Amerithrax (20 page)
In New York, Gov. George Pataki’s Manhattan office was evacuated after an anthrax field test gave a false posi- tive. Pataki’s mail had passed through Morgan Central, which had processed the Brokaw,
Post
, and other media letters. Authorities assured the nation that should an anthrax letter pass through a postal center there could be no cross- contamination with other pieces of mail.
Health experts continued to insist that anthrax-tainted en- velopes posed little danger as long as they were sealed, that there was no way other mail could become dangerously con- taminated. The government advised that postal workers at centers that had handled the tainted letters did not have to take prophylactic antibiotics. Patel’s temperature was 38
°
C when her husband took her to her primary-care physician. The doctor started her on levofloxacin for bronchitis. Be- cause she worked in New Jersey and the anthrax was in Washington no one suspected anthrax and therefore no lab- oratory studies were performed at this time.
Postal officials were begging for testing of their employ- ees and buildings, but “didn’t get a lot of cooperation” from health authorities, who were focused on Capitol Hill. Tim Haney, Brentwood’s sorting center manager, made the first use of digital records to trace a tainted letter. He and Patrick Donahoe, the Postal Service’s chief operating officer, sought to determine on their own which machine the letter had
On Wednesday morning, twenty-eight workers who worked in or near Daschle’s office had tested positive for anthrax exposure and were on antibiotics. This was less than thought at first. Field detectors are notoriously inaccurate. What the government needed was a quicker, more accurate and precise test. An antibody-based anthrax detector was in use, but antibodies are difficult to make and variable in qual- ity.
The first tests at the Senate bulk mail–handling facility were negative. Despite growing evidence that the anthrax was “aerosolizable,” investigators assumed the heavily taped letter sent to Daschle could not have contaminated “up- stream” mail-handling sites. Still the investigators didn’t seek advice from the U.S. Postal Service.
None of their leaders were on the crisis management team that began meeting regularly in the secretary of the Senate’s office. Leader of that team was Republican Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the only doctor in the Senate. His experience as one of the nation’s foremost heart-and-lung transplant surgeons put him in the front ranks of any battle against bioterrorism.
As a member of the Subcommittee on Public Health and Safety, he and Sen. Ted Kennedy had helped draft and pass the Public Health Threats and Emergencies Act of 2000. On the Monday morning the Daschle letter arrived, Frist was in Nashville acting as host to a bioterrorism roundtable. Asked about the Daschle letter as he entered a press briefing, Frist made no comment, only recalling a hoax letter labeled
an- thrax
he had received three years earlier. Frist prayed the Daschle letter was a similar kind of beast. He went on to the Nashville Rotary Club to deliver a speech about bio- terrorism, ironically written a day or so earlier on the subject of anthrax. Frist was concerned. His Public Health Subcom- mittee staff worked a few doors down the hall from Das-
That same afternoon, Frist held two press conferences in a public health command center Daschle had quickly set up on the third floor of the Capitol. Later, to answer detailed queries about anthrax, Frist set up a website. Privately, he considered the nation’s hospital system woefully unprepared for such a biological attack. Meanwhile, in the Hart Build- ing, staff members were still working in their fifth- and sixth-floor offices. Because the Quantico hazmat response team had shut down the air-conditioning system everyone there was hot and tempers were frayed. By Wednesday, all of Frist’s staff had tested negative, though one individual’s test results had been lost and he would have to be re- swabbed. Dr. Eisold’s team had taken more than six thou- sand nasal swabs during the first three days of the outbreak and thousands more environmental swabs.
Panic and near hysteria reigned under bright skies as top officials passed on misinformation masquerading as fact. Rumors spread that anthrax spores had gotten into the ven- tilating systems and the tunnels of the Senate office build- ings and that the tunnels and subway leading from the Hart Building had been sealed off. When the leaders of both chambers met at the White House early Wednesday morning to see the President off to China, they discussed whether to close down Congress (whether both agreed to do so remains in dispute).
Shortly before 10:00 a.m., the House leadership an- nounced that they would go out of session that afternoon and stay out until the following Tuesday, October 23. Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, flanked by the Democratic leader Dick Gephardt, ordered the House adjourned, its offices closed for sweeping by an environ- mental crew, and most of the staff went home at 10:30 a.m. However, at a briefing on the anthrax situation held later that morning in the Senate Dining Room, most of the sen- ators bridled at closing up shop. “That would send the wrong message,” they said. Furious House Republicans, who had
The House’s failure to keep going, or appear to keep going, as the Senate had done while its offices were swept, did some harm to the national spirit. After traces of anthrax were unearthed in a House annex where mail is collected, in two House members’ offices, and in the Ford building, the widespread criticism of the House for fleeing proved unjustified. At 1:00 p.m. Frist conducted a “tense” briefing of all the Senate chiefs of staff in the Capitol basement. “The high-level staffers in the room,” wrote Frist, “were angry, frustrated, and resentful.” Two hundred Capitol Hill staffers were told to start taking Cipro.
House and Senate office buildings were closed the rest of the day to allow for environmental testing, work that was to continue through the weekend. It was hard to trap an invisible killer—2,500 to 50,000 spores (enough to kill half of most test animals) didn’t even cover the point of a pin. At this point it remained unclear whether Congress would go back into session next Tuesday as planned. Capitol police parked cars across all roads to the Capitol Plaza to bar traf- fic. They moved huge cement planters in front of the Russell Building stairs to block any bomb-laden trucks from being driven up the stairs. Trucks had already been banned from all major roads on Capitol Hill. On television screens all over America, citizens saw their leaders evacuating the seat of government.
After his staff left that afternoon, McCain was asked if he thought the House leaders had panicked in deciding to shut the House down. “I think Americans understand and feel very concerned about the situation,” he said. “That was clearly the intent of the people who’ve done these things. Our job as leaders is to calm people down and not have people panic, or the terrorists succeed. Some people say we should shut down and go home. I say that would be raising
the white flag. If we tell people to get on with their business and we go home, that sets a
fine
example.”
Asked about the FBI’s warning on October 11 that there would be another terrorist attack over the “next several days,” McCain replied, “I don’t think that was the best way to present it, nor was the statement by the Attorney General that endorsed the leak that there was a hundred percent chance of retaliation if we used military force.”
In Hamilton Township, Linda Burch, a fifty-one-year-old maintenance employee working on the facility’s mail-sorting machines, sought treatment for an outbreak on her forehead. A doctor drained liquid from the sore and prescribed oral antibiotics. However, as she awaited test results, the lesion “progressed and ulcerated.”
The CDC was mystified. Cross-contamination could not have provided enough spores to cause such a serious form of the disease. The developments raised the possibility that another letter contaminated with anthrax had been sent to Congress by Amerithrax. This hypothetical letter may have passed through the Ford Annex before finding its way to a House office. Officials, however, admitted one letter could have contaminated others while passing through mail- handling equipment. Dr. Eisold said employees in the Ford mailroom were being tested and would be treated if neces- sary.
Federal and New York officials had given the go-ahead to tens of thousands to go back to their jobs near Ground Zero. But there were hot spots on rooftops a half-mile away. Eye, throat, and nose irritations and persistent wheezing and coughing were the high order of the day. The downtown dust was highly caustic. High “alkalinity levels” made it as potent as household drain cleaner. Oppressive dust left those with allergies gasping.
In California, almost four hundred emergency responders who had worked at Ground Zero in the three weeks after 9-11 were sick. No good turn goes unpunished. They would file workers’ compensation claims because of illnesses they had contracted from the air. America was gasping from coast to coast, choking from grief.
ON
Wednesday, October 17, 2001, hazardous materials specialists from the Fairfax County Fire Department in Vir- ginia arrived at the Brentwood plant. They had come in advance of the CDC at the request of postal officials to test for anthrax bacteria. By seven o’clock that evening, Hazmat workers in protective gear were moving among unprotected postal employees working nearby. “How come you aren’t testing the people?” one mailworker asked a tester. He got no answer. However, the preliminary results of the tests were negative.
Two nightshift mail sorters at the Brentwood complex, express mailroom worker Leroy Richmond, fifty-seven, and an unnamed worker a year younger, were ill. They had seen the onset of low-grade fevers, chills, sore throats, and stiff necks. Their mild headaches were not associated with visual changes or other neurologic symptoms. Both soon had min- imal dry coughs, a heaviness in their chests, shortness of breath, night sweats, nausea, and spates of vomiting.
On Thursday,
Business Week Online
complained in an article titled “Postal Security Is Hardly First Class”: “Not only is the USPS not testing everyone who could have con- ceivably touched these letters, but it isn’t communicating with employees what its plan is... and where one-hundred- percent security can’t be ensured, at least have a plan.”
Also on Thursday, Postmaster General John Potter con- ducted a televised press conference on the main floor of Brentwood to assure everyone the mail was safe. He took the opportunity to offer a million-dollar reward for the ap-
A second anthrax spore test confirmed that the swabs “tested hot.” A batch of mail from the Brentwood facility was received at Howard University and left traces of anthrax in the university mailroom. The traces provided the first con- crete evidence that cross-contamination of the mail was pos- sible. But the Brentwood facility wasn’t evacuated. Its postal workers, predominantly African Americans, were not put on antibiotics, though the chiefly white Capitol Hill staffers had gotten antibiotics immediately.
Thomas L. Morris Jr., a Brentwood distribution clerk, was feeling ill too. He had felt the first symptoms on Tues- day while bowling in his league. He had been so fatigued that he had halted his play and returned home to Suitland where he lived with his wife and son. Unknowingly, Morris had come into contact with anthrax spores on October 13. Because he was having trouble breathing and was suffering anthrax-exposure symptoms, Morris, whose past medical history included diabetes mellitus, visited his primary-care provider. He arrived at Kaiser Permanente Marlow Heights Medical Center for a throat culture.
Morris had a fever and a cough productive of green spu- tum, but none of the shortness of breath, chest discomfort, or gastrointestinal symptoms that his coworkers were ex- periencing. His white blood count was slightly elevated and he had a temperature of 38.9
°
C. He had normal heart rate and blood pressure, and a respiratory rate of 24/min. Morris was infected, though he didn’t know it, which meant spores were multiplying in his body. A few days had to pass before the anthrax bacteria, those strange subvisible beings, could produce the toxins that bind to the protective membranes of target cells.