Major Update On The Chinese Defector Scoop

Red State is running a brief but explosive article that sheds additional light on Adam Housley's "scoop" regarding a high level Chinese defector who confirms the lab origins of Covid:

EXCLUSIVE: High-Ranking Chinese Defector Has 'Direct Knowledge' of Several Chinese Special Weapons Programs

While the article doesn't say so directly, the clear inference from what's said is that this defector came initially to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). DIA has been debriefing the defector for the last three months and withheld information from other Intel Community agencies--FBI and CIA are specifically mentioned--because DIA believes those agencies have been penetrated by Chinese "spies or sources".

Presumably the other agencies are now being allowed access to the defector:

FBI Director Christopher Wray was “ambushed” with the information, they say, and Langley [the CIA] was also unaware. Sources say DIA leadership kept the defector within their Clandestine Services network to prevent Langley and the State Department from accessing the person, whose existence was kept from other agencies because DIA leadership believes there are Chinese spies or sources inside the FBI, CIA, and several other federal agencies.

Note that this doesn't necessarily discredit anything that Adam Housley said--Housley was passing on what his FBI sources told him. There are a number of reasons why those sources may have concealed some of the facts.

The information provided to RedState corroborates and clarifies Thursday evening’s reporting by journalist Adam Housley. The defector is considered to be highly reliable--unlike Tony Fauci and other government funded scientists:

Sources tell RedState the defector has been with the DIA for three months and that he has provided an extensive, technically detailed debrief to US officials. In DIA’s assessment, the information provided by the defector is legitimate. Sources say the level of confidence in the defector’s information is what has led to a sudden crisis of confidence in Dr. Anthony Fauci, adding that U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) personnel detailed to DIA have corroborated very technical details of information provided by the defector.

Assessing The Assessment

A few days ago commenter Mike Sylwester noted in a comment to Brennan's Task Force--The Heart Of The Russia Hoax that the Brennan task force that was assembled to stop Trump appears to have excluded analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Department of State (DoS) from its work. This, despite the fact that DoD and DoS representatives with Democrat political connections played key roles in propagating the Russia Hoax. The task force's work, of course, included coming up with the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that has been perhaps the fundamental driver of the whole Russia Hoax narrative. As a result, the ICA has been getting renewed scrutiny.

This morning I was taking a look at an article by Ray McGovern, DoJ Bloodhounds on the Scent of John Brennan, which also focuses on reporting that Brennan's task force is being targeted by Barr and Durham. It happens that McGovern's article closes with a pointed reference to the Intelligence Community Assessment and its exclusion of any views that might have been, well, independent. Earlier, in About that IC Assessment: Paul Sperry Has Good News, we quoted Sperry's reporting that GOP Congressional investigators have been honing in on the production of that Assessment and, in particular, the growing likelihood that--like virtually all else Russia Hoax--it was essentially a byproduct of the Steele "dossier":

Staff investigators for GOP Rep. Devin Nunes’ intelligence committee, for one, are now going over “every word” of the ICA — including classified footnotes — to see if any of the analysis was pre-cooked based on the [Steele] dossier. On Tuesday, Nunes sent letters to Obama intel officials responsible for the report. He demanded former top spook John Brennan and intel czar James Clapper provide answers about how they used the dossier in intel reports and when they learned the Clinton camp paid for it. 

Under oath, Brennan has denied knowing the Clinton campaign commissioned the dossier. He also told the House intelligence panel the CIA didn’t rely on the dossier “in any way” for its reports on Russian interference. Committee staff are taking a second look at his May 2017 testimony. 

Clapper, for his part, conceded in a recent CNN interview that the ICA was based on “some of the substantive content of the dossier.” Without elaborating, he maintained that “we were able to corroborate” certain allegations.

In that light, here are the closing paragraphs of McGovern's article, in which McGovern highlights the exclusion of DIA and DoS from the task force and, therefore, from any voice in developing the ICA: