CIA vaccination scam to catch Bin Laden makes people even more suspicious of “aid providers”

CIA Vaccination Program to Catch Bin Laden Makes Middle-East Even More Suspicious of Vaccinations
By Shiran Shen, July 28, 2011

CIA polioSince the global anti-polio campaign was launched in 1988, the number of polio cases has dropped by more than 99 percent. As of now, only Nigeria, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan still suffer from the spread of polio. Supporters of the anti-polio campaign estimated that the elimination of polio would produce a net benefit of $40 billion — $50 billion by 2035. However, the global anti-polio campaign has recently been complicated by the scandal that the CIA ran an operation to verify Osama bin Laden’s location by gathering DNA samples through a false-flag hepatitis B vaccination program. This incident also further complicates the already strained U.S.-Pakistan relationship after it was uncovered that a Washington nonprofit funnels money from Pakistan’s spy agency to lobby Congress on Kashmir.

Resistance to vaccination gained much momentum in the wake of 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror. In Nigeria and Pakistan, at least, Muslim clerics have taken on roles to spread rumors that America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were part of a wider war on Islam. In 2003, religious leaders in Nigeria led the resistance to vaccination campaigns by spreading rumors that the shots were in fact sterilization drugs, part of a Western conspiracy to reduce African birthrates. In 2007, Taliban clerics in Pakistan also joined the anti-vaccination campaigns. Resistance also developed in extremely poor areas in Uttar Pradesh in India. It took a tremendous effort from the World Health Organization to reach out to religious authorities to dismiss these misconceptions.

And now these efforts are jeopardized by the CIA’s polio vaccine plot in Pakistan.

According to a Guardian report, the CIA worked with Shakil Afridi, a surgeon in Khyber Agency—a tribal agency that borders Afghanistan to the east—to lure families in for hepatitis B vaccinations. In addition to giving the shots, the medical team collected DNA from the blood of the patients. To make the vaccine drive seem less suspicious, Afridi even started in a poorer part of town before moving to Abbottabad.

The vaccination plan was conceived after American intelligence officers tracked an al-Qaeda courier…to what turned out to be bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound last summer.

The agency…wanted confirmation that bin Laden was there before mounting a risky operation inside another country. DNA from any of the Bin Laden children in the compound could be compared with a sample from his sister, who died in Boston in 2010, to provide evidence that the family was present. …more