COVID Lab Leak Controversy Discussion

So shortly after, it was COVID.

So it was, like, uh,

early in 2021, maybe January, February.

I'm seeing online and elsewhere

people that I thought were smart and serious,

Jamie Menzel,

m- uh, mostly saying, uh, and o- and others, "Maybe this leaked from the

lab."

And I was like, "Well, that's interesting." So I went to

Nightline, I said, "Hey,

you know, I'd like to do a story on..."

And they were like, "Great.

Yeah, let's do it."

So we, we just r- across the board, we, we talked to, you know,

m- molecular virologists, we talked to people in the Trump

administration,

uh, who had been in the Trump administration.

We broke a little news that there...

the, that lab had been funded by the Chinese

military despite the bat lady saying

no it hadn't.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, and that came from the security, uh, uh, a tip from, from

inside the, um, one of the three letter agencies in the

government.

And we kind of laid it out, and at the end of the day,

my own personal feeling

was, you know,

I, talking to everybody, it's... uh, I thought it's probably a little bit more

likely it's natural, but if you told me it had leaked from the lab,

fine.

And it's probably not cooked up. It's probably not a Franken-virus.

But I didn't, I didn't reach that conclusion, I just laid it out.

And we're ready to go, and the day that it, that it's supposed to air, it

gets reviewed, and it comes back to me, and it is

incomprehensible.

And I'm...

I had never be- I had never been angrier.

I'm in the, I'm in the booth-

And these are lawyers?

Lawyer standards.

And I was told,

"Fauci."

Oh?

And I said, "I can't do this, and they're going to

air, and they..." You know, it's a tw- 15-minute piece or whatever, and

I'm cursing and screaming in the, in the booth.

And this is day of?

Day of air.

And I'm just absolutely livid beside myself, and

I was... And I'm usually...

I, I tried to be a good colleague that way.

Uh, it's important to be respectful of

somebody on the other end of that

mic taking it in in New York, so they were... And, and the editor.

And I w- but I was...

I c- I, I've never watched that story, and never want to.

Because it wasn't mine, I didn't think, and because, most importantly, because it

was incomprehensible. They had put so many caveats in there

and so many that...

and it was so legalized and l- uh-

Wait, so they took the story that you did and

either sent a copy of a transcript or a copy of the video to Anthony

Fauci?

It w- it would've been, uh, uh, it would've been the script.

Um, uh, th- that's what I was told. I don't know

that that's true personally, but I was told that.

And the idea was just suggesting that it wasn't

a wet market and it was a lab leak was

dangerous?

Well, if you... You know the whole story, right?

There, uh, there was an organized campaign by one of

the guys who was funding the

research at, uh, what was the name? Dat- DASAK or w- whatever.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, to get scientists to sign on and say, "There's no way there's a lab leak,"

and anybody who says that, that, that this came from the lab is, you know,

p-

participating in racism or something.

Uh, and that really silenced... I mean, our standards, uh, ABC

News's standards people took that absolutely to heart, and it

was not going to

be d- uh, discussed as, uh... That potential was killed for a

while.