What it entailed, reactions and implications for the international community.

Report from the Daily Telegraph Australia, 4th May, revealed that a 15-page document had recently been obtained by the Saturday Telegraph which laid the foundations of the argument for China’s involvement in the coronavirus pandemic. Illustrated by a loose grouping of 5 themes, the alleged ‘dossier’, issued by the Five-Eyes network, listed out various accusations against China’s management of the crisis and further insinuated that China was ‘not acting like a responsible international citizen.’

The intelligence dossier addresses controversies over: ‘the silenced and the disappeared’, ‘suppression and destruction of evidence’. ‘The denial of transmission’, ‘the endangerment of countries’, ‘assault on international transparency.’ It not only frames China’s involvement as a ‘deliberate cover-up’ of crucial virus information, it further upturned previous disputes over the identity of ‘patient zero’, the mysterious disappearance of 8 Wuhan doctors, the destruction and transferal of virus samples to designated testing areas, instruction of a no-publication order related to the unknown disease, denial of human-human transmission until January 20, censorship of various terms from social media such as ‘Wuhan Unknown Pneumonia’ and ‘SARS variation’, and refusal to share sample isolates with an institution in the US.

(Report from the Daily Telegraph Australia illustrates the above in detail and is complemented with a detailed timeline breaking down the progression of events. An article highly worth reading and its discourse is supported by evidence indicative of China’s ‘deliberate cover-up’)

When asked for his opinion on the origin of the virus, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison made his position clear during a press conference on April 22 where he acknowledged the multitudes of speculations and emphasised the imperative for an open investigation to dispel related allegations. He proclaimed that his sentiments are coherent with those shared between the US President Donald Trump and the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. Morrison further reaffirmed his determination to ‘get to the bottom of this’ and stated he was backed by President Trump and both were ‘committed to working together to beat this disease - in the best spirit of our strong alliance.’

However, statements made by Pompeo just 24 hours following the release of the intelligence dossier raised questions over the nature of the two countries’ ‘strong alliance’ and challenges to the document’s own legitimacy.

On 3rd May, Pompeo had claimed ‘there is a significant amount of evidence that this (the coronavirus) came from that laboratory in Wuhan (the Wuhan Institute of Virology)’. Confident that the coronavirus was due to a laboratory leakage in Wuhan, President Trump had even gone to accuse the virus outbreak as an attempt at sabotaging his chances of reelection later in November. Despite allegations made by the two individuals, WHO later remarked that they have received no evidence from the US government to back up their claims and allegations remain purely ‘speculative’. The Chinese XinHua News Agency further dismissed Pompeo’s allegations as ‘groundless accusations.’

Whilst Washington Intelligence officials have since clarified that they do not believe that the virus is part of a biochemical weapon developed and released by China, its ruminations of a global pandemic were certainly not its motivations, conspiracies that it was due to a laboratory leak remain. What is evident, however, are stark differences in Pompeo’s and Morrison’s rhetorics over the origin of the coronavirus. Whilst Trump’s government shows much stronger support to the conspiracy, Morrison does not share the sentiment to nearly the same extent and is convinced that the coronavirus outbreak was more likely to have originated from one of Wuhan’s wet markets, with a 5% chance of the virus having originated from a laboratory.

Differing rhetorics behind the same narrative: an indication of a fall-out of ‘strong alliance,’ or strategic collaboration with greater underlying motives?

Since the release of the intelligence dossier, Trump and Morrison have found themselves in an awkward position of differing rhetorics produced from the same narrative. The accountability of the Five-Eyes agency as an ‘intelligence-sharing coalition’ offers limited room for qualification. Information shared to allies are unlikely to have been driven by motivations other than for ‘finding out what could have been done better to prevent the disease, communicate its existence, and prevent it from becoming a global pandemic.’ However, it has been greatly contested that there remains a likelihood that the US is not sharing all of its intelligence.

The mild response witnessed amongst UK officials to the dossier further suggests greater degrees of complexity than which is apparent. Whilst the official word from Downing Street is that the UK does not comment on intelligence matters, remarks made by a spokesperson that the document was ‘based off open source, public domain material’ further calls into question the dossier’s legitimacy. When asked about the report on BBC Radio, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace refused to comment and instead retorted, ‘every day I get intelligence bulletins from our agencies around the world. I don’t comment on individual bulletins, what I have and haven’t seen. That would be wrong.’ Speculations have been made since that the document was merely a ‘tool for building a counter-narrative and applying pressure on China.’ This not only severely jeopardises the credibility of the Five-Eyes intelligence agency but leaves us wondering, if the document was purposefully ‘leaked’, what were its ulterior motives and who was it intended to fool?

Read more about the Five-Eyes Intelligence Dossier in our INSIGHT article: ‘Groundless Accusations’ or Battle of the Narrative?’ where we debate further on the legitimacy of various allegations and to what extent the dossier is a ‘tool for building a counter-narrative.’