now believes a lab leak in

China is most likely

the cause of the COVID 19 pandemic.

Now, before

now, the department said it was undecided

on how the virus emerged.

It cites updated intelligence

for this new assessment.

Now a caveat.

Sources tell

CNN the Energy Department

has just low confidence

in these findings.

China, predictably, is furious

and pushing back.

David Culver joins us now.

So, David,

you were in Wuhan

in China in January of 2020

where the first COVID cases

were detected.

There was a theory back

then that the virus had emerged

at a massive food market there

and then travel to animals.

Tell us

about how China is now

responding, though, to this new report.

You hit it, Brianna,

when you said that

they're not happy with it.

This infuriates them.

This is one of the most sensitive issues

for the Chinese government.

And it's been so sensitive

going back to, say,

April 20, 20 a few months

after the initial outbreak

that they launched

this relentless propaganda campaign

to try to counter the narrative,

to try to sow doubt and deflect blame.

And it seems to have been

mostly successful within China

and that it's muddied the waters there.

But their reaction

a few hours ago

from the foreign

ministry is one of the

we've really, quite frankly, seen

many times before,

and that is

they're telling the US

to stop smearing China

and to stop politicizing the issue.

Also worth noting in that response

from the foreign ministry today,

they point out the W.H.O.

conclusion

after their field visit in 2021

and they say that the W.H.O.

field team determined

that it was highly unlikely

that a lab leak

was the origin of COVID 19.

That is true.

The W.H.O.

field team

did say that and in their conclusion

to that field visit

the issue is the unknown Victor.

That also went on to ask for a second

follow up field visit.

And the Chinese

said, no, that's not going to happen.

They did not let that team

back into Wuhan, China.

And we're hearing

from some of those scientists

who are part of that.

And they told me early

on that

they had asked for data

from some of the Chinese officials

who were on the ground

and that data was never handed

over to them.

Would

cover thank you for

the reporting and stay with us here.

CNN national security analyst Juliette

Kayyem is joining the conversation.

She's the former assistant secretary

of the Department of Homeland Security.

Juliette,

how much credence should people give

a most likely report

from the Energy Department

in which they only have low confidence

Right. Not much.

And I'll just be clear here.

You have to look at the totality

of the intelligence

community's assessment.

So it may be confusing

to people who haven't been in this world.

I've been a consumer of intelligence

my entire career. So you have four.

So so

what happens when there's a question

like this is different

intelligence communities

assess what they know

and what they've determined.

You are going to rely on the Expertize

of certain intelligence

agencies over another.

So a perfect

example is a maritime threat.

You're going

to lean more heavily on the Coast Guard

than you would say on TSA.

On an aviation threat.

So right now, here's

the scorecard, so to speak.

You have the Department of Energy

at low confidence,

the FBI at medium confidence

for intelligence agencies.

More likely

than not on the natural release side

and an overall national

intelligence review

Also in the state,

most likely that it was natural.

These are all caveated.

And so we don't know.

I mean, the truth is we don't know.

But the idea that

that in energy department switch

to low confidence is changes

that calculation

or should be used

politically is

just it's a misunderstanding.

Of how the intelligence works.

So, Juliette,

how should we read these qualifiers then?

Because the FBI had deemed

this moderate confidence

that this began in a lab.

And now we have this information

from the Department of Energy.

Low confidence.

Right.

So.

So these are all just levels of caveat.

In because intelligence is

is something that has to be consumed

and then assessed by analysis.

So here's where I start.

Not a single intelligence

community member nor the W.H.O.

believes that it is purposeful

bioterrorism.

I want to make that clear

because it is

this report

is being manipulated to suggest

that China was purposeful.

All the lab leak theory

is also an accidental theory,

no matter who you ask.

It is

that someone

got infected in the lab

and then it starts to spread.

So between the lab leak and and

and natural causes.

The second point is

we won't know because China,

of course, views this as as a threat

to whatever narrative they were,

the narrative that they want to put out.

So we don't have full transparency.

And so the question

now is, what do we do with this?

Why does this matter?

What matters obviously

because you're going to want labs

to be safer and

and to know what had happened.

Does it change?

Does it

change a

narrative about how each individual

country responded? Probably not.

And the reason why we want to be careful

about how we interpret

this is because as we're

reporting, China's reaction does matter.

I mean, you know,

I mean,

if this was a lab leak,

it's very different to them

than if this was in, say,

a market or natural causes.

So but I'm

maybe I've been in this role too long.

I'm comfortable in the space of

we don't know yet,

but the

totality of the intelligence community

believes

more likely that it was natural causes.

And all of the intelligence community

believes that it was not bioterrorism.

David, talk to us more about Guha.

And you've been there

three times since the initial outbreak.

Talk to us about the research labs there.

There's more than one.

There are there

there are several and two

in particular, Victor,

that have gotten

the focus

of those who are skeptical

of how the Chinese have handle this.

And to Juliette's point,

the idea that this was manufactured

and intentional, that this lab leak then

is the source of COVID 19

and that this is what

the origin theory is rooted in.

You can put that aside and you can say

perhaps it is accidental.

And then the amplification in point

where it was really that initial outbreak

was that market.

But when you look at the labs,

I think this is really important.

You have to

look at the circumstantial evidence

of where they're located.

One of them is about a 30 minute drive,

the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

From that first amplification

point, the market,

the other just two blocks away.

And the other thing

that is undeniable

that all of this is the early handling

or mishandling

from the Chinese government.

I mean, we covered this extensively.

There was the silencing

of whistleblowers,

one of them being a doctor who

we spoke with a few days

before he ultimately died from COVID 19.

And he was simply trying to warn friends

and family

that this was a strange

mystery illness going around

that got screenshot at it

and went very public

and got him in a lot of trouble

with local police.

So there was certainly

from the local government in Wuhan

an effort

to stop the rumors,

as they put it, from being spread

and to keep this quiet.

And that is ultimately

what folks are looking at here

as the real culpability factor,

even beyond how this started, is

how it was mishandled and the cover up

that followed.

Yeah, I remember you covering that, Dr.

David.

I believe he was an ophthalmologist

or something at the time,

and it was just heartbreaking to see

what happened to him.

Julie,

I think the overall concern here

is not necessarily

just pointing the finger

at who's to blame here.

We know that this virus

originated in China.

We know that, unfortunately,

we will see future viruses and pandemics

to come.

And the fact that China

has not been