The Department of Health and Human Services has hired an Army doctor with a history of questioning the safety of Covid vaccines to investigate unsubstantiated claims that more than 2,500 U.S. service members died after receiving the shots.
The doctor, Lt. Col. Theresa Long, who has no specialized training in vaccines or viruses, said in an Aug. 14 legal deposition obtained by The New York Times that she is a senior medical military adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. but also reports to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Mr. Kennedy, who has called Covid vaccines the “deadliest” ever made, is leading an intense campaign to explore his long-held theory that vaccines are fueling an epidemic of chronic diseases in the country.
Billions worldwide have received Covid vaccines. The vast majority have experienced no serious side effects, and research has found deaths from the vaccines to be exceedingly rare.
“I have not seen any convincing reports that large numbers of people have died due to the vaccine,” said Dr. Ofer Levy, the director of the precision vaccines program at Boston Children’s Hospital.
More than 96 percent of service members were vaccinated against Covid before a mandate that they receive them was rescinded. A March 2026 report from the Pentagon, and a previous one in July 2025, reported no deaths from the vaccines.
Dr. Long said in the deposition that she had been appointed to investigate 55,000 reports of adverse effects and 2,544 deaths among service members who received Covid vaccines, reported to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Experts have noted that while this database is the largest, it is also the least reliable: Reports of side effects can be submitted by anyone and are not vetted, so they may be subject to bias or manipulation.
Dr. Long’s role was reported earlier by Politico. She and H.H.S. did not respond to requests for comment or clarification on the project.
She testified that she had personal knowledge of the deaths of 28 service members as a result of Covid vaccines. She also said that she knew of several female service members who lost pregnancies after receiving Covid shots, and that the vaccines had caused pregnancy loss at a rate of about 82 percent. Studies in hundreds of thousands of women have shown that Covid vaccination is not linked to an increased risk of miscarriage, stillbirth or preterm birth.
Dr. Long also echoed inaccurate comments from Mr. Kennedy suggesting that vaccines may cause autism and contending that autism is “extraordinarily rare” in some groups like the Amish who often do not immunize their children. Dozens of studies have explored and dismissed those theories. Last week, Pennsylvania announced two deaths from measles, both in infants from the Amish community.
The 2026 Pentagon report concluded that Covid vaccinations caused a short-term rise in heart inflammation within 21 days — a known side effect — but that the inflammation did not persist, and Covid itself carried a larger risk of the complication. The Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The report also found that Covid vaccines decreased the incidence of eight conditions, including life-threatening ones such as acute kidney failure and hemorrhagic stroke.
Dr. Long told lawyers in the deposition that the Pentagon report cherry-picked data and that she had been appointed specifically to investigate “inaccuracies” in defense databases. She said she hoped to complete her investigation within a year.
Dr. Levy said given the military includes many young men, the group at highest risk of myocarditis, or heart inflammation, from Covid vaccines, he supported research into the safety of the shots in that population. But many infections, including Covid and flu, can cause myocarditis, he noted, and proving the exact cause of death can be exceedingly difficult.
A detailed investigation would require autopsy reports, including samples of nasal passages and lung fluid, and information on any infections the person may have had. “You’d want all of that and more to really reach a very serious conclusion that this is caused by the vaccine,” he said.
Dr. Long’s testimony was part of a defamation lawsuit brought against Ivan Raiklin, a far-right activist, by Dr. Terry Adirim, who as a senior Defense Department health official had advised that military personnel receive Covid shots. Shortly after she moved to a new post at the C.I.A., Mr. Raiklin accused her on social media of committing “jab genocide” with that advice.
In her deposition, Dr. Long spoke in support of Mr. Raiklin and said in immunizing service members, Dr. Adirim was morally comparable to Nazi doctors who were hanged for experimenting on prisoners in concentration camps during World War II.
Dr. Long said she did not receive the Covid vaccine and did not immunize her two children against the disease. She said she had received every vaccine the military required of her before then, but had struggled with infertility and heart failure.
“And so having received, you know, probably four or five rounds of vaccines every time they lost my vaccine card, I wouldn’t — I wouldn’t say that I feel like those vaccines helped in any way,” she said.
Helene Cooper contributed reporting, and Georgia Gee contributed research.
The post Kennedy Hires Army Doctor Who Opposed Covid Shots to Investigate if They Killed 2,500 Troops appeared first on New York Times.
