Are intelligence leaks a faction trying to get the word out? Someone trying to CYA? An attempt to manipulate public opinion by essentially speaking out of both

Are intelligence leaks a faction trying to get the word out? Someone trying to CYA? An attempt to manipulate public opinion by essentially speaking out of both sides of their mouths? All of the above? When it comes to intelligence stuff conclusions are more of a probability cloud. Everyone is lying, so the question is which scenarios are more or less likely? Instead of COVID let's take Lyme Disease as an example. Lyme Disease is named after Lyme, CT, where the stuff was first diagnosed/discovered. That's interesting. What's also interesting is that there was a biological weapons research facility across the Long Island Sound from there. Well, if you didn't know anything else about Lyme disease it wouldn't be a stretch to believe, at some level, that the origin was some kind of bio weapon that escaped. New disease near a weapons lab? Sounds within the realm of possibility. Now you add some more information: namely, that Lyme disease is a worldwide problem, and they've been found in ticks all over the world. Well that makes the lab origin theory substantially less likely (probably 0%), because it's unclear how ticks would have spread to Asia, Europe. Nobody is going to go around infecting ticks as a bioweapon. So your analysis really comes down to how much information you have. You have a bunch of guys walking around randomly, not a big deal. You have a bunch of random guys meeting in random places really often, well, maybe that's something that needs to be watched.