To implement the anti-vax campaign, the Defense Department overrode strong objections from top U.S. diplomats in Southeast Asia at the time, Reuters found. Sources involved in its planning and execution say the Pentagon, which ran the program through the military's psychological operations center in Tampa, Florida, disregarded the collateral impact that such propaganda may have on innocent Filipinos. "We weren't looking at this from a public health perspective," said a senior military officer involved in the program. "We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud."