Vaccination not a CIA front — usually

MATT APUZZO

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — In his 2009 speech to the Mus­lim world, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama announced a new effort to erad­i­cate polio, which per­sists in three Mus­lim coun­tries. One of the biggest hur­dles had been per­suad­ing some local lead­ers that vac­ci­na­tion cam­paigns were inde­pen­dent health efforts, not nefar­i­ous pro­grams being run by the CIA.

With the Obama administration’s assur­ances, Mus­lim schol­ars issued a reli­gious decree that par­ents should vac­ci­nate their chil­dren. The admin­is­tra­tion and pub­lic health offi­cials cheered as the num­ber of new polio cases began to fall in some hard-to-reach areas.

Recently, how­ever, as the U.S. closed in on Osama bin Laden’s com­pound in Pak­istan, the CIA used a vac­cine pro­gram as cover, a way to try to col­lect DNA from bin Laden’s fam­ily and con­firm he was hid­ing inside a walled compound.

Pub­lic health offi­cials swiftly crit­i­cized the move, say­ing the inde­pen­dence of health work­ers must be sacro­sanct. World Health Orga­ni­za­tion spokes­woman Sona Bari said health offi­cials were caught by sur­prise when the story was first reported by the Guardian news­pa­per in Lon­don. The Asso­ci­ated Press has con­firmed details about the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gram from U.S. officials.

“It’s just so unfor­tu­nate. It’s the worst kind of label­ing you could put on a pub­lic health cam­paign,” Bari said Wednes­day. “Any back­lash against this will hurt the chil­dren of Pakistan.”

Polio is endemic in three Mus­lim coun­tries — Nige­ria, Pak­istan and Afghanistan — but some Mus­lim lead­ers have been sus­pi­cious of vac­ci­na­tion efforts, sug­gest­ing they were part of a CIA ster­il­iza­tion cam­paign. Allay­ing those fears has been cru­cial to get­ting doc­tors and nurses into some areas.

The vac­ci­na­tion pro­gram used in the CIA’s hunt for Osama bin Laden was a real one, for hepatitis.

Nei­ther the White House nor the CIA would speak about the pro­gram. A senior U.S. offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity because the pro­gram remains secret, said the deci­sion to use vac­ci­na­tions as a cover was a rare move that reflected the seri­ous­ness of the hunt for bin Laden. Intel­li­gence offi­cials were under pres­sure to con­firm bin Laden was in the com­pound before the pres­i­dent risked Amer­i­can lives.

But the move directly con­tra­dicts the administration’s own mes­sage to the Mus­lim world. And health experts say main­tain­ing con­fi­dence in vac­ci­na­tion dri­ves is far more impor­tant than even the hunt for bin Laden. Polio, for instance, is on the verge of erad­i­ca­tion but remains a stub­born prob­lem, par­tic­u­larly in areas such as the Afghanistan-Pakistan bor­der, where there is great mis­trust of the U.S. and where the CIA launches mis­sile strikes on sus­pected ter­ror­ists from unmanned aircraft.

The expanded polio vac­ci­na­tion effort was seen as key suc­cess for the Obama administration’s Global Engage­ment Direc­torate, which is run out of the National Secu­rity Coun­cil. Top mem­bers of the National Secu­rity Coun­cil were deeply involved in the bin Laden raid but it is unclear whether that included the peo­ple cham­pi­oning the polio effort.

“I can’t imag­ine the peo­ple involved in that effort knew about this,” Bari said. “It’s beyond the pale of the imagination.”

Posted by AP News on Jul 13 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.