Kristina Wong<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Terry Adirim, a senior Central Intelligence Agency official and former senior defense official who played a pivotal and potentially illegal role in the Biden Administration\u2019s military vaccine mandate, was recently fired from the agency, a source has exclusively revealed to Breitbart News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adirim, a former senior Biden appointee at the Department of Defense who was performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, had decamped in December to the CIA as director of CIA Centers for Global Health Services until about a week ago, according to the source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her firing was related to her role in forcing service members to choose between taking a vaccine that was under Emergency Use Authorization or being kicked out, according to the source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On September 14, 2021, about a month after then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the vaccine mandate, Adirim issued a memo instructing DOD health care providers to consider the vaccine available to service members \u2014 Pfizer\u2019s BioNTech vaccine \u2014 as \u201cinterchangeable\u201d with a vaccine that was approved by the FDA, known as Comirnaty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nPer FDA guidance, these two vaccines are \u2018interchangeable\u2019 and DoD health care providers should \u2018use doses distributed under the EUA to administer the vaccination series as if the doses were the licensed vaccine.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Consistent with FDA guidance, DoD health care providers will use both the PfizerBioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and the Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine interchangeably for the purpose of vaccinating Service members in accordance with Secretary of Defense Memorandum, \u2018Mandatory Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination of Department of Defense Service Members,\u2019 August 24, 2021.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Her memo was considered legally dubious even inside the Pentagon, as Breitbart News reported<\/a> in September 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A month after Adirim issued her memo, a senior defense official proposed allowing service members who did not want to take the EUA vaccine to wait for the FDA-approved vaccine before facing punishment for being unvaccinated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Readiness Policy and Oversight David J. Smith, proposed in a draft memo that would replace Adirim\u2019s memo:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nIf a Service member, after medical counseling, declines administration of the EUA-manufactured product, DoD health care providers should engage with their logistics chain to secure and administer the [Biologics License Application]-manufactured Pfizer-BioNTech\/Comirnaty product prior to any punitive action being taken against the Service member.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Smith\u2019s action memo was addressed to Adirim, with a recommendation for her to sign the draft memo with the proposed change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the documents obtained by Breitbart News, the draft memo had been sent to the military services for coordination, and a senior Air Force official objected to it, arguing that adopting the change could open the military up for more litigation and possibly force it to reverse punishments already given for not taking the vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His response said the proposed change would suggest that DOD considers the EUA-manufactured vaccine different from the FDA-approved Comirnaty product and could open the Air Force up to lawsuits, and that since adverse action had already possibly been taken, \u201csignificant remedial actions\u201d would probably be required.https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/t\/assets\/html\/tweet-4.html#1432064562862465031<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The proposal was never adopted, with legal implications for the DoD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under 10 U.S.C. Section 1107(a), a defense secretary can order service members to take an FDA-approved vaccine, but he cannot legally order service members to take an EUA-manufactured vaccine without seeking and obtaining a waiver from the president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also under 10 U.S.C. Section 1107(a), that waiver must be signed by the president then the defense secretary must formally notify Congress of the waiver. Congress has never received notification of such a waiver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Austin had pledged in an August 9, 2021, memo to service members that he would seek a presidential waiver, but it is not clear he ever did so. He also pledged that his order would only use the FDA-approved vaccine. Breitbart News questioned the Biden Pentagon if Austin ever sought a presidential waiver to mandate the EUA-manufactured vaccine, but was given the same verbiage that appeared in Adirim\u2019s memo:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nPer FDA guidance, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and the Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine had the same formulation and the two vaccines were \u2018interchangeable.\u2019 Accordingly, DoD health care providers could \u2018use doses distributed under the EUA to administer the vaccination series as if the doses were the licensed vaccine.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Comirnaty has not been widely available in the U.S. for reasons that are not clear. In July 2022, the FDA reissued its EUA of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, noting, \u201cThere is no adequate, approved, and available alternative to Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to prevent COVID-19.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The DOD later would be hit with lawsuits from service members suing the DOD for trying to force service members to take the EUA vaccine instead of the FDA-approved vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the lawsuits was led by former Marine Capt. Dale Saran, the military attorney who ended the Pentagon\u2019s anthrax vaccine in 2004. In an interview<\/a> with Breitbart News in 2022, he called Adirim\u2019s memo a \u201cfraud.\u201d he said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThe undersecretary of defense for health affairs, a woman named Terry Adirim, published a memo claiming that the unlicensed product, BNT162b2 \u2014 Pfizer\u2019s unlicensed EUA product \u2014 could be substituted in that it was interchangeable with the licensed product. \u2026 . That\u2019s the fraud that\u2019s at the heart of our case.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
It would not be the first time Adirim would appear to skirt the law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n