A federal official instrumental in advancing the Biden administration’s military Covid shot mandate has been fired, according to a new report.
On Tuesday, Breitbart News’ Kristina Wong reported claims from an unnamed source that Terry Adirim, who previously worked at the Pentagon as assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, “was recently fired” from a role she reportedly held at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). According to Wong, the source said that Adirim “had decamped in December to the CIA as director of CIA Centers for Global Health Services until about a week ago,” and that her dismissal “was related to her role in forcing service members to choose between taking a vaccine that was under Emergency Use Authorization [EUA] or being kicked out.”
Adirim’s LinkedIn profile indicates that she started working as a “senior executive” within the federal government in December, although it does not specify which agency she was employed with.
During her time at the Defense Department, the Biden appointee issued a memo in September 2021 instructing agency health care providers to treat the FDA-approved Comirnaty vaccine and the Pfizer-BioNTech shot — which had only received EUA from the FDA — as “interchangeable.”
“Per FDA guidance, these two vaccines are ‘interchangeable’ and DoD health care providers should ‘use doses distributed under the EUA to administer the vaccination series as if the doses were the licensed vaccine,’” Adirim wrote. “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 [DOD policy].”
The memo was issued weeks after then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that service members would be required to get the Covid jab.
As described by Wong, federal law specifies that “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.” Any such waiver signed by the president must then be reported to Congress by the defense secretary — a scenario which never seemingly occurred regarding the DOD’s Covid shot mandate, according to the Breitbart report.
“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,” the report reads.
While the military’s Covid vaccine mandate was repealed in January 2023 following passage of a defense bill containing a provision nuking the edict, the damage had already been done. More than 8,700 service members were effectively forced out of the armed forces after choosing to forgo the experimental mRNA shot.
In compliance with an executive order from President Trump, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced on Monday that the Pentagon has begun “outreach to ensure each of these individuals receives clear information on how to pursue reinstatement.” These service members, according to the spokesman, will have until April 1, 2026, to do so.
As observed by independent journalist Jordan Schachtel, Adirim is “a devoted [D]emocrat political activist and, as a medical doctor, advocates for [so-called] ‘gender-affirming prescriptions‘ for ‘transgender’ children, or in plain [E]nglish, she’s for sterilizing children.” The Biden appointee has also locked her X account and “never explained publicly why she signed off on the Biden White House’s DOD mandate,” Schachtel noted.
The CIA did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
