CIA to halt use of vaccination programs for spying

The White House announced that the CIA would stop using vaccination programs as a cover to gather intelligence — a tactic long criticized by humanitarian aid agencies operating in conflict zones around the world.

Lisa Monaco, President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, wrote to the deans of 13 prominent 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, offered a program of hepatitis vaccinations in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad as cover for his CIA-backed effort to obtain DNA samples from children at a compound where Osama bin Laden was later killed.

The White House statement came three days after Pakistan acted to quell a growing polio crisis within its borders. The public health deans had warned last year that the CIA's use of a vaccination program had played a role in the shootings of several health workers in Pakistan and could hamper anti-polio efforts.

"Public health programs should not be used as cover for covert operations," they said.

In 2012, the United Nations suspended a polio vaccination effort in Pakistan after gunmen killed several health workers. Taliban militants accused health workers of acting as spies for the U.S.

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

She added that CIA Director John Brennan committed in August 2013 that the agency would "make no operational use of vaccination programs, which includes vaccination workers." Also saying no DNA or genetic material would be used from such programs, Monaco said the CIA policy "applied worldwide and to U.S. and non-U.S. persons alike."

Monaco's letter and the CIA statement did not acknowledge any error in the decision to use the Pakistan vaccine program as a spying cover. 

Last week, Pakistan's Health Ministry announced that it would require that all travelers leaving the country first get a polio vaccination. That move followed the World Health Organization's declaration earlier this month that polio's spread was an international public health emergency. The WHO identified Pakistan, Syria and Cameroon as nations that had allowed polio to spread beyond their borders.

Pakistan was the only country with reported endemic polio that saw a rise in new cases in 2012, the health organization reported. Pakistan accounted for more than a fifth of all polio cases identified across the world in 2013.

The CIA's use of a vaccine program to spy on bin Laden's compound undercut Obama's own high-profile speech to the Muslim world in 2009, in which he touted U.S. efforts to slash the growth of polio in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. With Obama administration assurances, Muslim scholars in two international groups issued religious decrees urging parents to vaccinate their children.

Al Jazeera and wire services