Anatomy of a conspiracy: With COVID, China took leading role

FILE - In this March 19, 2020 file photo, biological science specialists, background, wear biosafety protective clothing for handling viral diseases at U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md. On March 9, 2020, a public WeChat account called "Happy Reading List" reposted an essay claiming the U.S. military created SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, at a lab in Fort Detrick and loosed it in China during the Military World Games, an international competition for military athletes, held in Wuhan in October 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

FILE - In this Tuesday, March 31, 2020 file photo, President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington. Powerful voices in the U.S. -- from former President Trump to congressional Republicans -- worked to rebrand COVID-19 as “the China virus,” amplifying fringe theories that it had been engineered by Chinese scientists. In response, China launched what may be its first global digital disinformation campaign. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

FILE - In this March 11, 2020 file photo, Russian Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky speaks during a session at the State Duma, the Lower House of the Russian Parliament in Moscow, Russia. Zhirinovsky, the nationalistic leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, suggested that the U.S. and its greedy pharmaceutical companies were to blame for the coronavirus. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

FILE - In this Sept. 1, 2020 file photo, a smartphone records Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying as she speaks during a daily briefing at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing. "I'd like to stress that if the United States truly respects facts, it should open the biological lab at Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues like its 200-plus overseas bio-labs, invite WHO experts to conduct origin-tracing in the United States," she said at a January 2021 MOFA press conference that went viral in China. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

FILE - In this June 19, 2009 file photo, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivers a sermon with a picture of the late spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini in the background, during Friday prayers at the Tehran University campus in Tehran, Iran. Khamenei was among the first and most powerful world leaders to suggest the coronavirus could be a biological weapon created by the U.S. (Meisam Hosseini/Hayat News Agency via AP, File)

FILE - In this Sept. 4, 2020 file photo, Russian national Igor Nikulin speaks during a news conference in Moscow, Russia. Nikulin argues the U.S. created the virus and used it to attack China. Nikulin says he is a former U.N. arms inspector, but the man who would have been his boss said he's never heard of him. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)

FILE - In this Monday, Feb. 24, 2020 file photo, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian speaks during a daily briefing at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs office in Beijing. Zhao has repeatedly suggested on Twitter that the coronavirus might have come from the U.S. Army. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 7, 2020 file photo, people wearing masks attend a vigil for Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, in Hong Kong. The outpouring of grief and rage sparked by Li's death was an unusual - and for the Chinese Communist Party, unsettling - display in China's tightly monitored civic space. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

(AP Illustration/Peter Hamlin)