Ex-CDC director tells senators that RFK Jr. required political sign-off on decisions, called for firings without cause

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN

(CNN) — Dr. Susan Monarez, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a Senate committee hearing on Wednesday that US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put politics before public health when he required that all CDC policy and personnel decisions be cleared by political staff.

She was ousted last month, just 29 days into her tenure as CDC director, amid clashes with Kennedy over vaccine policies. Dr. Debra Houry, who stepped down from her role as the CDC’s chief medical officer in protest after Monarez’s ouster, also testified in Wednesday’s hearing.

“I was fired for holding the line on scientific integrity,” Monarez told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in the hearing. “I had refused to commit to approving vaccine recommendations without evidence, fire career officials without cause, or resign.”

HHS has not responded to CNN’s request for comment on Monarez’s claims.

In the hearing, Monarez offered new details about her brief tenure as CDC director, including saying Kennedy issued a directive that CDC policy and personnel decisions required prior approval from political staff — a break from the practice of past administrations.

Monarez also said that on August 2, she learned from media reports that Kennedy had removed liaison members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP — an influential group of outside experts who advise the agency on vaccinations – essentially being blindsided by the news.

Then, “on the morning of August 25, Secretary Kennedy demanded two things of me that were inconsistent with my oath of office and the ethics required of a public official,” Monarez said. “He directed me to commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation regardless of the scientific evidence. He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy, without cause. He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign.”

Monarez said she told Kennedy that she could not “pre-approve recommendations without reviewing the evidence” and that she had no basis to fire scientific experts.

“On August 25, I could have stayed silent, agreed to the demands, and no one would have known,” Monarez said. “What the public would have seen were scientists dismissed without cause and vaccine protections quietly eroded — all under the authority of a Senate-confirmed director with ‘unimpeachable credentials.’ I could have kept the office, the title, but I would have lost the one thing that cannot be replaced: my integrity.”

Kennedy removed all 17 sitting members of ACIP in June. The committee now includes an entirely new group of experts, including five who were announced this week. They are scheduled to meet Thursday and Friday to discuss Covid-19 vaccines as well as immunizations against hepatitis B and measles, mumps, rubella and varicella. Several of the new members have made unproven claims about vaccines, including one who said, without evidence, that Covid shots are causing “unprecedented levels of death and harm in young people.”

Monarez said the new composition of the committee has “raised concerns from the medical community.”

“There is a real risk that recommendations could be made restricting access to vaccines for children and others in need without rigorous scientific review,” she said. “With no permanent CDC director in place, those recommendations could be adopted. The stakes are not theoretical. We already have seen the largest measles outbreak in more than 30 years, which claimed the lives of two children. If vaccine protections are weakened, preventable diseases will return.”

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