In late December and early January, as COVID-19 vaccines were just beginning their chaotic rollout to the states, a secretive scramble took place inside the Trump White House. One after another, political appointees at very high levels approached chief of staff Mark Meadows and members of the National Security Council to ask a favor: They wanted to be on the list.

It was, to be sure, the ultimate VIP list: On it were the names of U.S. government officials whose work was considered so essential that they needed to be vaccinated against COVID-19 from a limited allotment that would otherwise have gone to the general public. The allotment was intended to protect career staff who could not telecommute (such as White House butlers), critical workers in the field (such as Secret Service agents), and those in the line of presidential succession (such as the secretary of state). The question of who was eligible in an outgoing administration, with just weeks remaining until the inauguration of a new president, was complex. To make the cut your role had to be “essential” to national functions.

The quest to get on the White House list—which was closely guarded by Meadows’s office and a small cadre of NSC officials—attracted an array of supplicants. They ranged from the representatives of cabinet secretaries to young White House desk jockeys to those prepared to leverage their connections to President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Among this group, Vanity Fair has learned, were chiefs of staff of cabinet agencies, some of whose bosses had become notorious for publicly disregarding pandemic safeguards like mask wearing. They wanted to know, “Would they be able to get four or six doses for their front office?” said a former senior administration official. Though some would claim to be inquiring on behalf of their teams, the official said, in fact “their ask was not about their employees.”

Though it is not clear who ultimately succeeded in crashing the list, which morphed continuously as names were punted off of it and then mysteriously reappeared, most petitioners ran into a surprisingly hard line. “It ain’t happening,” was a common refrain, said one career official familiar with the decision-making. In part this was because Meadows—who, like many working in the White House, contracted COVID-19 late last year—had received explicit directions from his boss. On December 13, President Trump tweeted that White House employees would wait their turn unless “specifically necessary.”

But in a White House awash in special favors, that didn’t stop almost every stripe of political appointee, at almost every rung of the ladder, from “shamelessly” attempting to jump the line, according to a senior administration official. (Meadows and President Trump did not respond to requests for comment.)

Why, in a White House infamous for flouting pandemic precautions, would some political appointees in the executive branch show such determination in attempting to score a shot? According to the former senior administration official, the answer is simple enough: Vaccinations would enable these high-flying rule flouters to “maintain” their active lifestyles.

The previously unreported struggle over the White House list was just one front in a sprawling secret war that raged for months at the highest levels of the federal government. The question of how to equitably vaccinate a federal workforce of 2.1 million people in the midst of a presidential transition ended up pitting the National Security Council against officials from Operation Warp Speed, and career staff against political appointees. It also sparked resentment, suspicions of missing doses, and allegations of line jumping.

And it all played out against the backdrop of a critical shortage of vaccine doses across the nation. In the waning days of the Trump administration, with nearly 2,500 Americans dying of COVID-19 every day, what had been envisioned as a triumphant vaccine rollout soon devolved into Hunger Games–style chaos. As vulnerable residents struggled to score shots in fragmented state sign-up systems, governors furiously blamed federal officials at Operation Warp Speed for continually revising the number of doses they would receive.

Underlying all this was an unforgiving zero-sum math equation: In December and January, the program had roughly 70 million doses to fully vaccinate 35 million Americans with first and second shots, to be divided on a per capita basis among 64 jurisdictions, including 50 states, eight territories, and six metropolitan areas.

By definition, any dose given to anyone—whether in the states or in the State Department—would be taken from someone else, given the lack of any surplus.

No one disputed that the federal government ought to reserve a portion of vaccinations in order to protect its own essential workforce. But from there the questions got much thornier. Did employees within a White House that flouted safeguards, and was holding mask-less holiday parties, deserve a shot? What about Department of the Interior firefighters, dousing flames on federal lands? Or Border Patrol agents in pursuit of undocumented immigrants?

This early incarnation of the U.S. government’s plan to vaccinate its workers—which Vanity Fair pieced together in interviews with 33 current and former federal employees—was the product of an orderly and thoughtful process spearheaded by the National Security Council. By late spring the NSC’s resilience directorate began an effort to identify employees who were critical to national essential functions, which are those jobs needed to sustain the country amid a catastrophe. Many of the roles identified were classified and related to intelligence activities.

The resilience directorate’s effort, involving months of classified deliberations, resulted in a tight list of fewer than 12,000 essential employees across three branches of government. These employees were so crucial that, under the NSC plan, the U.S. government would vaccinate them directly.

At the same time the directorate also helped guide the creation of a separate and larger set of lists identifying workers who would be eligible for priority vaccinations in their respective states. Those workers met guidelines developed by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which outlined critical jobs ranging from front-line health care to the maintenance of nuclear reactors and handling of hazardous materials. Working with the resilience directorate, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) invited federal agencies to tally up those workers. Then it sent the resulting spreadsheets—essentially head counts by agency—to the states, with instructions to set aside a corresponding number of doses during the initial rollout.

The two sets of lists, though distinct, were assembled using consistent guidelines. “That was the most legitimate process you had,” said the former senior administration official. “It was not going to be a boondoggle.” The story of how it became one reflects the larger M.O. of the Trump administration, said a federal official who worked on the pandemic response. “You had a functioning government that did its due diligence,” only to be thwarted by arbitrary and secretive decisions. “That’s what happened with every single thing in the White House.” 

It was autumn of 2020 when OMB began its outreach to federal agencies, asking them to submit head counts of their front-line employees. “We asked agencies to really think through: Were those employees teleworking? Could they mitigate against exposure? Were they able to maintain social distancing vs. law enforcement or Border Patrol? What is the immediate need for their agencies?” said a former administration official who participated in the effort. “We gathered that information. We consolidated it and distributed it to the states.” The federal agencies were then supposed to follow up with state immunization directors to coordinate on delivering the shots.

But that relatively democratic process soon collided with the secretive decision-making culture inside Operation Warp Speed. The multibillion-dollar government program, launched last spring, was a collaboration among the Pentagon, the Department of Health and Human Services, and a number of pharmaceutical companies to dramatically accelerate the development and production of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. The four-star general Gustave F. Perna was in charge of logistics, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar oversaw his efforts. Even to some Operation Warp Speed board members, it seemed that the two men operated with little input from others. And when the CDC sent Perna a proposal to meet regularly to review decisions about the distribution of vaccinations, it was met with “crickets,” according to a CDC official. (A Pentagon spokesperson said, “There’s nothing I’m aware of that he didn’t respond to.”)

In October a new set of allocations materialized. Allotments of COVID-19 vaccines were approved for five agencies: the Department of Defense, the State Department, the Bureau of Prisons, the Indian Health Service, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which shared its doses with the Department of Homeland Security.

The amounts initially allocated to each department, which were not publicly disclosed, were small enough. The State Department received 13,000 doses and the Indian Health Service got fewer than 20,000, a source familiar with the allotments said. In December, the Defense Department got 44,000 doses, according to an email obtained by Vanity Fair, from the director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. A Health and Human Services spokesperson for COVID response told Vanity Fair that, among a host of considerations, those agencies were chosen “because of their large patient-care functions and ability to store and administer the vaccine.”

But the sudden, unexplained appearance of COVID-19 vaccination clinics within the federal government for some workers and not others ignited a wildfire of whispers, denunciations, and comparisons to the Titanic, with first-class passengers elbowing their way onto scarce lifeboats. “The moves they were pulling were unorthodox,” said the former senior administration official. “These other agencies were getting it outside of a formal interagency process.”

Who, exactly, was making these decisions? It depends whom you ask. A Pentagon spokesperson for General Perna told Vanity Fair, “The decision to allocate doses to any federal agency…is approved by the HHS secretary.” But the office of former secretary Azar said in a statement, “Secretary Azar did not make, review, or approve allocation decisions.” Such decisions, according to the statement, were made by the CDC and the leadership and board of Operation Warp Speed.

But one CDC official said the agency was “never involved in decision-making about how much” vaccine would go to the five federal entities, and was “quite concerned there didn’t seem to be a process” for determining the amounts.

The operation was so opaque that even members of the Operation Warp Speed board and the White House COVID-19 task force say they were left in the dark. When several caught wind of the seemingly random vaccinations of healthy, young federal employees, they suspected that vaccine doses were being siphoned, without clear accounting, from the nation’s overall supply, Vanity Fair has learned.

When one task force member contacted Perna, demanding to know where the doses were coming from and going to, the request was met with “radio silence,” said the person involved. “I can’t emphasize enough how secretive it was,” that person said, adding, “You could never get to the bottom of who made the decisions. It was one of those two”—Perna or Azar—“or those two together.”

Asked why General Perna didn’t respond to questions from the Trump administration’s task force members, a Pentagon spokesperson said he “briefed the White House COVID task force...on January 21, 2021”—the first full day of the Biden administration. The spokesperson added that an HHS computer system called Tiberius “provides vaccine accountability” and can be audited.

In agency after agency, employees in critical roles were stunned to learn that they weren’t eligible for a shot. On January 13, the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees numerous agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, held an intra-agency video call. When one participant asked when HHS employees would be notified about vaccination schedules, the answer came back that no one outside of the Indian Health Service could expect a dose. At that “the room just lost their shit, with everyone speaking at once,” one attendee recounted.

Paul Mango, the former deputy chief of staff for policy at Health and Human Services, who was centrally involved in Operation Warp Speed, justified the distribution decisions, saying, “We wanted to set up a governance process so it didn’t become, ‘I am doing favors for you and not for you.’ Then the floodgates would have opened.”

Nevertheless, resentment brewed as young, healthy, teleworking employees in some agencies scored vaccinations while others facing extreme perils could not. One example underscores the absurdity of the arrangement: A team of infectious disease experts from the CDC who were deploying to Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo to fight an Ebola outbreak were vaccinated against Ebola but not COVID, despite the evident hazards they faced, Vanity Fair has learned. Those employees have since been vaccinated, said a CDC spokesperson.

“The entire fiasco of the distribution falls to Perna,” said one HHS official. “We knew that [the Department of Defense] was extremely well taken care of, the intelligence community was. And then there was everybody else.”

In the months leading up to the release of COVID-19 vaccines, all three branches of government held classified meetings to refine the far smaller list of federal employees critical enough to get a direct vaccination. That list—which was separate from both the state spreadsheets and the allocations that General Perna divvied up among the five agencies—covered such high-value individuals as Supreme Court justices and intelligence agents in the field.

But in the last week of November, General Perna upended that process too, Vanity Fair has learned. He declared to those involved that any federal agency wanting a direct allocation had to come brief him in person. Perna’s team informed National Security Council officials that if they wanted to save the list that had been months in the making, they would have to come “kiss the ring.” Those whose agencies had employees on the list, such as the director of national intelligence, got similar instructions.

Suddenly what had been an organized, well-considered process became an arbitrary one, overseen by Perna. The question was why? Some with knowledge of the process suspected that, due to manufacturing and dosage shortfalls, Perna could not deliver on commitments he’d made to the states, and so he was trying to whittle down the allocation to federal employees. (On December 19, Perna acknowledged overpromising to the states, saying, “I want to take personal responsibility for the miscommunication.”)

In the second week of December, in a secure meeting room, several NSC officials defended their plan for the roughly 12,000 direct allocations in a meeting with Perna and a handful of his deputies. Tensions erupted almost immediately, according to three officials familiar with what occurred. After listening to the NSC request, Perna refused to sign off. Evidently unimpressed with the seniority of the NSC emissaries, he said, “I don’t take orders from a child. You can have your adult” give me directions. As tempers flared, Perna added, “I don’t give a damn what you people think.”

According to the officials, Brian Cavanaugh, a special assistant to the president and senior director for resilience policy at the NSC, told Perna, “You need a piece of paper in writing, so when you get subpoenaed by Congress, you can feel good about yourself.” Cavanaugh then pointedly violated protocol by standing up to leave without waiting for the four-star general to do so first. (Cavanaugh declined to comment.)

It was “a dick-measuring contest between the NSC and Perna,” said a former White House official.

Ultimately, Meadows and Secretary Azar—the so-called adults—did weigh in, and the allocations were approved. By the latter part of December, as the contested doses destined for essential employees arrived at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, doctors from the three branches of government met there to sign for them.

On December 13, The New York Times reported that senior White House staff were told they would soon begin getting vaccinated. The news sparked an outcry. Why, critics asked, should an administration that had so flagrantly violated COVID-19 safeguards have access to the vaccine when elderly nursing home residents were dying in droves?

Trump reversed himself almost immediately, tweeting that day, “People working in the White House should receive the vaccine somewhat later in the program, unless specifically necessary. I have asked that this adjustment be made. I am not scheduled to take the vaccine, but look forward to doing so at the appropriate time. Thank you!”

That same day Trump made it clear that he wanted the White House’s allotment of vaccinations to go to the career staff—who, it’s worth noting, were in fact being endangered by politicians and appointees who insisted on working and carousing without wearing masks or social distancing. In an Oval Office briefing, Trump gave “very clear direction” to vaccinate career employees and prioritize government continuity, said the former senior administration official.

Still, the “specifically necessary” wording in Trump’s tweet gave those angling for vaccinations room to continue maneuvering, as the back channel clamor for them grew. It also left room for some justifiable additions. Trump’s director of the National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, who had suffered a heart attack in 2018—and who publicly played down the pandemic’s severity—got a vaccination to protect his health. Kudlow, who is 73, told Vanity Fair that he was “super grateful” to be vaccinated, adding that he regarded it “as a miracle that I didn’t get COVID” from working at the White House. “There were one or two of us who escaped it,” he added.

While vaccinations within the judicial branch ran smoothly, the legislative branch was the “Wild West,” said the former senior administration official. There were “500-plus people who all think they’re in charge,” and therefore crucial to government operations.

To federal employees the seemingly arbitrary rationing of vaccinations has provided a bitter reminder of their own dispensability. Employees at the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, who had been instrumental in developing vaccines, watched as federal employees working on Operation Warp Speed received their shots. “The scientists aren’t getting vaccinated,” griped a BARDA employee, “but the notetakers are.”

The perception of inequity and lack of transparency have persisted into the Biden administration. In early February the State Department notified a wide swath of employees, including many who were healthy, young, and telecommuting, that they were now eligible to get the vaccine, advising them to report to a vaccine walk-in clinic at the State Department headquarters.

This left even some State Department employees wondering whether the Biden administration’s talk of equity was hollow. “I can understand having Moderna and Pfizer for colleagues who are at embassies,” said one State Department employee. “But we have had the luxury of teleworking, not traveling internationally.”

According to a spokesperson, the State Department “weighs the availability of COVID-19 vaccine doses against the risk posed to our workforce at each post and domestic facility when assessing how many vaccine doses” to make available and to whom.

As it turned out, Donald and Melania Trump were vaccinated at the White House in January, out of the public eye. After saying the doses should be reserved for career staff, he evidently made an exception for himself. Which raises the question: Did he actually think his effort to overturn the election would succeed, meaning that he had a role to play in “continuity of government”? Or was the president, like the rest of us, just trying to survive?

Additional reporting by Stan Friedman.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the date of General Perna’s public comments on vaccine allocation shortfalls. It was December 19, not December 18.

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