CIA Says It Will No Longer Use Vaccine Programs As Cover

Enlarge this image toggle caption Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images

A White House official says the CIA will no longer use vaccine programs as cover for spy operations, answering health experts' complaints that it had hurt international efforts to fight disease.

The CIA famously used a vaccination program as a ploy to gain information about the possible whereabouts of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. That effort didn't succeed, and the doctor involved was sentenced to a prison term. But the revelation had immediate effects — particularly in the fight against polio.

As The New York Times reported in 2012, vaccination teams were banned in some areas of Pakistan.

And vaccination workers have been assassinated, the deans from Tulane, Emory, Columbia and other universities wrote in a letter to President Obama dated Jan. 6, 2013. They also compared the use of vaccine programs to the CIA's early infiltration of the Peace Corps, saying that in both cases, the practice had to be stopped to protect volunteers and gain access where people are most vulnerable to disease.

Homeland Security adviser Lisa Monaco recently sent a letter responding to the deans. She wrote that in August 2013, CIA Director John Brennan issued an order forbidding the use of vaccination programs to gather intelligence or genetic evidence.

From Yahoo News, which obtained a copy of the letter:

"CIA Director John Brennan made the decision himself because he 'took seriously the concerns raised by the public health community,' CIA spokesman Todd Ebitz said. " 'By publicizing this policy, our objective is to dispel one canard that militant groups have used as justification for cowardly attacks against vaccination providers,' Ebitz said by email."

News of the CIA's revised policy was first reported by Yahoo and The Washington Post, which also noted the timing of the response — more than 16 months have passed since the deans wrote to Obama.

Quoting a "senior administration official," the Post says it was told that "this was a unique case that required deliberate thought and review on our end before we made such a statement publicly."

Update at 4:16 p.m. ET. 'Not Going To Help':

NPR's Jason Beaubien filed a story about this decision for tonight's edition of All Things Considered. Here's an interesting bit from it: