Amerithrax (11 page)

However, so few spores remained in the envelope after the sandy powder was spilled that the FBI asked the Army to delay any analysis. What remained was heavily adulter-

ated with “vegetative cells,” which in dry anthrax powder are generally dead and therefore harmless. Vegetative cells are anthrax bacteria before processing in the lab converts them into hardened spores. What the FBI and the Army needed was one of the anthrax letters unopened. They could not imagine how that could happen.

Once they had their sample, Army specialists still had to grow the suspected anthrax spores in a nutrient medium until they germinated into live, rod-shaped bacterial cells. Un- identified gram-positive bacilli growing on agar may be con- sidered as contaminant. The lab would attempt to characterize the organism by further biochemical testing— motility testing, inhibition by penicillin, and absence of hemollysis on sheep blood agar. If
B. anthracis
was present, antibodies in a test kit would bind to antigens on its surface and the antibodies fluoresce. An antigen is any molecule capable of simulating an immune response. An antibody is a protein made by B lymphocytes that react with a specific antigen.

Reporter Judith Miller had not yet heard about O’Connor’s anthrax infection. At 9:15 a.m., Friday, October 12, she was busy at her desk at the
New York Times
’s 43rd Street headquarters between 8th Avenue and Broadway. As the author of a new bestseller—
Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War
(with coauthors Stephen Engel- berg and William Broad Miller), Miller had her share of odd mail. As she completed a phone call, she distractedly slit open a stamped business-type envelope, failing to notice it had no return address. The plain letter was postmarked St. Petersburg, Florida, a retirement town about two hundred miles from AMI, on the Gulf of Mexico. A cloud of talcum- like powder puffed over her.

“It looked like baby powder,” Miller wrote later. “A cloud of hospital white, sweet-smelling powder rose from the letter—dusting my face, sweater and hands. The heavier particles dropped to the floor, falling on my pants and shoes. ‘An anthrax hoax,’ I thought.” Had Miller left some touchy bioweapons expert out of her comprehensive book? Was it professional jealousy? She and her coauthors had spoken to most of the experts.

Bioweapons expert William C. Patrick III was the former chief of product development in the Army’s offensive bio- logical weapons program at the U.S. Army Medical Re- search Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Those in the know called it the Institute. When the nation abandoned germ weapons in the early 1970s, Bill Patrick became a private consultant on biological defense. He had also been a knowledgeable source for Mil- ler’s book. He had told her spores were sometimes cut with baby powder to mask them with a smell that was reassur- ingly familiar. “Anthrax has no smell,” he said, “and is hard- ly ever white.”

And so, because the unsigned note threatened President Bush and the Sears Tower in Chicago, Miller asked a nearby reporter to ring security. Just then her phone rang with news that Tom Brokaw’s assistant had contracted anthrax from powder in a letter she had opened in late September. The FBI thought it had had a Florida postmark. Security guards in gloves arrived, placed Miller’s letter and envelope in a plastic garbage bag, tossed their gloves in after it, and sealed the bag. Miller washed her hands in the rest room and tried as best she could to rub the powder from her pants and shoes. When she returned, a senior editor put his arm around her and walked her to the medical department on another floor. When Miller got back, other editors rushed to her side and brought her tea.

Within twenty minutes, investigators, police ambulance service, and police officers wearing gas masks and light brown head-to-toe biohazard suits rushed into the office to check out the suspicious letter. Miller stayed with them, pointing where the powder had fallen and answering ques- tions about anyone she might know in Florida. The men took photos, performed tests, and evacuated two newsroom floors, leaving Miller’s floor silent except for continually ringing phones. Outside the street was cordoned off. Miller would have to wait to learn whether the powder contained anthrax. An antigen test supplied to federal and local au- thorities could be performed in fifteen minutes to determine if anthrax spores were present; however, it was often unre- liable.

Newsweek
reporter Jonathan Alter was a lot closer to the crime scene than he wanted. His desk was about fifty feet from where the exposure took place. As part of his part- time job as contributing correspondent for NBC News, he kept an office on the third floor of 30 Rockefeller Center. That floor was now sealed off by men in Hazmat moon suits. Only a short time before, employees had been eating pizza near where the powder had fallen. Alter wondered if they were safe.

The cast of
Saturday Night Live
was rehearsing floors above in Studio 8-H. They had been on hiatus from June through August and recently returned. Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Ana Gasteyer, Darrell Hammond, Rachel Dratch, Jimmy Fallon, and the rest of the comedy stars were evac- uated from the building. Marci Klein, the show’s talent co- ordinator, who lived downtown near the World Trade Center, was not at work the day they discovered anthrax at 30 Rock. “I was at home,” she reported, “and when I called my office after hearing the news, a lot of people there were obviously hysterical. Drew Barrymore was the guest host for that week’s show, and she said, ‘I am going to leave, calm myself down, and go back to my hotel.’ I completely understood. Then I made sure to tell everyone that if they didn’t feel comfortable staying in the building, they should go home. Some people did say, ‘I am getting out of here, and I will come back when it is fine.’ It was a very scary situation, just horrible. I calmed Drew down, but I felt bad for her. Everyone thought she had left town and she didn’t. She stayed and she did the show. And this show is really scary to do under the best of circumstances.”

Steve Higgins, also of
Saturday Night Live
, said, “Marci was in control on the anthrax crisis, and so it’s one of those things where you go, ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth. If they need me they will call me.’ I did talk to Drew about it after she talked to the doctor. She was freaked out in the beginning, but then in the end she put on that game face and went ahead with it.”

At midday, O’Connor sent word she was more concerned about her coworkers at NBC than about herself. “Anthrax is not contagious,” Alter wrote, “but fear is.” At 30 Rock

the line of people waiting to be tested “looked like a soup kitchen at Thanksgiving. Two hours, minimum,” Alter said. People were given an option to come back later or wait. Most waited. People even cut in line to be tested. Inside, they filled out several forms and were asked about symp- toms: “Where and when were you in the building in respect to the hot spot?” “What about vents in offices?” After ques- tioning by agents, they had their nostrils swabbed, but that is not a reliable test for anthrax.

The NYC Department of Health had little data on inha- lation anthrax. Once pulmonary symptoms appear, the spores have already germinated and begun to release toxins like a deadly flowering garden. Thirty “Rockers” were given Cipro starting immediately after exposure. Since the mor- tality rate for inhalational anthrax was so high—90 percent— a patient must take the antibiotic for two months to be effective.

“I had been on the third floor,” said an MSNBC staffer. “I remember the date because it was my boyfriend’s birthday—October 8, 2001. And they didn’t take away the letter until the twelfth of October. I came over from New Jersey when it was announced that Tom Brokaw’s assistant had cutaneous anthrax. At MSNBC we had a lot of military, terrorism, and former FBI people all sitting around. I told them, ‘Oh, my God, I was in the building.’ ‘You better go in,’ they said. ‘You don’t know if it was weaponized.’ I went in Friday and the line was so incredibly long that I couldn’t get in. I went back two days later and went right in and they tested me. I was given enough Cipro for a month. I took it for a week and then I got an e-mail that my test had come back negative and I could stop taking the medication. I had people calling me up and saying, ‘I heard you had to go on Cipro!’ ‘It’s OK,’ I said, ‘I’m all right.’ It was just a horrible time in New York coming so soon after 9-11.”

NBC Nightly News
was moved across the street to the
Today
set. “This is outrageous and maddening beyond my ability to express in socially acceptable terms,” an exhausted Brokaw told his viewers. Later, he choked up over his as- sistant suffering for an attack probably intended for him.

Environmental sampling revealed anthrax contamination of the NBC third-floor Rockefeller Center work site, specif- ically implicating mail and package delivery. The
Virginian- Pilot
later reported that “protective gear, office equipment, papers, carpets” were to be incinerated at Norfolk.

After the announcement of O’Connor’s anthrax, doctors at the NYU Medical Center attending the ABC producer’s infant son considered a possible diagnosis of cutaneous an- thrax. A skin biopsy from the hospitalized infant was hurried to the CDC for testing. The child was bleeding internally. On October 15, the sample would test positive by staining for the cell-wall antigen of anthrax. A serum specimen col- lected ten days earlier would test positive for
B. anthracis.
No suspicious letter was identified at his mother’s work- place; like the AMI letter, it had vanished into limbo. Mother and child, treated with Cipro, clinically improved.

B. anthracis
grew from swabs (two nasal and one facial skin swab) from three other workers, suggesting exposure to anthrax. One of the exposures was in a law enforcement officer who brought the letter containing anthrax from NBC to the receiving laboratory. The other two exposures were in the technicians who had processed the letter in the lab- oratory. Environmental sampling in both workplaces was ongoing. Investigations of other exposed persons continued. Some of the adults were placed on ciprofloxacin or doxy- cycline, and the treatment was to continue until sixty days after final opportunity for exposure.

The first reports of anthrax letters to the media appeared in the press. As word of O’Connor’s infection spread, New Yorkers rushed to have themselves tested. The proper pro- cedure was a very sensitive first test, then more specific follow-up tests—such as PCR. If PCR is positive, then aggressive environmental samples, nasal swabs, sputum, and blood, as well as cerebrospinal fluid in suspected meningitis cases, should be obtained. Dr. Meryl Nass, a biological war- fare epidemiologist, thought patients should be treated prior to any signs of illness. “I would propose consideration of bronchoalveolar lavage in highly exposed patients,” she said. This is a technique in which a doctor instills salt water

through a bronchoscope. When the saline is suctioned back it carries any cells and bacteria with it.

President Bush asked all Americans to live their lives as normally as possible. “Our government is doing everything we can to make our country as safe as possible,” the Pres- ident said. Vice President Cheney said there may be links between the domestic anthrax incidents and September 11 and Osama bin Laden. “I think the only responsible thing for us to do,” Cheney told PBS’s Jim Lehrer, “is proceed on the basis it could be linked.” But Cheney knew at this point he could not prove it. An earlier Pentagon briefing had revealed that bin Laden’s global network had the ability to produce biological weapons of mass destruction.

Officials also assured the nation that anthrax spores could not leak out of a sealed envelope, and certainly not in quan- tities enough to cause the most dangerous form of the dis- ease, inhalational anthrax. Should a spore or two escape, they said, they would at worst cause a case or two of very treatable cutaneous anthrax. But how had the Hamilton mail workers been infected? None of the envelopes had been opened in their presence.

In Columbus, Ohio, three employees of the
Columbus Dispatch
remained in quarantine after one of them opened a Halloween card and found a powdery substance. The card had a Dayton postmark, but no return address. A preliminary report on the powder was expected late Friday, October 12, from the Ohio Department of Health.

On that day, CNN, the
Los Angeles Times,
and the
San Jose Mercury News
stopped accepting outside mail. The
Mi- ami Herald
continued to provide latex gloves to concerned employees just as it had since Bob Stevens had died seven days earlier. The New York offices of
Newsweek,
the AP, ABC, and CBS stopped mail deliveries to staffers as a pre- caution. The Fox News Channel received a questionable en- velope filled with a powdery substance. All of their mailroom workers were tested. The woman who got the en- velope tested negative for anthrax exposure.

Senator John McCain gave an interview to
USA Today
columnist Walter Shapiro on the subject of fear. “The way you live with fear is that you suppress it,” McCain said.

“Anyone who is faced with a life-threatening situation will have fear. Anyone who says they don’t is either crazy or a liar. The trick is to channel it into productive missions and activities. That’s the way I’ve handled it in the past.” He might have been commenting on the events that came later that morning.

At noon on that Friday, McCain was already en route to Arizona when it was announced that Brokaw’s assistant had contracted anthrax from a letter addressed to Brokaw. She had developed skin anthrax on September 25, but was di- agnosed several days after opening a letter that contained white powder. Until then only AMI had been hit. Now a second news outlet had been attacked. It was an attack de- signed to rivet attention of the public and guarantee cover- age and widespread panic.

That night from Phoenix, McCain spoke on Chris Mat- thews’s show,
Hardball
, on CNBC. “I think you have to realize there is reason to fear,” he said, “but you have to suppress it. You have to channel it, and it can be beneficial in a way because it will make you more alert. It will make you more efficient. And it will make you more aware of everything that’s going on around you. You know, Ernest Hemingway’s famous definition of courage was ‘grace un- der pressure.’ And basically that’s what he was saying. You’ve got to show grace under pressure and that grace is to go on with your life, not let it rule you, not let it overcome you.”