Last Updated

08 Nov 2002

Source: Washington Post, January 27, 2002.

Where Anthrax Is Old News

Florida Tabloids Say Their Story Has Been Forgotten

By Sue Anne Pressley, Washington Post Staff Writer

BOCA RATON, Fla. -- No doubt the fish are long dead. They have not been fed since that Sunday afternoon in early October when the staff of American Media Inc. fled their office building at the command of the FBI, leaving behind car keys, eyeglasses, the confidential files that fuel AMI's tabloid publishing empire, and the Siamese fighting fish that some workers kept on their desks as office pets.

The fish, belly up or perhaps fossilized, as one employee is now able to joke, are among the artifacts in an office that is frozen in time, off-limits to anyone not dressed in a hazardous-materials suit. This is where the nation's anthrax scare had its beginnings last fall, where the rare disease caused the first of five deaths, and the locked-down building is still rife with anthrax spores on all three floors -- not only in the work space of the genial photo editor who died Oct. 4 (case 5).

In the nearly four months that have passed, AMI workers in makeshift newsrooms have continued to put out the six tabloids that reap huge profits and substantial ridicule for their content and reporting style -- the National Enquirer with its cover story this week, "Hillary Catches Bill Cheating Again!"; the Star, detailing Prince Harry's "drug shame"; the Globe with its coverage of Michael Jordan's "secret sex life."

But they also feel like the forgotten, or pointedly ignored, victims of this episode. In this instance, they say, it doesn't matter that many Americans see them as cold-hearted snoops who seldom show mercy for the subjects of their scandal stories and exposés; they were simply good corporate citizens going about their business when an unforeseen terrorist attack shattered their working world.

"We have to some extent been the stepchildren of this whole anthrax ordeal," said Candace Trunco, editor of the Globe, which has an estimated readership of more than 4 million. "... That stepchild kind of feeling is because we are the tabloids. There have been so few answers on this. We've been out here so much alone."

Together, the 350 AMI employees who worked in this now-ghostlike building stood in line last fall outside the Palm Beach County Health Department, waiting to be tested for exposure to anthrax spores. They mourned the death of photo editor Bob Stevens and worried about the fates of mailroom clerk Ernesto Blanco, who nearly died, and three other workers who tested positive for anthrax exposure but never fell ill. They suffered through the sometimes-serious side effects from weeks of taking the antibiotic Cipro.

They still are shocked at the lack of information they have received from state and federal officials about what happened to them and what they should do next, and they continue to nurse hurt feelings about what they see as official slights in the midst of the tragedy. They question, for example, why Gov. Jeb Bush (R), who visited a contaminated Boca Raton postal facility four miles away from their main temporary newsroom, did not also visit them to offer his support.

"We've been a good corporate citizen, and then to be treated like this," said AMI's chairman, CEO and president, David J. Pecker. "Anything that happened in New York, [Mayor Rudolph] Giuliani and [Gov. George] Pataki were there. Here, to this day, Jeb Bush never came in to see any of my people -- maybe it's because we're tabloid reporters -- and that's something that I have to say the editors were very upset about."

Bush spokeswoman Lisa Gates said this week that the governor was "from the very first days, very involved and very concerned," and that he spoke with Pecker on the telephone several times. She said no slight was intended, and stressed that the governor would not have been deterred by AMI's line of business. "These are citizens of Florida," she said, "and we were concerned about a community going through this situation."

Many at AMI also wonder why so-called mainstream media organizations have done so little to follow up on their story.

Pecker, 50, a former CEO and president of Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, which launched the late John F. Kennedy Jr.'s George magazine, says he had to fight every step of the way for basic information and treatment for AMI staff. He says he had to threaten federal officials with an embarrassing news conference when they did not immediately offer an extension of Cipro to his employees, as they did to postal workers. He says he had to ship in expert doctors and organize town hall meetings with government officials so his workers could try to obtain answers to their questions. Even given the chaotic times, he was "astounded," he says, at the lack of coordination -- and information provided -- by the various agencies involved.

"Everything we found out was communicated by the crawl on CNN," Pecker said.

The shared experience did have one benefit, he said, in that it drew the workers closer together; others agreed.

"Employees bonded at a fierce level because we were in a life-and-death situation," said Steve Coz, 42, AMI's editorial director. " 'How are you today?' takes on a whole huge impetus under the circumstances."

But as the days pass, and AMI's quarantined building remains locked and guarded, the next step is hard to determine. The Environmental Protection Agency confirms that contamination of the 70,000-square-foot building is "widespread," and Pecker says he is interviewing companies about the cleanup, expected to cost millions of dollars. An EPA spokesman says no federal assistance is forthcoming because AMI is a private business, but Pecker wonders at what point the responsibility for this huge public health hazard is shared.

"The building is totally pervasive with anthrax," he said. "God forbid that there is a hurricane [which could tear open the building], or who knows what could happen?"

Later, after Bob Stevens had died, several AMI employees would remember the letter, addressed to actress and singer Jennifer Lopez, that emitted a puff of white powder when Stevens ripped it open. That is when they believe he inhaled the anthrax spores that killed him.

His co-workers could not know it then, but they were about to embark on an ordeal of fear and worry that was unique and uncharted. They were the first -- before NBC News in New York, before the Capitol Hill office of Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) -- and Pecker says the early public reaction was "negative... . 'Oh, they planted it themselves,' 'Oh, they're making it up.' "

After the EPA completed its initial testing of the building, AMI research assistant Ann Burke looked at a map pinpointing the contamination and found it included her desk.

"On the one hand, it seems incredibly unreal. 'Anthrax? That was anthrax?' " said Burke, 55. "After the story broke, everybody experienced the same thing. Everybody you ever knew called you. I felt like I was at my own funeral, and that's kind of a strange experience in itself."

J.D. Robinson, a reporter for the Globe, was shaken further when his first test came back positive for anthrax exposure. "You're saying to yourself, 'Please, not me. Please, please, not me,' " said Robinson, 29, who wrote about the experience. "... It was tough for a couple of weeks. We got chucked out of a building that was kind of like our home. We were put on Cipro. Somebody we all knew to be a very, very good person died. One day he's here and the next, he's not."

After Robinson's second test was inconclusive, he declined a third and has not become sick.

Other workers and family members found that taking Cipro was, itself, a health hazard. Side effects ranged from mental confusion and joint pain to at least one life-threatening toxic reaction.

Jill Perel, the wife of David Perel, editor of the National Enquirer, became sick after she began taking the medication, and was hospitalized in isolation with a white blood cell count that had dipped dangerously low. Doctors knew she did not have anthrax because the count would have been elevated, so they took her off the Cipro and she immediately recovered, her husband said.

Months later, no one at AMI is any closer to knowing why they were targeted or who was responsible. An FBI spokeswoman said this week that "the investigation is continuing, and will continue until it is solved."

But some here doubt there will ever be conclusive answers. Others point to coincidences that seem too good to discount. For example, several of the suspected Sept. 11 hijackers had at one point rented an apartment from the wife of Sun editor Mike Irish.

But Tony Frost, editor of the Star, suggests that whoever sent the anthrax might simply have been going after big American institutions.

"I have a completely open mind," he said. "It's obvious the titles of AMI are household names, part of Americana. You see them at every single retail outlet, at every supermarket, right there at the cash register."

Already, the once-manicured grounds of the battened-down AMI building, located in the middle of a prosperous corporate park, have taken on the somewhat seedy look of abandonment. Yellow police tape is intertwined around the trees -- this remains a crime scene -- and Pecker bought a trailer to house the security guards who are posted there around the clock.

Just before the anthrax episode, AMI had completed an $8 million renovation of the building. "It was a palace," said Trunco. But now, it is uncertain whether the company will ever reclaim it; questions about the cleanup are too iffy.

In the meantime, Pecker has leased for two years a nearby former IBM building, which AMI plans to move into on Feb. 15, at last gathering the employees again in one place. After that, he said, who knows?

"Psychologically, some people might not want to go back into the building," Pecker said, "so we'll put it to a vote. If 90 percent of the people agree, we will go back in."

But he also is so upset by the company's treatment during the anthrax episode that he is entertaining offers to leave Florida completely.

"Fifteen states have sent us offers. The one most aggressive so far has been New York," he said. "I told the employees the same thing: I would also put that to their vote."