Last Updated

13 Feb 2003

Source: The Wall Street Journal, November 2, 2001.

Seven Days in October Spotlight Weakness Of U.S. Response to Threat of Bioterrorism

By KATHY CHEN, GREG HITT, LAURIE MCGINLEY and ANDREA PETERSEN
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

WASHINGTON -- The first bioterrorist attack against the U.S. government began during a routine meeting to discuss whether a tapped-out South Dakota gold mine should be converted into a research laboratory.

It was Monday, Oct. 15, and 10 members of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's staff were holding their weekly South Dakota planning meeting on the fifth floor of the Hart Office Building. A painted buffalo hide, donated by a Sioux Indian tribe, hung on the wall.

Shortly after 10 a.m., Eric Washburn, a longtime Daschle aide, stuck his head in the door, interrupted the mine-to-lab discussion, and announced that an intern had just opened a threatening letter. "Just wanted to let you know," he added, according to a colleague, "it had white powder in it."

In the minutes, hours and days that followed, the U.S. government was put to the test. For decades, experts had warned of a bioterrorist attack. Now it was happening. Just days earlier, the Capitol police, spurred by anthrax attacks in Florida and New York, had established new procedures for screening suspect packages.

But the plan didn't provide any guidance to the nation's leaders on how to navigate the difficult line between taking all necessary precautions and avoiding alarming the public. Federal officials, faced with a chaotic situation that changed hourly, were first faulted for being alarmist as they shut down the House of Representatives, and then for underreacting tragically by minimizing the threat. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, floundering in uncharted territory, repeatedly assured a nervous Postal Service that there was no reason to worry about mail workers who might have come in contact with the threatening letter before it was opened. A week later, two of those mail workers were dead.

Confusion over just how to respond to the anthrax attacks continued to deepen Thursday, as preliminary tests revealed that the latest victim, a New York City hospital worker, was killed by a strain that's indistinguishable from those found in all the other infections, according to a top federal health official. But authorities were no closer to unraveling how the woman, who had no obvious ties to previously known targets or the postal system, became infected. That's an increasingly urgent mystery. Additional locations are testing positive for anthrax every day, most recently Food and Drug Administration mailrooms in Rockville, Md.; a Kansas City, Mo., postal facility; and State Department mailbags sent to Lithuania.

The initial reaction in Sen. Daschle's office on Oct. 15 was nonchalant. Staffers had seen threatening letters before. Days earlier, environmental activists had delivered a tuft of musk ox fur to the senator as a token of gratitude for opposing expanded oil drilling in Alaska, and some fretted it might be anthrax-laced. A test showed it wasn't. But given the recent anthrax attacks in Florida and New York, which had killed one person already, the staff wasn't taking chances.

Uniformed police officers came and closed the stairwell in the office, securing the room with the letter. They quarantined all staff in the area. Officers did two on-the-spot tests. Both indicated anthrax. The letter's postmark -- Trenton -- was also troubling, because an anthrax-laced letter mailed to NBC's Tom Brokaw earlier had the same postmark.

A short while later, Sen. Daschle arrived in the Capitol and was notified of the situation. He wanted to go to his office to discuss the threat directly with his staff, but Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Al Lenhardt, whose duties include overseeing security, insisted it was too risky. Instead, Mr. Daschle made a conference call, and his staff gathered around the speakerphone as he confirmed that the powder had tested positive for anthrax. He relayed reassurance from medical professionals that the disease was treatable. And he told them he was "proud of how strong they are," recalls Jay Carson, Mr. Daschle's home-state press secretary.

Mr. Daschle also talked to President Bush and told him about the letter. "Field tests showed it was positive," he said, according to an aide. Minutes later, Mr. Bush surprised Mr. Daschle and his staff by announcing the development to the world during an appearance with Italy's prime minister. In the Hart building, the Daschle staff ordered Armand's pizza and watched reports about their unfortunate circumstance. By mid-afternoon, they were released, and headed to the office of Dr. John Eisold, the Capitol's attending physician, where they were given anthrax-detecting nose swabs and doses of the antibiotic Cipro.

Samples of the powder were sent to Fort Detrick, Md., where Army scientists confirmed that evening that the substance was anthrax. The Capitol Police worked with Dr. Eisold's office on plans for a massive nose-swabbing operation the next day.

No one involved contacted the U.S. Postal Service, officials there say.

Tuesday, Oct. 16

At 4:30 a.m., an official from the Centers for Disease Control called Sherry Adams, the nurse who runs Washington's Office of Emergency Health and Medical Services. The experts at Fort Detrick had concluded that the Daschle letter contained "a virulent form" of anthrax. It consisted of tiny particles, able to float in the air for a long period of time and thus invade the lungs of victims. Sen. Daschle got the same message in a briefing from Maj. Gen. John Parker, Fort Detrick's commander. In an afternoon press conference, he said: "It's a very potent form of anthrax that was clearly produced by somebody who knew what he or she was doing."

At Postal Service headquarters, Postmaster General John "Jack" Potter asked his aides to ask the CDC what to do about workers upstream from the Hart building at the city's main postal station. The Brentwood Road facility distributes all the city's mail, and it has a special unit for sorting the federal government's incoming mail.

The response was unequivocal, says Deborah Willhite, the Postal Service's senior vice president for government relations and public policy. "They said there was virtually no risk of any anthrax contamination in the facility, that without the letter being opened at Brentwood, there was no risk of any anthrax escaping, so neither the facility nor the employees needed to be tested." Health officials said "whatever was sealed in the envelope was sealed," adds Patrick Donahoe, the Postal Service's chief operating officer. "There was no evidence anything had opened up. The letter to Daschle had been sealed with tape."

"There were just no clues, no evidence that indicated to us that people in Brentwood were at risk," says David Fleming, deputy director of the CDC.

By then, evidence already had emerged from earlier anthrax attacks that letters were leaving behind spore trails. In Florida, where inhalation anthrax killed a supermarket-tabloid editor, officials were pretty sure that a mailroom worker for the newspaper was infected, and a Boca Raton post office was tainted with anthrax traces, prompting authorities to close it temporarily and hand out Cipro to postal workers. In New Jersey, news of the Trenton-postmarked Brokaw letter had prompted private physicians to notify authorities that two Trenton-area postal workers had anthrax-like skin lesions.

But CDC officials in Atlanta and Washington thought there wasn't a risk of inhalation anthrax, the more serious form of the disease, for Washington postal workers. "It's not a question of leakage, but if enough comes out that poses a health risk," says Rima Khabbaz, head of the CDC investigation in Washington. Besides, she adds, environmental tests at another congressional mail facility that received mail from Brentwood had so far shown no evidence of anthrax.

Meanwhile, at the Brentwood station, 56-year-old postal worker Leroy Richmond called in sick. He had a fever, the sweats, muscle aches and fatigue. Joseph Curseen, a 47-year-old mail processor on the night shift, came to work, but felt like he was coming down with a cold. And Thomas Morris, a 55-year-old mail sorter, participated in his weekly Tuesday morning bowling league at the Parkland Bowl in District Heights, Md., but then he started feeling fatigued.

In New Jersey, at about 9 a.m. Dr. Faruk Presswalla, the state medical examiner, started work on a skin biopsy of a female mail carrier suffering from lesions. Dr. Presswalla had seen naturally occurring anthrax cases in his native India. It took him hours to prep the biopsy, but late in the afternoon, his microscope revealed dark-purple-colored rod-shaped germs -- telltale signs. He phoned Dr. Eddy Bresnitz, New Jersey's chief epidemiologist, at about 5 p.m. "He said, 'Doc, this is certainly compatible with anthrax, but we don't have the special stains to confirm this," Dr. Bresnitz recalls. "Only the CDC has those." The skin biopsy was sent to the CDC in Atlanta that night via FedEx.

 At 8 p.m., Sen. Daschle was at a fund-raiser when he got a call asking him to return to the Capitol right away. He rushed to the Secretary of the Senate's ornate office, where the sergeant-at-arms, Mr. Lenhardt, and other top aides delivered the latest disturbing news. Cultures grown from the staffer swabs preliminarily indicated that as many as 20 had been exposed -- including those a floor below in the South Dakota planning meeting. More troubling, tests showed the clothing of a Capitol-based Daschle aide who hadn't even been in the Hart building on Monday had been exposed. Though the latter result later would turn out to be a false positive, "it was very disconcerting," the senator said.

Late that night, Mr. Daschle called Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt. House aides say Mr. Daschle raised the prospect of closing the Capitol in his call with Rep. Gephardt.

Mr. Daschle went home at 1 a.m.

Wednesday, Oct. 17

By 7 a.m., Sen. Daschle was at a weekly White House breakfast with the president and other congressional leaders, a ritual instituted by the president in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The senator looked "shaken, almost ashen," recalls a top congressional aide. The leaders discussed the expanding anthrax crisis and how to secure the Capitol and its workers.

Messrs. Gephardt and Hastert came away convinced that an agreement had been struck to close both chambers, along with all the complex's office buildings, House aides say. Mr. Daschle recalls some discussion of closing the office buildings but no focus on the Capitol building itself. "It could be my discussion of that was misinterpreted," he says.

Later that morning, Reps. Hastert and Gephardt announced the House would go out of session that day, and leave town until the following Tuesday. For the first time in history, the U.S. Congress appeared to be shutting down under threat of attack.

At about 10:30 a.m., the Senate convened a rare bipartisan caucus of all 100 senators in the members-only dining room on the Capitol's first floor. Sen. Daschle outlined the grim situation: Spores had been detected in about 30 staffers, mostly his, and they were taking powerful antibiotics to ward off a possibly deadly infection. "We're being tested here," he said, according to several in attendance. "I want us to demonstrate leadership. I want everyone here to be a leader." The room erupted in applause.

Gen. Parker of Fort Detrick also spoke to the group, but this time he focused on the good news. The anthrax, he said, appeared to be a "garden variety" strain that was easily treated with antibiotics. "I've seen it under the microscope," he assured them.

Then Sen. Daschle announced that all Senate office buildings would be closed for testing, and the Senate itself would need to be tested at some point. He suggested closing for legislative business at the day's end and doing a "pro forma" session Thursday.

Several colleagues objected. Texas Republican Phil Gramm stood and argued that votes be held Thursday as a signal to the terrorists and the country. "We cannot flinch," he said, according to someone at the meeting.

"You need to have a real vote, a real vote on something, anything" on Thursday, said Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat.

"We've got to send a message: Vote today," said North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad, drawing cheers. "Vote tomorrow," he said, drawing more cheers. Jocularly pushing his luck, he broached a Senate taboo: "Vote Friday." Mocking boos broke the tension. Faced with a Senate revolt, Mr. Daschle relented: The office buildings would close for testing, but the Senate would stay in session and vote Thursday.

Back at Postal Service headquarters, Mr. Potter decided to have Brentwood tested himself, at Postal Service expense, even though the CDC continued to argue it was unnecessary. "Let's not wait," Mr. Potter said, according to Ms. Willhite.

The CDC based its position on limited available scientific data and its experience in Florida, New York and New Jersey, says Ms. Khabbaz, head of the CDC team in Washington. "The risk of inhalation anthrax" was thought to be "with the opening of the letter and aerosolization of the substance," she says. "So the investigation focused on the letter and went concentrically from there."

Meanwhile, Mr. Curseen now had a stomach ache as well as a cold. But he reported to work as usual. Messrs. Richmond and Morris were also feeling worse.

Thursday, Oct. 18

Dr. Bresnitz, the New Jersey epidemiologist, was about to leave for work at 7:30 a.m. when someone from the CDC called saying that the female mail carrier's biopsy had been confirmed positive for anthrax and that another worker probably was infected, too. "Are you sure about this?" Dr. Bresnitz recalls asking, stunned. "And he said, 'We're absolutely sure.' "

The Postal Service's Ms. Willhite and several colleagues went to a meeting that morning at the office of the Senate sergeant-at-arms to discuss the growing backlog of Capitol Hill mail. Commenting on the enormity of the problem, a congressional staffer mentioned that the Senate mailroom had four "hot spots" of anthrax traces. "That was the first time our concerns that anthrax might be able to escape an unopened envelope were sort of confirmed," Ms. Willhite says. "That sort of said to us: 'If it got into their mailroom before the letter was opened, why think it couldn't have gotten into Brentwood?' " Leaving the office, Ms. Willhite turned to her colleagues: "Did you think that had some implications?"

It did. The Postal Service, eager to calm the public's nerves, arranged an event with John Walsh of the "America's Most Wanted" television show to publicize the government's $1 million reward for information leading to the people who had sent the anthrax. To drive home his point that the mail was safe, Mr. Potter decided to hold the event at the Brentwood postal facility. He had asked CDC officials that day and the previous day whether "there was any reason to believe our employees were at any risk being at Brentwood," says Ms. Willhite. "Given the facts they knew at the time about the letter to Sen. Daschle, they advised it was safe for employees to be there. Since it was safe for employees, he felt it was safe for him to be there and for all of us to be there. He said, 'Let's do this at Brentwood.' "

Even as reporters were gathering at the Washington post office, Acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco of New Jersey was announcing the first confirmed case of anthrax in a postal worker.

At the news conference on the cavernous workroom floor of the Brentwood facility, Messrs. Potter and Walsh stood with other top federal officials, next to a big image of the Daschle and Brokaw envelopes, as they touted the $1 million reward and the toll-free tip line maintained by America's Most Wanted. "We will continue to do everything possible to protect the confidence of the American people in their mail," Mr. Potter said. The Daschle letter "was extremely well-sealed, and there is only a minute chance that anthrax spores escaped from it into this facility."

That night at Brentwood, senior plant manager Timothy Haney halted all of the machines for quiet and gathered all workers in the central work area. "Mr. Haney advised employees that if they saw people with funny suits, they were testing the facility," recalls Ray Williams, vice president of the American Postal Workers Union's Washington office, who was also present.

A worker interrupted him: "Why are you testing the machines instead of us?" Mr. Haney responded that if anything was found on the machines, the CDC and public health officials would start providing antibiotics to the workers, according to Ms. Willhite. The workers weren't satisfied, but after 15 minutes everyone went back to work.

A team of testing contractors in white protective suits and face masks arrived shortly after 8 p.m. and started testing, focusing on four automated machines as well as equipment in the government mail area that would have processed the Daschle letter. The initial field-test results, available in minutes, were negative, offering hope that Brentwood wasn't contaminated.

Meanwhile, Mr. Morris went to see a doctor. He had a fever of 102 degrees, but a normal white-blood-cell count and so was sent home. Mr. Curseen was feeling worse, too, but he hadn't missed a day in 15 years, so he didn't consider skipping work. "He thought he could just stick it through," said his mother, Billie Curseen.

Friday, Oct. 19

At the work week's end, Capitol Hill was a ghost town. Both the House and Senate were out of session and all the office buildings remained closed. Some Daschle staffers played touch football on the mall by the Air and Space Museum -- "exposed versus unexposed," one quipped.

In New Jersey, Dr. George T. DiFerdinando, acting commissioner of the state's health department, decided to ignore the CDC's advice and recommend seven days of Cipro for all workers at two Trenton-area postal facilities. "We made our own policy," Dr. DiFerdinando says. "I said, 'I'm interested in hearing what the CDC has to say, but my mind is pretty much made up. I'm going to recommend treatment anyway.' "

In Washington, no widespread treatment was provided, although Mr. Potter had said the previous day that any Brentwood workers who wanted to get tested for anthrax should. At about 1 p.m., Mr. Richmond went to the Kaiser Permanente Woodbridge medical facility in Northern Virginia and told Dr. Michael Nguyen that he was a postal worker, that he rarely got sick, and that he was worried about anthrax. The doctor sent Mr. Richmond to the emergency room at Inova Fairfax Hospital, where he arrived just after 3 p.m. There, Dr. Cecele Murphy ordered blood tests and a chest X-ray and CT scan; the preliminary signs pointed toward inhalation anthrax. Dr. Murphy put him on intravenous Cipro and notified city health officials at about 10:30 p.m.

CDC officials monitored the situation closely, but doubted that Mr. Richmond had inhalation anthrax.

Saturday, Oct. 20

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Bill Frist, the Senate's only physician, was worried about the report that a postal worker was in a Fairfax hospital. He called Tom Ridge, the White House director of homeland security. "What's going on?" Mr. Frist recalls Mr. Ridge saying. "It's not clear to me," Mr. Frist responded. "But it's big."

Meanwhile, the CDC's Dr. Khabbaz sent an investigator to the Fairfax hospital to check on Mr. Richmond's condition. And, evidencing confidence in the Brentwood facility's safety, other CDC officials visited the plant without protective clothing to meet with its manager, Mr. Haney. The CDC officials wanted to know exactly where the letter had come in and to see the equipment that processed it and the plant floor layout. As Mr. Haney was explaining the mail-sorting process to his guests, an assistant came in and whispered in his ear. Mr. Haney excused himself to take an urgent phone call and returned several minutes later with devastating news: Mr. Richmond's wife had called to say that doctors were almost certain her husband had inhalation anthrax.

"Everyone started falling and popping and running and scrambling," recalls Mr. Williams. Recovering from cancer and other illnesses, Mr. Williams picked up his briefcase and headed for his doctor's office.

At the news conference, health officials played down Mr. Richmond's condition, saying it had not yet been confirmed.

At the CDC's Atlanta headquarters, people were stunned by the Richmond case. "It didn't make sense," says Dr. Fleming. "Something different happened at Brentwood. Something there allowed this material to become aerosolized."

That afternoon, Mr. Curseen went to Mass at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Clinton, and briefly blacked out. By the time paramedics arrived, he had recovered sufficiently to drive home.

In New York that night for the all-star benefit rock concert at Madison Square Garden, Mr. Daschle was called onto the stage by comedian Billy Crystal, who cracked, "This man has had a pretty tough week." Mr. Daschle played it straight. "We're all Americans tonight," he said. He had planned to leave early, but "we stayed till the last song was sung" -- "Let It Be," by Paul McCartney and the all-star cast.

Sunday, Oct. 21

At 7 a.m. Sunday, Sherry Adams called Dr. Ivan Walks, the director of the D.C. Department of Health. Mr. Richmond was confirmed positive.

The CDC now recommended that all postal workers at Brentwood be tested and treated. Belatedly, Dr. Walks had realized that hundreds of postal workers would be converging on D.C. General Hospital for treatment just as crowds would be entering nearby RFK Stadium for a benefit concert featuring Michael Jackson, the Backstreet Boys and others. So he hurriedly switched the day's testing venue to a city office building.

Mr. Morris arrived at the emergency room of Greater Southeast Community Hospital just before 6 a.m. When doctors saw his medical history form and realized he was a postal worker at the Brentwood central mail facility, they suspected anthrax. Within hours, the hospital contacted Washington's Department of Health to notify them. Mr. Morris died at 8:45 p.m.

Mr. Curseen went to work again Saturday night, but he threw up while there, so at 2 a.m. he drove himself to Southern Maryland Hospital Center in Clinton. He told doctors that he thought he had the flu. A chest X-ray was judged to be normal, so doctors concluded Mr. Curseen had stomach flu, gave him intravenous fluids and discharged him after three hours. They didn't ask if he was a postal worker, and Mr. Curseen was too sick to volunteer anything. "They were very vague symptoms," says Venkat Mani, chairman of the hospital's infectious-disease program.

Monday, Oct. 22

Early Monday morning, buses began to drop off hundreds of postal workers at D.C. General Hospital for anthrax tests. The hospital had been closed for months for financial reasons, but now a line snaked through its hallways and out the door as employees waited for hours to get nasal swabs and a 10-day supply of Cipro.

Mr. Curseen's wife, Celeste, found him alarmingly lethargic that day. At 3:30 a.m., after he collapsed in the bathroom, she called an ambulance, which whisked him back to the Southern Maryland Hospital Center. He could barely breathe, and a second chest X-ray and CT scan revealed serious problems. A reexamination of the previous day's X-ray, which had been deemed normal, showed "an ill-defined area of increased density," the CDC said in a report. Antibiotic therapy started, and he was put on a ventilator.

His parents, summoned to the hospital, were told that he had "double pneumonia," says his mother, Billie Curseen. "His breathing was so labored, you could hear him a block away," she says. She figured his condition was exacerbated by his asthma. "The doctors were frantic, this was something new to them," she said.

Mr. Curseen died six hours after arriving. Officials later announced that both he and Mr. Morris had succumbed to pulmonary anthrax. Their colleague Mr. Richmond remains hospitalized in serious condition.

In retrospect, CDC officials say they would have done some things differently. "If I could move back the clock and go back, knowing what I learned at Brentwood, boy ... " says Dr. Khabbaz, her voice trailing off. Still, she says, the agency moved as quickly as it could. "The fact that we were able to put people on antibiotics within six hours of confirmation, we had mobilized the [pharmaceutical] stockpile, and to make sure that we were able to do that, is pretty amazing." Defenders of the CDC also say the agency was hampered because it wasn't getting timely information from Fort Detrick.

For his part, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson says he didn't realize how extremely potent the anthrax was until he was briefed by the Army lab at Fort Detrick on Oct. 23, after the postal workers died.

"If I had known it sooner, we would have done something differently at Brentwood," Mr. Thompson says.

-- Jess Bravin in Washington contributed to this article.