US to stop using jabs as cover for spying

Barack Obama’s top anti-terror adviser has pledged that the CIA will no longer use vaccination programmes – the ruse used to target Osama bin Laden before the US raid that killed him in 2011 – as cover for spying operations.
By The Newsroom
Published 20th May 2014, 18:03 BST

Lisa Monaco wrote to the deans of 13 prominent public health schools last week, saying the CIA agreed it would no longer use vaccination programmes or workers for intelligence purposes.

The agency also agreed not to use genetic materials obtained through such programmes.

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Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi provided polio vaccinations in the city of Abbottabad as cover for his CIA-backed effort to obtain DNA samples from children at a compound where al-Qaida mastermind bin Laden was later killed during the raid by US Navy SEALs.

Dr Afridi was convicted and sentenced by a Pakistani court to 33 years in prison for treason, but the sentence was later overturned and he now faces a retrial.

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

In her May 16 letter to the health school deans, Ms Monaco said the US “strongly supports the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and efforts to end the spread of the polio virus forever”.

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She added that CIA director John Brennan promised last August that the agency would “make no operational use of vaccination programmes, which includes vaccination workers”.

She added that no DNA or genetic material would be used from such programmes.