Trump official in charge of national stockpile bet big on smallpox and anthrax, cut infectious disease funds

Had the U.S. been attacked by anthrax or weaponized smallpox, Robert Kadlec would have looked prescient. Instead, the U.S. and the world got a deadly new coronavirus, and the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile, which Kadlec oversees, was unprepared, The Washington Post reports.

Kadlec, a longtime biodefense expert, was confirmed as head of the Health and Human Service Department's Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) in August 2017. He immediately began shifting his office's focus to "biologic attacks, intentional attacks, terrorist attacks, and definitely away from natural disease outbreaks," a former official told the Post. HHS transferred control of the national stockpile to ASPR from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2018, over the objections of some national security and public health officials.

Kadlec streamlined the process for purchasing supplies for the stockpile, "diminishing the role of government experts and restricting decision-making to himself and a small circle of advisers," the Post reports. He oversaw a $2.8 billion, 10-year contract for smallpox vaccines, at double the cost per dose, with a former client, Emergent BioSolutions — a relationship he did not mention on his Senate disclosure forms — and ramped up purchases of anthrax vaccines.

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At the same time, ASPR slashed planned funding for pandemic flu and infectious disease preparedness, including halting "an Obama-era initiative to spend $35 million to build a machine that could produce 1.5 million N95 masks per day," the Post reports. After HHS Secretary Alex Azar assigned him to lead the department's coronavirus response in March, Kadlec's office signed contracts for $2.3 billion worth of ventilators and $468 million for masks, including $62.3 million from O&M Halyard, the contractor whose rapid mask machine Kadlec axed in 2018.

Kadlec told the Post he's proud of his decades government service, including his efforts to centralize authority at ASPR. And his actions are consistent with his longtime views on biodefense.

"Quite frankly, Mother Nature is not a thinking enemy intent on inflicting grievous harm to our country, killing our citizens, undermining our government, or destroying our way of life," Kadlec told Congress in 2011. "Mother Nature doesn't develop highly virulent organisms that are resistant to our current stockpiles of antibiotics." In March, he told a House committee his office "did not consider a situation like this today," with "respirators being our first and only line of defense for health-care workers." Read more about his vision and business entanglements at The Washington Post.