to know where and from which species it infects in order to
keep it from jumping to us again and again like the Bubonic Plague. We know
which animals it infects so we know to avoid them like the plague.
If it came from a lab we need to know first how it escaped
and secondly what exactly what was going on in that lab. Gain of function
experiments are very dangerous things and should be regulated. Can you imagine
if it were found that scientists were experimenting with gain of function with
something as dangerous as prions that cause Mad Cow Disease for example (actually being done!)? It
gives me nightmares and the consequences make whoever is president seem as unimportant
as who picked up my trash this morning. This transcends politics and frankly if
you can’t see this then you shouldn’t be commenting on it.
There is only one scientific field today where the proverbial
“mad scientist” could put us back hundreds of years and kill millions and maybe
billions and that is in biology. Technics and equipment necessary to genetically
manipulate viruses and bacteria and make them more virulent than anything in
nature are cheap and widespread and scientists to work on them and are easy
to find. There are strains of Flu that kill close to 100%. Swine Flu does that.
Imagine if somewhere someone is playing around with it to study it. Covid is
small potatoes compared with what might and probably will happen one day. Look
beyond politics and economics. Look to the survival of the Human race because
that is what we are talking about here.
Atlantic high-activity era, which began in 1995 in association with a
transition to the warm phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO).” (Goldenberg et al. 2001, Bell and Chelliah 2006, Klotzbach and Gray 2008).
In 1994 Pompeo was employed at the D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly where he worked on tax law and on a major case involving an amendment to the Arkansas Constitution (and other states) imposing term limits. In 1992, Williams & Connolly began representing U.S. Term Limits, Inc., which admitted to the press that it used “promotional literature, mailing lists and other items from a campaign committee that the https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Brothers funded to push term limits.” It is unclear if Pompeo knew of the relationship between U.S. Term Limits and the Kochs. In mid-2016, as a third-term Congressman Pompeo signed the latest pledge of U.S. Term Limits, to vote for a constitutional amendment to limit congressional service to three terms. Pompeo won his election for a fourth term in Congress in November 2016.https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-4
Pompeo’s first company, Thayer, was an investment company funded in part by Koch Venture Capital. Thayer raised more than $90 million in its first three years, which enabled it to buy three Wichita companies that make aerospace parts. Years later Pompeo’s office claimed that https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Industries had only invested “2%” in Thayer, but there is no independent documentation of that claim and no materials to show whether https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch Industries was a lender or part owner/shareholder through its investment capital or how long it invested in the firm.https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-koch-5
Pompeo’s second company, Sentry, was tied to a Brazilian division of https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch Industries. It is not clear what the nature of that business relationship was or how significant it was to Pompeo’s business. It is not clear Sentry had other contracts with Koch Industries domestically.https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-koch-5 Sentry was located in the same building as the Koch-fueled Flint Hills Center for Public Policy.
In 2004 Pompeo became a trustee/board member of the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy, a role he served for four years. Flint Hills was founded and led by https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Charles_Koch oldest advisor, https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_Pearson&action=edit&redlink=1, to advance Kochs’ policy agenda in Kansas. Pompeo served alongside Pearson and other Koch operatives, in an uncompensated position as trustee.https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-koch-5
Flint Hills, which partially shared a name with a division of Koch Industries, was renamed the https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Kansas_Policy_Institute, in 2010 as the Kochs gained greater notoriety. KPI is a member of the Koch-funded https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=State_Policy_Network (SPN), which helps state-based “think tanks” push the Koch policy agenda.
As a trustee—basically a board member—Pompeo worked with one of Charles Koch’s closest and oldest advisors to help push Koch’s agenda to change the law in Kansas and nationally. According to federal tax filings, Pompeo was a trustee of Flint Hills in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007, although he is also listed on an archived part of the group’s website as a trustee intro 2008. This past year, Pompeo joined in giving a personal tribute to George Pearson and has appeared at KPI events. Many of the legislative positions Pompeo has echo the agenda of the Kochs’ Kansas think tank and Koch groups like https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Prosperity. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-koch-5
In 2016, Pompeo joined in giving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNxiV32CPug to George Pearson and has appeared at KPI events.
In 2009, as Pompeo began to prepare to run for Congress, he was a featured speaker at newly launched Tea Party event coordinated by https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Prosperity (AFP). As Lee Fang reported, “On August 28, 2009, Pompeo spoke at a large Tea Party rally organized by AFP… In addition to the rallies and Tea Party events, AFP has touted Pompeo for signing onto its pledge to ignore climate change.” AFP’s Kansas arm was led in 2009 by Alan Cobb, a former Koch lobbyist.https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-koch-5
In 2010, KOCHPAC, the Koch Industries’ PAC, endorsed Pompeo in the Republican primary for the congressional district where Charles Koch lives. According to Open Secrets, “Koch Industries,” through individuals and entities, was the largest contributor to Pompeo’s campaign, by an exponential amount greater than others. The bulk of outside money in the primary was spent for Pompeo and against his main opponent; the donors are unknown.
Representative Pompeo’s largest contributor in his each of his Congressional campaign’s was Koch Industries and its employees, totaling $375,100 since 2010. According to the Center for Responsive Politics people working for Koch Industries contributed:https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-6
KochPAC contributed $10,000 to Pompeo’s CAVPAC and $4,000 to Pompeo for Kansas, Inc. (See all of the 2016 Koch candidates https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_candidates,_2016. KochPAC supported Pompeo with $10,000 in 2014, $10,000 in 2012 and $10,000 in 2010.https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-7
But these direct donations do not include the amount of money spent by Koch groups like https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=David_Koch https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Prosperity on activities that promoted Pompeo or helped influence elections in his favor.
Pompeo’s campaign co-chairs included David Murfin, a wealthy oilman who attended the Koch electoral retreats that were later incorporated into the entity that was dubbed https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Freedom_Partners, and Nestor Wiegand, Jr a real estate scion who was also a trustee of Flint Hills. KOCHPAC endorsed Pompeo instead of the other three Republicans running for an open congressional seat, and Koch Industries, through its employees and its PAC, is by far the largest donor to Pompeo’s electoral campaigns. David Koch’s https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Prosperity helped give Pompeo a platform with the emerging Tea Party in 2009, before he ran, and helped promote him in their grassroots outreach in the state in 2010.
As Jane Mayer noted in her book, Dark Money: “After his election, Pompeo turned to the company for his chief of staff, choosing Mark Chenoweth, a lawyer who had worked for Koch Industries’ lobbying team. Within weeks, Pompeo was championing two of Koch Industries’ legislative priorities— opposition to Obama’s plans to create a public EPA registry of greenhouse gas polluters and a digital database of consumer complaints about unsafe products.” Chenoweth left after almost three years for another Koch-funded group.https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-8.
His positions have been promoted by Koch-funded groups, and he has defended the Koch Brothers in the press. He has taken numerous positions on legislation that are consistent with the Koch agenda through its lobbying or their non-profit groups.https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-koch-5
Pompeo issued http://pompeo.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=370999 on February 26, 2014 defending Charles and https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=David_Koch from public criticism:https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-9
Dan Glickman, a Democrat who represented Kansas’ 4th district for 18 years, lost his seat to a Koch-backed Republican challenger, as reported by the Wichita Eagle. “Glickman was a Democratic member of Congress from Wichita until 1994, when he says the Kochs opposed him for supporting a BTU tax on energy. He lost to Todd Tiahrt. ‘I was on the receiving end of their campaign decisions,’ Glickman said. ‘I viewed it as I was on their target list. I had grown up in Wichita, and Charles and his brothers grew up there; I knew Charles, and knew David, and I had met Bill. We would go to Colorado, to Aspen, and I’d meet them. And we all got along fine. We have a lot of mutual friends, actually. So I knew it wasn’t personal. I never viewed it as personal. But I had voted for an energy tax, and they don’t like energy taxes. So they opposed me, which was their right. And I lost the election.’”https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-10
Pompeo issued http://pompeo.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398326 after a 2014 Senate report found that the CIA tortured suspected terrorists. “These men and women are not torturers, they are patriots. The programs being used were within the law, within the Constitution, and conducted with the full knowledge of Sen. Feinstein. If any individual did operate outside of the program’s legal framework, I would expect them to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-11
Pompeo, a staunch supporter of NSA bulk data collection and surveillance,https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-12 https://www.c-span.org/video/?404034-3/washington-journal-representative-mike-pompeo-rks on February 11, 2016:
“He should be brought back from Russia and given due process and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence for having put friends of mine, friends of yours, who serve in the military today at enormous risk because of the information he stole and then released to foreign powers,” Pompeo said.https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-13
Pompeo signed onto a letter in September, 2016 urging President Obama not to pardon “serial exaggerator and fabricator” Snowden as well issuing http://pompeo.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=399157 that called for “prison rather than pardon for Edward Snowden.”https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-14https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-15
Snowden has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize,https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-16 had all charges lifted by EU Parliamenthttps://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-17 and has been recognized with a number of awards, including the Sam Adams Award, an award given annually to an intelligence professional who has taken a stand for integrity and ethics.https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-18
“This threat to America,” Pompeo told a church group in Wichita in 2014, is from a minority of Muslims “who deeply believe that Islam is the way and the light and the only answer… They abhor Christians,” Pompeo said, “and will continue to press against us until we make sure that we pray and stand and fight and make sure that we know that Jesus Christ is our savior is truly the only solution for our world.”https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-fang-19
Lee Fang of The Intercept reported that Pompeo, responding to an audience member at an event hosted by the Westminister Institute, failed to reject the idea that President Barack Obama wanted Iran “to win”. “Every time there has been a conflict between the Christian west and the Islamic east, the data points all point to a singular direction. You asked me why. That gets trickier, right? It is very clear that this administration — and when I say that, a very narrow slice inside the leadership regime here in Washington has concluded that America is better off with greater Iranian influence certainly in the Middle East, but I think around — certainly it’s tolerated around the world. But if you ask me why they think that, I’ve listened to them intently and I cannot with any certainty provide you an answer to that.”https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-fang-19
“At an evangelical church in his district that specializes in addressing ‘Satanism and paranormal activity’- and standing in front of a Christian flag – Pompeo in 2015 spoke of the ‘struggle against radical Islam, the kind of struggle this country has not faced since its great wars.’ He warned that ‘evil is all around us,’ citing reports of terror plots, and cautioned the congregation not to be deterred by those who might call them ‘Islamophobes or bigots,’” According to Fang.https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-fang-19
The Kansas lawmaker released http://pompeo.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398892 denouncing the Islamic Society of Wichita in March 2016 for hosting a speaker that he perceived had ties to Hamas.https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-statement-20 Fang notes that Sheik Monzer Tali had spoken at the mosque four times before this without an incident.https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-fang-19 Additionally Pompeo took up issue with the timing as it was scheduled on the same day as Good Friday, a Christian holiday. “On one of the most holy days on the Christian calendar, and only days after radical Islamic extremists murdered dozens of innocents of many faiths in Brussels, Belgium, they chose to bring a Hamas-connected sheik to their community center here in Wichita. They should cancel his appearance… But worse, now, in my own community, rather than make clear that violence in the name of Allah is always wrong, the Islamic Society of Wichita has chosen the day, when millions of Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on the cross, to bring a cleric who has claimed his commitment to Hamas, to lead their services… They will be responsible for the damage among religious faiths that is sure to follow.”https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-statement-20
It’s impossible to say with 100% certainty that if those Americans had been there, they would have been able to alert Washington earlier to an emerging threat. But not having them there eliminated that possibility.