Liars in our government? Say it isn't so. A CDC internal email released through a Freedom of Information Act request reveals just how nasty things got behind closed doors after a CDC senior scientist confessed to covering up a link between vaccines and autism, and implicated his CDC colleagues. The email, dated Sept. 2, 2018, was written by CDC's Dr. Willam (Bill) Thompson to Dr. Frank DeStefano, CDC’s head of immunization safety. In the email, Thompson responds to an interview DeStefano gave me in 2014. It was after Thompson stunned the scientific community by saying that he, DeStefano, and other CDC scientists committed fraud in a major vaccine-autism study. It was information that upended a decade-and-a-half of government and vaccine industry narratives on the controversy, and stood to impact some of the millions of families in the U.S. who have autistic children. According to Thompson, he and his fellow CDC scientists covered up a link between MMR vaccine and autism in African-American boys. “The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism,” Thompson later testified. CDC officials disposed of study documents "in a huge garbage can" As part of the alleged fraud and coverup, Thompson said he and the other CDC scientists who conducted the research got together and literally trashed study data. Thompson first revealed his role in the fraud during a series of phone conversations with the parent of an autistic child. The parent surreptitiously recorded the calls, in which Thompson confessed and said he lived with tremendous guilt. When the parent made the recordings public, Thompson admitted to scientific fraud and issued a statement issued through his attorney. “I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information,” read the statement, in part. He also described how he says he and his CDC colleagues had a meeting and literally threw documents from the research into a garbage can. The coauthors scheduled a meeting to destroy documents related to the study. The remaining four coauthors all met and brought a big garbage can into the meeting room and reviewed and went through all the hard copy documents that we had thought we should discard and put them in a huge garbage can. However, because I assumed it was illegal and would violate both FOIA and DOJ requests, I kept hard copies of all documents in my office, and I retained all associated computer files. Dr. William "Bill" Thompson, CDC Senior Scientist CDC would not permit Thompson to do media interviews after he blew the whistle. Interview with CDC official that prompted Thompson's email In the interview with me in 2014, DeStefano, a co-author with Thompson on the questioned study, defended the CDC’s vaccine-autism research. I asked if he was aware of Thompson’s concerns prior to them being revealed publicly. “I mean I’ve continued to see, uh, see him for over the past ten years and we’ve interacted fairly frequently, and, uh, no I wasn’t aware of this,” DeStefano told me. “So whoever he raised his concerns to, he didn’t, he didn’t raise it to you or anybody you knew of?” I asked. “No, I mean the last time I saw him was probably about two months ago, and he didn’t mention anything about this,” replied DeStefano. “And at the time he didn’t seem concerned when you said there was a consensus?” “No, yeah,” said DeStefano. “I mean at the time he did these analyses he did, you know, he did point out that in one group, you know in that larger group the the the measures of association [between MMR vaccine and autism] were higher than in the, uh, birth certificate group and, you know, we discussed that and for the reasons I mentioned, uh, we came to consensus that the, uh, birth certificate uh results were more valid.” Thompson apparently heard or read a transcript of the recorded interview four years later, in 2018, and fired off an email to DeStefano. The subject was titled: “Your dishonest behavior —- trying to portray us as ‘friends’" Thompson’s email included the link to my interview with DeStefano and the transcript.