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view of governments. >> immediate,, we believe whether it's here or in the middle of anywhere, should have access. media, support c-span along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row proceed to democracy area. street journal national security reporter warren strobel joins us now. he has been on the trail of covid and plenty of stories in recent days. here is the latest. fbi director says covid pandemic likely caused by covid lab leak. what do you say? guest: whether working the story for three years now.

wray acknowledge fbi division assessment is that the pandemic was caused by a lab leak. i thought it was interesting he decided to do it publicly. up until now the u.s. intelligence committee has given overview but none of individual agencies have acknowledged where they are. host: is it because of the story you published over the weekend about the energy department assessment on the same assessment of a lab leak. guest: there was a direct correlation. the doctor one to get out there and say we think it is true and we thought this before the energy department did have expertise. host: colors have been bringing up your story that you and your colleague wrote this weekend. why would the energy department look into the lab leak? why are they doing an assessment

? i'm send the fbi but why the energy department? guest: looking back my have explained completely in the article. the energy department back in 1960's established that the division -- z division. laboratory studies weapon programs in foreign countries. they do the same with china and iran and over the years have developed specialties not just in nuclear but chemical bio up is as well. have expertise out there. the fbi energy have expertise. host: how many different agencies are looking in the origin of covid? guest: nine.

there are 18 members of the u.s. intelligence community, the latest being space force, of the 18 a lot of them do not have expertise. it is really nine. host: how many of those nights do we know the conclusion so far? guest: the intelligence committee as a whole does not have final conclusions or assessments. anyone who tells you i know where this came from is wrong or making it up. you have four agencies who lean with low confidence towards this came from nature. you have two fbi and imagery who lean -- you have two, fbi and energy, who lead near a lab leak. host: john kirby make in this point from his press conference

on monday. [video clip] >> the intelligence community and the rest of the government is still looking at this. it is not been a definitive conclusion so it is difficult for me to say, nor should i how to defend press reporting about a possible preliminary indication hearing. but the president wants facts. he wants the government to go get those facts and that is what we are doing. we are not there yet. when we are there and if we have something that is ready to be briefed to the american people and congress we are going to do that. host: john kirby on monday. what will it take to get u.s. government there to a certain number of these agencies have to agree? guest: yes to get a consensus within the intelligence committee. lots of expertise.

in the original report, they said to get have an answer we need more answers from china or cooperation or more information. i do not think anybody -- it is still a mystery. it is what we feel is important to keep reporting on this. host: the idea that they assessed with low confidence. what does that mean? guest: low confidence, high confidence and these are structured in political terms in the intelligence community. they do not pick them up it had. low confidence means the information is caught -- incomplete and not conclusive. we do not know the new intelligence as a but it is enough to push the energy saint we do not know to reassess, likely more likely than not it was a lab leak. host: how long have you been looking into the origin of covid?

guest: three years. host: do you have it there relating to? guest: i miss you the agnostic cap. i cover complex issues in the past but have not seen one piece of evidence or another that makes me say that is it. on the other hand, there are some people on capitol hill who say it is a lab leak and scientists it was a we know for sure it was not a lab leak. i do not think we know. host: are there origin stories that can be discarded at this point? guest: in the follow-up and discussions about our story that broke on sunday, i do not think enough attention has been given to what we reported. the original report by the director of national intelligence said reassess -- we assess this is not a engineered biological weapon. in the file -- follow-up report,

reaffirms that consensus more strongly. host: what should we draw from this? where the intelligence community is? they're leaning towards this was a mistake. guest: an accidental lab leak that procedures, shoddy equipment, but again, there is chatter on capitol hill and elsewhere that this was a deliberate created weapon in the intelligence community have businesses they do not believe that is the case. host: we invite callers to join the concession -- the conversation. warren strobel of the wall street journal. how long have you been there? guest: four years. host: to call in, republicans,

202-748-8001. democrats, 202-748-8000. independents, 202-748-8002. he is with us until the bottom of the hour, 8:30 a.m. eastern jeff is uppers in new york. independent. good morning. caller: i would like to point out the origin of covid compared to a lab leak is not clearly delineated people create lab leak with an engineered virus and of course the scientific evidence shows that overwhelmingly it was not concession and not biologically

engineered because there no genetic engineering technology available that can possibly have created sars-cov-2 that creates covid-19 from any of the viruses we know. it is a misnomer and it does an injustice because if we do not continue to find the truth as to why this occurred for not going to be able to prevent the next pandemic. we need to be able to study this. we need to do it securely. we need all the proper safeguards in biotech labs to make sure it is safe. we do need to continue this. if we discontinue it because a falsehood, it would be a tragedy. guest: really good points. we do need to find out how to

pandemic started in order to prevent future once. there's a good opinion piece saying either way we should do both things which is improve our bio security and improve our monitoring of viruses that come from nature because we do not know but we need to stop the next pandemic. in genetic engineering, yes intelligence say there is no signs of engineering. i will add two points, you can leave no trace and others cannot tell you do so. if it was not genetic engineered, it was possible the virus was modified pass through humanized mice. the could have been worked on in the lap without being genetically engineered. host: have you been to china to do reporting? guest: no.

some of my colleagues, once again cap and almost got way to the mind where they will have a lab went to to do fieldwork and collect studies from bats and i think he got stopped near the entrance of the mine. host: has anyone been to the pond lab i guess talk about so often? guest: i do not think. i am pretty sure no reporters have been there. there are american scientists, european scientists who work is setting there before the pandemic. host: tina in alabama. line for republicans. caller: good morning. exactly what you just said. january or february 2020, they came across a department of justice statement that the dean of chemistry from harvard was arrested in december 20 19 for having two chinese nationalism working with them. he had a lab in wuhan since

2014. you can look at the department of justice website to see that arrest. donald trump mentioned that also in february 2020. thank you for doing the research. good luck. guest: thank you for the call. i'm only vaguely remember that case. it was a case i believe was later dismissed. we have to be careful, michael gordon and i prepared to report the story we knew it was set off a fireball and it will be seized on by components of the lab leak to make whatever political point they wanted to and that happened. we also knew and were concerned investigative issue does not become an anti-china to it because i will be bad. -- because that would be bad. host: right in california on the

line for democrats. good morning. caller: good morning. i'm curious. i know barack obama left 12 or 15 scientists in wuhan when he left office in the first thing donald trump did was remove them. with that have helped -- would that have helped -- monitor the viruses coming out of china? by moving them, did not do any damage? thank you very much. guest: really good questions this morning. i do not know about the number but it is true that the trump administration came into office ended or curtailed a program which was to monitor deposit -- pathogens around the world.

they also closed down or reorganize an office at the national security office at the white house dealing with national security threats. some officials will say they did not downplay the issue and they put a lot of emphasis on it, but that program was closed down. host: alan in hawaii on the line for independent. good morning. caller: good morning. it's great to speak to you and to warren. i'm having deja vu because back in 2020 of april we had robert on, i spoken to him. he answered in the affirmative that he thought was a high probability that a lab leak could have been an introduction

of the virus in china, that was before anyone understood what the potential scenarios where. my thought would be with all the information coming out again, it's going to be recycled until china is willing to reveal the necessary data to pin it down, is how we work with organizations that also submitting funding to lapse in china. people are concerned about these processes and they need to be considered -- the other part is the intelligence agencies but you're not talking about the cdc epidemic intelligence service which also should have a role in the analysis as well. i will let you discuss that. host: 4/29/2020 robert gallo

director of institute of human biology. guest: also he was the cowinner of the nobel peace prize for identifying the hiv virus. one day that makes it more complicated covering the story as many scientists have stuck with a wagon and said it cannot be a lab leak because of it turned out it raises questions about by security procedures, how much research you can and should do, and scientists want to do as much research as possible and do not want to be limited. we do not get this into article there's not room but it is an issue about what american dollars from u.s. in essence it -- national institutes of health and how it was used.

there are conspiracy theories that people are demonizing, dr. fauci and he said monday through wuhan through third parties to create a bioweapon, that is expert in theory -- is a conspiracy theory. host: what is gain of function research? guest: you take a pathogen, dangerous virus or bacteria and make it more lethal, more infectious to study it, to make a vaccine against it, to understand how it may evolve over time, making something more dances -- more dangerous to protect against that. host: is the u.s. government funding gain of function research? guest: yes. whether it is all in wuhan is another discussion. we know they funded research in china in wuhan lab on

coronaviruses, whether that involves gain of function, i cannot sit here and say that right now. host: good morning, you are on with warren strobel. caller: good morning. i do not think you could trust the country to the -- the country who has concentration camps, destroys evidence which would be necessary to determine whether it came from the lab or not, but regardless they still knew that the virus was how this -- the virus was how contagious, arrested their own doctors, people could not leave to go to other parts of china but they allowed wuhan citizens to travel all of -- all over the world effectively creating a biological bomb. regardless of whether elite or not, they knew it was contagious and they were -- regardless of

whether it leaked or not they knew it was contagious. guest: at think car right in some of the actions you described and what makes this difficult to cover in the aftermath of the virus coming out china took steps to look like a cover of taking information online, arresting or restraining doctors in positions who spoke out. we do not know where they trying to cover up something or a knee-jerk reaction by an authoritarian regime they would have done in any case. the u.s. intelligence community, $90 billion and 18 agencies say we need more help from china to help us figure this out. host: warren strobel on this story for more than three years. what is next steps for you? what do you want to find out next? guest: i do not want to tell my

competitors who may be listening exactly what, but there are several. we would like to know more about what the intelligence was to let the energy to change its position. host: we do not know that? guest: it is classified. this beautiful building behind us, there is going to be a lot of hearings that will hopefully shed a little light and a lot of heat. there's a special committee on covid which will look at a number of things. the origin of covid andy u.s. government response -- the origin of covid and the u.s. government response. it is a very fascinating mystery. i've cover intelligence, national security for a long time and the most interesting issues in intelligence have to do with scientists and they are the origins of covid,

unidentified flying objects, all scientific/intelligence issues which are interesting. host: how did you and michael gordon get on this story? guest: we originally right as the pandemic, we cover intelligence, to look at what committee and how did they perform. the answer to that is not that of all because they were not a posture to cover the report and cover pandemics. from that initial report on how the intelligence community performed, we moved on to how is the community changing and how -- and what we know about the virus. host: the investigation by path you follow that you make about. it is a book in working? guest: we have discussed that

there may be a book here. i think someone should do a book. might as well be us. host: we have booked to be on c-span two. taylor, independent. good morning. caller: to the reporter, can you stop being so vague about what you are doing. if keep saying you do not have a lot of definitions for things. can you tighten up on your definitions. when was the u.s. government notified that about the potential covid-19 and allowed it to spread to the states? if you're concerned about something, focus on how the united states responded and set of where it came from. guest: ouch. i apologize if i. bake. i'm trying to be careful what my -- i apologize if i appear vague

but i'm trying to be careful with what we know and what we do not know pretty -- what we do not know. . i think there's a lot of reporting out there with u.s. whispers -- when the u.s. realize this thing existed and the transference from human to human and they might become a pandemic. i think that it started out pretty well in documents. host: doug in new jersey, republican. good morning. caller: good morning. how come three years ago i knew this was a deliberate act of a bioweapon release on our country to get rid of trump, he was hurting the chinese with his policies. it was meant to hurt our economy. the response by government, we now know they lied about the deaths of covid.

the over exaggerated the deaths and the treatments. other countries used improve work. that was not allowed here. we had to use big pharma. it is a big moneymaking scam. it hurt our country permanently. now we paid the price permanently. we'll have these choque investigations. -- joke investigations. guest: there is no firm evidence that there was a bioweapon deployed to hurt our economy . if it was a bioweapon, it was a stupid bioweapon the chinese because it hurt the chinese and killed a a lot of chinese as well. host: rj in oklahoma, independent. caller: i'm retired psychologist

and this is a joke. you cannot see what china is doing? you're going to get canceled. if you say anything more than you are, you are done. host: on the lab leaked theory and the response to it early on. what you saw from the reporting side as you are asking questions about this, administration officials come what did you experience? guest: i would say with the country experience. president trump, mike pompeo, and their a's at the end --aids push the lab leaked theory. many people who do not like trumpets it has to be bs. let's not touch that. time goes along and michael gordon and i break a story saying there were three sick

researchers at the wuhan lab in october ish between 19. that story landed at the same time every look at the lab look very and against our story that we did on sunday, it is because people to take another look and take a lab leaked theory seriously without saying we know what it is. there has been a change over time and willingness to look at this. host: jimmy in athens, georgia. good morning. caller: good morning. i have two questions. the first is about the chinese journalism investigators. are there chinese journalist doing investigations about this story? my second question is about the nord stream sabotage. you have any reason why should believe or disbelieve that story? guest: as second point first, i

was treated with skepticism. it was a single source and a night on the record by spokespeople of the cia and white house. those agencies are denying on the record and putting their names out there. in chinese journalism, there are no independent journalists in china. there are investigations and discussions and debate on social media that publish very well and get shut down. there are good chinese journalists operating outside of china. host: what is china daily yucca -- what is china daily? guest: it is not run by the communist party. it shows up on our doorstep in the morning and other news organizations around d.c. host: it is the state newspaper. we showed it earlier this morning.

there is a hearing to happen on capitol hill about threats from china. does not get any mention on the front pages of today's china daily. i do have a front page story on the overblown balloon story. guest: that is a part of china's tropicana effort. you cannot stop it. i do not have any problem with them doing that as long as we know what the newspaper is and we consume it and judge in that way. host: warren strobel national security reported with the wall stst >> merrick garland testifier the first time before congress and was asked about justice department investigations. watch the hearing tonight, at 9:00 eastern on c-span, c-span now, or online at c-span.org. >> cpac, one of the largest

annual gatherings is back in washington, d.c. this week. watch c-span's coverage of the conference. speakers include donald trump, nikki haley, mike pompeo, members of congress, conservative activists and media personalities. watch the conference from washington, d.c.. c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, and within comcast. >> comcast is partnering with 1000 community centers to rate wi-fi enabled listings. >> comcast support c-span