Instruments of Peace: The Use of Health for National Security (Features‪)‬

As the hunt For Osama bin Laden began to focus on the now infamous compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the CIA desperately sought confirmation that he was there. The agency came up with an idea: hire a local doctor to conduct a fake vaccination campaign, which it hoped could lead to obtaining blood samples from bin Laden's grandchildren that could be analyzed for a DNA match to bin Laden. One could dismiss the campaign as just another imaginative tactic used by the CIA in the search; the fact that it involved a population health ruse could be of no more significance than had the CIA hired agents to sell lottery tickets door to door in the neighborhood. But the selection of a vaccination campaign may not have been mere happenstance, just another case example of the increasing use of a health intervention to advance a specific national security objective. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]