Dr. Terry Adirim, then the acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon in 2021.Credit...Susan Walsh/Associated Press
The C.I.A. fired its top doctor after she was targeted by far-right activists who have worked to oust government officials they see as disloyal, according to a lawsuit filed Friday evening.
Late last year, the C.I.A. recruited the doctor, Terry Adirim, to take a top medical job as the director of the agency’s Center for Global Health Services. Within days, Ivan Raiklin, a far-right provocateur, accused her of being the “architect” of the Pentagon’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate.
Dr. Adirim, 61, had served in a top medical role in the Defense Department in 2021 when Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III mandated that all service members receive a Covid vaccination.
Mr. Raiklin,
who has called himself President Trump’s “secretary of retribution,” is a former Green Beret who became an intense critic of the Covid vaccine. He published a “Deep State Target List” of 350 individuals he accused of treason. According to the suit, Mr. Raiklin also singled out Dr. Adirim for criticism.
Appearing on Rosanne Barr’s podcast, Mr. Raiklin accused Dr. Adirim of “genocide and mass mutilation” for her support of the vaccine.
In a since-deleted post on social media directed at John Ratcliffe, who had been chosen by Mr. Trump to lead the agency, Mr. Raiklin suggested that Dr. Adirim was “burrowing in” at the agency, a term for political appointees taking civil service jobs.
Mr. Raiklin is a close associate of Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, and serves on the board of directors of Mr. Flynn’s organization America’s Future.
Dr. Adirim was told on April 4 that she was going to be fired. She twice asked why, but her supervisor said “I have no information.” Breitbart News reported her termination on April 8 in a social media message, which Mr. Raiklin reposted.
According to the lawsuit, Dr. Adirim was fired two days after Lara Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist, visited the White House and demanded that several national security officials be dismissed. Ms. Loomer later took credit for the firing of Gen. Timothy Haugh, the director of the National Security Agency.
In the suit, Kevin Carroll, a lawyer for Dr. Adirim, said he would seek to prove through discovery that Mr. Raiklin asked Ms. Loomer to request that Dr. Adirim be fired.
The suit has no direct evidence Mr. Raiklin spoke to Ms. Loomer, but says he had posted his support for her after the Oval Office meeting. “For the record, I respect Laura Loomer,” he wrote.
Mr. Raiklin and Ms. Loomer did not respond to requests for comment on Friday afternoon.
Dr. Adirim’s firing is expected to be finalized Saturday, a month short of when she would have qualified for full federal retirement benefits, according to the lawsuit.
“Plaintiff and her family suffered terrible injustice only because her good service to our country made her a target for a political extremist who defamed her and called for the termination of her employment and even her death,” Mr. Carroll wrote in his complaint.
The lawsuit says while serving at the Pentagon, Dr. Adirim recommended to Mr. Austin that service members be given mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations, and notes it was in the tradition set by George Washington, who ordered the Continental Army vaccinated for smallpox in 1777.
“Plaintiff’s good advice saved the lives of American service members,” Mr. Carroll wrote in the complaint. “While several troops sadly died of Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic in 2020-1, none died of Covid-19 after Secretary Austin adopted her recommendation and ordered our armed forces vaccinated.”
On Dec. 11, Dr. Adirim signed a renewable five-year contract with the C.I.A.
When the agency told her on April 4 that she was being let go, an official also said a clause in her contract allows termination with 30 days’ notice for “any reason.”
A spokeswoman for the C.I.A. declined to comment.
C.I.A. regulations give the director broad authority to fire employees. But a federal court has issued a temporary stay on Mr. Ratcliffe’s attempts to fire C.I.A. officers who were assigned to diversity initiatives.
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