A rank-and-file CDC scientist felt secure enough to make demands of agency leaders and criticize their work, sometimes copying the HHS secretary on correspondence, a recently released trove of CDC emails shows.
In several emails, William Thompson, PhD, a senior scientist in CDC’s division of viral hepatitis, noted that he was working on behalf of the HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s interests. He also frequently looped in other political leadership at the agency.
Thompson pushed for access to data used in an autism study that was conducted more than two decades ago — one that he co-authored — and at one point he complained to political superiors that another project led by a high-ranking CDC official was “one of the most absurd SOWs [scope of work] I have ever seen.”
Thompson’s tone throughout the emails, released as part of an investigation by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, was direct and empowered. He works under federal whistleblower protections, according to the New York Times, and Kennedy himself touted his connections with Thompson during a Senate hearing last year.
When asked during that hearing to name one scientist Kennedy spoke with at the CDC, he named Thompson.
In an email exchange that began on May 29, 2025, Thompson reached out to a branch chief at the agency’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD), asking for the original data used in an autism study. The request was kicked up the chain, ultimately looping in the center’s acting director Suzanne Gilboa, PhD.
When Thompson highlighted Kennedy’s interest, Gilboa noted that the data for the 2004 paper — which Thompson co-authored — were “pulled together in 2014 in response to a previous request.”
That request involved Brian Hooker, PhD, of Kennedy’s former group Children’s Health Defense, who had recorded conversations with Thompson as he alleged that his CDC colleagues covered up and deleted data on a potential relationship between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and autism in Black boys in that study.
Hooker’s study was published in Translational Neurodegeneration, but subsequently retracted.
Gilboa pointed out that as a co-author of the original study, Thompson was “likely aware” that the original data were linked to school vaccine records solely for the study and that the 2014 package is the “fastest way to meet your needs.”
Thompson replied that he was familiar with the 2014 dataset but was “more interested in whether the original data sources exist.” He explained that he “did all the analyses for the study and was provided a cleaned dataset with cases and controls already matched and the birth certificate data already merged.”
Instead, “HHS would like access to the original data sources and would like to merge the data using those datasets to test additional hypotheses,” he wrote.
Gilboa responded that the agency didn’t have original source data. About a month later, on July 10, Kennedy himself responded to the email thread: “Bill. I’m assuming this is the verstratten original data.”
Kennedy had been on the email thread the whole time, put there by Thompson from the beginning. It appears, however, that Kennedy was talking about an entirely different study — a 2003 paper on the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines by CDC employee Thomas Verstraeten, MD, MSc, and colleagues, which has been heavily criticized by the anti-vaccine community.
In another email thread starting June 25, 2026, former CDC chief medical officer Debra Houry, MD, MPH, sent a proposed scope of work in collaboration with Gilboa to Stuart Burns, a former Republican congressional aide hired to work in the CDC director’s office.
The scope of work appears to be about a “50% detail” for Thompson — that he’d work half of his time at CDC for the NCBDDD and half for his home division of viral hepatitis. Houry made it clear that she wasn’t involved in conversations with Thompson or HHS about the position and was open to revisions on the proposal.
Burns passed the document to Thompson, who forwarded it to a CDC employee in his division of viral hepatitis named Brooke Hoots, PhD, MSPH, and copied Kennedy.
Thompson didn’t hold back in his criticism. “NCBDDD put together this statement of work without input from me, Stuart Burns … or Secretary Kennedy. This SOW has nothing to do with the tasks that Secretary Kennedy has assigned me to carry out. It is actually one of the most absurd SOWs I have ever seen.”
He then asked for his detail to be delayed “until we have a new CDC Director and I will continue to carry out tasks as assigned to me by Stewart [sic] Burns and Secretary Kennedy.”
Heather Flick Melanson, whom Kennedy has since fired as his chief of staff at HHS, replied the next day, confirming plans to delay his detail, but added that “Bill should continue to perform work for the IOS [Immediate Office of the Secretary] … as requested,” including Secretary Kennedy, the chief of staff, the deputy chief of staff for policy, and Burns. “We appreciate all he does to help with important, timely projects. He’s been great.”
Houry was not copied on that email, but it was forwarded to her, and she wrote to Burns and CDC chief of staff Matthew Buzzelli. She said she was “disappointed in the unprofessional and uncalled for behavior of Bill Thompson related to his 50% detail.”
She emphasized that she was moving along the request as quickly as possible but wasn’t part of the initial discussions about the scope of the detail, which is why she was “explicitly very open to feedback.”
“I do not appreciate Bill including the Secretary, HHS OGC [office of general counsel], and HHS Chief of Staff on his response about the scope of the detail,” Houry wrote. “This felt like a direct attack on me without first providing any input about the draft scope. I would have appreciated you or Bill revising the scope so we could easily move forward with the detail rather than bringing such high levels of HHS leadership into the discussion.”
