Former State Department officials who investigated China's role in the spread of COVID-19 are demanding that Washington take urgent steps to hold Beijing accountable, with sanctions, a ban on research funding and backing for individuals to launch lawsuits for damages.
They say it is only way to protect the world from another pandemic.
'We cannot afford further impunity by Beijing and passivity from Washington as we enter what may be a century of synthetic biological adventurism and potential biowarfare,' write the former officials, who all worked at the State Department.
David Asher, who led a task force looking into the origins of COVID-19 in the final months of the Trump presidency, Thomas DiNanno, who worked with Asher at the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, David Feith, who was also on the investigation team, Miles Yu, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's chief China adviser, and Matthew Zweig, a sanctions expert, make their recommendations in a paper published by the Hudson institute.
'China’s initial silencing and censoring of its doctors and scientists, followed by misinformation about COVID-19’s dangers - especially denials concerning the virus’s ability to be spread human-to-human, invisibly and asymptomatically - helped cost the world trillions of dollars and millions of lives,' they write.
David Asher spearheaded a task force at the State Department last year looking into the origins of COVID-19 and the role of the Chinese government in its development. He is one of the authors - along with other Trump era officials - demanding that President Biden gets tough on China in order to uncover the truth about how the pandemic began
Thomas Dilanno (left) and David Feith both worked at the State Department and were part of the investigation into COVID-19's origin.
Miles Yu (left) and Matthew Zweig joined their former colleagues in calling for Biden to investigate whether the Wuhan lab embarked on undeclared, classified biological weapons research for the Chinese military
Concerns have been raised about 'gain-of-function' research taking place at the Wuhan Institute for Virology (above), located in the city where the outbreak began
They called on President Joe Biden to cease funding for 'gain of function' research, enforce China's treaty compliance - including requirements to share data - investigate formal sanctions, and establish a new network for pandemic preparedness.
The sanctions probe should look into whether the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab at the center of questions, embarked on undeclared, classified biological weapons research and development for the Chinese military.
Their recommendations are drawn from work they conducted in the fall of last year and which concluded there was no proof that COVID-19 appeared spontaneously in nature.
They used the results of a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory which concluded a lab leak was plausible as the origins of the pandemic, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Their work has been used to question whether scientists, other government agencies and the media were too quick to dismiss the lab leak hypothesis.
Whether it emerged from a lab or not, the four write, China must provide answers for the pandemic.
'Whether one believes COVID-19 originated in a zoonotic host, a bat cave, a frozen food shipment, or a Wuhan lab’s dangerous “dual-use” research supporting undeclare bioweapons programs, the world needs answers from the Chinese Communist Party,' they write.
'These are answers Beijing won’t provide unless it faces a high price for refusing.'
Three members of staff Wuhan Institute of Virology were reported to have sought medical help for COVID-like symptoms in November 2019, adding to growing speculation that the virus escaped from the facility triggered a pandemic
Last month Biden said the inability of inspectors to access key sites in China hampered early investigations as he asked the intelligence community to redouble efforts in investigating how COVID-19 emerged
The authors also have recommendations for Congress.
They want to see an independent bipartisan commission to probe the pandemic's origins; 'curb dual-use abuse,' tightening restrictions on technologies that can be put to military use; impose sanctions on individuals and government bodies that were negligent or withheld information; and support civil litigation.
This might mean expanding the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to ensure that US federal courts would have jurisdiction over liability claims and enforcement against American assets held by the targets of suits.
In multiple interviews, members of the State Department's investigation say they faced hurdles as they went about their work, warned by officials not to delve too deeply.
In a recent interview, Asher said the problem was that the U.S. government had funded work in China and did not want it to be exposed as the possible source of the coronavirus.
'I'm not saying they are mentally retarded, but they are unqualified and unfit for office,' he said of the people who tried to halt the investigation.
'Moreover they had their hands dirty. Who signed off on all this cooperation with the Chinese?'
The origins of the virus have been under renewed scrutiny after President Biden ordered the intelligence community to redouble its efforts to find the cause.
He ordered a report within 90 days.
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