Last Updated

27 Dec 2002

Source: Washington Post, October 22, 2001

District Postal Worker Seriously Ill

As Capitol Reopens, Anthrax Case Revives Concerns About Spores' Potency

By John Lancaster and Justin Blum, Washington Post Staff Writers

Health authorities announced yesterday that a postal worker in the District is seriously ill with the often deadly inhaled form of anthrax, the third such diagnosis in the baffling series of anthrax poisonings that began three weeks ago in Florida.

Five other people with suspicious symptoms were being monitored, District health officials said.

Acting on the assumption that the postal worker fell ill after handling an anthrax-tainted letter -- perhaps the same one that has caused a week of turmoil on Capitol Hill -- authorities began screening and preemptive antibiotic treatment for about 2,000 mail workers at the District's main processing center on Brentwood Road NE and for another 150 at an airmail center near Baltimore-Washington International Airport. The infected postal worker handled mail at both centers.

The news was particularly unsettling because it indicated that letters containing anthrax could spread relatively easily the more dangerous inhalation form of the disease.

The postal employee, identified by co-workers as Leroy Richmond, 57, of Stafford, was listed in serious condition at Inova Fairfax Hospital. A spokesman described him as suffering from flu-like symptoms.

At an afternoon news conference, District Mayor Anthony A. Williams described the postal worker as seriously ill, but offered assurances that systems put in place to identify and quickly treat new anthrax cases are working as they should.

"We're going to do everything we can and everything we have to do . . . to see that people are getting the treatment they need when they need that treatment," Williams said.

Ivan C.A. Walks, the city's chief health officer, said health officials were monitoring five additional cases of "people with symptoms of concern," after being alerted to the cases by doctors and emergency rooms across the region. One of the five was at Inova Fairfax, and at least two others were in hospitals in the District, health officials said.

Results of tests for anthrax are pending, and it is uncertain whether the five have the disease. Health officials said they had been able to make a connection to the mail facilities in one of the five cases.

As a precaution, city health officials said tests and antibiotics will be offered to the postmaster general, a top FBI official, federal health officials and dozens of journalists who attended a news conference last week at the Brentwood facility for the government's announcement of a $1 million reward for information leading to arrests or convictions in the anthrax cases.

Meanwhile, investigators continued to focus on postal routes and facilities near West Trenton, N.J., that were involved in handling anthrax-contaminated letters sent to Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), NBC News and the New York Post. Two New Jersey postal workers have contracted the skin form of anthrax, which is less serious than pulmonary anthrax.

New Jersey health officials said yesterday that environmental tests had revealed the presence of anthrax spores in 13 of 23 "work areas" -- including areas where mail is sorted by machine -- in Trenton's main processing facility in Hamilton Township. A thousand postal workers were advised to undergo tests for exposure to anthrax spores.

On Capitol Hill, environmental specialists continued to swarm over the Capitol building and adjacent offices yesterday after the discovery of anthrax spores in the Ford House Office Building on Saturday.

No other tests returned positive, and Capitol Police spokesman Lt. Dan Nichols announced yesterday afternoon that the Capitol will reopen today and that the House and Senate will be in session Tuesday.

House and Senate office buildings -- including the Hart Building, where the letter to Daschle was opened last week by an aide -- will remain closed today for additional testing.

Before the District postal worker fell ill, health authorities had taken some comfort in the knowledge that six of the nine people infected in the last several weeks had the more easily treated cutaneous form of the disease, which affects the skin. Pulmonary anthrax is more lethal and therefore more effective as a weapon.

For that reason, the postal worker's case has revived suspicions that the anthrax sent to Washington and elsewhere is of a particularly sophisticated nature that may suggest state sponsorship -- and perhaps a link to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, although authorities continue to assert that they have no hard evidence for either possibility.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said yesterday that "significantly refined anthrax" was involved in the recent attacks.

To make ordinary anthrax "into the stuff that's being sent in envelopes, that requires a real effort, and, frankly, more than a couple of guys in somebody's kitchen stirring things up," he said. "So it says to me that there's either a significant amount of money behind this, or this is state-sponsored, or this is stuff that was stolen from the former Soviet program."

One man, Florida photo editor Robert Stevens, has died of pulmonary anthrax. A second victim, Ernesto Blanco, 73, who worked with Stevens at the tabloid publisher American Media Inc., remains hospitalized with the disease.

Richmond, the District postal worker, handles express mail and routinely travels between two facilities -- one on Brentwood Road and the other near BWI -- according to postal service officials.

It is unclear where he was exposed, health officials said.

Yesterday, officials told about 2,000 postal employees who work at the Brentwood facility to report to a downtown office building -- or, today, to Building 3 at D.C. General Hospital from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. -- for nasal-swab tests and a 10-day supply of the antibiotic Cipro. About 150 employees at an airmail center near BWI airport also will get tests and antibiotics.

Last night, a D.C. health department official asked those who attended the news conference last week at the Brentwood facility to go to D.C. General for evaluation and treatment.

Participants in the news conference included Postmaster General John E. "Jack" Potter, FBI Deputy Director Thomas Pickard, Chief Postal Inspector Kenneth Weaver and John Walsh, host of Fox's television show "America's Most Wanted."

They and reporters had gathered in an area far from the spot where mail to the Capitol is sorted, according to Dan Mihalko, spokesman for the postal inspections service.

"The area that was of concern at that time was where government mail was handled," Mihalko said yesterday, before health officials invited the news conference attendees to be tested. "We were on the working floor, but it was quite a distance away. . . . I don't think we have too much to worry about."

Postal service officials said they would immediately close the Brentwood and BWI facilities to allow for environmental testing and cleanup. Mail handled by those facilities will be diverted to other processing centers or temporary locations, but service will not be disrupted, officials said.

At his news conference, Williams counseled against overreaction: "We're going to stand up and return to our quality of life and repudiate what these terrorists are trying to do."

Officials said there was no indication that anthrax spores had contaminated other mail. They were unable to say whether the infected worker may have come in contact with the letter sent to Daschle's office.

Officials said they did not know of any letters or packages that broke open, leaking powder. "We are still investigating the specific circumstances," said Rima Khabbaz, deputy director of the division of viral diseases at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In New Jersey, health authorities focused on the Hamilton Township facility, which processes mail from 46 branches in the Trenton area. The New Jersey State Health Department and the CDC ordered an estimated 1,000 mail workers to undergo nasal-swab tests, which test for exposure to anthrax spores, not infection.

FBI agents continued to interview residents along the route of a postal worker in West Trenton who is infected with skin anthrax.

Authorities have now confirmed that a contaminated letter sent to the New York Post on Sept. 18 was mailed through that branch and postmarked in Hamilton Township. Two other anthrax letters -- to Daschle and to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw -- also passed through the West Trenton branch.

"Which specific letter infected her, I don't know if we'll ever know that," said Linda Vizi, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Philadelphia office.

The announcement of a third case of inhalation anthrax revives debate among law enforcement and public health officials about whether the spores now harming people through the mail should be considered "weapons grade" or "weaponized."

The distinction is crucial in part because it could tell investigators about the sophistication of the person or group sending the anthrax, and whether they may have access to anthrax supplies in Iraq, Russia or other countries.

Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and other officials said Friday that the samples found at NBC, in Daschle's office and at American Media Inc. were not weaponized. That means the particles were not substantially reduced in size or altered to make them easier to release into the environment.

But Richard Spertzel, a Maryland-based bioterror consultant, said yesterday on CBS's "Face the Nation" that since the Washington postal employee had developed inhalation anthrax, the material he came in contact with was evidently small enough and remained airborne long enough to be breathed into the lungs. He said that indicates the anthrax is "weapons grade."

Some experts have defined "weapons grade" anthrax as a precursor to the weaponized version, which also may be genetically modified to resist antibiotics or to withstand a missile explosion.

Health officials have said the anthrax tested so far responds to antibiotics and, according to scientists close to the investigation, has been identified as closely related to the Ames strain of B. anthracis.

While the question of who may be sponsoring the current attacks remains open, Spertzel said in an interview last week that evidence suggesting some of the mailed anthrax spores were finely milled was extremely worrisome to him and suggested state sponsorship.

"There's no question in my mind," said Spertzel, who was a member of the group that inspected Iraq's weapons programs after the Persian Gulf War. "The idea that this is the work of a lone nut, that's wishful thinking."

A prime suspect for state sponsorship would be Iraq, which is known to have stockpiles of anthrax and other pathogens and was turned down when it tried to obtain samples of the Ames strain from a Western European laboratory. But Spertzel said Iraq also tried to get the strain elsewhere, including from sources in Eastern Europe and Africa, and it is unknown if those attempts were successful.

"The big question is, 'Is Iraq cooperating [with the terrorists] or not?' " Spertzel said. "If they are, I think there is ample reason to worry."

Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said on "Fox News Sunday": "We know that Iraq has played a role in the past in supporting other groups of global terrorists. Iraq will continue to be in our crosshairs. But at this point we don't have the basis on which to pull the trigger."

The FBI has said it has found no hard evidence that the Sept. 11 hijacking plot, the anthrax letters and Iraq are linked.

Staff writers Dan Eggen, Avram Goldstein, Lisa Rein, Liz Seymour and Rick Weiss contributed to this report