But we always meant it for the best! From the NYTimes:
Three years after the Central Intelligence Agency set up a phony hepatitis vaccination program in Pakistan as part of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the Obama administration told a group of American health educators last week that the agency no longer uses immunization programs as a cover for spying operations.
In a letter to leaders at a dozen schools of public health, President Obama’s senior counterterrorism adviser said the C.I.A. had banned the practice of making “operational use” of vaccination programs, adding that the agency would not seek to “obtain or exploit DNA or other genetic material acquired through such programs.”
The letter from the adviser, Lisa O. Monaco, comes more than a year after public health officials wrote to Mr. Obama expressing anger that the United States had used immunization programs as a front for espionage. The educators were protesting the C.I.A.’s employment of a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, to set up a hepatitis B vaccination program in Abbottabad to gain access to a compound where Bin Laden was believed to be hiding…
John O. Brennan, the agency’s director, put the new policy into effect last August, an agency spokesman said. “By publicizing this policy,” said Ned Price, the spokesman, “our objective is to dispel one canard that militant groups have used as justification for cowardly attacks against vaccination providers.”…
Because if a bunch of foreigners can’t trust the head of the CIA, what has this modern world come to?
Yes, I’m sure it had to be read into the record, but let’s not delude ourselves that saying “Hey, our bad!” is going to save public health workers from being murdered as spies. Or keep kids from dying needlessly of polio and HepB, because those health workers can’t vaccinate them.
Tommy
My grandfather was a doctor. As a kid I’d often go with him to medical conferences, cause well they were usually in “cool” places. He pounded into my head at them the importance of giving back and was a huge supporter of Doctors Without Borders. He wasn’t anything close to a liberal, but he felt medical care wasn’t or shouldn’t be political. What the CIA did in Pakistan is literally criminal. We can and should eliminate most diseases. We know how to do it, we just need the will to do it.
NotMax
How to get your suit tossed out of court in one easy lesson.
Meet The Man Suing NYC For Two Undecillion Dollars
No, not from The Onion.
schrodinger's cat
Does anyone anywhere believe any proclamations CIA makes?
Tommy
My former boss was an elderly gentlemen. He had polio. I had never met somebody that had polio. It was like a foreign idea to me. Honestly, and maybe I am stupid, I didn’t realize there were Americans alive that had it. It was something he NEVER talked about, cause he didn’t want people to feel sorry for him. But the pain he seemed to live in. The way his body was deformed. That all he needed was a shot in the arm. We need to provide that for EVERYBODY.
Tommy
@schrodinger’s cat: Short response. Nope.
NotMax
@Tommy
Polio was a palpable fear in summertime hot weather, particularly. Not uncommon for kids to be kept indoors for extended periods during the summer.
Know a smattering of contemporaries who survived it (but with lifelong effects, such as muscular degeneration in an ankle and such like), but then we pre-date the vaccination programs.
There’s a facility here (originally built as a tuberculosis sanitarium before expanding their facilities) which several years ago retrieved all the iron lungs they still kept in storage in order to ship them overseas to locales with a need for them.
NotMax
@schrodinger’s cat
Congress, past experience notwithstanding.
ulee
My house mouse was tricked and caught in a live trap. I released him a few blocks up while walking the dogs. I’ll keep the traps open in case he has friends.
Tommy
@NotMax: I went over to Wikipedia and Google and clearly there is a world of stuff I didn’t know about polio. Never ceases to amaze me how little I know about the world around me.
I have a question. I went to public schools in the 70s. I hear all this BS about vaccinations. There were just days where we stood in line and got vaccinated. Nobody protested it. It was just a fact. I am sure some children might have gotten sick. But I never got sick. And those diseases, well I never got any of them.
Update: My question. Do you still get vaccinations in public school?
jl
Well, I heard on the news that the CIA said it wouldn’t do anything like that ever ever again. Ever.
And some wingnut media site will say that even though it didn’t find anything, it might have helped in some way, therefore it obviously worked,, or maybe was crucial after all! Just like torture.
So, win win in my book (/snark)
The article is vague, and as I interpret it, the CIA promise not to do it again is a little dodgy.
The CIA said it would not use such program to obtain genetic material. But the first link just mentions access to gain information, and the second link suggests genetic material and other information was gathered.
It’s hard for me to understand how genetic material would determine whether bin Laden was in the compound. It would have determined that some members of his family were there, but how helpful would that be? He probably had family, including kids, in a number of places. Hard to believe that finding some of his kids there would be useful, unless you had additional, and more definite information that bin Laden himself was there.
If anyone knows more about it or has some insights, let me know.
So, I withdraw my ‘win win’ conclusion. Sorry, I may have made a mistake.
NotMax
@ulee
I understand the whole ‘girlfriend doesn’t want it killed’ thing, but really what was accomplished (presuming the mouse doesn’t just find its way back) is making it someone else’s problem in their home.
And clean up all the day-old pizza. :)
NotMax
@Tommy
My layman’s understanding is that it varies state by state and and even district by district.
Most places, proof of vaccination is still required for public school attendance, although there are sometimes carve outs for religious objections.
Tommy
@NotMax: As a dude that lived in DC I am not sure I understand the difference between a rat and a mouse. I say that cause I used to have rats the size of my cat outside where I lived. Not a fan of either. As I said to you last night I’d expect my cat to jump into action. If not you were a far more nice dude then I would have been with the critter.
ulee
@NotMax: He is just trying to scratch out a living like the rest of us. I’m glad he is alive.
NotMax
@jl
Again, layman’s understanding – it serves to narrow down locations in order to pinpoint particular ones of interest for focusing observation and surveillance.
IIRC, it was the travel of the courier to and from the compound which served as a (if not the) tipping point that OBL was inside.
NotMax
@Tommy
ulee is the nice one.
Me, I get rid of them ASAP, with finality.
During extended dry spells here, Norwegian rats come out of the cane fields to populated areas in search of water. Not quite as big as a Buick are they, but damn large.
Joel Hanes
@NotMax:
Polio was a palpable fear in summertime hot weather
I was a little kid then.
First we got the Salk shots, but not everyone got them.
But in a couple years there was universal free distribution of the Sabin vaccine in our public elementary school;
long lines of tiny children and trays of tiny cups
Our parents were unbearably grateful -(one of my father’s
friends from school had polio, and had lost the use of
his legs, and his hands and arms were stiff and difficult for him to use.
A brilliant man, he had been a budding jazz pianist before polio got him in his late teens)
Just another one of those damned government impositions on the freedom to be stupid and diseased
Gypsy Howell
Well, it’s not a canard if it’s actually true.
The CIA is our own worst enemy.
Joel Hanes
@Tommy:
Do you still get vaccinations in public school?
Not around here.
The drugstores will do for-fee immunizations, and the free public outreach clinics set up yearly in drug stores, even in supermarkets; but the schools are afraid of the responsibility
There is a list of immunizations that the public schools want ordinarily to see before enrollment, but I don’t think the schools themselves have the courage to give a kid an aspirin. Too much liability.
raven
This doggie lurves his bucket. Let’s see a damn cat do this!
Montanareddog
I wonder how many of those health workers going into crisis zones and saving the lives of children get “thanked for their service”
raven
One year since the tornado at Moore, Ok. Looks like the Mornin Joe crew will be there.
raven
@raven: Oops, wrong.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T: So terrified of getting caught in early rush-hour traffic and reporting late to poll-watching duties that I ended up getting here half an hour early. Sitting in my car in an elementary school parking lot. Lights are blazing, but no other signs of life.
If you live in one of today’s primary states, don’t forget to vote!
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: School is out here and the early morning street are like “The Day the Earth Stood Still”!
raven
streets
Tommy
@Joel Hanes: I didn’t think they still did, but without any kids I honestly don’t know. Seems like an effective treatment method, but what do I know.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Can’t seem to watch it now. Probably at my end. But I gotta say, as the owner of a Lab, They are the best. But you do have to be careful, they are always learning, whether you want them to or not.
PurpleGirl
@raven: The “bucket” had no bottom so the dog could still see where he was running when he his head was in the “bucket”. Dog’s owner cheated in making the video. Hrrmp!
raven
@PurpleGirl: Baloney, the doggie made many uses of the bucket!
OzarkHillbilly
“When you’re chided for your naiveté, and you will be, remind your critics that an amateur built the ark. Experts built the Titanic.”
—Peyton Manning, in his commencement speech to the University of Virginia class of 2014 Sunday in Charlottesville, Va.
ulee
@PurpleGirl: How is it cheating? Yes, the bucket has no bottom, anyone can see that. Dog loves his bucket. End of story.
Tommy
@SiubhanDuinne: My mom runs elections in her district. She calls me after every election in tears that more people don’t vote. My mom is a pretty hardcore Republican. Me a liberal. I think it makes her proud that they raised a liberal. That they let me figure shit out on my own and didn’t force their views down my throat. But we are all in agreement voting is important. If more people voted and liberals lost elections, well I would not be happy but I could deal with it. Vote!!!!!!!!!!
Calouste
@OzarkHillbilly:
There’s a joke in there about an expert quarterback conceding a safety off the first play in the Super Bowl.
danielx
In this uncertain world, there are a few things of which I can be tolerably certain. One is that whenever I feel I’m in danger of being too cynical, the national security state will find at least one way a week to prove me wrong.
Lurking Canadian
@Gypsy Howell: Exactly what I was coming here to post. How exactly is it a “canard” if it’s something they have done in the last five years?
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
And Eli has more Super Bowl rings.
OldDave
@NotMax:
xkcd’s “What-If” page had a go at this: $2 Undecillion Lawsuit
Botsplainer
@NotMax:
Interesting thing about polio – if you’ve ever known anyone who had a mild dose as a child, the physical effects come roaring back in their 70s.
Another Holocene Human
Wow, it’s really true nothing Obama does will please you, Anne Laurie. He did exactly what you wanted, but did it with the wrong mouthpiece.
I wish I could say this shit surprises me, but after nigh on six years….
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
It may have been a ruse, but the nurses were administering hepatitis vaccinations, so it was not a phony vaccination operation.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: “Experts” built the WTC as well, and the building failed, but don’t mention that. There were naysayers when both were built. But I will tell you this: an amateur WROTE that ark story!
ulee
@Another Holocene Human: Please. Engineers can design a good building but if someone drives a 737 into it, it might fail.
Botsplainer
On this topic, I blame the Guardian and whichever assholes spilled those beans to it.
Bin Laden needed to die.
Sadly, most aid workers are viewed as spies. The ISI was clearly protecting Bin Laden, so everything was going under the radar.
Everything would have been fine, save for the Guardian’s blinkered view of the world and it’s notion that the US is the source of very evil in it.
Aimai
@Another Holocene Human: i think her point is that having let the CIA do this the first time it is probably not going to be convincing to the world to assert, without apology, that we will nev er do it again. Obama or not Obama this was a terribly short sighted and immoral act. And it will have a death toll just like other immoral and deceptive government programs like Tuskegee,the various experiments on children, prisoners, and mental patients. These medical government projects led to decades long african american suspicion that the AIDs virus was made by the government and also is responsible (in part) for some of the anti vaxx hysteria in this country. Im a huge obama supporter but this is too little too late.
gene108
@OzarkHillbilly:
Wasn’t Noah given the blueprints by God? Didn’t God promise to keep Noah safe during the flood?
I mean, if an omnipotent and omniscient God is your foreman, architect and guiding your boat to keep it safe on the water doesn’t it just mean any old amateur can do what Noah did.
ThresherK
Now that Larry Wilmore is taking over that slot on Comedy Central, all this reminds me of is the PJ’s episode where the “vaccination” really was a plot to get the DNA of everyone in the neighborhood.
artem1s
@OzarkHillbilly:
ftfy peyton….
Anybodybuther2016
@Botsplainer: Sadly, most aid workers are spies.
Rafer Janders
@Botsplainer:
So the problem isn’t what we did, it’s that someone told people what we did….?
That’s a mighty…convenient way to look at the world, I grant you.
Interrobang
The mother of a friend from high school had had polio as a child, and some days, she wasn’t able to use her left arm at all, due to post-polio syndrome (which is a thing, and it hurts). Another current friend’s mother had it, and has recently all but lost the ability to walk, which has caused some problems for my friend, who is the only child and living in another city, and the father is long dead.
Polio is a nasty disease, and whoever had the bright idea to use vaccination programmes as spying programmes ought to be publicly pilloried, with every public health professional and infectious disease specialist in the country allowed to have first go with the rotten eggs and vegetables.
gene108
@Rafer Janders:
Do you object to offing Osama bin Laden? Do you think the Guardian objects to offing Osama?
If not, why make an issue of how it was done.
Rafer Janders
@gene108:
At the end of the day, more people will die of polio and other infectious diseases because they were not vaccinated than were ever killed by Osama bin Laden. I wanted bind Laden caught and/or killed, surely, but the end does not justify every means used to achieve it. Setting up a fake vaccination program — and running the risk that it would be exposed as a CIA operation and thereby tarnishing all vaccination programs for years to come as a Western plot — was an incredibly irresponsible and destructive thing to do.
jayjaybear
@gene108: I’m certainly not one of these “NO ESPIONAGE EVER!” people, but there is a qualitative difference between ends and means. The end here (finding and ending bin Laden) is desirable. The means (using a vaccination program to gather info) not so much. Making international vaccination programs look suspicious is a horrible side-effect of what happened. I think the end isn’t even close to justifying the means in this case. The equivalent of many 9/11s (in terms of body count) will be the death toll of people who won’t take advantage of vaccination programs like this because of what we did.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@gene108:
Killing bin Laden was a nice, symbolic gesture that did little or nothing to stem terrorism. His death was likely forgotten by most of the world within two weeks of his demise. Creating mistrust of first world medicine and motives or adding to that mistrust where it already exists is both shameful and short sighted. The harmful effects of that will linger. It was a stupid thing to do and it was another example of the often counterproductive “anything goes” mentality of those who have been charged with fighting terrorism. “Anything goes” is also the mentality of the terrorists.
ETA: jayjaybear said it better and sooner.
Ruckus
Two of my friends moms had polio. A girl I went to school from kindergarten to HS graduation with had polio. She is one of my heroes. The abuse she endured, far more than she probably knows because a lot of it was behind her back, just because she had a horrible, crippling disease always made me mad. I didn’t and still don’t understand it even after all these decades. But what made her a hero to me was how she held herself. That she ignored the assholes who made fun of her. And that at our 10 yr reunion she walked in without braces or cane and showed us all that none of us could stop her or get her down.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Ruckus:
The Salk vaccine wasn’t distributed until I’d been in Elementary School a few years. Kids were advised not to use drinking fountains and most were forbidden the use of public pools or the swimming hole due to the absolute terror of then-incurable polio. “If you’re hot you can play in the sprinkler,” was the word. When a child started exhibiting symptoms of what might be polio, even though some of those symptoms were also common to tonsillitis or the flu, the fear was palpable. Because I lived through those times I am heartily in favor of having the anti-vaccine idiots charged with child endangerment. In my eyes they are unfit parents.
ruemara
Pardon my cruelty, but I don’t care. They knowingly protected Osama bin Laden and everyone in that compound while taking our money and playing our friend-for years. Let AQ fund doctors and immunization for the community, if that’s who they want. My only sympathies are to aid workers and kids, who didn’t ask to be born to the ‘ll find of people who’d think any member of AQ is less than a nasty shit stain.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
I care to the extent that it’s going to make it a lot harder to get kids immunized if the local authorities assume that the healthcare workers are spies. It may have seemed like a justifiable ruse at the time, but it could have longer-reaching consequences.
The original reports were that the immunizations were entirely fake and none of the patients were given vaccinations — it sounds like the Guardian has backed down from that claim?
Botsplainer
I remember getting some sort of air gun injection at school. Kicked like a motherfucker, don’t remember what it was.
Gene108
@Rafer Janders:
My point is what was the benefit to Guardian publishing the info about the CIA program?
If it was not leaked, which I assume was the CIA’s intent, you would not be compromising immunization programs.
I generally believe sunshine is the best policy to prevent government abuses, but I also think there are no absolutes. The news about the program has only caused harm.
Shakezula
Another fabulously stupid idea from The Company Clowns. You’d be better off putting glue huffing teens in charge of designing an undercover operation.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@ruemara:
I do care because this will have repercussions far beyond one town in Pakistan. A lot of kids are going to suffer and die needlessly because the CIA enacted another of its harebrained, fruitless schemes.
Cacti
@Another Holocene Human:
The inadequate black man denied Hillary her patrician right to the White House.
AL never forgave him for being so uppity.
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
Would those be the same local authorities that give shelter to international terrorist organizations?
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
wouldn’t be the first time.
jayjaybear
@Cacti: Let me redirect your attention to the actual subject of that sentence: “kids”. The kids aren’t protecting terrorist organizations. The kids aren’t PART of terrorist organizations. They’re children and babies, who will probably die of an easily avoided disease because our government decided that the risk of tarnishing the reputation of a desperately-needed medical procedure was worth it.
Rafer Janders
@Gene108:
The Guardian is a newspaper. It exists to publish news. “CIA runs fake vaccination programs” is news. The Guardian was doing its job, and the CIA should have assumed that the news about this would sooner or later get out, and balanced that risk accordingly.
Rafer Janders
@Cacti:
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But either way, who cares? The children not being vaccinated aren’t the ones running or electing the local authorities. Do you think it’s worth thousands of children dying from infectious diseases just to give a poke in the eye to someone you don’t like?
Rafer Janders
@Gene108:
Which was entirely foreseeable.
Was this program absolutely necessary to catch Osama bin Laden? Was it the only way? Plainly, no. They did something that, if it became public — as these things very often do — would definitely cause a great deal of harm for years to come, and didn’t even get any benefit out of it.
Keith G
Tim McVeigh was put to death for murdering far fewer innocents than will die because of this totally unnecessary and immoral program.
Where does the buck stop? Who will be held responsible:? The same administration that gets cheers for putting a bullet in Ben Laden’s eye should be held accountable for the heinous act of sabotaging public health services to the most needy
The CIA is our own worst enemy?
No dear. We are. It’s on us. If people we like do wrong and we fail to act, we are the villains too.
Cacti
@Rafer Janders:
The families of the people they killed?
How many people should be blown up “for the children” Mrs. Lovejoy?
PJ
@ruemara: I have my doubts that the children who would have been inoculated, or their parents, for that matter, were taking our money while they protected Bin Laden.
Rafer Janders
@Cacti:
The families of the people that terrorists killed want thousands or tens of thousands of completely unrelated innocent children to die because they didn’t get vaccinated?
That…doesn’t seem right to me….
Cacti
@Rafer Janders:
Somehow I find myself unmoved by the sense of right/wrong of a person who can hand wave away the victims of a terrorist attack with “who cares”.
Rafer Janders
@Cacti:
Reading comprehension, how does it work??
Cacti
@Rafer Janders:
Who cares if third world government officials and law enforcement are in the pocket of international terrorist and other criminal organizations, allowing them to move among the local population with impunity?
The greatest threat to these people is the CIA!
Derp!
Mnemosyne
@Rafer Janders:
Okay, you keep calling this a “fake vaccination program,” but as far as I can tell, the claim that they didn’t actually provide any vaccinations has been debunked. The children in question were vaccinated, with real vaccines, but the program was a cover for spying.
You can call it a cover story, but calling it a “fake vaccination program” implies that the whole thing was fake and the kids got sugar water injected in their arms, which does not seem to be the case.
Mnemosyne
@Rafer Janders:
And again, I’m not defending what the CIA did and I think it did enormous damage to the organizations that vaccinate in developing countries, but as far as I can tell, they weren’t giving fake vaccinations, which is a totally different claim.
Rafer Janders
@Mnemosyne:
No, that’s true. “Fake” in the sense that it was a CIA cover designed to collect bin Laden DNA, not fake in the sense that they weren’t actually vaccinating those who showed up. The better quote would have been “Vaccination program actually run by CIA.”
But, in the end, for every person they vaccinated they caused an untold number of others not to get vaccinated because now people believe (accurately) that what seems to be a public health program may in fact also be an American spy operation.
Mnemosyne
@Rafer Janders:
Okay, thanks. I know the early reports were that it was a totally fake program where they only pretended to give the kids vaccines, so I wanted to make sure nobody reading was under the impression that that was the case.
Now that that’s cleared up, rip away!
cckids
@Tommy:
Really late here, but here in Vegas, there are several schools (elementary, middle & high schools) that have a health clinic on site; uninsured kids can go there & get vaccinated free of charge. The clinics are located in schools in lower-income areas, of course, but anyone can & does go there. That’s where we got our kids (who were homeschooled) their pre-college shots.
Tim I
@Gypsy Howell:
The people attacking vaccination programs aren’t going to stop because the CIA stops using such programs as cover. The radical jihadists attack aid workers because they might undermine the jihadists’ control over the population.
These fundamentalists – much like our own fundamentalists – despise modernity and everything associated with it because it threatens their power. The more successful the vaccination program, the more it will be despised.
It was stupid for the CIA to use humanitarian programs as cover, but the Jihadists attack aid workers for what they do, not because they might be CIA.