Evidence is mounting the 15-page dossier published by Australia's Daily Telegraph supporting the claim by president Donald Trump COVID-19 is a manmade virus developed by China is nothing but a compilation of news reports -- some of them false -- concocted by the Trump administration and meant to goad Australia into denouncing China.
The Australian Intelligence Community (AIC) asserts the Daily Telegraph dossier published last week isn't a Five Eyes intelligence document as it claims to be. It said this dossier doesn't include original intelligence from human sources or electronic intercepts but is merely a collection of open-source materials cut-and-pasted into a single document.
The identity of the dossier's author remains unclear, but fingers are being pointed at the U.S. Department of State, whose secretary, Mike Pompeo, is the only senior U.S. Cabinet official backing Trump's patently false claim. Pompeo has said there is "a significant amount of evidence" the coronavirus came from the Wuhan lab, although he also said this isn't a certainty and completely backtracked on the claim when confronted with evidence in a live TV interview.
Anthony Byrne, Deputy Chair of Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, is said to have been angered by the dossier. He called the dossier a crude attempt to influence Australia to act against its national interest on the basis of intelligence that doesn't exist.
He's said to have voiced the opinion this document has similarities in intent to the fake intelligence reports of Iraqi mobile weapons of mass destruction invented by the administration of former U.S. president George Bush as an excuse for the U.S. to invade Iraq in 2003.
The Daily Telegraph published the 15-page "dossier prepared by concerned Western governments." The dossier included a range of criticisms of China's "assault on international transparency" and voiced concerns about practices at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where COVID-19 is alleged to have been developed. The story falsely claimed intelligence agencies within the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK) were investigating the matter.
"The origins of the document are opaque, and the reliability of the sources are not fully corroborated," said John Blaxland, professor of international security and intelligence studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison had previously dismissed the lab origin theory, saying he had "not seen anything that suggests that conclusively".
"There's been no change to the Australian position on this ... which was to say that we can't rule out any of these arrangements ... but the most likely has been in a wildlife wet market."
