The Polio Field Reports: What Nasra Hassan Found, and Why Epstein Saw It First

In July 2013, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation outlined what it wanted from the International Peace Institute. Melissa Covelli West, a senior program officer, summarized the objectives: "Reduce number of inaccessible children to zero. Create safety for polio vaccinators/health workers and their security teams." IPI would provide "research, analysis and insights of the political environment in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Northern Nigeria, and Somalia" and help "identify potential influencers/high-level contacts that can move the work forward" (vol00009-efta00969185-pdf-3). By September, the Foundation had committed $1 million in general operating support and a $4 million project grant over three years (EFTA01959363-1). The reports IPI produced traveled through Terje Rød-Larsen to Jeffrey Epstein. Several survive in his archive.

The most detailed is a May 2013 field report by Nasra Hassan, forwarded by Rød-Larsen to Epstein. Hassan had spent five days meeting sources across FATA tribal areas and Islamabad. Her conclusion: "religion-based refusal is a very small part of the problem; the rest is pressure tactics by not only the Taliban but also local communities; one-upmanship; poor follow-up & monitoring." She documented "ghost" vaccination teams: "funds provided for 15 teams, but only 10 actually exist, ditto transport, fuel etc. In a vast area with no jobs, PC is a good regular income." Surveys had been gamed. Respondents "deliberately gave wrong info or provided answers which would please the sponsor." Communities with no clean water or electricity imposed local bans on polio teams: "no PC until we get electricity" (vol00009-efta00657797-pdf-0).

Hassan's report mapped how different groups used polio eradication as a bargaining chip. The Taliban ban on vaccination had only started in June 2012, years after the campaigns were already struggling. Criminal groups, local leaders, and feuding factions all blocked polio teams to pursue unrelated objectives, from getting prisoners released to controlling territory. Even Taliban leaders "do try to acquire anti-polio drops for their own children." The UAE was about to sign a $110 million, three-year grant to cover all polio eradication in FATA. Funding was not the problem (vol00009-efta00657797-pdf-0).

Three weeks after the field report, a CIA drone killed Wali ur Rahman, the Pakistani Taliban's second-in-command. Hassan wrote to Rød-Larsen on May 30: "Unfortunately today's CIA droning to death of the Pak Taliban's No 2 (Wali ur Rahman) has complicated matters. He was a pragmatic voice, who opposed suicide attacks in Pakistan (though not in Afghanistan) and who believed in and was ready to negotiate with the 'new' Govt in Pak." She had been "working behind the scenes to get the 'new' Govt to include polio issues in their negotiations with TTP." The strike ended that track (EFTA01969802-0).

On February 26, 2014, a female polio worker was shot and killed in Wardigley district, Mogadishu. Hassan sent the report to Rød-Larsen, Andrea Pfanzelter, and Mark Shaw. "The popularity of such attacks is spreading, with Pakistan leading the pack," she wrote. She referenced a precedent: district polio officer Osman Hussein Ibrahim had been killed in 2010 by a stray bullet while supervising a national immunization program (EFTA01931211-0). Rød-Larsen forwarded it to Epstein the next day.

By February 2015, the violence had escalated. Hassan sent Rød-Larsen a report titled "Urgent, Confi, plz pass on to Bill Gates." In Zhob, Balochistan, a polio team of three workers and two paramilitary escorts had gone missing. Pakistani forces launched a 250-person search operation. During an exchange of fire, "two suicide bombers blew themselves up on Sunday 15 Feb pm, the 1st suicide bombing in connection with polio." Four bodies were recovered. In Khyber Agency, gunmen fired at a van carrying a polio vaccination team, killing the driver. Hassan's analysis: "The police and/or Levies accompanying polio teams offer the right target & polio workers are collateral damage, sometimes in gunfire by the security forces" (vol00009-efta00864113-pdf-0).

Hassan's instruction was to pass the report to Bill Gates. It went to Rød-Larsen, who forwarded it to Epstein. Since December 2014, when militants attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar and killed 132 children, the Pakistani government had been hanging members of TTP and allied groups. Hassan wrote that "any chance of a dialogue with any of the militant groups cited above is, for the present, neither possible nor recommended." The Gates Foundation's polio intelligence program was operating in a war zone. Its classified field reports were traveling through a convicted sex offender's Gmail account before reaching anyone at the Foundation.