By now, we all know that the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t originate in the wild; that its genesis wasn’t the result of a fruit bat getting frisky with a pangolin.

We all know that it came from a lab in communist China. Common sense dictates it. Senator Tom Cotton called it within days of the outbreak. The stone’s-throw proximity of the Wuhan Institute of Virology to the location of initial outbreak makes any other scenario seem about as implausible as the Steele dossier, about as unlikely as Hunter Biden’s laptop being Russian disinformation.

Indeed, we know where the virus came from despite Anthony Fauci’s best efforts to cover it up due to his agency’s funding of the ChiComs’ dangerous gain-of-function research.

These days, only the lowest of low-information voters believe the virus emerged naturally rather than artificially. Heck, even Jon Stewart long ago embraced the chocolatey goodness of the truth.

Looking back, we were struck by how reluctant so many ostensibly intelligent people were to come to this obvious conclusion. We always figured either money or professional embarrassment were behind it — or, in the case of Fauci, both. But now, thanks to a Central Intelligence Agency whistleblower, we have yet another reason to follow the money.

According to that longtime CIA officer, his agency commissioned an investigation into COVID-19’s origins, and then, when it didn’t like the investigative team’s findings, it paid them to change their position. A letter sent Tuesday from House Coronavirus Pandemic Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner to CIA Director William Burns provides the details:

A multi-decade, senior-level, current Agency officer has come forward to provide information to the Committees regarding the Agency’s analysis into the origins of COVID-19. According to the whistleblower, the Agency assigned seven officers to a COVID Discovery Team (Team). The Team consisted of multi-disciplinary and experienced officers with significant scientific expertise. According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis. The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position.

That last sentence is stunning. It says that the agency’s analysis is for sale. The officers on the CIA’s COVID Discovery Team were nearly unanimous in their conclusion that the coronavirus originated from the Wuhan lab, but they were then bought off.

And yet it’s not so stunning at all, is it? The CIA simply isn’t what it used to be. This morning, upon reading these revelations, one of our colleagues invoked Captain Renault: He was shocked — SHOCKED — to learn that the agency’s report was inconclusive.

The letter from Wenstrup and Turner continues: “These allegations, from a seemingly credible source, requires the Committees to conduct further oversight of how the CIA handled its internal investigation into the origins of COVID-19. To assist the Committees with their investigations, we request the following documents and information as soon as possible, but no later than September 26, 2023.”

Why would the CIA be so dead-set against acknowledging the strength of the lab-leak theory? What might cause it to essentially jump into bed with the communist Chinese? Perhaps those within the agency who bought off the investigative team were bought off themselves.

Or perhaps they were rabid partisans. Perhaps they were Trump-hating Democrats, and they were thus loath to be seen as siding with the then-president, who’d been calling COVID-19 “the China Virus” all along, and whose tough-on-China policies had not only made the communist Chinese unhappy but also discomfited the go-along get-along Washington establishment.

Sixteen years ago, Tim Weiner, then a reporter for The New York Times, published a book called Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. The fundamental question posed by that book is as crucial today as it was then: Why is it that the most powerful nation in history can’t seem to create a first-rate spy agency?

In any case, we see this as a big story and a deeply troubling matter of national security, and we look forward to seeing where the evidence takes these House Republicans as they do their constitutionally prescribed duty of oversight.