Dark side of Medical Intelligence gathering .

Intelligence agencies routinely gather medical intelligence on the world’s political leaders. Officially, this information is used to ascertain the viability for continuation in office for leaders. However, there is a dark side to such intelligence collection.


Medical intelligence also contains data on the status of a leader’s immune system and his or her susceptibility to a number of diseases or other external health threat. Such information can be useful in devising “natural” assassination weapons, such as cancer, radiation poisoning, and food poisoning.

The collection of information on medical factors is known as “medical intelligence.” MEDINT, as it is also known, is defined by the US Department of Defense as “That category of intelligence resulting from collection, evaluation, analysis, and interpretation of foreign medical, bio-scientific, and environmental information that is of interest to strategic planning and to military medical planning and operations for the conservation of the fighting strength of friendly forces and the formation of assessments of foreign medical capabilities in both military and civilian sectors.”

    Intelligence agencies take MEDINT one step further. The Central Intelligence Agency and Israel’s Mossad, in particular, use MEDINT to analyze the medical conditions of foreign leaders, as well as their treatment regimen and schedules, to determine the best methods for administering toxic dose of medicines, pathogens, or other deadly agents to cause death, in other words, medical assassination.


Eight years after his death, the body of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is to be exhumed. After researchers at a Swiss institute discovered high levels of radioactive polonium on Arafat’s clothes and other personal effects and a French court ordered an inquiry into Arafat’s death, an autopsy will be conducted on Arafat’s body. Arafat fell seriously ill while being held as a virtual hostage by the Israelis at his Ramallah, Palestine headquarters. Arafat was flown to hospital in Paris and died a month later in November 2004. Mossad is believed by many to have carried out a “medical assassination” of Arafat.

At the same time that Arafat’s exhumation and autopsy was scheduled, Turkish investigators discovered high levels of DDT, strychnine, and polonium in the body of Turkish President Turgut Ozal. More