Leaked Pentagon Document Shows FDA-Approved COVID Vaccine Was Made Available Later Than Claimed: Whistleblower

Preventive Medicine Services NCOIC Sergeant First Class Demetrius Roberson prepares to administer a COVID-19 vaccine to a soldier in Fort Knox, Ky., on Sept. 9, 2021. Jon Cherry/Getty Images

A leaked Pentagon health document shows that the government may have made misleading claims about when it made Food and Drug Administration-approved COVID-19 vaccines available to the Army, which was then mandated to take the shot, according to a service member.

An active-duty Air Force member with nearly 15 years of service—who used the pseudonym Sgt. Daniel LeMay and emphasized that his views don’t reflect those of the Department of Defense or the Department of the Air Force for fear of reprisals—provided The Epoch Times with a copy of the Army’s Medical Material Quality Control Message (MMQC-22-1268), dated May 25, 2022.

The document was an “ordering ... and implementation guidance” for the Pfizer BioNTech, Cominarty-labeled, Tris-Sucrose/Gray Cap, vaccine for 12 years and older.”

The reason for the message, it stated, was that the Pentagon will be “introducing Pfizer BioNTech, Cominarty-labeled, Tris-Sucrose/Gray Cap vaccine into the distribution process.”

“The document itself represents the first time ordering instructions for Comirnaty were issued, and as Fort Detrick is the central node for all distribution, there’s no reason to believe it was circulating through other channels,” Sgt. LeMay said.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s August 2021 vaccine mandate, which has since been rescinded, stated that it applied to “COVID-19 vaccines that receive full licensure from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in accordance with FDA-approved labeling and guidance.”

A month later, the Pentagon issued a policy saying the FDA-approved Comirnaty and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines issued under the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) are interchangeable, citing FDA guidance.

Some service members objected to the policy, arguing that the mandate’s wording meant the military couldn’t force people to take EUA-labeled vaccines. They said the military didn’t make available Cominarty-labeled vaccines until several months after the August 2021 mandate.

“While [the plaintiffs] may believe that FDA-approved vaccines are ‘not available,’ the Comirnaty-labeled vaccine is in fact available for DOD to order as of today’s date,” the Department of Justice, representing the Defense Department (DoD) in the federal lawsuit Coker v. Austin, stated in a May 20, 2022, filing.

The Army medical document dated five days later contradicts these claims, Sgt. LeMay contends.

“If the Comirnaty-labeled vaccine wasn’t available to order until five days later on May 25, the Department of Justice lied under oath in court,” he said. “[MMQC-22-1268] was the first set of ordering instructions.”

“Since my discovery, the Army has deleted the document from their database,” he said. “It’s not accessible anymore by any standard Common Access Card holder, but I fortunately had already saved a copy.”

Without disclosing their nature, he said “a handful of other documents” also are missing.

Officials at the Pentagon and the Department of the Army didn’t respond by press time to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.