New evidence has emerged that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s colleague explicitly described their trip to Samoa as a “mission” to study medical records after a “discontinuity in vaccinations”, according to emails released by the US Department of State. Dr Michael Graven, then chief information officer of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, wrote to Samoan officials in March and May 2019 that he and Kennedy planned to perform statistical investigations and health informatics evaluations across all hospitals and clinics on the island nation. The emails, obtained by the Guardian and Associated Press through a freedom of information lawsuit, undermine Kennedy’s repeated denials during his Senate confirmation hearing last year that the visit had “nothing to do with vaccines”.
The ‘mission’ as described by Kennedy’s colleague
Graven, a paediatrician who died in 2022, laid out the purpose of the trip in two emails to Samoan officials. In a message dated 8 March 2019, he said he would “be with Mr Kennedy as the Health Informatician who will be performing the statistical investigations”. Two months later, on 13 May, Graven wrote again after discussion with Kennedy, describing the trip several times as a “mission”. “The mission involves health informatics evaluation from medical record data from all hospitals and clinics in Samoa to evaluate outcomes associated with the recent discontinuity in vaccinations,” Graven wrote. “Mr Kennedy asked me to join this mission as I have performed health informatics initiatives in 48 other countries over 40 years.”
Graven explained that he planned to travel to every hospital and clinic in Samoa to collect data and conduct a statistical analysis. He insisted the mission would be carried out “without bias”, adding that he had witnessed the harmful effects of vaccine-preventable illness and had served in countries where they had discovered “bad vaccine lots”. In a further email on 13 May, Graven wrote: “We all look forward to the opportunity to be of service to the people of Samoa with our mission.”
The trip took place against a specific backdrop. In 2018, two infants in Samoa died after receiving a measles, mumps and rubella vaccine that had been improperly prepared. The Samoan government halted all vaccinations for ten months, until April 2019, and vaccination rates plummeted. Kennedy had long called for studies comparing the health of vaccinated children with unvaccinated children, and Samoan officials later confirmed that the pause created what Kennedy in a 2021 blog post called a “natural experiment”. In that post, Kennedy wrote that Samoan officials “were curious to measure health outcomes following the ‘natural experiment’ created by the national respite from vaccines”.
Graven’s description of the mission aligns with Kennedy’s known interest in such comparative studies. Kennedy’s 2023 book Vax-UnVax: Let the Science Speak called for more research comparing fully vaccinated children with those who are not vaccinated. The New York Times reported this month that Kennedy, now US health secretary, has asked government scientists to undertake such studies, which he believes will prove vaccines are harmful. Last year, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) granted funding to a study in Guinea-Bissau that would have compared children who received the hepatitis B vaccine with those who did not; the study was deemed unethical by the head of the World Health Organization and other experts and was paused.
Kennedy’s denials under oath
At his Senate confirmation hearing last year, Kennedy repeatedly denied that his trip to Samoa had anything to do with vaccines. Under questioning from Senator Ron Wyden, he said: “I went there, nothing to do with vaccines. I went there to introduce a medical informatics system with digitalised records in Samoa and make health delivery much more efficient.” The following day, Senator Edward Markey pressed him again. “My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines,” Kennedy said. He later added: “My purpose in the trip was not to – I ended up having conversations with people, some of whom I never intended to meet.”
Kennedy also told the Senate that Children’s Health Defense had a $6m grant “to digitalise the health records of Samoa … and to bring in a state-of-the-art medical informatic system” to the island nation. He said that was “the purpose” of his visit. However, the emails obtained by the Guardian and AP show Graven repeatedly used the word “mission” and emphasised the evaluation of vaccination outcomes. The discrepancy has prompted Wyden and Markey to accuse Kennedy of lying to the Senate. Wyden told the Guardian that the new findings “offer more proof that Robert Kennedy is a liar on a mission to take vaccines away from kids who need them”.
An email from Antone Greubel, a US State Department employee stationed in Samoa, provides further context. On 4 June 2019, Greubel wrote to colleagues that Kennedy and Graven had left just a few days after arriving, adding: “Based on conversations with my contacts RFK and Dr [Graven] fell far short of their goal to influence Samoan government vaccination policy.” Another State Department email, cited in the research briefing, noted that Greubel believed Kennedy’s goal was “to raise awareness about vaccinations, more specifically some of the health concerns associated with vaccinating (from his point of view)”.
The outbreak and aftermath
Kennedy arrived in Samoa on 30 May 2019. By that time vaccinations had resumed, but rates remained very low. A few months later, a devastating measles outbreak tore through the Pacific island nation, sickening thousands and killing 83 people – most of them children under the age of five. Samoan officials have since said that Kennedy’s visit bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccine activists. Samoa’s Prime Minister, Fiame Naomi Mataʻafa, expressed surprise at Kennedy’s nomination for health secretary, stating that his visit “did not help our cause” and that “unvaccinated children died”.
Children’s Health Defense, the non-profit Kennedy chaired at the time, had been reaching out to the Samoan government in the months before the trip, according to emails previously obtained by the Guardian and AP. The organisation’s revenue increased significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic. Kennedy was also accompanied on the trip by his wife, the actor Cheryl Hines.
The emails released by the State Department – many heavily redacted – were turned over in batches beginning in January as a result of an open records lawsuit brought with the assistance of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. They provide the most detailed view yet of Kennedy’s stated intentions in Samoa. Despite Graven’s plan to spend weeks visiting sites and collecting data, the State Department email from Greubel confirms that Kennedy and Graven left after only a short stay. Children’s Health Defense did not respond to a request for comment.
