Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote to Samoa's prime minister on 20 January 2019 and asked to study the country's measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. He used the words "vaccine" or "vaccination" eight times. "I would propose my team conduct detailed health informatics assessment in Samoa of what happened with your MMR vaccines," he wrote, on the letterhead of Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group he chaired.
Six years later Kennedy faced the senators who would decide whether he ran American health. Sen. Ron Wyden asked him about Samoa. "I went there, nothing to do with vaccines," Kennedy answered. "I went there to introduce a medical informatics system that would digitalize records in Samoa." Sen. Edward Markey asked the next day. "My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines," Kennedy said.
The Guardian and the Associated Press published that letter Thursday morning. Michelle R Smith reported it from documents the two newsrooms pried out of the State Department. Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi wrote back a month later, welcoming "your Team's independent health assessment of our MMR Vaccines." Kennedy's colleague Dr Michael Graven called it a vaccine-related "mission" in an email that May.
Kennedy sat unsworn at both hearings. Prosecutors can still charge a witness who lies to Congress.
An HHS spokesperson called the reporting "outright defamatory" and repeated that the visit "was unrelated to vaccines." The Guardian asked HHS to explain the letter. HHS answered everything except that.
