As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region changing the pattern
As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population.
According to sources, concerns about what is now known to be the coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents.
The report was the result of analysis of wire and computer intercepts, coupled with satellite images. It raised alarms because an out-of-control disease would pose a serious threat to U.S. forces in Asia — forces that depend on the NCMI’s work. And it paints a picture of an American government that could have ramped up mitigation and containment efforts far earlier to prepare for a crisis poised to come home.
“Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event. It was then briefed multiple times to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the White House,” one of the sources said of the NCMI’s report.
However, the Pentagon has issued a statement denying the “product/assessment” existed.
From that warning in November, the sources described repeated briefings through December for policy-makers and decision-makers across the federal government as well as the National Security Council at the White House. All of that culminated with a detailed explanation of the problem that appeared in the President’s Daily Brief of intelligence matters in early January, the sources said.
For something to have appeared in the PDB, it would have had to go through weeks of vetting and analysis, according to people who have worked on presidential briefings in both Republican and Democratic administrations.
The NCMI report was made available widely to people authorized to access intelligence community alerts. Following the report’s release, other intelligence community bulletins began circulating through confidential channels across the government around Thanksgiving, the sources said. Those analyses said China’s leadership knew the epidemic was out of control even as it kept such crucial information from foreign governments and public health agencies.
