Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Ratcliffe told Breitbart News in his first interview after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Thursday that he intends to immediately get to the bottom of what the Agency knows about COVID leaking from a Wuhan lab in China.

Ratcliffe was confirmed by the Senate Thursday and then sworn in by Vice President JD Vance as the newest director of the CIA. 

He spoke with Breitbart News on Thursday for his first exclusive interview, in which he laid out how he intends to reform the Agency to return the world’s preeminent intelligence service to its core mission and depoliticize it. 

He also ripped previous CIA director John Brennan, who led the Agency during former President Barack Obama’s administration, as being singularly responsible for steering it in the wrong direction.

When it comes to confronting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Ratcliffe did not hold back.

“I know from conversations with the president about where his priorities are and where he wants things to be as it concerns foreign threats to America’s national security posture, and it starts with China,” Ratcliffe said. 

“One of the things that I’ve talked about a lot is addressing the threat from China on a number of fronts, and that goes back to why a million Americans died and why the Central Intelligence Agency has been sitting on the sidelines for five years in not making an assessment about the origins of COVID. That’s a day-one thing for me. 

I’ve been on record as you know in saying I think our intelligence, our science, and our common sense all really dictates that the origins of COVID was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But the CIA has not made that assessment or at least not made that assessment publicly.

So I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure that the public is aware that the agency is going to get off the sidelines.”

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