Amerithrax (25 page)

Before the Gulf War, the threat from weapons of mass destruction wasn’t very real. After the war it was a “very real threat.” The U.S. discovered Iraq had concealed a grim arsenal bigger and far more deadly than imagined. Dr. David

1. Franz, a former colonel and senior scientist at the Insti- tute, headed three UN inspection teams in Iraq. He believed Iraq had used dummy anthrax during testing. Inspectors un- earthed powderized
   Bacillus thuringiensis
   (BT) at the Al Hakam plant. The particles were as small as one to five microns in size, the same size of the spores later mailed to Senator Daschle.
   

   “A relative of anthrax is
   Bacillus thuringiensis
   (BT),” Dr. Franz said, “which produces a toxin that kills the common bollworm. Formulated as powder, pesticide BT has larger particles than anthrax because pesticides have to fall through the air to coat leaves. Military bioweapons experts use BT and similar nonlethal bacilli as a stand-in for anthrax when ironing out production.” Franz added that the Iraqi “BT was missing the glue [a gene] for the toxin that kills bugs, ren- dering it totally useless as an insecticide.”
   

   Iraq produced thousands of gallons of anthrax, but in a
   

   wet form slightly more viscous than whole milk. Bio-agents grown only in liquids and produced in a liquid paste form are called “slurry.” Stephen D. Bryen, who headed the Pen- tagon’s Defense Technology Security Administration, re- ported that United Nations inspectors in Iraq found no “dusty” anthrax. He also observed that the Iraqis, like the Soviets, tended to mix together various germs (or strains) and chemicals in their weapons, presumably to defeat coun- termeasures. The mailed powdered anthrax was all of a sin- gle strain, the so-called Ames strain that had been developed in the U.S.
   

   Dr. Khidhir Hamza, a former top official in Iraq’s weap- ons program, believed he knew who had mailed anthrax to Brokaw and Daschle. “This is Iraq,” he later told CNBC. “This is Iraq’s work. Nobody has this expertise outside the
   

   U.S. and outside the major powers who work on germ war- fare. Nobody has the expertise and has any motive to attack the U.S. except Saddam to do this. This is Iraq. This is Saddam.”
   

   He said Iraq had developed the capability to weaponize anthrax even before he defected to the U.S. seven years ago and continues to maintain that capability. “I have absolutely no doubt. Iraq worked actually even before the Gulf War on perfecting the process of getting anthrax in the particle size needed in powder form and disseminate the way it is being disseminated now. Probably this is the first wave. I’m not trying to frighten everybody in this, but probably this is the first wave.”
   

   STRAIN 12
   

   

   Cry of the City
   

   ON
   October 17, 2001, the FBI had sent a sample of the Daschle anthrax to Battelle for further testing and confir- mation of the Institute’s analysis. Battelle was an Ohio mil- itary contractor that did secret work for the Pentagon. As officials accused Institute scientists of processing samples too slowly, the CDC was castigating the FBI for sealing off access to the Daschle letter and its contents. The FBI was awaiting another series of test results from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Northwest Washington. With their energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscope they were to attempt to identify the additive in the new anthrax. Some investi- gators thought it might be the clay bentonite, used by Sad- dam Hussein’s bioterror cooks in Iraq.
   

   Since BT (
   Bacillus thuringiensis
   ) had been found at Iraqi anthrax plants after the war, the FBI was also investigating that angle. Amerithrax might have used BT as dummy an- thrax to perfect his strains between mailings. Agents secretly monitored an equipment auction at one of the nation’s larg- est BT insecticide producers. At gun shows they found a bioterrorism cookbook sold by antigovernment militia groups. The anthrax recipes inside contained sufficient in- structions to make the deadly powder, as did sites on the Internet.
   

   Maj. Gen. John Parker, commanding general of the In- stitute, told a caucus of senators at 10:30 a.m. that the Das- chle anthrax was “essentially pure spores.” Parker had studied it himself through an electron microscope. Working from photographs, Dr. Ken Alibek thought the Daschle an-
   

   thrax had not been done with a regular industrial process and might even be “homemade.” A Defense Department of- ficial characterized the latest anthrax as “run of the mill.” Bill Patrick, now a private consultant on biological defense, rated the Daschle anthrax as a seven on a scale of ten. “It’s relatively high grade,” he said, “but not weapons grade.” Expertise was needed for that. “Weaponizing germs,” said Sergei Popov, a 1992 Soviet defector and biowarfare sci- entist, “is not a basement production.”
   

   “If I have a small amount of anthrax,” Leonard Cole of Rutgers wrote later, “it would take a few days to develop a huge arsenal of anthrax. In ten hours, one bacterium can yield a billion. A knowledgeable high school graduate could do it.” At the same time General Parker was speaking to the Senate, the FBI dispatched a helicopter to the Institute to pick up a sample for a second opinion.
   

   When Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge went to the White House briefing room to announce the latest news of the anthrax investigation, he was asked: Was the Daschle anthrax weapons grade, as Hill leaders had been told? Ridge insisted the anthrax was not “weaponized.” However, he later had to reverse his opinion of the amateurish quality of the Daschle anthrax and concede that terrorists “intended to use this anthrax as a weapon.”
   

   When Tommy Thompson saw the Institute’s test results on the Daschle letter spores—“treated to hang suspended in midair,” “pure,” and “finely milled”—he needed to see the President “right away.” He rushed to the Oval Office to meet with the President and Ridge. The spores, according to the FBI, were “much more refined, more potent, and more easily dispersed” than the New York media anthrax. The Institute found that the Daschle anthrax contained as much as one trillion spores per gram—much, much more than had been detected by Battelle from the sample shipped to them in a single test tube. The Daschle powder was nearly pure spores and “highly aerogenic.” It behaved like gas. Ridge reported the concentration of the anthrax powder was extraordinarily made “to be more easily absorbed.” On October 22, the Battelle laboratories delivered a completely opposite opinion to the FBI.
   

   The Battelle experts said the particles had a large-size range and told the FBI it looked like “puppy chow.” While single spores predominated, some clusters ranged up to forty microns wide—far too big to penetrate human lungs. The big clusters suggested the powder was far less than Ameri- can weapons grade and as much as fifty times less powerful than the Institute had determined.
   

   Ridge and Bush adviser Karen Hughes interrupted a Na- tional Security Council meeting to tell the President of the conflicting analyses. Bush told them to “get everyone to- gether and work it out.” Ridge picked up the phone and said, “I need scientists!” Tom Ridge’s ruddy face was not quite as square as a concrete block. He was a tall man, cut from Rushmore granite in a dark blue suit and blue tie with white polka dots. Clean-cut, with big hands, he had the in- tense look of a fullback who could do some real damage. His first press conference would be an anthrax press con- ference and he would be so unknown that people would say, “Tom who?”
   

   The disagreement between the two scientific teams ini- tially puzzled the FBI. However, the scientists quickly rec- ognized the flaw. The tests had been conducted differently. When the FBI had transported a sample of the anthrax for additional testing to Battelle it had been altered. The Insti- tute’s scientists had irradiated part of the anthrax powder. This was “a safety technique that leaves the spores aero- dynamic and other characteristics undisturbed.”
   

   Unaware that the Army laboratory had irradiated the ma- terial, Battelle used a different safety technique. They placed the anthrax in an autoclave, a sterilizer that used superheated steam under intense pressure, to kill the spores. This pro- duced a far lower estimate of the concentration level and induced Battelle scientists to conclude that the material was more liable to bunch together in lumps, and thus less likely to become airborne than the Army scientists had estimated. Now the FBI commenced flying up to two hundred forensic samples a day by helicopter from Brentwood, New York, and New Jersey postal facilities and the
   New York Post
   to the Institute. Treated as criminal evidence, the specimens were analyzed (ten tests per environmental sample) inside
   

   Suite AA3. Col. Erik Henchal, an Army biologist, and his team ultimately analyzed more than thirty thousand samples. The
   Post
   sample turned out to be nearly pure spores.
   

   NALC President, Vince Sombrotto, met with Bush and Ridge at the White House. “The proud members of the NALC do not walk with fear,” Sombrotto said after meeting with Bush. “We will rise to the occasion because, as the president just said a few minutes ago, we’re all soldiers in this war and tomorrow when I visit Trenton, I will pass his message along to all the letter carriers... that they’re in the front lines of our war against these terrorists.” The union leader told his letter carriers that the nation was depending on them as an anchor of “normality” in a difficult time.
   

   “We cannot function in this country if fear is going to be our constant companion,” Sombrotto said. “So long as we continue to deliver the mail, we’ll be standing up for America in the war against terrorism. As I have said on numerous occasions, it is the familiar sight of a letter carrier walking down the street, shouldering a mail satchel, firmly holding the mail, that is reassuring to the citizens of this country... the Postal Service soldiers on—as it must— because the nation’s commercial, social and even emotional health depends on it. If we let them make us cower, the terrorists will have won. So long as we continue to stand tall and deliver the mail, we’ll be standing up for America,” Sombrotto concluded. “God bless America, and God bless all of you.” A toll-free hot line was set up to help carriers deal with trauma.
   

   On October 24, a tense nighttime meeting presided over by Tom Ridge was held in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. Attorney General Ashcroft, the FBI’s Robert Mueller, and Allyson Simons, Tommy Thompson, and six- teen other top officials and experts were in attendance. Ridge addressed the lack of communication between the CDC, FBI, and the Army. He told them to share information with each other—and take orders from him. Ashcroft, worried that another anthrax release might be imminent, was furious and took the Army, HHS, and FBI to task. Not a few there feared Amerithrax might be “a state actor,” possibly dis- patched by Iraq.
   

   On October 25, another shipment from the rapidly dwin- dling supply of Daschle anthrax was sent to Battelle. The contractor subsequently produced estimates not divergent from those of the Army scientists. The Daschle anthrax might be weaponized, pure and deadly, but there was barely enough left to test. The next day the USPS put new safety measures into place.
   

   “Headquarters is purchasing nitrile gloves and N-95 fil- tering face pieces for all the processing and distribution cen- ters in the country,” USPS Chief Operating Officer Pat Donahoe wrote mail plant managers on Friday, October 26:
   

   These items will be shipped directly from the manufac- turers to your plants. Each box of N-95 face pieces pro- vides instructions for its use. Attached is a mandatory safety talk on hand protection. Please ensure that your employees who desire these added precautions be given this personal protective equipment to use, as needed... wear your gloves, and wash your hands with soap water every two hours during your tour, and other times as appropriate.
   

   1. Gerard Bohan, manager of Maintenance Policies & Programs wrote (noting that this was an interim policy to be updated as more information became available):
      

      Implement the following procedures immediately:
      

      1. Do not use compressed air for custodial cleaning.
         

      2. Avoid dry sweeping of the floor and dusting other surfaces. Use a vacuum cleaner equipped with a HEPA filter or wet methods to clean the floors and other sur- faces.
         

      3. Wet mop using a ten-percent bleach solution (one and a half cups of household chlorine bleach in one gallon of water) to clean areas that cannot be using the HEPA- filtered vacuum.
         

      4. Employees may wear a filtering face piece respirator (N-95) and nitrile or vinyl gloves for comfort. These
         

         tools are to offer comfort and an additional measure of security during the current crisis.
         

      5. Dispose of worn out or damaged gloves and respira- tors by placing them in the trash.
         

      6. Minimize the generation of dust when changing the bags in the vacuums. Place the full vacuum bag in a plastic bag and seal the plastic bag. Place the plastic bag in the trash. It is a good work practice to wear the filter- ing face piece respirator and nitrile or vinyl gloves while changing the bags in the vacuums.
         

      7. Wash your hands with soap and water thoroughly when the gloves are removed and before eating.