A Republican lawmaker has raised concerns over the potential dismissal of unvaccinated intelligence employees if they should fail to comply with the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccination deadline for civilian workers later this month.
Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) said on Nov. 5 that COVID-19 vaccination rates are different in all the 18-agency intelligence communities in the United States.
“You’re potentially firing thousands of people on the same day. And it’s not like you put an ad on Craigslist and have people apply by Thursday,” Stewart said.
“My question is, what’s the impact on national security if we do that?”
Intelligence personnel are particularly hard to replace because of the highly specialized work they do and the difficulties of completing security clearance checks.
Stewart cited information that he said had been provided to the House Intelligence Committee but hasn’t yet been released publicly.
The Republican lawmaker said that some intelligence agencies had at least 20 percent of their workforce unvaccinated as of late October, The Associated Press reported. In other agencies, as many as 40 percent of intelligence personnel remain unvaccinated.
In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a spokesperson from Stewart’s office confirmed that the figures listed in the story published by AP are accurate.
“Unfortunately, anything more specific than that is classified,” the spokesperson wrote.
President Joe Biden has ordered all civilian employees to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 22, as well as those employed by federal contractors and entities receiving federal support in connection with the government’s pandemic recovery programs.
Federal employees who aren’t vaccinated or haven’t received an exemption by the deadline could face a suspension of 14 days or less, followed by possible dismissal.
The director of the Office of National Intelligence declined several requests to disclose the overall vaccination rate for the roughly 100,000 people who work across the 18-agency intelligence communities.
Avril Haines, the Biden administration’s director of national intelligence, declined to state last week what percentage of the agency’s workforce had been vaccinated against the CCP virus.
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee said they’re confident the vast majority of intelligence workers will comply with Biden’s vaccination mandate.
“If somebody is not willing to do what’s necessary to protect their own health and the health of their unit, that actually calls into question their ability to effectively do the job,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said during an interview.
“If you say, ‘You have to do this and we won’t consider any exceptions to that,’ that’s where you get people to dig in their heels,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
