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Harvard University Professor and Two Chinese Nationals Charged in Three Separate China Related Cases
Harvard University Professor and Two Chinese Nationals Charged in Three Separate China Related Cases
The Department of Justice announced today that the Chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department and two Chinese nationals have been charged in connection with aiding the People’s Republic of China.
Dr. Charles Lieber, 60, Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, was arrested this morning and charged by criminal complaint with one count of making a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement. Lieber will appear this afternoon before Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler in federal court in Boston, Massachusetts.
Yanqing Ye, 29, a Chinese national, was charged in an indictment today with one count each of visa fraud, making false statements, acting as an agent of a foreign government and conspiracy. Ye is currently in China.
Zaosong Zheng, 30, a Chinese national, was arrested on Dec. 10, 2019, at Boston’s Logan International Airport and charged by criminal complaint with attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research to China. On Jan. 21, 2020, Zheng was indicted on one count of smuggling goods from the United States and one count of making false, fictitious or fraudulent statements. He has been detained since Dec. 30, 2019.
Harvard University Professor and Two Chinese Nationals Charged in Three Separate China Related Cases
The Department of Justice announced today that the Chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department and two Chinese nationals have been charged in connection with aiding the People’s Republic of China.
Dr. Charles Lieber, 60, Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, was arrested this morning and charged by criminal complaint with one count of making a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement. Lieber will appear this afternoon before Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler in federal court in Boston, Massachusetts.
Yanqing Ye, 29, a Chinese national, was charged in an indictment today with one count each of visa fraud, making false statements, acting as an agent of a foreign government and conspiracy. Ye is currently in China.
Zaosong Zheng, 30, a Chinese national, was arrested on Dec. 10, 2019, at Boston’s Logan International Airport and charged by criminal complaint with attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research to China. On Jan. 21, 2020, Zheng was indicted on one count of smuggling goods from the United States and one count of making false, fictitious or fraudulent statements. He has been detained since Dec. 30, 2019.
Harvard Chemistry Chairman Charged on Alleged Undisclosed Ties to China
Chemistry Chairman Charged on Alleged Undisclosed Ties to China
Aruna Viswanatha and Kate O’Keeffe
The chairman of Harvard University’s chemistry department was arrested Tuesday on charges of lying about receiving millions in Chinese funding, in an escalation of U.S. efforts to counter what officials say is a plot by Beijing to raid U.S. universities to transform China into a scientific superpower.
A federal criminal complaint alleges that Charles Lieber misled the Defense Department and the National Institutes of Health about his participation in China’s Thousand Talents Plan while the U.S. agencies were spending more than $15 million to fund his research group in the U.S.
Through the Thousand Talents Plan and other such programs, China pays thousands of scientists around the world to moonlight at Chinese institutions, often without disclosing the work to their primary employers.
The case was one of three presented Tuesday by federal authorities in Massachusetts, with each underscoring U.S. concerns that the Chinese government is trying to obtain cutting-edge U.S. research by exploiting U.S. universities.
In a separate indictment also unsealed Tuesday, a researcher at Boston University was charged with allegedly acting as a Chinese government agent and failing to disclose that she was a lieutenant in the Chinese military when she applied for her research visa.
Prosecutors also discussed the indictment last week of a Harvard-sponsored researcher accused of trying to smuggle biological research back to China.
“Chemistry, nanotechnology, polymer studies, robotics, computer science, biomedical research—this is not an accident or a coincidence,” said Andrew Lelling, the top federal prosecutor in Boston, referring to the science at issue in recent cases. “This is a small sample of China’s ongoing campaign to siphon off American technology and knowhow for Chinese gain.”
Mr. Lieber, who has been at Harvard since 1991, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
He has done pioneering work in nanoscience and helped develop tiny wires with diameters thousands of times smaller than a human hair, according to a citation from the Welch Foundation, which funds chemical research and recognized his work last year. His work helped develop “bio-nanoelectronic sensors capable of detecting diseases down to the level of a single infectious virus particle,” the foundation said.
U.S. authorities have raised alarms in particular about the so-called talent programs run by the Chinese government, which officials say create conflicts of interest and offer incentives to bring intellectual property back to China.
“Failures to disclose the receipt of substantial resources, participation in certain types of programs, and dual employment distort decisions about the appropriate use of taxpayer funds and result in hidden transfers of information, know-how and time,” said Kelvin Droegemeier, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in a statement in response to the cases. His office is leading an effort among federal agencies, the private sector, academia, professional societies and nonprofits to protect U.S. research.
Prosecutors have brought a series of cases in recent months alleging that researchers at U.S. universities and labs didn’t disclose funding they were receiving from such programs, or tried to steal information to take to China.
When Defense Department investigators asked Mr. Lieber in 2018 about his foreign research collaborations, he told them he had never been asked to participate in the Thousand Talents Program, the complaint said. But Mr. Lieber had signed such a talent contract with Wuhan University of Technology in 2012, the complaint said.
NIH also asked Harvard about Mr. Lieber’s affiliation with Wuhan that same year, according to the complaint. After interviewing Mr. Lieber, Harvard told NIH in January 2019 that Mr. Lieber had no formal affiliation with Wuhan after 2012 and that he had never participated in the Thousand Talents Program, even though Mr. Lieber had a formal relationship with the university through 2017, the complaint said.
In conjunction with the program, Mr. Lieber became a “strategic scientist” at Wuhan University of Technology, according to the complaint. For “significant periods” from 2012 to 2017, his contract called for a $50,000 a month salary on top of $150,000 in living expenses paid by WUT, it said. He was also awarded more than $1.5 million by WUT and the Chinese government to set up a research lab, it said.
The complaint cited emails during those years in which Mr. Lieber and his contact at Wuhan discussed how Mr. Lieber would be paid, with some of the funds from Wuhan to be deposited for him in a Chinese bank account and some provided in cash. “Our university has put your salary in your…[bank] card and we will help you change the cash for you when you come to Wuhan,” the Wuhan contact wrote in one January 2017 message.
“The charges brought by the U.S. government against Professor Lieber are extremely serious,” a Harvard spokesman said Tuesday. “Harvard is cooperating with federal authorities, including the National Institutes of Health, and is initiating its own review of the alleged misconduct. Professor Lieber has been placed on indefinite administrative leave.”
On his Lieber Research Group’s website, Mr. Lieber says he is developing a mesh to be injected through a syringe into parts of the brain to better understand how the brain works and to treat disease and brain injury. The long-term goal is to enhance “human performance via brain-machine interface.”
Prosecutors have brought a series of cases in recent months alleging that researchers at U.S. universities and labs didn’t disclose funding they were receiving from such programs, or tried to steal information to take to China.
A Harvard-sponsored researcher, Zaosong Zheng, was indicted last week on charges of “smuggling” vials of stolen biological research. Before he was about to board a December flight to Beijing, customs agents at Logan International Airport found 21 vials “wrapped in plastic and hidden in a sock,” the indictment said.
When agents asked Mr. Zheng if he had any research materials in his luggage, he said no, prosecutors alleged. He later acknowledged the vials and admitted he was planning to take them to China and publish the research in his own name, the indictment said. He is scheduled to be arraigned later this week. An attorney for Mr. Zheng said: “We are looking forward to a Jury trial so our client can be found not guilty.”
In December, the Justice Department also required a Michigan research institute to pay $5.5 million to resolve allegations that it made false claims about the Chinese grants its researchers received.
U.S. officials have described what they view as a shift in Chinese intelligence priorities, moving from gathering broad swaths of expertise overseas to seeking specific pieces of technology that fill gaps in research being conducted at Chinese universities and designated as priorities by Beijing.
In the Boston University case outlined Tuesday, the researcher, Yanqing Ye, allegedly responded to direction from colleagues in the People’s Liberation Army in China between 2017 and 2019. In one April 2019 email, an unnamed co-conspirator and PLA member sent her a message that said: “See if [we can] find projects in risk analysis and policy sponsored by the US military by searching risk + US military directly,” the indictment said. Ms. Ye, who is believed to be in China, couldn’t be reached for comment. A Boston University spokesman said Ms. Ye left the university in April 2019 and that it would assist in the investigation.
The recent cases underscore the unusual nature of China’s efforts, officials said. “While we are still confronted with traditional spies...I can tell you China is also using what we call nontraditional collectors such as professors, researchers, hackers and front companies, said Joseph Bonavolonta, who runs the FBI’s Boston office. The people charged Tuesday “are manifestations of the China threat,“ he said.
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Every once in a while it's smart to offer a few scalps to keep authorities at bay.
Max 5 yrs will end up being a year or two. Nothing compared to what they ended up making. Also ensures the money continues to flow into casinos and the local economy.
Max 5 yrs will end up being a year or two. Nothing compared to what they ended up making. Also ensures the money continues to flow into casinos and the local economy.
Yahoo is now a part of Verizon Media
Suspected SARS virus and flu samples found in luggage: FBI report describes China's 'biosecurity risk'
Sharon Weinberger, Jana Winter and Martin De Bourmont
Yahoo News•March 30, 2020
WASHINGTON — In late November 2018, just over a year before the first coronavirus case was identified in Wuhan, China, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at Detroit Metro Airport stopped a Chinese biologist with three vials labeled “Antibodies” in his luggage.
The biologist told the agents that a colleague in China had asked him to deliver the vials to a researcher at a U.S. institute. After examining the vials, however, customs agents came to an alarming conclusion.
“Inspection of the writing on the vials and the stated recipient led inspection personnel to believe the materials contained within the vials may be viable Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) materials,”
says an unclassified FBI tactical intelligence report obtained by Yahoo News.The report, written by the Chemical and Biological Intelligence Unit of the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate (WMDD), does not give the name of the Chinese scientist carrying the suspected SARS and MERS samples, or the intended recipient in the U.S. But the FBI concluded that the incident, and two other cases cited in the report, were part of an alarming pattern.
“The Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate assesses foreign scientific researchers who transport undeclared and undocumented biological materials into the United States in their personal carry-on and/or checked luggage almost certainly present a US biosecurity risk,” reads the report. “The WMDD makes this assessment with high confidence based on liaison reporting with direct access.”
The report, which came out more than two months before the World Health Organization learned of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan that turned out to be COVID-19, appears to be part of a larger FBI concern about China’s involvement with scientific research in the U.S. While the report refers broadly to foreign researchers, all three cases cited involve Chinese nationals.
In the case of the suspected SARS and MERS vials, the intelligence report cites another classified document that is marked “FISA,” meaning it contains information collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Another case cited in the report appeared to involve flu strains, and a third was suspected E. coli.
The FBI does not state precisely what sort of biosecurity risk these cases could present, but Raina MacIntyre, a professor of global biosecurity at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said the FBI appears to be concerned with dual-use research that would be used for bioterrorism. And if the illicit samples cited in the report were being brought into the U.S., she says, the traffic is likely to be both ways.
“How do you know what they’re bringing in and out unless you have a comprehensive surveillance point?” she asked. “If it’s going one way, it’s going the other way. You’d be very naive to assume otherwise.”
Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding, who worked on China issues on the National Security Council under the Trump administration, said “there is a threat” posed by Chinese nationals carrying biological samples but believes it’s “likely the carrier ... would be someone who is unwitting,” making it hard to determine the intent. “Some likely could be deliberate, to test our ability to identify and intercept. Others could be opportunistic,” he said.
The FBI report refers to both biosecurity, which typically refers to the intentional misuse of pathogens, such as for bioterrorism, and biosafety, which covers accidental release. The FBI declined to comment on the report.
Concerns about Chinese biosafety are not new. For example, the SARS outbreak in 2003 was followed by several incidents of infections caused by laboratory accidents, including eight cases that resulted from mishandling at the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing.
“There have been cases in the past where a variant of some kind of flu pandemic had escaped from a laboratory because of mismanagement,” said Elsa Kania, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
But the problem is not limited to Chinese researchers, even if those cases have been prominent, she continued. “Certainly it is a biosecurity risk when anyone is transporting materials in a manner that is clandestine because … there have been several incidents when this has occurred with researchers of a variety of nationalities.”
University researchers conducting Lab test in finding the genomic sequence of the Sars associated coronavirus in April 2003. (Edward Wong/South China Morning Post via Getty Images)
Concerns about China’s flouting of biosafety precautions may be long-standing, but the coronavirus pandemic is likely to exacerbate tensions between Beijing and Washington. The outbreak comes amid already rising tensions in U.S.-China relations over issues that range from trade to espionage.
Andrew Weber, who worked during the Obama administration as the assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, said the relationship with China in the biological sciences has gotten worse in recent years.
“After SARS, when China needed technical help, it had a strong relationship with the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]. They were transparent, because they realized covering up an outbreak cost them dearly,” said Weber, now a senior fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks. “In recent years they’ve tightened up, making international cooperation more difficult.”
In recent weeks, however, these tensions have rapidly boiled over, with President Trump calling COVID-19 “the Chinese Virus,” while Beijing in turn has promoted conspiracy theories claiming the virus originated in a U.S. weapons lab.
Scientists have been adamant that the virus is not a weapon, either from the United States or China. “There’s no basis to suspect it’s a laboratory construct,” says Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University. “It has none of the expected signatures that would be present for deliberate construction.”
However, Ebright doesn’t exclude the possibility that the virus’s spread started from poor biosecurity in China. A leading theory is that the virus jumped from wildlife to humans. Some researchers speculate this happened at a live-animal market where exotic species are sold for food. But Ebright also notes that such wildlife viruses are collected in laboratories, including in Wuhan. “Therefore, it’s also a possibility that this virus entered the human population through accidental infection of a lab worker carrying out field collection, or an accident by a lab worker characterizing the sample in a laboratory,” he said.
Independent of the coronavirus, the FBI’s focus on China’s biosecurity appears to be part of long-standing suspicion in the U.S. government about China’s involvement in the biological sciences. Several recent high-profile Justice Department cases involving the export of sensitive technology have involved Chinese scientists, or persons with alleged ties to the Chinese government.
Most prominently, the Justice Department in January announced charges against Charles Lieber, the chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology, for concealing ties to the Chinese government. “It’s a clear-cut case of a conflict of interest, and unfortunately, it’s not an isolated incident,” said FBI special agent Joseph R. Bonavolonta, head of the Boston field office, in announcing the charges.
Lieber, who is free on a $1 million bond, has not yet entered a plea on the charges.
Charles Lieber leaves federal court in Boston on Jan. 30, after he was charged with lying to federal authorities in connection with aiding China. (Reuters/Katherine Taylor)
But the FBI’s focus on China and Chinese scientists is also raising concerns among some academics, who fear it smacks of profiling. “I am concerned that the current trend in national security is toward profiling against people of Chinese descent,” said Nicholas Evans, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who specializes in medical ethics. “That’s not only racist, it’s bad practice. FBI and other intelligence and law enforcement attempts at profiling have very often been harmful without making us any safer.”
Evans also questioned the FBI’s focus on scientists hand-carrying biological samples as a unique threat. He pointed to previous examples, like a U.S. lab in Maine that was fined more than a decade ago for importing highly pathogenic avian flu viruses from Saudi Arabia.
“The FBI claims that it is impossible to determine the contents of samples accurately, even if declared under current import laws,” he wrote in an email. “That’s true. But I am skeptical about the degree to which this particular behavior adds significant risks to security given that there are many other ways to get biological organisms into the country.”
Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said it’s true that China has long had loopholes in its biosafety regulations. “That’s why [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] in February talked about beefing up the legislation for biosafety and biosecurity,” he said.
That history has already encouraged rumors like the idea that the coronavirus originated as a bioweapon.
Now, with relations between China and the U.S. deteriorating, Huang expects collaboration on biological research to grow even more difficult, reversing decades of cooperation. “I often argue that U.S. engagement with China is the most successful in the area of public health,” he said. Such cooperation even survived the difficult period after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
Now, however, those relations are being set back as hostilities between the two countries grow.
“You could argue, health is borderless, especially when two countries face these common challenges. This would be a time for them to collaborate mostly closely,” he said. “That turned out to not be the case.”
- Jenna McLaughlin contributed reporting to this story
bloomberg.com
China Concealed Extent of Virus Outbreak, U.S. Intelligence Says
By Nick Wadhams and Jennifer Jacobs
4-5 minutes
Airport employees wear full body protective suits at Pudong International Airport in Shanghai on March 28.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials.
The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret and declined to detail its contents. But the thrust, they said, is that China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete. Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake.
The report was received by the White House last week, one of the officials said.
The outbreak began in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, but the country has publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That compares to more than 189,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths in the U.S., which has the largest publicly reported outbreak in the world.
Read More: New York’s Coronavirus Patients Skew Young, Surprising Doctors
Communications staff at the White House and Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
While China eventually imposed a strict lockdown beyond those of less autocratic nations, there has been considerable skepticism of China’s reported numbers, both outside and within the country. The Chinese government has repeatedly revised its methodology for counting cases, for weeks excluding people without symptoms entirely, and only on Tuesday added more than 1,500 asymptomatic cases to its total.
Stacks of thousands of urns outside funeral homes in Hubei province have driven public doubt in Beijing’s reporting.
Deborah Birx, the State Department immunologist advising the White House on its response to the outbreak, said Tuesday that China’s public reporting influenced assumptions elsewhere in the world about the nature of the virus.
Read More: Drugs Trump Touted for Covid-19 Treatment Added to Shortage List
“The medical community made -- interpreted the Chinese data as: This was serious, but smaller than anyone expected,” she said at a news conference on Tuesday. “Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data, now that what we see happened to Italy and see what happened to Spain.”
China is not the only country with suspect public reporting. Western officials have pointed to Iran, Russia, Indonesia and especially North Korea, which has not reported a single case of the disease, as probable under-counts. Others including Saudi Arabia and Egypt may also be playing down their numbers.
Read More: Mapping the Outbreak Across the World
U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has publicly urged China and other nations to be transparent about their outbreaks. He has repeatedly accused China of covering up the extent of the problem and being slow to share information, especially in the weeks after the virus first emerged, and blocking offers of help from American experts.
“This data set matters,” he said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. The development of medical therapies and public-health measures to combat the virus “so that we can save lives depends on the ability to have confidence and information about what has actually transpired,” he said.
“I would urge every nation: Do your best to collect the data. Do your best to share that information,” he said. “We’re doing that.”
— With assistance by Justin Sink
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China Concealed Extent of Virus Outbreak, U.S. Intelligence Says
By Nick Wadhams and Jennifer Jacobs
4-5 minutes
Airport employees wear full body protective suits at Pudong International Airport in Shanghai on March 28.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials.
The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret and declined to detail its contents. But the thrust, they said, is that China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete. Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake.
The report was received by the White House last week, one of the officials said.
The outbreak began in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, but the country has publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That compares to more than 189,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths in the U.S., which has the largest publicly reported outbreak in the world.
Read More: New York’s Coronavirus Patients Skew Young, Surprising Doctors
Communications staff at the White House and Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
While China eventually imposed a strict lockdown beyond those of less autocratic nations, there has been considerable skepticism of China’s reported numbers, both outside and within the country. The Chinese government has repeatedly revised its methodology for counting cases, for weeks excluding people without symptoms entirely, and only on Tuesday added more than 1,500 asymptomatic cases to its total.
Stacks of thousands of urns outside funeral homes in Hubei province have driven public doubt in Beijing’s reporting.
Deborah Birx, the State Department immunologist advising the White House on its response to the outbreak, said Tuesday that China’s public reporting influenced assumptions elsewhere in the world about the nature of the virus.
Read More: Drugs Trump Touted for Covid-19 Treatment Added to Shortage List
“The medical community made -- interpreted the Chinese data as: This was serious, but smaller than anyone expected,” she said at a news conference on Tuesday. “Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data, now that what we see happened to Italy and see what happened to Spain.”
China is not the only country with suspect public reporting. Western officials have pointed to Iran, Russia, Indonesia and especially North Korea, which has not reported a single case of the disease, as probable under-counts. Others including Saudi Arabia and Egypt may also be playing down their numbers.
Read More: Mapping the Outbreak Across the World
U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has publicly urged China and other nations to be transparent about their outbreaks. He has repeatedly accused China of covering up the extent of the problem and being slow to share information, especially in the weeks after the virus first emerged, and blocking offers of help from American experts.
“This data set matters,” he said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. The development of medical therapies and public-health measures to combat the virus “so that we can save lives depends on the ability to have confidence and information about what has actually transpired,” he said.
“I would urge every nation: Do your best to collect the data. Do your best to share that information,” he said. “We’re doing that.”
— With assistance by Justin Sink
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U.S. spies had raw intel hinting at health crisis in China in November
U.S. spy agencies collected raw intel hinting at public health crisis in Wuhan, China, in November
Current and former officials say there was no formal assessment in November but that there was raw intelligence that fueled formal assessments written in December.
April 9, 2020, 6:43 PM EDT
WASHINGTON — U.S. spy agencies collected raw intelligence hinting at a public health crisis in Wuhan, China, in November, two current and one former U.S. official told NBC News, but the information was not understood as the first warning signs of an impending global pandemic.
The intelligence came in the form of communications intercepts and overhead images showing increased activity at health facilities, the officials said. The intelligence was distributed to some federal public health officials in the form of a "situation report" in late November, one former official briefed on the matter said. But there was no assessment that a lethal global outbreak was brewing at that time, a defense official said.
On Wednesday night, the Pentagon disputed an ABC News report that an "intelligence report" had warned about coronavirus in November.
"We can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is incorrect," said a statement by Col. (Dr.) R. Shane Day, director of the National Center for Medical Intelligence, a unit of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. "No such NCMI product exists."
But the current and former officials told NBC News that while there was not a formal assessment produced in November — and hence no "intelligence product" in the jargon of the spy agencies — there was intelligence that caught the attention of public health analysts and fueled formal assessments written in December. That material and other information, including from news and social media reports, ultimately found its way into President Donald Trump's intelligence briefing book in January. It is unknown if he read the information.
James Kudla, a spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency, declined to comment beyond the NCMI statement.
Air Force Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Thursday that he didn't see intelligence reports on coronavirus until January.
"We went back and looked at everything in November and December," he said. "The first indication we have were the reports out of China in late December that were in the public forum. And the first intel reports I saw were in January."
Even after public health authorities began sounding the alarm in January, the U.S. took few steps to ready itself for a pandemic. There was no effort to boost national stockpiles of medical equipment or encourage social distancing, for example. While Trump touts his decision to stop flights from China coming to the U.S. on Jan. 31, about 381,000 people had flown from China to the U.S. in January, according to an analysis by the New York Times.
Mask-clad passengers alight from their train at the railway station in Wuhan, China's central Hubei province on March 10, 2020.Noel Celis / AFP - Getty Images file
Experts believe the coronavirus outbreak began last fall in a seafood market in Wuhan.
The South China Morning Post, citing Chinese government data, reported that the first documented case of someone in China suffering from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, occurred Nov. 17.
On Dec. 31, an Associated Press report out of China was one of the first English-language news accounts of a mysterious new virus.
"Chinese experts are investigating an outbreak of respiratory illness in the central city of Wuhan that some have likened to the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic," the story began.
Initially, the World Health Organization was conservative. In a statement about the disease on Jan. 14 — about the first case outside of China, in Thailand — the WHO said, "there is no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission."
But by mid-January it was clear that the virus was spreading well beyond China.
In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Americans on Jan. 6 to take precautions if traveling to China. The next day, the CDC's Emergency Operation Center activated a COVID-19 Incident Management System — an emergency management tool used to direct operations, deliver resources, and share information.
An aerial view of the Pentagon building in Washington on Dec. 26, 2011.Dan De LUCE / AFP - Getty Images file
The extent to which the U.S. intelligence community was warning the White House about the potential implications of the virus remains unclear. Senior Congressional aides have told NBC News that the House and Senate intelligence committees did not receive anything that would have constituted an intelligence early warning.
The first House briefing on coronavirus was Feb. 6, an intelligence committee aide said, the day Trump was acquitted in the Senate on impeachment charges.
The Washington Post has reported that U.S. intelligence agencies wrote intelligence reports including ominous warnings about coronavirus in January and February. None of the classified intelligence reports about coronavirus have been made public.