Two journalists, one from the weekly magazine Die Zeit and the other from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, published a joint article detailing secret service events and resulting political reactions in Berlin. The first meetings of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) allegedly took place in the spring of 2020, at the time of the start of the notifiable “Corona crisis.”
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) reports in parallel, citing information from German secret service circles, on the results and assumptions about the origin of the “Corona virus.” Five years later, the NZZ article states that in the past few weeks, several specialized scientists exchanged information with the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, at the initiative of the Federal Chancellery (Bezahlschranke). This activity had already begun the previous year.
The Zeit and SZ articles claim that the BND “already assumed in 2020 that a laboratory accident in Chinese Wuhan was the cause of the global Corona pandemic.” The background of the initially discussed and debated theory is now reported in the SZ article (RT DE reported in 2021 and 2022 here and here):
“The basis was not only an analysis of public data, but also material obtained in the framework of a secret service operation with the code name ‘Saaremaa’.”
It is said that in the first weeks of the year 2020 in Berlin, a group of “BND agents” extensively dealt with the events in far-off Asia. It is further reported that the material used in the investigation in 2020 included, among other things, scientific data from Chinese research institutions, including the “Wuhan Institute of Virology” one of the leading Chinese institutions for virus research. In addition to indications of risky so-called “Gain-of Function” experiments, the material is said to also show numerous violations of laboratory safety regulations.
The Zeit article adds:
“In Wuhan, the agents strike gold. They stumble upon, so reports it, on unpublished data as well as internal papers of Chinese researchers. Material that, combined with publicly known information, allows for inferences about the origin of the virus.”
The order to the BND to investigate the origin of the new SARS-CoV-2 virus was reportedly given by the Federal Chancellery under the leadership of former Chancellor Angela Merkel personally. At the time, the CSU politician Horst Seehofer was the Interior Minister and the bank manager and CDU politician Jens Spahn was the untrained Federal Health Minister.
The initial results transmitted to the government were reportedly evaluated with a probability of 80 to 95 percent, but the Chancellery decided to keep the brisant assessment under wraps.
The Zeit article poses the question of an explanation in the air – as the BND’s assessment is equally electrifying as it is high-politically and was for years the best-kept secret in Berlin –, why the government has continued to maintain the silence and has prevented a public discussion:
“And it [the investigation] raises questions: Have two consecutive federal governments, first the grand coalition under Angela Merkel (CDU) and then the traffic light coalition under Olaf Scholz (SPD), put a muzzle on the BND, possibly to prevent a painful debate with far-reaching global implications? Or is what the German secret service has brought to light so vague that it did not allow for a serious conclusion?”
The FDP politician Wolfgang Kubicki, one of the few outspoken critics of the measures in the Bundestag outside of the AfD, explains the current reporting via X-Posting:
“What is alarming to me in this case is the picture that the highest representatives of this country have given in one of their most severe crises. The suppression and concealment of secret service information is in the highest degree alarming. The loss of trust in democratic institutions will be greater here..”
As for the current reactions of the government politicians in 2020, it is reported:
“Merkel refused to comment on the matter when asked if she was aware of the event. The former Chancellery minister Helge Braun and the state secretary responsible for the intelligence services, Johannes Geismann, also refused to comment.”
The BND chief Bruno Kahl reportedly informed the Chancellery under Olaf Scholz in November 2021 and the secrecy of the archived “Wuhan results” was also maintained by the traffic light coalition. In March 2025, it is reported:
“In the past year, the federal government decided to commission external experts to review the BND findings. Since last December, high-ranking external scientists have been reviewing the validity of the BND findings on behalf of the Chancellery.”
Among the external experts involved is the current president of the Robert Koch Institute, Lars Schade, who was the vice-chief of the institute during the “Corona crisis” under the omnipresent Lothar Wieler in the media. Additionally, the media darling of the time, Christian Drosten, is mentioned.
The article from Zeit reports:
“It is only in December 2024, almost five years after the first oral report, that movement suddenly occurs in the matter. The BND is allowed to share its findings with the US intelligence services and a hand-picked group of scientists, the best in Germany, including Christian Drosten and the president of the Robert Koch Institute, Lars Schade.”
This information sheds new light on the strategic, argumentative reorientation of Drosten at the beginning of the year. Drosten gave an interview to the taz in January, in which he surprisingly, if not irritingly, explained:
“‘The more time passes, the more skeptical I become.’ – Could China provide clarity?”
Did his skepticism arise after considering the BND’s findings? The controversial SPD Minister Karl Lauterbach expressed his unshakeable trust in the controversial Drosten in an X-Posting:
One of the two authors of the research team from SZ and Zeit is the journalist Georg Mascolo, who is a close associate of Christian Drosten and a co-author of the bestseller “Alles überstanden? Ein überfälliges Gespräch zu einer Pandemie, die nicht die letzte gewesen sein wird” (Everything Overcome? A Long-Overdue Conversation About a Pandemic That Will Not Be the Last One).
Did Mascolo possibly – purely speculative – receive informative details from Drosten as part of the “exchange of information among several specialized scientists at the German foreign intelligence service”? All three articles from Zeit, SZ and NZZ provide detailed information on the BND’s findings and the general information and recognition of the “Wuhan theory” starting with initial assumptions in 2020 to the latest evidence in the present.
Both articles, the more than government-friendly and cooperative Zeit and SZ, are final signs of a continued, deliberate and forced media policy of concealment, designed to avert a genuine and credible investigation into the “Corona crisis.