The explosive true story of fraud, embezzlement, and government betrayal. An insider’s view of what takes place behind the closed doors of agencies and drug companies, and the people tasked to protect the health of American children.

In 2000, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) carried out a secret mission to bury, skew, and manipulate data in six vaccine safety studies, in a coordinated effort to control the message that “vaccines do not cause autism.” They did so via secret meetings and backtesting health-care data. The CDC invested tens of millions of dollars in a foreign health-care data analytics startup run by Danish scientist Poul Thorsen, a move to ensure that no link ever surfaced. But fate had other ideas. The agency soon learned it couldn’t control Thorsen. In 2011, the US Justice Department indicted him for the theft of more than $1 million of CDC grant money.

Master Manipulator exposes the CDC’s hidden agenda for the cover-up. Influenced by Big Pharma money, future high-paying jobs, and political lobbyists, CDC executives charted a course different than what the findings of earlier vaccine safety studies revealed. The CDC needed an outsider to “flatten” the results of the data, while building an exit strategy: a fall guy in case the secret plan was exposed. Thorsen fit the bill nicely, conducting studies overseas. But the CDC’s plan backfired, as Thorsen took the money to the bank and the power went to his head. It would take years for his fraud scheme—funneling CDC grant money to a Danish university and then back to a CDC bank account he controlled—to play out.

Now available for the first time in paperback, Master Manipulator is a true story of fraud and betrayal. It’s a cautionary tale of the dangers of blind trust in the government and the health-care industry.

“This is a story of how the CDC used a con man to gull the public and ended up getting conned itself! Poul Thorsen is a world-class villain whose manipulation of health data gave the CDC and big pharma what they wanted: a report clearing thimerosal of any possible role in the autism crisis. His story merits a book-length exposé because the fraud he casually helped orchestrate has had a monumental impact on the health of millions of children globally.” —ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., from the Introduction

James Ottar Grundvig is an investigative journalist who has been published in the Huffington Post, the Financial Times Foreign Direct Investment (fDi) magazine, Law.com, and the Epoch Times, among other media outlets. He has written extensively about technology, autism, and the CDC’s failure to contain the runaway epidemic — all of which comprise the foundation for Master Manipulator. He resides in New York City.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper, and president of Waterkeeper Alliance. He was named one of Time magazine’s “Heroes for the Planet” for his success in helping restore the Hudson River, and he continues to fight for environmental issues across the Americas. He is the bestselling author of Crimes Against Nature.