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Amanpour
Interview With "Who Knew" Author And IAC Chairman Barry Diller; Interview With "The Mission: The CIA In The 21st Century" Author Tim Weiner; Interview With National Institutes Of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired July 18, 2025 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARRY DILLER, AUTHOR, "WHO KNEW" AND CHAIRMAN, IAC: Because I wanted so much to, I guess, please, my mother, it gave me kind of the ability to
please older people in the earliest stages of my career in ways that other people weren't prepared to do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: The man who changed the way we use our screens, media mogul, Barry Diller opens up about his dysfunctional childhood and finally
becoming the product in his new memoir, "Who Knew."
Then --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TIM WEINER, AUTHOR, "THE MISSION: THE CIA IN THE 21ST CENTURY": The CIA was not set up to be a lethal paramilitary force, it was not set up to erect
secret prisons or to inflict torture during interrogations. It's an espionage service. It's supposed to spy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- "The Mission." Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Tim Weiner charts the history of the CIA in the 21st century and warns about the
dangers ahead.
Also --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. JAY BHATTACHARYA, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: There's no such thing as Democratic science or Republican science. Science should be
something that is for all the people. And science can't work for the people if basically everyone distrusts it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Walter Isaacson speaks to director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, about the future of medical research in a
world of funding cuts.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiana Amanpour in London.
And we begin tonight with a man who's transformed the way people around the world enjoy entertainment, shopping, and even dating. Just think of some of
the biggest titles in film and television. "Greece," "Saturday Night Fever," "Home Alone," The Simpsons," Barry Diller help put them all on our
screens.
And it's not just Hollywood he conquered, as a businessman he's been ahead of the curve too. After becoming CEO of Paramount Pictures age just 32. He
then went on to launch the Fox TV network. He made home shopping the habit of millions.
And later, founded the conglomerate IAC, which has owned dozens of brands, including household names like Tinder and Expedia. Yes, remarkably in the
space of one lifetime, Diller has gone from working with Katharine Hepburn to Sam Altman.
But the story of Barry himself has never really been told until now, in his own memoir, "Who knew." He answers questions that have persisted for
decades with candor even about his personal life, and I spoke to him about the experience of looking back and opening up finally.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Barry Diller, welcome back to our program.
BARRY, DILLER, AUTHOR, "WHO KNEW" AND CHAIRMAN, IAC: Nice to be with you.
AMANPOUR: So, you know, I've interviewed you about other things before, but I want to start with something you say actually towards the end of your
book. You say, all my life I've been engaged in almost every form of creating product. This is the first time I've ever been the product itself.
So, obviously I want to ask you, how does it feel to be the product. But more to the point, because reading it, it's incredibly detailed, it's
incredibly candid. What inspired you to tell this story in this way now and why now? Why did it take you so long?
DILLER: Oh, I've had a long life, but, OK. So, yes, being the product after having taken care of people who are the product for your life, it has
taught me a lot of things. It's very daunting when you are actually the product and exposed. It's one thing to tell people what to do and how to
function, how to direct and produce things or create things. But when you are the thing, oh.
AMANPOUR: Well, it's a really good read. It's really engrossing. It's you know, touching. It's also shows your, really, sort of hard ass side when it
comes to business. And also, your, you know, creative side clearly.
But I want to go, you know, at the beginning. I didn't know obviously any of this, even though I kind of know you, I'm going to declare an interest.
I know you and your wife Diane Von Furstenberg. But the details of your childhood, your upbringing were really, to me, surprising. You write, the
household I grew up in was perfectly dysfunctional. You talk about your parents who were disengaged, your brother who was a toxic bully, and you
never even met one set of grandparents or most of your relatives, your -- you know, your aunts or uncles, cousins.
Where do you think -- or do you think that led to your drive and your ambition or not?
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DILLER: Well, first of all, I think most of it comes from biology. I mean, I just have this motor ticking around that is almost unstoppable. But I
also think that all the things that happened to me and all of the circumstances of this dysfunctional family in odd ways, a lot -- gave me --
maybe I wouldn't -- I don't know about saying, wanted those weapons, call them weapons, but those abilities.
But the fact that I had one big fear, which was sexual confusion. That big fear allowed me essentially -- if you have one big fear, one anil over your
head, then other fears disappear. So, I was able to take all sorts of risks that other people might not take, excuse me, because I had this one big
fear.
Now, would I have rather traded not have that, because it was painful and difficult and all of those things? I don't know. Well, now, it's a lot of
years later. So, I probably would say, you know, who cares? But I think the things that happen to you are separate and apart from your natural juice.
Of course, they give you -- they both give you limitations and they give you advantages. And I -- because I wanted so much to, I guess, please, my
mother it gave me kind of the ability to please older people in the earliest stages of my career in ways that other people weren't prepared to
do.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
DILLER: So, that was an advantage.
AMANPOUR: Yes. And I'm going to get to your one big fear in a moment. But about your mother, you tell a story about waiting for her, your mom, to
pick you up at summer camp. You were only seven years old. What happened that day and what was your takeaway?
DILLER: Well, I got lonely and I wanted her to come and get me. And she said she would come and get me. And you know, like those little snapshots
that you have in your brain that never go away, you know, you can recall them. They're absolute snapshots clear as a clear picture.
So, I remember us sitting on basically a tree stump and waiting for her to come hour after hour, and they would say to me no, no, come back into the
camp. And I said no, no, no, I'm waiting for my mother. And she never came. And when I finally realized she wasn't going to come, it was a very cold
revelation, absolute complete revelation that I was not to be protected.
And so, it colded (ph) me out. I kind of -- I did give up. I gave up on her and I gave up on parental protection, because I didn't really have it from
anywhere else. And it kind of -- it froze me over. Luckily, I mean, I think the two things that can come out that is your other fall apart or you
become very independent. You also become kind of cold and untrusting in that people will help you. And that's that. I mean, certainly, I mean, it
didn't scare me. It just resolved in me that I had to be independent.
AMANPOUR: Yes. Well, it's a very hard lesson to learn. And as you say, you are also consumed with this one big fear as an adolescence, and that
would've been in the 1950s. You recognize that your sexuality wasn't of the conventional model back then.
And to understand what you were feeling, I mean, I think this is incredible. You rode your bike to the Beverly Hills Public Library to find
books about homosexuality. What did you learn in your research about yourself?
DILLER: Oh, I mean, again, I have -- I do have lots of these snapshots that will -- you can't get rid of them, which is, I remember, first of all,
browsing that thing for books on homosexuality, and there were like, I don't know, three, four, five, and I took each one down and read like
horrifyingly that this was just -- not just, this was a clear mental disease.
And every book and everything I read in the probable hour I was there was about how this was a sick thing. That there was no mental health hope for
someone so afflicted and I got back on my bike and I rode back to my house and I thought, I really did think woe is me.
AMANPOUR: Well, you wrote, to my confused adolescent brain being exposed as a homosexual meant the end of life as I knew it. Well, that's
heartbreaking. But then, I assume you take all of this and you just pour it into being independent, getting ahead.
[13:10:00]
And of course, one advantage of your growing up in Beverly Hills, you were surrounded by the most famous of the famous, the actors. You weren't in
college at 19. And you had an epiphany that the only career that really inspired you was the entertainment industry. So, what did you do? You
picked up the phone to one of your best friend's fathers.
DILLER: Yes. I was very close to the Thomas family, Danny Thomas, who was the -- at that time -- this is the '50s, he had I think number one or two
comedy series. I mean, he -- and he was actually William Moore's agencies, theatrical agency's biggest client.
And I knew I wanted -- I was drawn always to the entertainment business. And I'm 19 and I didn't need to get a job, but I thought, I really want to
learn about this. And there was this mail room where they took people in to kind of train them to be agents. I didn't want to be an agent. I knew I
could never be an agent because I could never ask anyone to -- I didn't have the confidence to say, I'll represent you or whatever. And I knew I
didn't want to do that. But what I did want to do was absorb things.
And in those times where before digital there were -- there was this huge file room and it had, I don't know, a hundred big filing cabinets, which
literally had the history of the entertainment business. going back 70 years. And so -- I essentially, my three years in that mail room, I didn't
do any mail, but I read the file room. And that gave me this extraordinary kind of, I don't know, foundation for understanding almost every facet of
the entertainment business. I mean, it was just this great good luck, like going to Oxford to read.
AMANPOUR: Exactly. And you immediately put it into practice. You took a job as an assistant at ABC after your mail room university. And in really short
order, given your youth and inexperience, you launched ABC's famous movies of the week. It was the first time any network had ever produced its own
entertainment.
I mean, you became, you know, the head of a department. You put out dozens of movies a year, and you call it your first startup. That -- I mean,
really in retrospect, can you imagine how that happened?
DILLER: Well, I lived through it, so I can tell you. I mean it happened, really, because everybody thought it would fail. No one had ever made
original movies for television before. And so, I'm 20 -- maybe I'm 25 by then, and I had this idea that we should do this.
And because ABC was the third network, they would try anything. And also, there -- it was a kind of candy store operation where if you want a
responsibility, you could just take it. And also, again, they thought it would fail. So, they gave this kid the opportunity, so to speak, or the
disastrous potential of making 25 original 90-minute movies.
And so, I built this organization starting with me and then adding people onto it. And when you do that, you kind of have to know what they're going
to do. So, I had to learn those tasks, which to me is the best way to learn to become a manager.
And within -- actually, after the first year, it was so successful, they ordered a second night. So, we were up to 50 a year. And then, that year,
it was so successful, we did a third night. And so, in the third year, we were making 75 movies a year in this operation that had started with me,
this one person, and had grown to probably a couple of thousand.
AMANPOUR: It's incredible, because it really set the stage for many different networks to copy that and, you know, the whole series and the
movies of the week have become sort of what we all now expect, right? But I want to ask you a fun story because you populate your book with stories
about so many of the amazing who's who of old Hollywood. Everybody loves Katharine Hepburn.
You have a funny story about her. You were, I think in London on a shoot. You had an issue and her father was a urologist. What's the story?
DILLER: Well, her -- I'm on a plane to London. And I realize -- I feel this enormous pressure to urinate and I can't. And that -- and I land it's got
worse and worse. So, I go to the doctor. He immediately puts me in Guy's Hospital in London, and they -- I had a prostate infection, right?
[13:15:00]
And the next morning probably, I don't know, 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, I was asleep. And at the foot of my bed is Hepburn kind of banging on the
metal thing to wake up. And I say, oh, please. She said, look, I came before. She was shooting a movie at the time in London. And she said I'm on
my way, but I had to stop and I know exactly what to do. My father's a urologist and I know what we've got to do to get you to pee.
And I said, would you please go away? I do not want you to -- I'm very happy in my bed. I don't care if I ever do it again. Just leave me alone.
She literally grabs my arm, drags me, she says, I know what to do. Drags me up and down the halls of the hospital and very wide halls, and we're going
up and down like five times and I'm like, oh, when will this end? Shoves me in a bathroom? And of course, she was right. And she didn't -- you know,
Hepburn, she didn't say goodbye, she just left. Typical Hepburn.
AMANPOUR: Just an amazing woman. Well, you were saved by nurse or Dr. Hepburn. Dr. Kate. So, listen, so then you went on and on to scale ever
higher heights. You took over Paramount Studios. But at that time, then you sort of found your family. You met, as I said, the iconic fashion designer,
Diane von Furstenberg, and you write, while there have been a good many men in my life, since the age of 16, there's only ever been one woman. And she
didn't come into my life until I was 33 years old.
I think it's sort of love at first sight, but you boyed (ph) it -- yes. Tell me about it. Tell me. I can see you smiling now. She gave you
something that you hadn't had before.
DILLER: It's not -- it was -- I mean, it was a (INAUDIBLE). I mean, she -- we -- the moment we started talking to each other, some -- you know, this
does happen. I mean, the moment it was just a complete -- it was a rush in ways, different ways, I suppose, for both of us. But for me, I hadn't
certainly expected it. And it was an explosion of passion. And it surprised -- certainly it surprised me, but I didn't question it. I would never
question anything like that. Of course -- I mean, how could you question something that was simply powerful on its very own?
And we began our life together, which was in the late '70s -- sorry, God, mid'70s.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
DILLER: And then, in the late -- and then in the late '70s, we broke apart for -- we were separated for about 10 years and then we came back together
and our lives have been -- well, there was kind of years of wilderness, but our lives have been intertwined ever since.
AMANPOUR: Let me get back to you for the end of your book now. So, you essentially wrote your own epitaph in one sentence, I've worked hard,
helped make some beautiful things, tell some great stories, built companies and created jobs.
And, you know, I don't want to, you know, admit that you've been on the cutting edge of just about everything, travel companies, dating sites,
online shopping, publishing companies, hotels. And I just wonder, were you aware -- what made you have that courage to just be ahead of the curve on
so many of these things that you started and tried, and did successfully?
DILLER: Well, I had -- I mean, I think actually two things -- three things. I had a better sense. I had a higher tolerance for risk. Also, I have
innate curiosity. I didn't -- I can't claim it. It's biology. I'm just curious. And then -- and I think the third thing is serendipity. Things
happen to me along the way that are inexplicable. And that serendipity, yes, things happen that are -- you just can't -- that they have to be from
some celestial, whatever it is.
And it does, of course, depend whether you then have the will, and I have a lot of will, to execute stuff. But I think it's those things. I guess. In
the end, I think it's actually just biology. I can't be -- I can't be prideful about it.
AMANPOUR: As you write, "Who Knew," that's the title of your book. Barry Diller, thank you so much.
DILLER: Pleasure to be with you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Still to come, "The Mission." Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tim Weiner tells me why he thinks the CIA has strayed from its original
purpose and where it goes next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:20:00]
AMANPOUR: In a global landscape marred by war, from Ukraine to the Middle East and beyond, intelligence is often critical and course changing. There
was the massive intelligence failure of 9/11 and false claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which led to the U.S. invasion of 2003. But fast
forward to Ukraine in 2022 and the American Intelligence Community got it right. They said Russia would invade Ukraine and it did.
Now, with President Trump. 2.0, there are also concerns over the agency's politicization. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tim Weiner builds on his
history of the CIA with a look now at how it's performed in the 21st century. That's his new book, "The Mission." He told me what he sees as the
agency's biggest problems and what could lie ahead.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Tim Weiner, welcome back to our program.
TIM WEINER, AUTHOR, "THE MISSION: THE CIA IN THE 21ST CENTURY": Thank you so much.
AMANPOUR: You have continued your amazing saga, really, and history of the CIA. Let me just ask you first about the Iran situation, which was a whole,
you know, intelligence and military operation, both by the Israelis and the United States.
So, in June, President Trump comes out and says that we've, quote, "obliterated" Iran's key nuclear enrichment sites. Do you think that was a
correct description? You apparently think it's an example of a problem with the current CIA. Why so?
WEINER: The intelligence, both American intelligence and Israeli intelligence, said that the Iranian nuclear program was set back but not
obliterated. And when a reporter asked the president about this, he said, I don't care what the intelligence says. And this is a big problem. If you
are an ideologue, as our president is, your mind is made up. You don't want to be confused with facts. You don't care what the intelligence says. This
can lead to great dangers.
When the CIA tried to convince President George W. Bush that al-Qaeda was about to do something terrible, although they could not tell him the
precise hour or place that something terrible was about to happen, he didn't listen. He did not mobilize the government. He did not go on a war
footing against al-Qaeda, which had declared war against the United States.
There might be something oedipal about that. His father had been director of CIA back in the 1970s. They did not have a comfortable relationship with
one another. Leave that aside. One Cold War director of the CIA, Richard Helms, once said, if we are not believed, we have no purpose. If the
president puts intelligence in scare quotes, "intelligence," he doesn't believe it, he disdains, despises the CIA, he thinks it is the capital of
the deep state and this will cause trouble down the road. Mark my words.
[13:25:00]
AMANPOUR: So -- OK. So, there's a lot there and it's really, really fascinating. And of course, you are taking this episode, if you like, of
your CIA history from the beginning of the 21st century, pretty much the 9/11 moment as you've just described and just before it.
Tell me how and what happens, you know, if the president doesn't believe the intelligence. You said this is, you know, a very, very slippery road.
So, give us an example. I mean, we all know essentially the George W. Bush Iraq scenario. There was a huge amount of mixing of ideology, political
belief, and mixing up intelligence around that whole 9/11 Iraq war paradigm.
WEINER: There were several disasters that followed the 9/11 attacks. One was that the CIA director, George Tenet, who was a good person, but over
his head, said, oh, lord, well, we didn't connect the dots before 9/11, and now we're going to give the president all the dots. Every morning at 8:00
a.m. for months on end after 9/11, the CIA director would come to the White House with a long list of uncorroborated threats. He had told every
friendly foreign intelligence service in the world, give us everything you have no matter how farfetched.
Every morning, 40, 50, 60 threat reports came to the White House. They're coming for Los Angeles. They have a second wave of attack. They've got
nuclear weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons. They're going to hit the White House. And the director of CIA, George Tenet, said, you could
drive yourself crazy believing even half of these threats. And the trouble was we didn't know which half to believe.
This drove the White House mad. It really did. This is where we lost our perspective. After 9/11, counter-terrorism swamped everything, the CIA was
ordered to be the pointed end of the spear on the war on terror. The CIA was not set up to be a lethal paramilitary force. It was not set up to
erect secret prisons or to inflict torture during interrogations. It's an espionage service. It's supposed to spy. It's supposed to recruit
foreigners to enter into a criminal conspiracy with CIA officers to commit treason against their country and let the CIA know what's really going on
behind closed doors in the high councils of the Kremlin, in the Iranian majlis, in the high councils of enemies.
For 15 years, counter-terrorism took over, and that didn't change until the Russians ran one of the most successful covert operations in history,
penetrating the American democracy and monkeywrenching the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump.
AMANPOUR: This is another really interesting inflection point because this is -- goes to the heart of Trump's relationship with the CIA, then and now.
But first, I just want to stay for a minute with Iraq and this famous -- infamous false claims now, we know, of WMD.
You quote one former CIA Iraq operative told you, these guys would've gone to war if Saddam had a rubber band in a paperclip. Talking about the Bush
administration, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, or all the hard liners. Again, just there, how did politics become so entwined or corrupt intelligence?
WEINER: In the summer of 2002, the Senate intelligence Committee requested an estimate, a national intelligence estimate. This is the reporting of all
known thought on a controversial or difficult topic. And they wanted it in three weeks, and they wanted to know what was the status of Saddam's
arsenal.
Well, the CIA hadn't had a spy or a covert operations officer in Iraq since 1998. They didn't have any intelligence. And what little they had came from
dubious sources and one skilled liar, an Iraqi defector, whose code name was Curveball.
The CIA put together this national intelligence estimate with the scantiest of intelligence. And they falsely reported that Saddam had nuclear,
biological, and chemical weapons capabilities far beyond what he actually had.
[13:30:00]
Saddam wanted the CIA and his mortal enemies, the Iranians, to believe he had these weapons. He believed if they thought he had them, that would be a
deterrent. The CIA did not have the espionage capabilities or the analytical capabilities to put this together, and so informed the world
that nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, threats from Iraq posed an existential danger. The stench of that bad reporting lasted for many years.
AMANPOUR: I mean still, you know, the shadow of it still hovers obviously o over so much. You mentioned the Trump era, of course we've moved there now.
On his first full day, and we all remember, he did go to the CIA headquarters. He said, quote, "There's nobody that feels stronger about the
Intelligence Community and the CIA than Donald Trump." That was after he had already cast doubt on the intelligence agency's assessment. As you
point out, the Russia tried to meddle with the election.
What did you make of that moment? How pivotal was that in the integrity of the CIA and where is it leading now in Trump 2.0?
WEINER: Well, Trump's speech on his first full day in office of his first term was a desecration. It was a political speech. He bragged about his
enormous crowds that had turned out for his inauguration, lying through his teeth, as he commonly does. And it was kind of a desecration in the days
after CIA officers and analysts put a more than a few bouquets in front of the memorial wall where he spoke, in which our engraved the stars of CIA
officers who have died in the line of duty. Something had died. And that was the idea that the president would ever rely on or believe in the CIA
again.
Shortly after this, in the wake of the Russian attack on our democracy, a new chief of the clandestine service, top spy, took over his name, which is
reported for the first time in "The Mission," Tomas Rakusan. His roots are Czech. He was nine years old when Soviet tanks rolled in to Czechoslovakia
to crush the Prague spring and resistance to Soviet domination.
His feelings about the Russians were intense, bred in the bone. And he called in -- this is the spring of 2017, he called in his top operations
officers who had spent the past 15 years targeting terrorists. And by targeting, I don't mean putting warheads on foreheads. I mean, figuring out
who are they? Where do they live? What do they think? Who do they love? Who do they hate? And how can we recruit them to become agents of the CIA?
And he said, look here, I want you to take those talents and train them on the Russians. I want you to recruit Russian spies, Russian diplomats,
Russian oligarchs. And the result of this, four years later, was that the CIA penetrated the Kremlin and stole Vladimir Putin's war plans for
Ukraine. And that marked the return of espionage to its proper place of dominance at CIA.
And stealing that secret, no mean feat. Even more audacious, the CIA told the world about. And that had a galvanizing effect on the nations of NATO.
At first, they cocked their eyebrows and said, oh, really? Aren't you the people that told us that Saddam had WMD? But when the intelligence proved
correct, and the intelligence was not obtained solely by the CIA, it was through liaisons with a large number of foreign intelligence services who
work with CIA, including from countries that you would not think of as American allies.
These intelligence liaisons with foreign intelligence services are essential for the CIA to try to be a global intelligence agency. And they
are endangered by the fact that the president has wrecked American alliances all over the world. And by the fact that the president has
appointed a collection of crackpots and fools to run the instruments of American National Security at the Pentagon, at the FBI, at the Director of
National Intelligence, and I'm afraid at the CIA.
[13:35:00]
AMANPOUR: Well, you know, a lot of people said that John Ratcliffe, who you're talking about, is -- you know, is a pretty decent professional when
it comes to this kind of stuff. He -- you know, I guess that, you know, they have compared him to other members of the cabinet who you've talked
about and come up sort of more thumbs up and thumbs down. But, you know, he did just make a criminal referral or the former CIA Director Brennan,
accusing him of lying to Congress and about Trump and Russia.
So, again. It's gone back. You say, you know, the reveal of the Kremlin war plan to invade Ukraine, these marks a high point, a return to a high point
in espionage, and now, it looks like it's heading down to a low point again, of mixing politics and ideology with -- you know, with the figures
who are meant to not do that. So, where do you think that's going to lead?
WEINER: Nowhere good, I'm afraid. John Ratcliffe is a political animal. He has a track record going back to the first Trump administration of twisting
and distorting intelligence to please Trump. He has asked the most senior and experienced officers and analysts at CIA to find another line of work.
He has fired everybody the CIA hired in 2023 and '24 at the past of Trump and Elon Musk. He has started ideological purity tests for officers seeking
promotions. And he has eliminated the CIA's diversity policies.
Diversity is a spy services' superpower. It's how you don't get caught. You want people with the cultural background, with the language skills to blend
into the population. Terrible decision, all done in the name of political fealty to Donald Trump. Fealty, blind loyalty to a president is not part of
the job description of the CIA director.
AMANPOUR: So, much there. Thank you so much. Thank you, Tim Weiner, for your book, "Mission" and for being with us.
WEINER: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Stay with CNN because we'll be right back after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Now, President Trump's second term has heralded division and uncertainty for many in the medical research community with cuts to
research funding and scrutiny of the health secretary's approach to vaccine policy.
When Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was appointed as director of the National Institute of Health, he pledged to address what he calls the American
chronic disease crisis. And he tells Walter Isaacson how he plans to do so and the challenges ahead.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And, Jay Bhattacharya, welcome to the show.
BHATTACHARYA: Thanks for having me.
[13:40:00]
ISAACSON: Back in November, you wrote an opinion piece endorsing RFK Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, and you referred to a rot, I
think was the word that had accumulated at the NIH, the place you now lead. And you wrote, the National Institutes of Health, whose annual budget is
$45 billion, orchestrated under the leadership of Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, a massive suppression of scientific debate and research.
What in your opinion was suppressed and is it as bad as you said back then?
DR. BHATTACHARYA: I mean, I think -- I mean, I probably would be a little kinder in writing it now than I do, but I do still stand by the idea.
ISAACSON: Wait, let me pause by. Why would you be kinder?
DR. BHATTACHARYA: I've had now an opportunity to meet one-on-one with Francis Collins. And we've forgiven each other for, you know, whatever has
happened. And he famously wrote -- and this is an answer to your first question. He famously wrote an e-mail to Tony Fauci on October, 2020, right
after I'd written this document called "The Great Barrington Declaration" in October, 2020, calling for opening schools, lifting lockdowns, but
protecting older people better.
He called me, you know, Harvard -- a Stanford professor and my colleagues who wrote it, the Harvard professor and an Oxford professor, he called us
fringe epidemiologist and he called for a devastating takedown of the premises of the declaration, which then led to like death threats and all
this kind of nasty stuff. That was an abuse of power. That was an abuse. It was an attempt to essentially end the debate about the lockdowns from
above.
And you know, I've forgiven him and I don't want to really dwell on it. But I think that -- just, that was -- that led then to a whole host of sort of
dominoes falling where, you know, you couldn't have a conversation with social media about the lockdowns or about then -- subsequently about the
vaccine mandates and a whole host of other things without getting suppressed. You could -- you essentially -- and scientists would call me
and tell me that they agreed with me, but they were afraid to speak out because they were afraid that they're -- you know, metaphorically, their
heads would get chopped off. It made it difficult to have a scientific debate.
ISAACSON: Well, let me unpack what you've just said, which is now that you've talked to him and you understand, you're both forgiven each other.
Why did it become so divisive? And do you think people like Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins made mistakes or do you think they were intentionally for
some ulterior motive trying to mislead people?
DR. BHATTACHARYA: I don't think that -- my philosophy about interacting with people is I assume the best is about whenever I meet people. And I
don't -- and say that I have some ulterior motives that I don't know about.
But what I can say, and I entirely agree with the characterization, maybe you don't agree with the characterization, but the characterization that
they made mistakes, right? So -- and those mistakes were consequential mistakes, right, leading back to even before the pandemic, approving, in my
view, research, a research line aimed at potentially prevent -- they were saying to prevent pandemics, but a -- that many people believe may have
caused the pandemic, this sort of dangerous gain of function research that people talk about.
ISAACSON: You're talking about in the Wuhan Lab in China.
DR. BHATTACHARYA: Yes. I mean, they supported that research, even though many people -- members of the scientific community were very -- were saying
that that's not kind of wise to do this research. You know, it's like, Enrico Fermi, when he put the nuclear reaction that launched the nuclear
age in the squash court and University of Chicago, he did a calculation asking, what's the probability that this nuclear reaction I've caused is
going to, you know, spread around the world, unstoppably? And he found it was zero.
They supported an agenda, a research agenda aimed at predicting which pandemics would happen, but carrying the risk of causing a pandemic. And
they said that the risk was worth it. This was before the pandemic. During the pandemic, the -- Tony Fauci worked very hard, I think to -- I mean, in
many ways, I think to -- I think in good faith -- I don't know him personally. So, it's hard for me to say about his motives. But what he came
across as is conveying certainty about things that he didn't -- should never have had certainty about. The school closures, the risk of COVID to
children, underplaying essentially the evidence of the harms of the lockdown. And then later with the vaccine, overconfidence about the ability
of the vaccine to stop you from getting and spreading COVID. All of that led to policies that -- I mean, we can talk about this in some, but like it
led to many, many policies that harmed children. It harmed the working class; it harmed the poor at scale.
And I don't blame just Tony Fauci alone. He was part of a public health community `embraced this. But the key thing there, to me, is that we needed
to have a discussion, a debate, an honest conversation with each other about this. And that was denied to the American people in the world at
large. There were many scientists that agreed with me that kept their heads down because they didn't want their careers destroyed and damaged.
[13:45:00]
I would love to see a return to a science that like where we respect each other's opinions, even though we disagree, may disagree, we may -- we'll
bring evidence to it. We can discuss whether the evidence is right. I mean, that's the kind of scientific community I grew up in. And I love to, as the
head of the NIH, help the scientific community get back to that.
ISAACSON: Do you think it would be useful to have a commission, a nonpartisan expert commission, to say, what did we get right and what did
we get wrong during COVID? And is it possible in this age to have such a commission appointed? Who would you put on it?
DR. BHATTACHARYA: Yes. I mean, I naively, I guess, wrote a Wall Street Journal article in 2021 calling for such a commission.
ISAACSON: Could you just announce one?
DR. BHATTACHARYA: I could, but it's -- there's a lot of -- OK. So, let me just tell you the philosophy I've had. I have a problem that a large part
of the country no longer trusts science or public health. That's a problem for me and for the NIH. That's just a fact. Whether you disagree or agree
with them or not, that's the fact that I have to face.
At the same time, a large part of the country believes that science was ignored, or anti-science forces led to the issues that happened during the
pandemic. And they blame, you know, president Trump or Bobby Kennedy or others for this.
My job as the NIH director is to essentially bridge the gap between those two groups. I believe very fundamentally that science should not be
partisan. There's no such thing as Democratic science or Republican science. Science should be something that is for all the people. And
science can't work for the people if basically everyone distrusts it.
So, we have to figure out a way to solve the gap, to solve this divide that we have in this country. Like we shouldn't be using the NIH as a cudgel to
paint Bobby Kennedy or President Trump as anti-science when they're not anti-science. They care deeply about science. I've had conversations with
the president, I've had conversations with Bobby Kennedy, and they want the scientific knowledge to be translated into better health for people. You
can see it in every conversation they have -- I have with them.
And at the same time, I understand why there's this deep distrust. A lot happened during the pandemic where people -- regular people look and say,
well, why do I have to put a mask on when I walk into a restaurant? Then I sit down, I can take it off. How does that prevent the disease? Why is it
that children as young as two in the United States are recommended to get masks, but in Europe the recommendations people over 12?
ISAACSON: The NIH, you know, for a long-storied history has opposed to fund scientific research that's would be difficult to do in the private sector,
because it doesn't lead immediately to patents and making money. And now, we've been cutting, it seems to me, some of the NIH funding. Are you
worried about those cuts and do you think we should be basically doing a lot more in fundamental science?
DR. BHATTACHARYA: Right. So, Walter, there hasn't been any -- there have not yet been any cuts. And when I've gone around Congress and talked to
folks, what I see, again, from -- I mean I've had the privilege of talking to dozens and dozens of folks on both sides of the aisle. I see a --
basically universal support for the NIH's mission and for -- and what I see is that even from the -- from President Trump, a commitment to making sure
that the U.S. is the leading nation biomedicine to the 21st century.
I don't believe that the cuts that have been proposed will happen, just as a matter of like objectively looking at the pattern of what support there
is in Congress and even within the administration. I think that --
ISAACSON: Well, wait. You're not totally in favor of those proposed cuts. You're going to want to deal with Congress and --
DR. BHATTACHARYA: Well, I mean -- yes, I'm not supposed to -- I'm not to be supposed to -- I'm saying this as a matter of like analytically. I'm not
saying my personal opinion. I'm just saying that -- and I will say is that the NIH, when it's doing the things it's supposed to do, it has huge
benefits for the American people in terms of advanced knowledge that helps cure cancer.
I was just talking actually today this morning with some of the folks who were behind the advances in -- that have led to essentially a cure for
sickle cell anemia. Something that affects a lot of -- especially African American kids, that is seen as -- when I was a med student, the idea that
you could cure it seemed inconceivable.
ISAACSON: You're talking about genetic editing using CRISPR?
DR. BHATTACHARYA: -- for instance. Yes, exactly. And so, the cell-based therapies. And now, I was hearing about is you don't even need cell-based
therapies. You can just do it with -- essentially, with an injection. I mean, it's really, really, really promising. And that's why you have this
bipartisan support for the NIH is because if you can make the NIH focus on its mission, its mission is advancing -- research that improves the health
and longevity of the American people. Nobody's against that. Nobody's against that.
[13:50:00]
And if we actually achieve it, it'll -- it's -- and I believe it's possible, we can, it -- it'll secure American's health and also buy
security into the 21st century.
ISAACSON: You know, last month about 300 staffers in your NIH signed something called Bethesda Declaration. I'd love you to be able to respond
to it. In which they decried some things happening at the NIH, including politicizing research they said, interrupting global collaboration, saying,
we're compelled to speak up with our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources. I
mean, these are people who work in your building and work for you. What have you done to address that, and is there anything that made you think or
change from that?
DR. BHATTACHARYA: Yes. So, just a couple of points about that. So, one, I'm going to meet with them actually I think early next week. I'm going to have
them in a round table what -- and what we can -- I mean, I really value this kind of collaborative back and forth. And they're my colleagues. So,
I'm going to meet with them and talk with them to see what they're -- you know, in person. We can talk through some of the issues.
Just substantively, I think they're just flatly wrong about the international collaboration. So, what I've done as NIH director, what I
learned was that we had a kind of accounting structure for foreign collaborations where we put universities -- domestic universities in charge
of checking whether the collaborators were like meeting basic accounting standards.
And, often the people that we put -- that the -- that we put in charge of checking this, didn't actually have a lot of control over their foreign
collaborators. Probably most famously, the Wuhan Lab where the NIH funded the a domestic group, called the EcoHealth Alliance. It had this
relationship with Wuhan Lab.
We -- the NIH had no auditing capacity over the NI -- over the Wuhan Lab. There were several -- the way we structured these foreign collaborations
prevent -- essentially cut the NIH out of the ability to say, well, can you hand us our -- your lab notebooks? Can we see where you spent the money?
I put in a system that allows foreign collaboration where the foreign collaborators directly connect with the NIH. And so, they have the same
kind of auditing -- we have the same kind of auditing capacity over the foreign collaborators as we do over domestic grantees. That's going to
allow more firm -- more foreign collaboration and more effective collaboration in a way that I can look the American people in the eye say,
we're spending your money in a safe -- in a -- we're stewarding your money in the right way. We're checking to make sure that those collaborations are
productive and we can audit them in the ways that we audit domestic researchers. So, I'm going to -- I'll tell them about that. Because I think
they just didn't understand some of the changes.
As far as politicization, I've worked hard -- you know, I think -- and probably tell this story in terms of this USAID, where it was really
cleanest. The USAID had these programs, like PEPFAR. PEPFAR was this program to bring HIV medications to Africa. I'd written a paper in 2010 or
'11 estimating that PEPFAR had saved over a million lives by -- at that point in Africa. I think it's a great program.
The -- USAID also had this program, a program to add a third gender to the Bangladeshi census. Now, Walter, Bangladesh has a tremendous problem. It
has arsenic in the drinking water. It has hundreds of thousands children dying of high real illnesses. It has all kinds of issues. Adding a third
gender to Bangladesh's census looks to me like a political -- a politicization of the USAID rather than something that's really within the
USAID's mission.
There were elements of the NIH portfolio that were also like that, essentially trying to use the NIH as a weapon in a political war that we're
really poorly equipped to fight. The DEI, for instance. I think that's something that's -- that the NIH -- I really strongly believe -- and we
should invest in minority health. Minority populations have bad -- worse health outcomes, and if bad health outcomes, we, the NIH, as part of our
mission, should invest in improving the health of minority populations. A hundred percent believe in that.
But what did those DEI investments actually do? Did they actually improve minority health? No. Minority health has lagged behind just as it has -- as
the health of many other American groups. We have to like use the NIH to improve health rather than use the NIH in a part of an ideological
political war.
So, I think removing that, which they're calling political, is actually depoliticizing the NIH. It leaves the NIH portfolio in a place where every
party can look at this and say, we are doing the right thing for the American people. We're advancing -- we're investing in science that will
improve your health, improve your outcomes. We're not trying to fight a political war that we're poorly equipped to fight. We just should never be
fighting. We should be scrupulously, apolitical in that. And that's really the transition to that I think has made a lot of people un uncomfortable,
because that's really what it was before.
[13:55:00]
We had this -- if you will, this third gender drill Bangladeshi census problem. Although that's the USAID, we had a version of that in the NIH.
ISAACSON: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it.
DR. BHATTACHARYA: Thank you, Walter.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: That's it for now, but if you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you
can always catch us online, on our website, and all-over social media.
Thanks for watching, and goodbye from London.
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