whirlwind of action on capitol hill this wednesday morning. you could say it s a congressional hearing palooza on a slate of urgent topics from the origin of covid, the safety of air travel, the u.s. evacuation of afghanistan, and threats from around the world. that last topic is the focus of a hearing set to begin any second with the senate intelligence committee. we ll hear testimony from the nation s top intel chiefs including dni avril haines, cia director bill burns and fbi director chris wray. we can expect them to dive into a number of topics including new threats from china, questions about mishandling classified documents and concerns over domestic extremism. our team is monitoring this closely. meanwhile, in a different senate hearing, acting administrator of the faa is just moments away from testifying after weeks of disturbing headlines from the not so friendly skies, including a united passenger recently caught on camera attacking a flight attendant and threate
feels about former president trump. we begin, though, with breaking news on the hill. that critical senate intelligence committee hearing on worldwide threats starting any moment, and starting us off, nbc news capitol hill correspondent ali vitali, justice and intelligence correspondent, ken dilanian, and former counsel to the senate foreign relations and house intelligence committees and founder and executive director of the national security substitute. ali, this hearing set to gavel in at the top of the hour. it s set to last about two hours. how will it play out? set to last about two hours. that s the two hours that we can see. then they re going to go into a more classified portion, and that s probably where if there are answers to be gotten, had that s where they will get them. we know what the issues are on the table. this is an annual hearing, but many of these things are things that have been in the bloodstream here on capitol hill for the last few months, everything from c
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this, how much of this was a case of mistaken identity, but i really do think there s going to be, you know, a sense of a need for quick closure on this and the mexicans are going to help on this issue. again, i go back to that the more broad overall concern is the state of u.s., mexican counternarcotics cooperation is not good. so that s something that should be in the public debate now, and i think it will in the future because, again, there is a lawless there s a sense of lawlessness. when i talk to my old friends in law enforcement, there s a sense of lawlessness on our border. that s a national security issue for the united states. that s not a political issue. unfortunately two americans died because of that. mark poll mor rop louse, thank you for your expertise, morgan chesky and ellison barber on the ground, appreciate both of you. next, what the acting faa administrator is saying amid recent scares in the sky. and inside the new house
also underway right now, the first hearing from the new house subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic. it s focusing on the origins of the covid-19 virus as more intel agencies have recently raised the possibility that the pandemic was caused by a possible lab leak in wuhan. that intelligence is further straining the already tense relationship between the u.s. and china. nbc s josh lederman is following this from hong kong. what have we heard so far from this hearing? what does it mean for u.s./china relations? a big focus of this hearing so far, lindsey, has been on whether it even is important to get to the bottom of the origins of the covid-19 pandemic. and to really try to cast a spotlight on how critical it is in the view of those who have called this hearing that this be solved and that an investigation really be carried out to completion. every single one of the witnesses was asked today in the first minutes of this hearing whether figuring out whether