One of the most troubling elements of the bin Laden raid is the use of medical aid workers in the effort to find the now-deceased terrorist leader.

On one hand, the American people expected the President to use every tool at his disposal to either kill or capture bin Laden. We would expect nothing less. On the other hand, the disclosure of those tools can have ill effects both on innocent actors in the area of operations and on the potential success of future or concurrent missions. Talking about it was a mistake.

Health Inspection in Karachi. Courtesy USAID.

Though the news of the intelligence program broke nearly a year ago, The New York Times has published an article this week examining the adverse effects the CIA vaccination program has had on humanitarian workers in Pakistan. The hardest hit organization has been Save the Children, which has experienced travel restrictions, refused visas, monitoring of staff members’ phone calls and homes, and the impounding of supplies.

Aid workers already face a difficult job as it is, often working in dangerous areas with a skeptical public. The Los Angeles Times described some of these problems in October of 2011. Adding the threat of local law enforcement or intelligence agencies on top of the myriad of other challenges threatens to severely denigrate the effectiveness of valuable programs.

This is a dangerous precedent, and it may not be the only incident; The New York Times indicates that Pakistan arrested three aid workers accused of working for the German Federal Intelligence Service. Whether the Pakistani arrests are legitimate or an act of paranoia is difficult to say. Perhaps this may be a reality of intelligence collection, but it is a particularly dangerous reality that literally may have consequences in at least thousands of lives.

Vaccination and medical programs have been responsible for the improvement of health worldwide, including the eradication of smallpox. The benefits of these programs and the consequences of their potential loss must be taken into consideration before risking their legitimacy for other purposes.

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