New CIA boss Ratcliffe says Biden-era report backing lab-leak theory released to 'restore' trust

The CIA's decision to release a Biden-era assessment favoring the once widely-dismissed COVID-19 lab-leak origin story marks a step toward transparency with the American people, newly-confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe told Fox News on Sunday.

Speaking in his first interview since being confirmed as the agency's director last Thursday, Ratcliffe spelled out the insights he made public shortly after taking over the post and affirmed the importance of restoring trust in American institutions.

"I had the opportunity on my first day to make public an assessment that actually took place in the Biden administration, so it can't be accused of being political, and the CIA has assessed that the most likely cause of this pandemic that has wrought so much devastation around the world was because of a lab-related incident in Wuhan, so we'll continue to investigate that moving forward," he told "Sunday Morning Futures" host Maria Bartiromo.

"I think it was important for the American people to see an institution like the CIA get off the sidelines and be truthful about what our intelligence shows and, at the same time, protect us from adversaries like China if they caused or contributed to this," he added.

The CIA now appears to slightly favor the lab-leak theory that suggests gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China may have directly contributed to the virus.

A CIA spokesperson told Fox News that the agency "assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting. CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible."

"We have low confidence in this judgment and will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting or open-source information that could change CIA's assessment."

Ratcliffe said releasing the CIA analysis is one of the ways to support President Trump's push to restore Americans' trust in intel agencies and law enforcement.

"That includes the CIA," Ratcliffe said.

"The purpose of the CIA is to protect Americans, to keep us safe from foreign threats and foreign adversaries, but we also need to be truthful with Americans, and he [President Trump] has stressed to me and others that these aren't mutually exclusive missions. We can do both."

"In the case of the CIA, which is the best foreign intelligence service in the world, after five years, [they did not] not have a public assessment, to be honest with the American people about where the likely source of a pandemic that killed millions around the world, including a million Americans, and really impacted all 345 million Americans in some way. People lost jobs. They lost houses. They lost their health, they lost their businesses, all of that…"