the 7pm news, weeknights on kpix 5. >> yesterday he spoke with us in what he said was the period of sharing information about what he thinks still needs to be fixed within the government to deal with future pandemic. >> the chinese government was not sharing useful data with anyone in the world. the world health organization was pa parroting

misinformation about this virus. they were claiming it was not featuring significant human-to-human spread. they claimed for months there was not a significant amount of asymptomatic spread.ng spread asymptomaticly. >> brennan: why is it you were seeing and hearing things from doctors that the official health organizations were not getting? >> we had about a dozen c.d.c. officers in china. we had lots of c.d.c. officers in the united states that deal with chinese doctors. i covered the sars epidemic when i was living in china, working for the "wall street journal." so i dusted off some of my old contacts and talked to

chinese doctors who had information about this pandemic. and they were very open. they said this thing is not going to be like sars. it is going to be like the 1918 flu pandemic because it is spre bit too credulous. we were waiting to be fed information when we were not going to get that information. they had a strong incentive to mislead their own public and the rest of the world about the nature of this virus. >> brennan: so the world health organization has said that covid-19 was circulating in wuhan, china, in late 2019. why didn't u.s. health officials or u.s. intelligence know earlier about this threat? >> well, u.s. intelligence wasn't focused on these kinds of questions.

they were relying on the c.d.c. the problem was the chinese communist party did not turn to their c.d.c. to deal with this crisis. they turned to their military. and our c.d.c. did not have relations established with the chinese military. so the director of chinese c.d.c. based on public reporting didn't know either. the chinese c.d.c. director did not know that this thing was circulating until the last day of december, which is incredible, when you think about that. so it looks like the chinese c.d.c., to some extent, was cut out because they turned to their military to try to cover this thing up, to try to contain it, until it was too late. >> brennan: the biden administration and their national security advisor jake sullivan said he has deep concern about the world health organization's recent report and the chinese interference in it. >> the world health organization, it made all sorts of untruthful, or

misinformed, claims about this virus. so the w.h.o. has a lot to answer for. when it comes to this investigation into the origins, unfortunately what we're seeing is a panel that has been sent to china that is deeply conflicted. you have people who were hand-selected by the chinese government. they had a veto over who could come in. >> brennan: u.s. intelligence has said covid, according to wide scientific consensus, was not man made or genetically modified. you're not alleging it was, are you? >> no. the ledger on the side of the explanation that said this resulted from some kind of human error far outweighs the side of the scale that says this was some natural outbreak. we have very strong reason to believe that the

chinese military was doing secret, classified animal experiments in that same laboratory, going all the way back to at least 2017. we have good reason to believe that there was an outbreak of flu-like illness among researchers working in the wuhan institute of virology in the fall of 2019, immediately before the first documented cases came to light. >> brennan: what you're referring to is some information that the state department declassified right before the end of the trump administration. >> right. >> brennan: and it said that you have reason to believe that a covid-like disease is circulating in autumn of 2019 in china. is there evidence to back up that assessment? >> there is. and that was a very carefully crafted statement, carefully crafted so as not to overstate the case that it

was making. the case it was making was for following up on these important leads. >> brennan: let's unpact some of what you were saying about the reports back here at home. it is reported that you went in and told president trump at the end of january that this would be the greatest national security threat that he ever faced. did he understand the gravity of what you were saying at that time? >> i think he did. that is something that robert o'brien told the president. to the president's credit, he decided to shut down travel from china. >> brennan: around that same time, though, the american public was told this is not a direct threat to them. >> right now there is no reason for americans to panic. it is something that we thinkthink is a low risk to the u.s. >> brennan: is that something you thought at the time? >> i thought it would be

potentially quite devastating. you could match th that with quotes from a great number of people saying the same thing because we did not have hard evidence from the chinese government that this thing was as dangerous as it was. my view was let's prepare for the worst. >> brennan: so in preparing for the worst inside the national security council, you started telling your staffers to wear masks, yet the american public wasn't told definitively by the c.d.c. to wear masks until april. why? >> yeah. remember, we misjudged the nature of this thing to think it was like flu. one of the mistakes that followed that was the misjudgment by public health officials in this country to not advocate for the widespread, generalized use of face coverings, cloth masks and surgical masks and what have you. and that was because they feared shortages.

we put all of our mask-making supplies into, guess where? china. and china was not making it easy for us to get access to additional supplies. that was an understandable thing to do. it then made the mistake of inflating that with a set of advice that masks don't work affectively for the general public. that was a big mistake. robert o'brien and i weren't really willing to wait. so we thought that the risk of an outbreak in the white house could be potentially devastating for the united states. that would create a national security risk. and so in early april, we started looking for supplies of masks. i ended up calling a foreign government. i called some senior officials in taiwan, just to ask for lessons learn. taiwan had done better than probably any other country in the world as containing this virus. so in the course of my

conversation, i asked whether they had masks available. they agreed to send a shipment of half a million masks just a couple of days later. we put those masks into the national stockpile so they would be available to frontline medical workers. i made sure that one box got delivered to the white house and it was disseminated through the white house medical unit. >> brennan: so you knew enough to call the foreign government to ask for masks, and yet the american public wasn't told to wear them and the president wasn't wearing one. how do you make sense of that? >> it's frustrating. the mask misstep cost us dearly. it is the one tool that was widely available, homemade cotton masks that were available, it was the one available tool we had in the arsenal to deal with this. public health officials were stuck in this sort of

flu mentality. it was a grave misstep. the other really grave misstep -- and this is the one that i think we haven't rectified yet, and we have to rectify it -- has to do with the collection and analysis of critical data about how this virus is spreading in realtime. so we can stay ahead of it and ensure we don't get sucker-punched by a new variant that could compromise the effectiveness of our vaccine. this is an area where the centimecenters for disease control has stumbled very badly. i know the new director is working hard on trying to get a far greater number of samples of this virus genetically sequenced, which is critical. everyone should give as muchsupport in that as possible. there are cultural and

organizational problems that need to be rectified at the c.d.c. if we're going to have a chance at success of bottling up this pandemic and also preventing the next one. >> brennan: inside the white house, the commander in chief himself got covid. matt, as a national security risk, did you ever look at say who exposed him and figure out how that happened? >> it was a terrible day. i was overseas when we got the news that the president had been infected. it was scary. >> brennan: but should there have been a real contact-tracing effort within the white house to pin down the source of the outbreak? >> you've got to remember at that moment we had multiple cases. it may have had to do in part with the quality of the tests that we were using. there is a range of different tests that the white house was using to

screen staff. some were more affective than others. i'm not certain there was a failure to do that kind of contact tracing. >> brennan: we'll be back in a moment with more of our interview. stay with us. lactaid is 100% real milk, just without the lactose. so you can enjoy it even if you're sensitive. yet some say it isn't real milk. i guess those cows must actually be big dogs. sit! i said sit! good morning! this is where everything started. the four way is engulfed in history. you're sitting in the place where giants ate.

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celebrate less risk. added cardio protection. talk to your doctor about adding protection with vascepa. >> brennan: we want to go back to our conversation with matt pottinger. i've heard you on all of the criticisms of the c.d.c., and you've highlighted some really specific areas for them to improve. >> my view is they should establish a new super body for pandemic preparedness and response within the c.d.c., probably move it from atlanta into washington, d.c. so the person who in charge of that can also be attached to the white house. >> brennan: so this is your prime reform to the c.d.c. to prevent us from being sucker punched? >> that's one of them. another one would be to create a center for lessons learned, like the

military has. you have a quasi independent body of investigators that can talk to anybody, collect lessons learned in realtime, and then report. it is important that the other senior leadership actually listen to those reports and implement the lessons learned so you have a living organization that is learning. that is not, unfortunately, what the c.d.c. is today. so the final thing about the c.d.c. is cultural. the c.d.c. has developed, over the years, even though it has got great talent in there, and well-meaning people and a lot of expertise -- it has developed an academic kind of mindset. >> brennan: when you say the c.d.c., are you talking about director redfield? >> rob redfield did the very best he could with what he had. i'm talking about in the belly of this institution, the c.d.c. was unwilling to partner with industrial labs to do tens of

thousands of sequences so you could actually see where this thing was going. they wanted to do it internally, and i think the reason for that is they want the data themselves so they can publish. there is a very powerful incentive to partner with academic institutions rather than private institutions, and to direct data, submit for peer review articles that burnish your credentials. that's a very slow process. that's not the kind of incentive you want for dealing with a fast-moving pandemic. >> brennan: how much of this is a question of if this should be handled by public health officials at all, or whether pandemic should be handed over to intelligence officials and handled like a national security threat? >> the c.d.c. does need to prioritize the collection of intelligence on these kinds of biothreats, rather than relying strictly on sister to

sister relationships with or c.d.c. and other countries. i don't think the intelligence community is going to be able to do more than that critical role of collecting and analyzing the information. >> brennan: you're clearly thinking a lot of what could have been done differently. do you think that the trump administration did the best it could? >> we had an impeachment, the first impeachment, trial taking place as the coronavirus task force was meeting, at a time when the country wasn't focused on this pandemic. people in the white house were. people at health and human services and at the c.d.c. were. i never encountered anyone at the senior level who was not deeply seized by the major weight of what we were facing. i do think that people did their best. i'm doing this hotwash, as i call it, in the spirit of trying to help

understand that the narrative that it was all political failures at the top is not true. so what i'm trying to bring to light here is that we have a deeper problem with the permanent government in how we are organized culturally and organizationally to deal with this pandemic and with future ones. i want us to succeed at getting better. >> brennan: matt pottinger, thank you very much for your time. >> thank you. thanks a lot. lot, margaret. >> brennan: our full interview is available on our website as well as on our "face the nation" podcast platform. we're be back in a moment with former f.d.a. commissioner dr. scott gottlieb.

>> brennan: we think we worked out that technical issue in texas and can go now to betsy price, the mayor of fort worth. good morning to you, madam mayor.: orni maryann. margaret. let's hope we got this worked out. >> brennan: i'm glad we're talking now. republicans have been in charge of texas and the energy system by default for years now. after this week's

blackouts, what do you think needs to change? do you trust the state to manage the grid? >> mayor: i think citizens are depending on their local leaders to insist that we get answers. we're going to demand those answers at the state. because the state runs the power grid. and we're the ones who dealt with the issues on the ground. they're going to have to come up with solid answers and solutions. >> brennan: but you believe the state needs to maintain control? i was looking into this, and the majority of the ercot board, the energy grid operator, the people on the board don't even live in the state of texas. are they in touch at all with what is going on? what's the problem here? >> mayor: i certainly hope they're in touch, but it doesn't appear that way. and i think that's what surprised most people more than anything, is that they are not texans, and have not been living here. most people did not realize, including myself. and now you've had the perfect storm, a

state-wide storm that has tested our system. we went through this 10 years ago. i know mayor turner said that, and solutions were put on the table. at the time, texas was coming out of an economic downturn, and they just didn't want to spend the money to do it. now our economy is strong, even with covid, and we're going to have to do that. >> brennan: the governor has said lawmakers should make sure that texans themselves don't have to pay for this. let's be honest, the bill has got to go somewhere. who do you expect to pay for it? >> we expect the state to step up and pay it. of course, the state is taxpayers. and that's where it comes from. but the state does have a big rainy-day fund and they do have access to other sales taxes and things that everybody shares a piece of. they're going to have to take a real hard look of this and see what piece gets back directly to consumers and what piece they pick up on. >> brennan: you would

not support any kind of request to the federal government for increased aid to pick up the bill for this? >> mayor: i think we will go to the feds. they'll probably be a partner on this. we'll just have to work through it and see it. me at the local level, we're focused on getting water and power back to our citizens first and foremost. we're not playing politics here. we're in public service, and we have to get power, water and food delivered to our citizens, but we're going to demand answers as we go along with this process. >> brennan: do you need more federal resources right now? i know president biden has his major disaster declaration. what do you need? >> mayor: well, fema has been very good about stepping up and providing water and some of the services. ththey have provided the state guard. what we're going to need most is probably grants to help people who have broken pipes, who's homes are flooded. my own home is flooded, and i'll have insurance to

help with that, but many people don't. we'll need additional plumbers and resources. there will have to be dollars to help these folks who don't have the ability to pay this thermometer. >> bthemselves. >> brennan: and you can restart vaccines when? >> mayor: we think tomorrow, and at the very latest, tuesday morning. >> brennan: mayor price, thank you for your time. and good luck to you. we'll be right back. sunosi does not treat the cause of osa or take the place of your cpap. continue to use any treatments or devices as prescribed by your doctor. don't take sunosi if you've taken an maoi in the last 14 days. sunosi may increase blood pressure and heart rate, which can increase your risk of heart attack, stroke, heart failure, or death. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure.

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the pipes are... making strange noises. ♪bagpipes♪ ♪bagpipes♪ ♪bagpipes♪ even the plumbers couldn't help us. nope. at least geico makes bundling our home and car insurance easy. which saves us a ton. for bundling made easy, go to geico.com. >> brennan: we want to bring back former f.d.a. commissioner dr. scott gottlieb for a quick final word. we've asked you in the past about what you think happened, the origins of this virus. i wonder what you took away from matt pottinger's insights there. >> doctor: the most likely scenario is that this came from nature. that this was bouncing back and forth between people and animals for a period of time and finally

broke out. i think the lab-leak theory, the fact it could have been an accident out of that lab will never be fully dispelled, and the w.h.o. should not walk away from that so easily. one thing that matt said was that the chinese institute was in there during experiments with animals. and it could have jumped from animals to people inside that laboratory. >> brennan: and he detailed some of that. we'll have our full interview online. i was pressing jake sullivan on some of this. he didn't dispute the report, and he also doesn't address it. but the bottom line is that both administrations agree there needs to be more data shared by china. specifically what answers are needed? >> doctor: well, look, one thing that you would want to look at is antibody tests in people who worked in that lab to see if they have prior exposure to covid.

those tests may not show antibodies at this point in time because it has been some time. you would want to see that data for sure. you would want to see some of the original strains and try to get closer to the source of the initial outbreak. >> brennan: important to protect us against the next time. dr. scott gottlieb, thank you for your insights. that is it for us today. until next week, for "face the nation," i'm margaret brennan. ♪ captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

♪ ♪ turmoil in texas. the heat is back on and the state is still in crisis, millions scramble after a deadly and devastating deep freeze. texas is scraping its way out of a crisis. the need for food, and clean drinking water, unprecedented. >> also, terrible toll of covid wary america confrequents 500,000 lives lots. >> a terrible historic the couny. stimulus push. democrats speed ahead for economic aid for struggling americans. also, air scare. >> may day, may day. >> a near disaster over denver.