CIA, Secret Service: guarding Obama’s DNA

Really

We’ve had a titter over the old Michael Shrimpton video making the birther rounds, about how the CIA collected Barack Obama’s DNA back in 2007 and compared it to his relatives, and found they weren’t related. Why would the CIA do such a thing?

Well, according to a 2012 article in The Atlantic, “Hacking the President’s DNA,” snagging DNA is exactly what the CIA does to world leaders (and we thought we were just listening to their phone calls). Why? Here’s the rationale according to authors Hessel, Goodman and Kotler:

The U.S. government is surreptitiously collecting the DNA of world leaders, and is reportedly protecting that of Barack Obama. Decoded, these genetic blueprints could provide compromising information. In the not-too-distant future, they may provide something more as well—the basis for the creation of personalized bioweapons that could take down a president and leave no trace.

Michael Shrimpton described in his video how very easy it would be to harvest Obama’s DNA from a drinking glass, and that might have been true in 2007, but perhaps not today:

According to Ronald Kessler, the author of the 2009 book In the President’s Secret Service, Navy stewards gather bedsheets, drinking glasses, and other objects the president has touched—they are later sanitized or destroyed—in an effort to keep would‑be malefactors from obtaining his genetic material.