This Is Why Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Fired the CDC Director

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave Susan Monarez two worrisome ultimatums before she was fired as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Monarez told a Senate committee Wednesday.

On the morning of August 25, Monarez said, Kennedy “demanded two things” of the then director “that were inconsistent with my oath of office and the ethics required of a public official.”

One was “to commit, in advance, to approving every” recommendation by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, “regardless of scientific evidence.” The ACIP, responsible for providing national vaccine guidance, has undergone an upheaval under Kennedy—who has fired all of its members and appointed new ones, including vaccine skeptics, in their place.

Kennedy’s other directive, Monarez said, was “to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause.”

“He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign,” Monarez said. When she resisted, Kennedy told her that “he had already spoken with the White House several times about having me removed.”

Monarez’s story Wednesday aligns with the account of former acting CDC Director Richard Besser—a confidant of the former director—who last month said she’d been asked to do “two things she would never do”: “one in terms of firing her leadership” as well as “to rubber-stamp recommendations that flew in the face of science.” It also matches Monarez’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, in which she wrote she was “told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric” on August 25.

Kennedy, for his part, offered his own version of events in a congressional hearing earlier this month. Straining credulity, the health secretary claimed that he directed Monarez to resign because he asked her, “Are you a trustworthy person?” to which she replied, “No.” He has denied Monarez’s claim that she was asked to blindly approve ACIP recommendations, but does not dispute that he told her to fire scientists.