"In..2018..US Embassy in Beijing..dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety..weaknesses at..lab [and] that..lab's work on bat coronaviruses..represented..risk of.pandemic" https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/

"Two years before..coronavirus pandemic upended..world, US Embassy officials visited..Chinese research facility in..Wuhan several times and sent 2 official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at..lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats."

"In January 2018,..US Embassy in Beijing took..unusual step of repeatedly sending US science diplomats to..Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4)."

"What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington."

"The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at..WIV..and proposed more attention and help.The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic."

"During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory"

"As many have pointed out, there is no evidence that the virus now plaguing the world was engineered; scientists largely agree it came from animals. But that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals"

"The cable tells us that there have long been concerns about the possibility of the threat to public health that came from this lab’s research, if it was not being adequately conducted and protected"

"'The cable was a warning shot,' one U.S. official said. 'They were begging people to pay attention to what was going on.'"

"'The idea that..was just..totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. The evidence it leaked from..lab is circumstantial. Right now,..ledger on..side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and there’s almost nothing on..other side,'..official said."