Posted on 04/03/2020 7:25:35 PM PDT by Helicondelta
The C.I.A. has been warning the White House since at least early February that China has vastly understated its coronavirus infections and that its count could not be relied upon as the United States compiles predictive models to fight the virus, according to current and former intelligence officials.
The intelligence briefings in recent weeks, based at least in part on information from C.I.A. assets in China, played an important role in President Trumps negotiation on Thursday of an apparent détente with President Xi Jinping of China. Since then, both countries have ratcheted back criticism of each other.
So far, to the frustration of both the White House and the intelligence community, the agencies have been unable to glean more accurate numbers through their collection efforts.
But American intelligence agencies have concluded that the Chinese government itself does not know the extent of the virus and is as blind as the rest of the world. Midlevel bureaucrats in the city of Wuhan, where the virus originated, and elsewhere in China have been lying about infection rates, testing and death counts, fearful that if they report numbers that are too high they will be punished, lose their position or worse, current and former intelligence officials said.
Bureaucratic misreporting is a chronic problem for any government, but it has grown worse in China as the Communist leadership has taken a more authoritarian turn in recent years under Mr. Xi.
No complete picture of the virus exists anywhere because of factors beyond government suppression, including testing shortages, varying measurement standards and asymptomatic infections that could account for up to one in four coronavirus cases.
Iran has obfuscated its struggles with the pandemic.
Italys death count of more than 13,000, the most worldwide, leaves out people who died outside hospitals.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
bttt
bttt
Uh yeah, they should have been hunting for this information since at least last November, but they were too busy trying to overthrow the executive branch.
It’s a problem... who do we trust? Chinese thugs, American ‘intelligence’... or New York Times writers?
Adorno: You are right to never trust the Red Chinese or any other communist/Marxist/socialist government or entity.
The No. Vietnamese had a great “disinformation program” ongoing from the 50’s re the deaths caused by their “Mini-Great Leap Forward” - “Land Reform Programs” (aided by American leftist scholars such as Prof. George McT. Kahin (Cornell Un) and his students, plus a handful of other communist academics and media pawns. However, Ho started his own “disinformation” program about who he really was and what he wanted for Vietnam and all of Southeast Asia (as in complete conquest and control).
Lenin, Trotsky, Beria and Stalin covered up their genocide and mass murder (of White Russians, Kulaks, Ukrainians, Jews, Christians, Tatars, Katyn Forest Massacre of Polish Reserve Officers during WW2, South Korea massacres, etc.). They used foreign correspondents to spread this around (i.e. the NY Times Walter Duranty),identified KGB agent I.F. Stone, and Australian Communist Party member and KGB agent (and possibly Red Chinese agent) Wilfred Burchett whose writings graced the Op-Ed page of the New York Times) among a few other leftist American publications (this might have included the longtime CPUSA-dominated “The Nation”).
The Iranians have their own vast “disinformation” covering not only that country, but also in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, possibly Hamas’ Gaza and the Palestinian Authority’s territories, plus Syria and in the US among pro-Iran/Khomeini fronts and associations (aided in the past by the Hanoi Lobby of Don Luce, Ramsay Clark, etc).
As the late Dr. Fred Schwarz said in his speeches and his book, “You Can Trust The Communists to Be Communists”.
You can never “trust” them, nor can you adequately “verify” what the Communists claims. Psychopaths “lie” naturally so you naturally shouldn’t believe anything they say, most of what they show, and nothing their supporters promote.
None of the above.
Waste of time and tax dollars. How about they do something productive for once.
Might as well be hunting snipe.
Much more aptly named.
Can anyone tell if the Chinese are lying about there being more cases... or fewer cases?
Im antique: I remember Chernobyl.
LOL!!!
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