The CIA’s former top-ranking doctor is suing it over her firing, accusing the government of denying her due process and bowing to far right activists who singled her out for criticism.
The CIA hired Dr. Terry Adirim, director of the CIA’s Center for Global Health Services, after she served as assistant secretary of defense for health affairs during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Just days after Adirim started her job at the CIA last year, far-right commentator Ivan Raiklin accused her of being the “architect” of the Defense Department’s vaccine mandate, which required members of the military to get the Covid-19 vaccine.
The lawsuit alleges that Adirim’s hiring at the CIA had not yet been announced publicly and that someone inside the government leaked the information to Raiklin.
Raiklin, a former Green Beret who has called himself the “secretary of retribution,” has been an intense critic of the Covid-19 vaccines, calling them “DNA-mutilation injections.” He has demanded retaliation against Pentagon officials who he says were involved in requiring service members to get the Covid-19 vaccines.
Raiklin is associated with Michael Flynn, who was briefly President Donald Trump’s national security adviser at the start of his first term.
The CIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Adirim was fired only weeks after she received an email from the CIA’s chief operating officer saying the CIA “looked forward to investing in her career,” according to the lawsuit.
That was also two days after Lara Loomer, another far-right conspiracy theorist, paid a visit to the White House and urged that several national security officials be dismissed for alleged disloyalty, according to the lawsuit.
Loomer later took credit for the abrupt firing of the director of the National Security Agency, four-star Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh, as well as its civilian deputy.
“We’re suing CIA to enjoin the Agency from firing Dr. Adirim, and seeking damages for violating her privacy, ignoring her due process rights, and breaching her employment contract,” Adirim’s lawyer, Kevin Carroll, said in a statement.
Carroll says in the lawsuit that he will seek to prove through discovery that Raiklin worked with Loomer to secure Adirim’s dismissal.
CORRECTION (May 4, 2025, 6:35 p.m. ET): A photo caption in a previous version of this article misstated the location of the Pentagon. It is in Arlington, Virginia, not Washington, D.C.
