good evening. 150 days of the worst violence since the civil war. before we get to that, there was a reminder today of why facebook said he is not welcome on the platform until at least january of 2023. the justice department came out with updated figures on cases connected to the insurrection. approximately 465 defendants now from all 50 states. more than 130 defendants charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees. more than 40 charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer. again, 40 people charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon. keep that in mind as you listen to senator ron johnson say this. >> this didn't seem like an armed insurrection to me.

>> now, he may say he was talking about firearms. but if he was, he also knows he was being too cute by half because he's always known this about a video of an officer being beaten to within inches of his life by a flagpole that was used as a weapon. or the images of people being beaten by baseball bats. and he heard about a man whose hand was sliced open and endured hand to hand combat so intense, there were moments he thought he might die. that sergeant also drew a straight line between the president's social media lies to the terror he faced. >> when the president tweeted this or that, and they continued to say, well, he don't mean that. well, this is not what he meant to say, take his word for it or his tweet speaks for itself. well, he was just joking. okay. how are these people who are

deranged that listen to every single thing that he commands, if he tells them the sky is blue and there's a storm outside, they believe that crap. i mean, when, when is it going to stop? is it going to take your own family to be murdered by these people? this time it is against this president. next time it might be you. >> 28 that in mind and stories like his, even now coming to light, facebook said it is barring the former president from the platform until january 2023. at that time they will to look expert to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded. just think about that for a moment. facebook's decision on reinstating a former chief executive of the most powerful nation the world has ever seen will hinge on whether he is in the company's judgment, literally a threat to the public. and how did the man who was bound from inciting violence respond?

with more of the same. he couldn't do it on the blog which he just shut down for lack of interest. so he sent his reply via email. facebook's ruling is an insult to the record 75 million people plus many others who voted for us in the 2020 rigged presidential election. the president adding, our country can't take this abuse anymore. separately he also attacked facebook's founder. quote, next time in the white house there will be no more dinlers at his request with mark zuckerberg and his wife. it will be all business. i don't know what that means. today white house press secretary jen psaki was asked for her reaction to facebook's decision. she said it feels pretty unlikely the zebra will change his stripes over the next two years, end quote. except we are not talking about a zebra raflt we are talking about the former leader of the free world. joining us now, chief domestic correspondent, the lies, the conspiracies the former president is spreading now it's

not possible, at least not on facebook, until at least not after the 2022 mid-term elections, how damaging is this to his influence? >> yeah. the lies, the big lie, the conspiracy theory about the 2020 election not possible from trump on facebook. but remember, trump has plenty of proxies on facebook. his son is still on there. marjorie taylor greene is on there. facebook is not changing its policy when it comes to fact checking politicians so many people will still be able to lie and run ads with lies about the election. but how this damages trump specifically, he does have tens of millions of followers on facebook and he is most known for his twitter account. but the really engine of his campaign in 2016 and 2020, which is former campaign manager used to boast so much about, was their effective use of facebook for targeting voters with ads and also, for fundraising. fundraising is the big part of zpaib what he'll be missing out on here. >> we heard some of his reaction

to today's news. i wonder what your sources are saying is happening behind the scenes. last night we were talking about his hope of being reinstated to the presidency by august, which won't happen. >> yeah. he can't even get reinstated on facebook. forget about getting reinstated to the presidency. druf donald trump has big problems. this is one of them. i talked to advisers earlier. they expected. this look what donald trump was doing earlier this week. you were just talking about this. he was floating this idea that he could resume the presidency. obviously, he's allowed book facebook, allowed back on the social media platforms, he will go right back to lying the way he used the and lying in dangerous ways. i recently spoke with a facebook oversight board representative and asked this person, if donald trump is allowed back on these platforms and he incites another su insurrection, will your platform be responsible for that? i could not get a straight answer from this personal because that's the issue.

if they let donald trump back on these platforms, he will likely lie to the point where people might die. >> you know, we talk a lot about the former president's influence. and yet his blog which he called a platform, wasn't a platform. it was like, you know, a little hunting perch. the blog was taken down for lack of interest. what does that say about his influence? that a blog, he cannot sustain a blog? >> well, i think it points to the importance of these platforms that underline how powerful facebook and twitter is in all of this. teritory with has just kicked trump off. they said you're never again coming back. i think the most important thing in all of this is that trump did not get suspended for all the election laws. he did not get suspended for everything on january 6th.

he got suspended from facebook because he was praising what happened on that day. so if he is allowed back, facebook will say, he's not allowed to directly incite violence. but they're still going to allow all these election lies, all the pieces that will lead to potentially more violence. and i think that is the fundamental new in this new facebook policy. >> axios with jonathan swann. he is reporting, it's interesting, that the trump team were blind sided. they thought he would be reinstated on the platform. in the trump orbit, just how critical is facebook to the former president's messaging and fundraising still? does it matter whether he himself is on it? there are plenty of people who support him who are on it who will fundraise. >> yeah. i talked to a close ally. they described what facebook can as terrible. terrible because he can't

fundraise moving forward on facebook. if we to run for president again. his campaign, the people around him would want to start putting that message out on facebook. other social media platforms between now and 2023. this is awful for donald trump if he wants to run in 2024. getting back to what you were saying about the president's website being taken down, one of the reasons we were given for why that is not a big deal. we were told he's working on these other platforms where he'll be back on social media. if that were the case, if this were some big endeavor coming down, why did he respond the way did he to facebook banning him for another couple years? obviously there is nothing significant coming. just another one of these empty trump promises that never come to fruition. donald trump's idea of free speech is setting the world on fire. what facebook did today is deny trump is gasoline and the maxes to set the world on fire again.

so the question becomes, why can't they dump trump? their standard bearer can't get on facebook or twitter. how is he supposed to lead the republican party? i don't think there is a good answer tom question. >> appreciate it. joined now by presidential historian doris kearns goodwin. the author on too many good books including leadership in turbulent times. >> always great to have you. on as a presidential historian, what is it like to hear a former president of the united states is such a threat that he is not allowed to use the platform for two more years. even then the so-called experts will discuss whether the risk to public safety has receded. it is funding. >> it is stunning indeed. even to me who have lived with my guys through the civil war, the turn of the 20th century, the great depression, the early days of world war ii, through a

whole series of unprecedented events, probably more in the last five years than through all the 50 years that i studied my guys. just think. 2016 election and the outcome that we never expected. the pandemic we've all lived through. the economic fallout. the attack on the capitol. i don't know how historians of the future will talk about unprecedented anymore. it just seems like we're living in those times day after day after day. this is another example. who could have expected a platform with such power that could take a former president not to be able to be on, because he's a risk for public safety. both sides of that are incredible. >> has there been a president or a former president who, i don't even know how to say this. who can't control their words? or who, you know, their vilesors wish they did not speak? because i mean, it seems like he can't stop doing this. he can't stop spreading election lies even when he is responding today in an email about being

banned on facebook. he's lying about the election. >> you know what's interesting, we often talk about a president being right for the moment. in a certain sense, president trump when he was president, was right for social media. for him and i think for the country. when lincoln was a politician and debating steven douglas, he was great at and temperature brain jus, he knew his words mattered so he almost never spoke unprepared. today it is. harder to do that given social media. and president trump is certainly made it harder on himself by never letting himself say what he wanted to safety you have that combination of immediate response and a president trump and a former president trump, and here we are talking about

him. >> i think tipping answer to this question. has this ever been a former president so quickly out of white house has ended up living in a country club and sort of showing up at people's weddings and random dinlers and relitigating an election that he lost over and over and over again? >> well, the last part of what you said is the most important. what we have other is presidents accepting their losses and moving on and telling supporters that this is democracy. and that's been the real strength of our system. that we've been allowed to have somebody lose. the next person comes in and that person is president. >> the former president then engages in some sort of public endeavor that has some value to society. that's usually a tradition. you're joining us tonight in part because it is the 56th anniversary of a commencement speech that then president

lyndon b. johnson gave at howard university. june 4th, 1965. two months before he signed the voting rights bill. your late husband dick goowin drafted that speech. i want to play minute of it. >> no act of my entire administration will give me greater satisfaction than the day when my signature makes this bill, too, the law of the land. the voting rights bill will be the least and among the most important in a long series of victories. but this victory as winston churchill said of another trial for freedom, is not the end. it is not even the beginning of the end.

but it is perhaps the end of the beginning. that beginning is freedom. and the barriers to that freedom are tumbling down. >> that line, the barriers to that freedom are tumbling down. here we are in 2021 and in many states, barriers to vote are being rebuilt. or attempting to rebuild them. >> i know. it is heart breaking. when i think about my emotions. i was a young 22 yoefld i was in the capitol the day that he signed that voting rights act. he signed it in the capitol itself. and i'm a lowly intern in the house of representatives. it turns out that i will end up working for lyndon johnson, the man who signed that act and marrying richard goodwin who helped draft the speech that was so important form voting rights act be secured. the incredible thing he does at howard university, he takes at

this time next step. he goes to my husband and says i have to make another speech. voting rights is on the way. we have to talk about economic and social justice. that speech is where we are today. em, everybody is born with a range of abilities. but they are either stunltd or stretched by the house you live in, the family you grow up in, the poverty or richness of your surroundings of the you can't take a person to a starting line and expect them to compete if they've had a history of bondage and racism. it is the exact climate of what we're talking about today. he was talking about it then. those are the presidents we look for, who care about their legacy and the arc of justice and carrying it forward. >> i appreciate it. thank you. >> thank you for having me. >> coming up next, escalating the legal battle against the kind of hacks that have recently dried up gas pumps. also ahead, breaking news. new reporting on what appears to be the first top trump

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♪ ♪ it is one thing to safeguard social media from the man at mar-a-lago. it is another to protect the infrastructure and industries from cyber attacks and ransom demands. today nation's top cop made it clear, those hacks will be treated by the justice department no differently than terror attacks. the cyber threats against the united states have grown so much, it is like dealing with terrorism after 9/11. that urgent message from christopher wray. the alarm being sounded by the biden administration over the growing ransomware attacks here and around the world. there are a lot of parallels. the scale of this country is one

that the country has to come to terms with. >> we are worried that some people will get hurt specialley when we consider health care. >> health care, schools and most recently, the chonial pipe line and jbs foods, the biggest meat producer in the world. those two recent attacks caused gas shortages and beef plants to shut down. >> i think this will be an ongoing trouble, increasing defenses. to the extent this counter terrorism works, that is another way this will be a long term fight. >> the justice department announced thursday, it will implement practices used for terrorism cases, telling prosecutors to share more information and coordinate oefrts ransomware attacks. the attacks and the amounts paid have skyrocketed. the justice department says ransom parents often in crypto currency last year went up 300%. the white house on thursday

released a rare open letter. pleading with companies to strengthen online defenses saying they can't fight it alone. also saying the government needs to find ways to protect. >> it requires taking additional actions. they've got to work collaboratively with foreign law enforcement agencies to take these people off the field. to use law enforcement efforts, intelligence agency efforts, economic sanctions, to disrupt and deter these actors. >> most of the recent major attacks have come from russia. the government hackers national case likes solar winds and criminal hackers striking the pipe lien and food companies. today's comparison of cyber attacks to other terrorist threats is one that has been made for years including in 2018 by the country's head of intelligence. >> the warning lights are blinking red again.

the day the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack. >> reporter: those warning lights are now doing more than just blinking, they are on. i'm told this is going to be a significant part of president biden's upcoming trip to europe, both at the g-7 and then on that one-on-one summit in geneva with president putin. president biden will make clear to russia that they have to take action to crack down on these groups and tell putin they are fundamentally destabilizing to the u.s./russia relationship. biden has said he wants a stable and predictable relationship with russia. anderson? >> thanks so much. perspective now from christopher krebs from the department of homeland security, also a cnn national security analyst, former national intelligence director, james clapper. chris, director wray is making this parallel, likening these attacks to terror attacks. do you agree with that assessment? >> well, i certainly think that it's important that the fbi elevate the priority of tackling

ransomware gangs akin to the terrorist threat of 9/11. i think that's in part what you're hearing here. at the same time, you're seeing the deputy national security advisor, the deputy attorney general, the secretary of homeland, all making a very clear statement that ransomware is a top priority for this administration. >> director clapper, the 9/11 commission report, there were failures leading up to the attacks, one of the biggest the failure of imagination. is our government failing again on that front? are they doing enough? >> i don't think there's a failure of imagination here. the intelligence community has long identified hacktivists and criminals as a problem. dan coats did when he was dni. i think, though, that what has been in the past considered an annoyance or irritation has now risen to the level of a genuine

national security threat. when we've seen recent demonstrations of the impact this can have in the case of the pipeline seizure and the seizure of the meat processing plant. so this is a harbinger of what adversaries such as most notably the russians can do. so i think it's quite appropriate for the government to sound -- generate a sense of urgency about this in the public. >> the question becomes what do you do about it. chris, you recently tweeted saying there's no silver bullet or single action that will stop this. it's going to take a concerted and coordinated set of actions across government and industry to slow this down. even then the bad guys will look

for openings. make them not want to play the game anymore. how do you go about that? >> i think the first thing we have to do is here in the homeland we have to work with our private sector partners, business leaders, to improve their defenses. they need to improve on the basics but unfortunately doing the basics still is a little bit on the harder side. second, we've got to look at the business model. ransomware is a business. business is good. we have to look at what facilitates the transfer of funds from u.s. businesses to these criminals. in part that is cryptocurrency. so we have to look at regulatory regimes over crypto. and third, we've got to look at what our additional tools are, whether it's law enforcement or intelligence or military operations to disrupt the ability of these ransomware gangs to use the internet to launch their attacks and make them, like i said, not want to play the game anymore. make it too hard for them to engage in this criminal activity. >> director clapper, does that all sound right to you?

>> yes, it does. what this -- what i think chris is suggesting here is not just a whole of government approach but a whole society approach. and clearly private concerns need to step it up on defense. but i think the government needs to go on the offense here more and use more of the tools that are available to it. to chris' point, he's exactly right about if you dry up the funding and make it difficult for ransomware to be exploited, it will go away. we're just going to have to be a lot more aggressive about that. >> chris, what is the worst case scenario for a future attack? we've seen, you know, the impact on the colonial pipeline and what that did. it seems like there are a lot of other things that could even be much worse. >> i think that's true. i think we have seen over the last year more. we've seen ransomware attacks on hospitals, on state and local

governments, on water facilities. i do get the sense, at least from the folks i talk to in the private sector, cyber intelligence world, that programs the crew, the darkside crew with colonial overstepped, right? they didn't necessarily know they were going to be knocking out the pipeline and gas supplies to the southeast. and so there's been a bit of a reckoning in that community. but it's a clear indication that we have massive vulnerabilities and due to the unregulated nature of our private sector that we are going to have to think through a different set of incentives, whether carrots or sticks to improve our defenses here. >> director clapper, how much of this is state sponsored? if there are russian, you know, cyber groups, they're not -- i assume they are not operating without the knowledge of the russian government? >> well, knowing russia and the way it operates, particularly under vladimir putin, it's inconceivable to me that the russian intelligence services aren't aware of this and that putin has certainly at least acquiesced if not directing it.

it's inconceivable to me that they would permit an attack on these sensitive infrastructure apparatus or capabilities of ours without it being at least sanctioned by the state. now, russia wants to be in a position of -- perhaps it's attributable, but also deniable. and i think we need to keep that in mind as we consider options to retaliate. >> director clapper, chris krebs, i really appreciate your time. thank you. coming up next, breaking news on the grand jury investigating the president's company and senior company executive who's reportedly testified.

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breaking news tonight in the manhattan district attorney's grand jury investigation of the trump organization. there's new reporting on what could be the first known company executive to have talked. "the new york times" headline reads senior trump organization official testifies before grand jury. the manhattan d.a.'s office subpoenaed jeffrey mcconnie, a long-serving financial executive at the company. according to "the times" he's worked at the trump organization nearly 35 years. joining us now is elliot williams who served as deputy assistant attorney general during the obama administration. also barbara rez, former executive vice president at the trump organization and author of

"tower of lies, what my 18 years of working with donald trump reveals about him." eliot, let me start with you. how significant do you think this could be in this legal case, that a trump organization employee has testified? >> it's not -- anderson, it's not just any trump organization employee, it's the controller of the organization. look, what's being investigated here are financial irregularities both by the trump organization and potentially the president himself and allen weisselberg, the chief financial officer. when you are investigating financial irregularities in an organization, there are two people you need to talk to. number one, the chief financial officer and, number two, the controller. any dollar that the trump organization spent, whether in the form of inflating or deflating real estate assets or unlawfully making payments potentially to allen weisselberg would have gone through these two individuals. so what this all is a sign of is

that they're putting pressure on the chief financial officer, mr. weisselberg, in an attempt to get him to cooperate in the investigation and potentially provide testimony against the president. so this is quite significant just given the nature of the crimes that are being alleged and the people who they're calling to testify. >> yeah, and you say alleged. it's important to point out no charges have been filed against anyone in the trump organization. barbara, you worked in the trump organization for 18 years. who is jeffrey mcconney? what's his role in the company and his relationship with allen weisselberg. >> when i worked back there, i worked on a california project, i was a consultant at the end of my tenure, and jeff was a young accountant. we had occasion to talk to him once in a while. he would look at our expenses and things like that. he wasn't the controller. this is the first i'm hearing of it and i'm happy because i liked him a lot and i think he's a good man. but he was just doing pretty

much journeyman work for allen. >> but do you know about his role now in the organization? was that when he was just starting out you said? >> it was basically when he was just starting out. he was young and a very smart guy and hard worker. i can imagine that he would have moved up in the ranks absolutely. >> eliot, you point out in new york a grand jury witness is granted immunity so that's obviously significant here. >> new york is a state that grants full transactional immunity to witnesses compelled to testify before the grand jury. that means he can't be prosecuted for anything that he says during the course of this testimony. that's a huge -- of huge value to prosecutors because it allows them to ensure truthful testimony. now, if this -- if someone does get charged and this does go to trial, defense attorneys would likely challenge this witness and say, wait a second, you got a really sweet deal from the

government. you've potentially committed unlawful acts and they have committed to never prosecuting you for anything? so, yes, it becomes a credibility thing for the individual who testifies. but at the end of the day, what the policy is here in new york state is to get valuable testimony and by ensuring that you're not prosecuting the people that come before you, that's probably the way to do it. >> barbara, how loyal is allen weisselberg to the former president? >> how what? >> loyal is he? >> that's a good question. he was always extremely loyal. that's what i was going to say as an aside. i can't imagine that trump puts the same trust in jeffrey mcconney as he does in allen weisselberg. although he's controlling, he may not know everything. i'm happy he's testifying. we'll see what he knows. he knows a lot for sure. but allen weisselberg, he adored

trump. he worshipped the ground he walked on. he was a loyalist, probably the single loyalist person he has and the only non-family member. >> eliot, if allen weisselberg is their main interest, because according to everybody he's the person who knows everything there is to know. he knows where everything -- i mean he's been there forever. he worked for donald trump's father before he worked for the former president. is talking to a chief financial officer, somebody underneath weisselberg is that a step to getting information on weisselberg? >> it's not uncommon to work your way up the chain. if there's anyone who's going to know about the financial irregularities of the organization, it's weisselberg's deputy. now, look, this may never end in charges for the president himself. people need to know that. but it's incredibly significant that the chief financial officer

of any organization, let alone one run by the former president of the united states, is this much the target and subject of a criminal inquiry. >> it is so fascinating. i appreciate it both of you. thank you so much. just ahead, the white house comments on what may be in that pentagon analysis of ufo sightings by some of its navy pilots. we'll be right back. we'll have a look at the evidence to date when we continue. at carvana, we treat every customer like we would treat our own moms, with care and respect. to us, the little things are the big things. which is why we do everything in our power to make buying a car an unforgettable experience. happy birthday. thank you. we treat every customer like we would treat our own moms. because that's what they deserve.

the white house commented a story we've been following for a while about encounters between ufos and u.s. navy pilots, specifically on a new development that broke during last night's program, i could say, that sources are now telling cnn that a highly anticipated pentagon report, which should reach congress later this month, will reach no definitive conclusions on what these pilots saw. sources say the report concludes there's no evidence these were alien spacecraft, but say three of these sources the report doesn't rule that out. something that may only fuel the debate obviously. today the white house was asked about the report and would only say this. >> i will say that we take reports of incursions into our

airspace by any aircraft identified or unidentified very seriously and investigate each one. safety and security of our personnel, of our operations are of paramount concern. there's a requirement to put out this report and certainly our appropriate teams are working on finalizing it. >> randi kaye has more on what sparked such interest in the subject by those in government. >> what is that thing? >> reporter: a u.s. navy aircraft captured images of that rotating thing back in january 2015, off the coast of jacksonville, florida. >> my gosh! they're going against the wind. the wind is 120 miles to the west. >> reporter: also in 2015 just a few weeks later, this happened. watch as a navy air crew struggles to lock on to a mysterious fast-moving object

off the atlantic coast. >> oh, got it! woo-hoo! >> roger. >> reporter: former navy fighter pilot alex dietrich told anderson cooper about seeing one off the coast of san diego. >> enter stage left, the tictac. that's what we affectionately refer to it as. >> reporter: it was about the size of an aircraft fuselage. >> it was white, like a matte finish just like a tictac. and it behaved in a way that we were surprised, unnerved. it accelerated. it almost didn't accelerate, it sort of jumped from spot to spot and tumbled around in a way that was unpredictable. >> reporter: former navy commander david fraver was on the training mission and

remembers how the object quickly maneuvered. >> like a ping pong ball bouncing off a wall. the ability to hover over the water and start a vertical climb from basically 0 up to 12,000 feet and then accelerate in less than two seconds and disappear is something i had never seen in my life. >> reporter: so what was it? the government won't say or maybe doesn't know. for decades, the pentagon's research into these close encounters has been kept under wraps, along with the images and a now defunct $22 million program designed to investigate ufos. so what are we to believe about moments like this? >> whoa, it's getting close. >> it splashed. >> reporter: members of the u.s. navy captured that footage of an unidentified flying object spotted off the coast of california in july 2019, just before it vanished into the ocean. and with so few answers, extraterrestrials have become a

favorite subject for conspiracy theorists, with much of the focus on a highly classified u.s. air force testing facility in nevada, known as area 51. bob lazar is the conspiracy theorist and former physicist who says he worked at the secretive government research site, area 51. he says he was hired to reverse engineer a flying saucer buried there. >> this came from somewhere else. as bizarre as that is to believe, but it's there, i saw it. >> reporter: others have bought into his claims that the u.s. government buried extraterrestrial technology at area 51. >> it looks like sand. it's made to look like the side of the mountain it's in, whether it's to disguise it from satellite photographs. >> reporter: so until someone says for sure what's really out there -- >> no sound, no blinking lights, just this big illuminated form. >> reporter: we'll be left still

to wonder. and it's all so mysterious, anderson, just to think about those former navy pilots. that's not a ufo, it's an airplane. but think about those former navy pilots who saw that tictac-like object who thought it was watching them for the five minutes they were in the same area, which is amazing and sort of mysterious to even ponder. but i should point out that the former head of that $22 million pentagon program that was designed to study ufos did tell cnn back in 2017 that there is compelling evidence, anderson, that we are not alone. >> and this report, it's going to be fascinating even for what it doesn't say. the fact that they said they found no evidence it was an alien craft according to these sources, but they also can't say that it's not something from elsewhere. randi kaye, thanks very much. appreciate it. dr. anthony fauci is pressing china to be more open on the medical conditions of three lab workers in wuhan at the center of the lab leak theory of the coronavirus. a detailed report of the evidence for that theory when we

continue.

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dr. anthony fauci now says

that china must release the medical records of lab workers in wuhan at the center of the lab-leak theory on the origin of the coronavirus. this is what he told the financial times. quote, i would like to see the medical records of the three people who are reported to have got sick in 2019. did they really get sick? and if so, what did they get sick with? the same with the minors who got ill years ago. what did the medical records of those people say? was there a virus in those people? what was it? it is entirely conceivable the origins of sars-cov-2 started spreading naturally or went through the lab. comes after similar comments from the head of the nih, as well as 18 scientists from europe and north america, who weighed in the journal of science last month that the theory's not been given enough consideration. want to get perspective now from contributing editor for vanity fair. so, katherine, in your reporting, you looked into the minors who fell ill in 2012, as well as researchers at the wuhan

institute of virology who got sick in the fall of 2019, reportedly. what -- what did you find? >> well, it's really, quite remarkable, anderson. and thank you for having me on. the minors, in 2012, were tasked with shoveling out a thick layer of bat feces from this mine shaft. they became incredibly ill, you know, with symptoms that, as we learned about them, looked like covid-19, in 2012. the oldest one among them died, first. the disease was fierce, as a master's thesis documented it. it was identified as, somehow, being linked to a bat virus. and the sample from the mine that was taken was, initially, labeled by wuhan institute of virology researchers as something called 4991.

later, in the wake of covid-19, when they wrote about it, they labeled it ratg 13. but researchers, that i write about in my story, realized that, actually, it was the same thing. and -- and the reason it matters it because it is, at this moment, the closest pregenator to sars-cov-2, which is the virus that causes covid-19. so, there are questions about whether researchers at the wuhan institute of virology, somehow, attempted to conceal the links from this cave. and i should say, you know, they were doing research to, hopefully, prepare us for and prevent pandemics. but it seems that, the case of those minors was not reported to the world health organization, at the time. and was concealed. so now, revelations about this cave and the illnesses is

raising a lot of questions. >> and were those miners sent to shovel out, you know, bat guano without respiratory devices? without protection? >> well, we don't really know the details of, you know, what they were wearing or not wearing in the cave. i don't believe that the master's thesis that documents this, talks about that. but, you know, when they cgot t the hospital, they pulled in a top pulmonologist. who wanted antibody testing. wanted to know what sort of bat was in the cave. and it was, in fact, the same kind of bat that was linked to the initial-sars outbreak in 2002. you know, so in my story, i was tracking not only what was happening inside that cave, what was happening to the viral strains and how they were documented. and how they were reported.

but what was, also, happening inside our government. >> yeah. >> to people who were asking those very same questions. >> yeah. i mean, you report that multiple state-department officials investigating the origin of covid-19 were warned repeatedly not to open a can of worms or pandora's box. one official went on the record to say, those warnings, quote, smelled like a coverup. why wouldn't the u.s. government want to get to the bottom of this? >> you know, this is a question, i'm not sure that we know the answer. people inside the state department have said they never tried to conceal any information from the public. what they were simply advising is that the kind of research that was going on in the wuhan institute of virology was not, necessarily, untoward. but the real issue is the -- the kind of research going on in the wuhan institute of virology is called gain of function

research. it's an effort to try to make pathogens more infectious, to see whether they will be infectious to humans. there is a lot of controversy, surrounding this research. so, you know, there is real concern that you've got an institute, seven miles away from the epicenter of the outbreak. that had these strains, which were taken from this mine. those strains were renamed. and they were in this risky game of fufrnction research. now, the other piece of this is that the u.s. government, in part, was funding some of that research. >> yeah. >> from a sort of middle organization called eco-health alliance. so, yeah, go ahead. >> yeah. no. i mean, it's a fascinating report. it's up in vanity fair. katherine, i really appreciate it.

obviously, more to be learned, exactly, on the whole chronology of this. we'll be right back. (vo) jamaica. (woman) best decision ever. (vo) feel the sand between your toes, and the gentle waves of the sea on your skin.

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