Amerithrax (50 page)

Gorbachev’s Five-Year Plan had funded Vector’s 360- liter viral reactor, assembled by Biopreparat in western Rus- sia to produce smallpox. In Building 6, well guarded by security police, was a smallpox laboratory, a huge aerosol test chamber, and high-containment labs where research on other exotic agents was being conducted. Buildings 6 and 6A were two adjacent four-story brick buildings housing work on Marburg and other deadly viruses.

Building 600 housed a fifty-foot-high aerosol test cham- ber, the Soviets’ largest indoor testing facility, where they experimented with new strains of anthrax. The walls were crisscrossed with pipes delivering fresh air to workers’ space suits. Grounding strips prevented static electricity buildup, which would cause accidental explosions in rooms where germ bombs and bomblets were tested. Glossy floors of ep- oxy eased decontamination. Underground bunkers with seven-foot-thick walls protected and stored the finished product. Inside underground filing rooms, anthrax was fil- tered into warheads and other delivery systems.

The collapse of the Soviet Union left behind tens of thousands of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the scientists who knew how to make them. Many of its researchers were lured overseas. In 1997 Iranians visited Obolensk, the civilian-run secret State Research Center for Applied Microbiology in Russia, and tried to recruit biolo- gists. The Iranians were interested in bioweapons for use

against people, crops, and livestock. As in South Africa they were lusting after genetically engineered agents to kill or cripple selectively by race or gender. Between 1990 and 1996, Obolensk lost 54 percent of its staff to this brain drain and security deteriorated.

The U.S. learned of a new super anthrax from a 1995 conference in Great Britain. Obolensk scientists Andrei Pomerantsev and Nikolai A. Staritsin published a journal article about how they had altered anthrax’s DNA to create a super vaccine-resistant strain. They had genetically engi- neered anthrax by inserting virulence genes from
Bacillus cereus
, a bacterium that attacks blood cells but normally does not cause lethal disease in humans, into anthrax mi- crobes. Their cover story was this: “The Russian strains of
Bacillus anthracis
and
Bacillus cereus
,” Staritsin said, “were closely related and often found in soil of the same proximity. If the two organisms naturally exchanged genes without any external intervention Russian scientists needed to know what the result might be.” A natural gene exchange was of course a lie. What was true was that even exposed test animals given Russia’s own anthrax vaccine died when exposed to this new strain.

Over the last eight years American officials had arranged generous grants for Obolensk, more than twenty million dol- lars’ worth. They were after a sample of super anthrax to study, but arrangements always fell apart at the last minute. The super anthrax was locked in an old Soviet bioweapons lab in the rural Serpukhov district a two-hour drive from Moscow.

In 1998, the Pentagon paid $325,000 to Russia to deci- pher the strain’s genetic sequence. The sequencing was done by spring 2002, but U.S. scientists still weren’t provided with the data. The U.S. wanted a sample to improve its own vaccines, but the two nations had no formal agreement on exchanging dangerous pathogens. Russian officials failed to fulfill two contracts in which they’d agreed to provide a sample of the altered anthrax’s infectious qualities in exchange for money. They stated the sequence was subject to “Catch-22” export rules and withheld a sample. Both nations wanted to defend against bioweapons and agreed

that the altered anthrax must not be allowed to escape. “The anthrax issue will resolve itself over time,” said the Rus- sians. Until then, “it’s locked up tight—thanks to the Amer- ican assistance.” U.S. aid had improved security at Obolensk—one million dollars for fences, a concrete wall, electronic sensors, professional guards, cameras, and vault upgrades. At eight satellite labs there were still small prob- lems with security.

Officials had weighed the question of whether to repro- duce the vaccine-resistant strain of anthrax made by Russian scientists for several years. Pentagon officials needed to know if the Michigan vaccine being administered to millions of American soldiers was effective against such genetically modified pathogens. Amerithrax’s anthrax was virulent, but susceptible to the usual antibiotics. The Obolensk strain might be vaccine-resistant, but it was difficult to reproduce, not very stable, and tough to keep alive.

The Concern had been able to create antibiotic-resistant anthrax by using standard recombinant DNA techniques to splice in a gene for resistance from a common microbe like

E. coli.
Why hadn’t Amerithrax used such an antibiotic- resistant strain if he wanted to maximize the loss of life? What was his motive if not to kill?

ON
Sunday, July 14, 2002, the U.S. took its first faltering steps toward biodefense readiness. After so many decades of neglect, experts had thought such progress would take years. The Department of Health and Human Services began distributing more than $1 billion to the states and some cities to upgrade community public health preparedness. The start- up program required communities to begin developing in- frastructure: chains of command, response patterns, and communications, a condition of receiving their share of funds. In addition to the HHS money was a plan to shift

$1.9 billion in research funds from the NIH to a new De- partment of Homeland Security. A new $420 million pro- gram was to convert metropolitan Washington and three other urban areas into showcases for the best in biodefense. “This is the first year, and in this context, it’s going to

take maybe five years to build the systems and capacity,” said Thomas Milne, executive director of the National As- sociation of County and City Health Officials. “What we’ll get this year is an increment of improvement, not prepar- edness. Not yet.” The future of all the programs depended on both the 2003 budget and the way bureaucratic lines of authority were redrawn in the proposed Homeland Security Department.

“We have practice with explosions or chemical spills,” said epidemiologist D. A. Henderson, principal science ad- viser at HHS. “The biological has been more difficult be- cause of the misapprehension that you could deal with it the same way as a chemical incident, when, in fact, these events could not have been more dissimilar.”

A concerned John H. Marburger III, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, drafted a memo to handle a problem that had been bothersome ever since Amerithrax had begun sending his deadly letters. Anthrax field tests—widely used since the previous fall’s attacks— give fast but often incorrect results, prompting authorities to shut down buildings prematurely and hand out unneeded antibiotics. Law enforcement and emergency response per- sonnel used the test kits whenever white powder feared to be anthrax was discovered in buildings around Washington and across the country.

Marburger’s memo was sent to 250 federal and state agencies and firefighters, police, and local authorities. The White House warned them that commercially available an- thrax field tests were flawed and should not be used to de- termine possible exposure to the deadly pathogen. The Bush administration advised federal agencies to halt purchases and cancel pending contracts with companies that produce them.

“This equipment,” Marburger said, “does not pass ac- ceptable standards for effectiveness.” The CDC and the FBI’s study of field tests found that discrepancies in their levels of detection made them unreliable. Designed to detect the spore-forming bacterium
Bacillus anthracis
, their low thresholds of sensitivity also detected other forms of bacillus-type organisms. The White House wanted federal

and state agencies to use the “gold standard” of test meth- ods: the microbiological culture. A blood culture test is the most definitive way to determine actual anthrax infection. It involves placing a blood sample in a culture of nutrients and then waiting a day or two to see if an anthrax colony grows. The Bush White House kept searching for high-tech methods for detecting bioweapons disseminated in highly populated areas. President Bush visited the Argonne Na- tional Laboratory in Illinois and saw equipment that applied light one million times brighter than an X ray. This equip- ment projected a beam that could identify an agent like an-

thrax in less than three minutes.

Shortly afterward, a twenty-six-year-old Czech-born graduate student at the University of Connecticut became the first person charged under the zero-tolerance USA Pa- triot Act of 2001. Anyone possessing “any biological agent, toxin or delivery system” that was not reasonably justified by “bona fide research or other peaceful purpose” could face up to ten years in prison. In October 2001, the grad student had been transporting biological spores from a broken lab freezer when he came upon some samples collected thirty- five years earlier from an anthrax-infected cow. He moved two of the samples to a working freezer and forgot about it. A few weeks later, a coworker observed the samples in his freezer space (right next to West Nile virus samples). He tipped off the FBI and the agency added his name to a computerized government watch list. He cooperated com- pletely with the authorities and, to avoid prosecution, agreed to community work and some restrictions on his activities. Amerithrax had accomplished one thing—anthrax labs were turned into vaults as scientists rushed to destroy anthrax samples and other deadly microbes in their university deep

freezers.

A company in Coralville, Iowa, provided scientists all over the world with made-to-order DNA. When some New York scientists used mail-order molecules to create polio viruses, this increased concerns about keeping a closer watch on the DNA synthesis industry. Since 1989, the U.S. and other nations had limited the risk of bioweapons by placing controls on their cultivation and shipment. Now, for

the first time, potentially deadly viruses could be built from scratch.

In the meantime, Amerithrax and his deadly letters had not been forgotten. Where was the invisible enemy? Was anthrax in the cracks of the floor? On your hands as a fine powder? Already in your lungs or lurking in the air you’re about to breathe? The very mail in your hands might be your executioner. Worst of all, there seemed no defense against the unseen and unheard. Wash and wash and hold your mail away from your face and worry: when would Amerithrax strike again? If not today, then soon, and if not then, why not? Had the police gotten too close? Had he been a victim of his own pathogen and died, classified as a pneu- monia victim? Had he run out of his poison or was he se- cretly making more this very moment? While the nation held its breath, the damage already done had to be undone.

It would be costly and dangerous.

SPACE-SUITED
men were vacuuming rats on a sunny July day. They had to. The rodents had been scurrying inside the quarantined Brentwood Mail Facility. Though rodents don’t die from anthrax, they can carry it. For weeks Hazmat crews had been snaring the rats and cleansing them with an HEPA system. And they did it on a sunny day because the burning rays of the hot sun on any escaping spores provided a natural safety net. Ultraviolet rays vaporized many of the pathogens. Rodent control was only one of sixty-nine different san- itization procedures the cleanup teams had put in place, in- cluding sampling, gas fumigation, HEPA filtration, and

bleach disinfectant. They removed dust, equipment, heating and air-conditioning filters, and debris. Since the previous October, when tainted letters bound for Capitol Hill left spores behind in the Brentwood facility and forced the mail hub’s closure, the contractors and EPA had conducted daily tests. Ten thousand samples told them contamination still swarmed inside. Resurrecting Brentwood would be the most ambitious and intricate fumigation ever attempted of any biohazardous building in the nation’s history.

The cleanup required flawless coordination and perfect execution. In November, teams of chemical, civil, and me- chanical engineers; chemists; and environmental response experts had begun learning all there was to know about Brentwood’s interior and exterior. Sabre Oxidation Tech- nologies of Odessa, Texas, and Ashland Inc. of Covington, Kentucky, had been contracted to handle the fumigation. Sabre and Ashland were also contracted to clean the Tren- ton, New Jersey, mail facility next. They were joined by a third partner, Shaw E & I, who had helped prepare for de- contamination of the deserted Brentwood plant since Octo- ber, 2001.

The men plugged all possible escape routes. During the Hart Building cleanup there had been no problems with leaks. But only 100,000 cubic feet of the Hart Building had had to be sealed to fumigate it with chlorine dioxide gas. Brentwood had some 17.5 million cubic feet to decontami- nate. Over the last three months, workers had overlaid every outside window with foil-backed foam insulation. Crews had filled all visible exterior cracks and obstructed and in- sulated all roof openings with foil tape and poly-sheeting.