CIA: Will not use vaccination programs for spying

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

CIA: Will not use vaccination programs for spying
By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, May 19, 4:32 PM

WASHINGTON — A top White House official has assured the deans of prominent U.S. public health schools that the CIA will no longer use vaccination programs as cover for spying operations. The agency used the ruse in targeting Osama bin Laden before the U.S. raid that killed him in 2011.

Lisa Monaco, President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, wrote to the deans of 13 public health schools last week, saying that the CIA has agreed it would no longer use vaccination programs or workers for intelligence purposes. The agency also agreed to not use genetic materials obtained through such programs.

A Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, provided polio vaccinations in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad as cover for his CIA-backed effort to obtain DNA samples from children at a compound where bin Laden was later killed during a 2011 raid. Afridi was convicted and sentenced by a Pakistani court to 33 years in prison for treason. The sentence was later overturned and Afridi faces a retrial.

The health school deans were among a group of medical authorities who publicly criticized the CIA’s use of the vaccination program after it was disclosed by media accounts and Pakistan’s arrest of Afridi as a CIA operative.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/cia-will-not-use-vaccination-programs-for-spying/2014/05/19/967a8396-df97-11e3-9442-54189bf1a809_story.html

[jtuck004]

1. Trust us. We're the ones who send drones to kill your innocent children. n/t

[blkmusclmachine]

18. ^This.^

[GeorgeGist]

2. Google "polio workers killed" ...

it's chilling.

[blkmusclmachine]

12. Sociopathic.

[d_legendary1]

3. Well that's a relief. Now if I can only get them off my phone, my xbox, and my computer

I'd be set.

[blkmusclmachine]

19. Good luck!

[hughee99]

4. That ship has sailed... not that anyone would take them at their word, anyway. n/t

[JackRiddler]

5. They didn't provide vaccinations!

According to the New Yorker, they provided dummy vaccines.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/12/the-cia-and-the-polio-murders.html?printable=true&currentPage=all

That's incredibly criminal.

Perhaps Scientific American is more reliable, however. They report it was hepatitis-b vaccinations, that, however, were suspended after the first of three shots.

Again, unbelievably irresponsible, completely without regard for the affected children and their families. SA condemns the CIA in no uncertain terms for its irresponsibility and negligence:

www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-cia-fake-vaccination-campaign-endangers-us-all/

The distrust sowed by the sham campaign in Pakistan could conceivably postpone polio eradication for 20 years, leading to 100,000 more cases that might otherwise not have occurred, says Leslie F. Roberts of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. “Forevermore, people would say this disease, this crippled child is because the U.S. was so crazy to get Osama bin Laden,” he argues.

The vaccination ruse also poses a moral problem. Physicians take a Hippocratic oath to do no harm. Humanitarian workers adhere to an international code of conduct that requires that their services be provided independently of national agendas, on the basis of need alone. The misguided vaccine program in Pakistan was started in a poor neighborhood of Abbottabad, no doubt to give it an air of legitimacy. Yet after the first in a standard series of three hepatitis B shots was given, the effort was abandoned so that the team could move to bin Laden's wealthier community. This lapse in protocol proves that the best interests of the recipients were not the guiding principle of the effort—while not coincidently betraying the program for the sham it was.

The price of course was paid by legitimate medical workers who have ended up murdered by Taliban as a direct result of the CIA using their profession as a front.

In addition, WHO was subsequently wrongly associated with the CIA fake vaccination program.

www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27388336

Last week the foreign ministry alleged that UN agencies were involved in the campaign, claiming it led the public to doubt genuine polio vaccination drives.

The WHO says Pakistani officials now accept the statement was made in error.

The global health agency recently warned that polio has re-emerged as a public health crisis. Pakistan is particularly badly affected as one of three countries where the virus is endemic.

But Pakistan has also struggled to prevent attacks against polio workers administering the campaign and the Taliban - who view the immunisation programme as a cover for Western spying - have banned vaccinations in the tribal region of North Waziristan.

[gvstn]

6. Thanks for the informative post!

[Judi Lynn]

9. What are these people, finally who would do this to others? Tremendous links, thank you. n/t

[blkmusclmachine]

13. Sociopaths

[Ash_F]

7. Does the CIA lie? /nt

[blkmusclmachine]

14. Does a bear sh!t in the woods?

[Ash_F]

16. And will the CIA film it? /nt

[Kelvin Mace]

8. And we should believe you why, exactly?

You people don't know the meaning of the word truth.

[blkmusclmachine]

15. Pathological liars

[McCamy Taylor]

10. The CIA should pay for the health care for life of all the children crippled because they

hijacked a public health vaccination program for their own purposes. And all the deaths are on their heads. Except that they don't care. And I am sure that no one believes them, and so children will continue to get a preventable disease.

[blkmusclmachine]

17. Sick

[blkmusclmachine]

11. Yeah, riiiiiight

[bemildred]

20. Until next time, because nothing is really more important than they are. nt