welcome to amanpour on pbs. tonight he exposed one of the start up scams in silicone valley history. john carry on the multimillion blood business too good to be true. >> plus, how the west has failed the people of syria and talk of a trump-putin bargain to keep assad in power. good evening, everyone and welcome to the program.

i'm christiane amanpour in london. as silicone valley faces increasing scrutiny, we begin with a tale reminding us to be wary of the next start up's promises. elizabeth holmes was once the start up darling. her company promised to do away with painful sharp needle blood tests, replacing them with one simple pick of the finger. she had the look and the drive to become the youngest female billionaire, revered by entrepreneurs and politicians. she attracted big name investors. at one point henry kissinger, george schultz was on her board. there was just one problem. it was all a fraud. john brought down this house of cards. and his new book "bad blood" laying out his investigation into the scandal. he explained what first tipped

him off and his pain taking pursuit of clues when he joined me this week from new york. >> welcome to the program. >> thank you for having me. >> so, look, we have announced your book "bad blood" is interesting. what got your attention? what made you delve into this story? >> well, i had covered health care at "the wall street journal" for the better part of ten years, and i read a profile of elizabeth holmes in the "new yorker" magazine in late 2014. she had rocketed to fame about a year earlier. but that story is the one that put her on my radar. i thought that there was some strange things in that story. the thing that struck me as the most odd was this notion that a stanford drop out with no formal training in medicine or in laboratory science could just

drop out and, you know, invent new science, new medical science that would completely revolutionize the industry. i found that hard to believe. to be fair, i wouldn't have done anything with that hunch if i hadn't got a tip a few weeks later. and that tip came from a practicing pathologist in the midwest who also read the new yorker profile and had also been very dubious of the claims and the central claim was that she could run the full range of lab tests from a drop of blood picked from the finger. he knew from experience that that was actually a very difficult scientific nut to crack. he wrote a skep skeptical blog identi identity. >> she claimed and he got a lot of investors and publicity and road the wave of silicone valley start-ups and he was a woman. maybe that played into it. but tell us exactly what the --

what the claim was, what the promise of revolutionary medicine in science. >> right. she claimed that she had invented a device that could run the full range of lab tests, which if you speak to experts means anywhere from several hundred to several thousand blood tests, off a tiny pinprick of blood obtained from the fingertip. that's actually very difficult to do. no one had cracked this nut. people had been trying in about deem yeah and industry for decades. she claimed to have done it and it would have had very interesting applications. it would have made blood testing much for friendly and less painful. a lot of people don't like the big syringe being stuck in their arm. as elizabeth holmes told it, people would get their blood tests more often and therefore

diseases would get diagnosed earlier and people would have to say good-bye to loved ones less often. >> it really was a dramatic claim. for a long time, as we all know, people were really excited about it, even the vice president, joe biden, visited. and there are all these pictures of him and elizabeth holmes. then it turns out in your book that the lab, the quote, unquote lab that he visited was a total fake just staged for that visit. i mean, how does she get away with it for so long? >> i think it speaks a lot to this ethos in silicone valley of you fake it until you make it. and she really modelled herself after steve jobs. steve jobs was her idol. apple was her idol. she modelled herself after the computer industry. that's what silicone valley is. it gave way to the personal computer revolution and today the internet and smartphone

apps. during these 40, 50 years of silicone valley, people have faked it until they make it. she followed that road map. >> so she didn't talk to you for this book, did she? she definitely didn't cooperate. but you do portray a really fascinating profile of this woman. i mean, just one of the sentences, she had the presence of someone much older than she was, the way she trained her big blue eyes on you without blinking made you feel that the center of the world. it was almost hypnotic. >> right. well, one thing i'll say is that i don't think she dropped out of stanford at 19 years old in 2003 with the notion that she was going to execute this long con and defraud investors and put patients in harm's way. that was not her motivation originally. her motivation was to create a great company and to walk in the footsteps of steve jobs and to become a very successful silicone valley entrepreneur. the problem is that as the years

went by and she encountered difficulties and set backs, she refused to acknowledge them and go back to the drawing board. she papered them over and she continued to overpromise and to fail to deliver and to lie about the fact that she was failing to deliver. so this is someone, as the years went by, who used her intelligence and her charisma to basically hide her lies and her salesmanship became, you know, one giant lie. >> and she fired doubters. even i was fascinated to read that even though maybe through nepotism, the grandson of george schultz got a job and he reported back to grandpa that something was rotten in the heart of denmark and he didn't believe im. they weren't buying it. >> that's right. tyler schultz graduated from stanford in 2013 and a couple months later went to work for

her full-time and ended up spending eight months at the company. and over the course of that stint become convinced that the company was behaving unethically, that it was cutting corners and essentially the whole thing was a scam. he went to his grandfather and was on the board and tried to convince his grandfather that it was all a fraud. and his grandfather wouldn't believe him and sided with elizabeth holmes. so he had to keep all that bottled up after he left the company for about a year until i came along and i reached out to him and we made contact and he became a corroborating source for my investigation in the wall street journal. >> it is absolutely stunning to think that something to big. hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and, you know, there is magazines that talk about her success. you quoted somebody as saying the whole project looked like an

eighth grade science project. let me ask you the bottom line. did people's lives get put in danger? were there tests that could have been life threatening? >> absolutely. there is no question. the company itself has avoided or corrected almost a million blood tests in california and arizona and the l l l l lab director who was working there until a few weeks ago was lobbying elizabeth holmes to avoid every single blood test the company returned. we're talking eight million drug tests being voided. one is a test that measures the speed at which blood coagulates. it is an important test for doctors on blood thinners to prevent strokes. doctors use that test to determine the dosage of the blood thinner. and if the dosage is wrong, the patient can either bleed out or

his or her blood can clot and he can have a stroke. so these are tests that people rely on for super important medical decisions. there is no question that the behavior of the comny and of its founder put patients in harm's way. >> isn't there a peer review process that forbids these kinds of claims getting on to the market before a thorough testing? >> that's another thing that elizabeth holmes was very expert at doing, which was navigating a loophole between the fda which reviewed and approves the diagnostic equipment that companies make and sell to laboratories to do their tests and then on the other hand cms, the centers for medicare and medicaid services, which is the main overseer of laboratories in the united states. and there's this gray area between these two regulators known as laboratory developed tests, which are tests that are fashioned by labs with their own

methods, which means they are not made with -- they are not performed with the diagnostic equipment makers that the fda refused and those ltds, as they're known, are not closely overseen by cms either. and elizabeth holmes argued her tests were done on proprietary technology and therefore fell in this gray's zone and she exploited that expertly, drove a truck through that loophole. >> and of course what we said, to a large extent, a fawning press helped to build her up. when you started to pick holes in it, she was pretty angry. this is what she said. we'll play a little bit about what she said about your reporting. >> my dad was a reporter with the san francisco chronicle. i told you this before we were going on stage. and he said to me that the job of a reporter is to tell truth to the readers. and we've seen two articles that were published that were false

and then immediately even picks it up and reprints it as if it's true. >> i mean, you know, i wonder what you think of that. i mean, she is really adept at putting her own side of the story across. >> right. i actually watched that interview. that took place in california, and it was streamed live to wall street journal subscribers and i watched it from the news room in new york. during those 30 minutes she told one lie after another. it was quite incredible. this was about ten days after my first investigation had been published, and i expected her to come out swinging. but i didn't expect her to lie to boldface lie the way she did in public. it was quite amazing to see. and it drove home the lengths to which she was willing to go to, you know, uphold the myth that she had built around herself. >> and of course rupert murdoch owns the wa"the wall street jou

which but were writing for and one of her biggest investors. >> she went to him several times, including two weeks before my first story was published. she met with him in his eighth floor office and tried to get him to spike the story. i had no idea she was on the premises. >> what is becoming of elizabeth holmes? what is her fate? >> she has been indicted. she was indicted about ten days ago on wire fraud charges. not just elizabeth holmes but also her ex-boyfriend who was the number two of the company. so unless they reach a plea deal, we are looking at a federal trial and prosecutors will look to prove those fraud charges and she will try to convince a jury that she didn't do anything wrong, that all she was trying to do was build a company and that unfortunately the company failed, but that doesn't mean it was criminal.

>> what would have happened if you hadn't called her out? >> that's an interesting question. when i started digging into the company, walgreens was on the cusp of taking their partnership national, which means the blood testing services they offered in walgreens stores in northern california and arizona would have been rolled out to the more than 8,000 drugstores throughout the country. and i think, had that happened, the chances that patients would have died from either misdiagnose or wrong diagnoses that would have caused them to get unnecessary medical procedures would have risen. i don't know how long it would have taken, but she would have been unmasked. there would have been patient complaints, doctor complaints. i think employees would have come out of the wood work, current and former, and either another journalist or a regulator would have looked into it. and i think it was a matter of

time. >> really amazing. i mean, it is almost like a who done it. author of "bad blood." thanks so much for joining us. it is a riveting and cautionary tale. now, it is hard to imagine that we would get to such a state of war fatigue that syria could now be called the forgotten war. after seven brutal years, images of the conflict have faded from the front pages, but the tragedy is still as alive as ever. in the past couple of weeks alone, the united nations says that almost 300,000 syrians have been displaced by assad's push. assad can stay in exchange for moscow ousting iran from the battlefield. even though russia has already said a complete pull out by iran

is unrealistic. to break down all those complexitie complexities, i spoke to a man who focuses on the middle east and north africa. he spent his career analyzing the region and joined me here this week en route to washington seeking support for a new political solution. >> welcome to the program. so i wonder what you make and whether you think it is cynical that as we speak president assad is calling on syrians abroad, syrians who fled to come back to their homeland. they have liberated certain areas. what do you make of that? >> well, they're not going back any time soon. in fact, in the last four or five months, we have had the largest internal displacement, a million people. so people are voting with their feet. what is now going on in the southwest of the country is further testament to the fact this crisis is not over. people are still on the move.

>> yet, people might think it is over because it has fallen off the radar in terms of news coverage. we're hearing that maybe president trump backed by the saudi crown prince is going to try to make some grand bargain when he meets vladimir putin. allow assad to stay and try to get the russians to take iran out of syria. what do you make of that? >> first of all, christiane, it's been greatly frustrating. we ask ourselves who is trying to make peace in syria? and why is it that we have an effort going on, perhaps by some of the fighting forces on the ground, particularly the russians and the iranians and yet the western alliance has pretty much backed out when it comes to peacemaking. firstly, it is good. it is good that russia and the united states are trying to work together. we always knew that cooperation, especially as this sere

onconflict has become much greater than syria needed that kind of big power engagement, europe, too. but if it depends on getting iran out of syria, it is no a nonstarter in my view. >> what do you think that? >> for iran, in my view, this is a strategic choice to be in syria. they invested an awful lot of money, blood and treasure in establishing itself in syria. and the signs that are, in fact, they still are working on that particular project. >> but let me just play you what the national security adviser john bolton said about this and we'll talk a little more about this issue. but clearly it is an idea that somebody thinks it is a really clever one. >> there are possibilities for doing a larger negotiation on helping to get iranian forces out of syria and back into iran,

which would be a significant step forward. >> were you supposed to do so? >> to have an agreement with russia, that's possibly. >> so you pretty much poo-pooed that. >> there are 80,000 in syria today. the force right now is supporting and training militias part of the southwest offensive. economically, iran is using its foundations. so to think and with regards to eastern syria, they are going over to the syrian tribes. to think it will be easy, even for the russians who, remember, need these foot soldiers inside syria in order to maintain their interests, i think this is a prospect, at least in the short term, it is not going to come to fruition. >> slightly devil's advocate. but if iran thinks the united

states of america and russia and all the other major powers are going to guarantee their client to stay in power, why wouldn't they decide to pull back? they're obviously stretched in syria. they're undergoing some, you know, protests at home. there is economic pressure because of the u.s. pulling out of the nuclear deal. >> well, again, it is a strategic point to syria. and i heard iranian officials and syrians talking about how the iranians stepped in in 2012 and were telling assad hold on to damascus with your fingernails if you have to. and now they have established a military presence, in fact, they are in circles around damascus. they have established themselves within the security operators. so, again, it is not something at a time when they are coming under pressure, a card they are going to give away. this is a strategic choice. >> before i ask you what you think your solutions are, what

do you make, then, of president trump who keeps saying, i've got tough with iran. i'm pulling out of nuclear deal and, boy, look iran's behavior is changed. i've had an impact. it's doing things differently around syria. >> let's go back a little bit. under the previous u.s. administration, they made a big mistake. the jcpoa should have been linked with iran's regional ambitions. it was not. many of us talked to senior u.s. officials at the time trying to make that linkage. so now president trump and other regional players, saudi arabia, have made that linkage. so it is time to get tough with iran's behavior in syria and elsewhere. but the way to do that is not, in my view, through another military escalation because i don't believe even the united states is willing to do that, especially in syria. and even for israel it carries major risks.

it is to get ourselves on a path towards a truly inclusive political process that involves syrians who want change. >> do you think that's even possible? where do you see this? you talked about a proper inclusive political solution, but this has been the demand of the un, the demand of different negotiating tactics over the last many years since this war began. really where do you see that? you are going to the united states. what do you expect to tell them and to hear from them? >> well, under the ongoing games of the football world cup, the russians haven't stopped. they are, in fact, engaged in an energetic effort to get a political process going. it is now in russia's interests to cap the gains they have made politically. that's through a political process. the un envoy is very active right now. and the focus is on this idea of a constitutional committee, which would set the pathway towards a knew constitution or an amended constitution which

would take us to fresh elections. this is not going to happen overnight. it is going to take perhaps a number of months, even years. but, and this is the big but, if the west does not show up, if the united states does not take more of an interest in the political process itself, we're not going to be able to achieve the aims even that the united states has set for itself. >> but again, president assad has never taken seriously any road map for any kind of inclusive political solution ever. >> you're absolutely right. and, in fact the -- >> and now he thinks he's winning. and he thinks he's gotten the president of the united states on his side and even the prime minister of israel. >> absolutely right. we started the discussion talking about how they still report to have u.s. cooperation. the russians have been able to move president assad in the direction of politics. and, in fact, president assad himself has now talked about moving forward on a political presence. of course, he would like to do it on his terms.

that constitutional committee won't will fair and balanced if it is left to one party. that is why the united states, european powers, the so-called small group which is meeting on the margins of the nato meeting as well as later on needs to be able to present new and fresh ideas in order to move that along. >> i have just spoken to the former deputy national security advis advisor. there is a lot of defensiveness. he basically said that no one supported it. no ally, no parliament, no congress. but he also said this about what they might have failed at at the very beginning before it went into a full blown war. just listen to this. >> everybody focuses on the military question, which, you know, we've debated many times. there was also the question of at the beginning we probably presumed that assad was going to go. you know, we had -- we moved

pretty quickly to call for him to go publically. obviously i believe certain people would have better off with him gone. but by doing that, without a clear strategy that we're going to put means behind to remove him, we kind of closed the diplomatic window in a way. >> so how do you react to that analysis of what they did back then? >> first of all, the obama administration thought that words and declarations by itself will magically change the equation in syria. we all know, those of us who know the government of assad, it wasn't going to go away just like the others. it required real will power and it required a real international effort. of course russia and other -- china and the security council thought the regime change should not be on the cards, especially after the experience of syria. but after that -- >> with iraq you mean.

>> right. and libya. but after that we got into a situation where we just supplemented more words and declarations. in fact, what required was ingenuity on the diplomatic side. we need to bring together the government, the regime and the opposition. and there is a much broader mass of syrians that needed to be involved in peacemaking, which is now what is happening. >> thank you very much, indeed. >> talking to me earlier this week as he was headed to washington. and we should soon know whether there is some kind of bargain to be immediate over syria between presidents trump and putin. that is it for our program tonight. thanks for watching amanpour on pbs. and join us again next time.

>> national presentation of bbc world news is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> welcome to bbc news on pbs and around the world. i'm nkem ifejika and these are our top stories. a brexit breakthrough. the british prime minister says cabinet ministers are backing her plan for leaving the european union. >> this is a proposal that i believe will be good for the u.k. and good for the e.u. and i look forward to it being received positively. nkem: the u.s. and north korea agree to