The Anthrax Letters: The Attacks That Shocked America (33 page)

On Monday, February 22, 1999, around 9:30 a.m., as a snowstorm raged outside, an employee of the Planned Parenthood clinic in midtown Kansas City, Missouri, was opening the mail. She came upon a letter containing brown powder, a skull and crossbones, and a statement that the reader had just been exposed to anthrax. A call to local authorities set in motion a municipal response led by the fire department’s HAZMAT team, police, FBI, and medical personnel. Before the call was made, a staff member (who asked not to be identified by name) had seen the letter and gone home: “When I saw the dirty-looking piece of paper with a skull and cross bones and the word ‘anthrax,’ I just left. I did not want to be around,” she told me. At home with her 3-year-old son, she began to think: “What if I’m infected?” She became increasingly worried and called the clinic. A firefighter told her to take a bath with bleach and water and that someone would call her if there were a problem. About 5 hours later, she learned from a television broadcast that authorities determined that anthrax apparently was not present. But she remained concerned because “we were not allowed back in the building for two days.”

When firefighters first arrived at the clinic, they quarantined 20 people who were there and then set up a tent for decontamination outdoors. The detained people—five men and 15 women—were told they would have to undergo a washdown with diluted bleach. Seven firemen who had entered the building were also ordered to undergo decontamination even though they had been wearing masks and protective outerwear. The women went through the process first while the 12 men waited their turns in the building.

One at a time the victims went outside in the freezing weather. A few men held up tarps to block the view as each victim undressed. Then, completely naked, each victim entered the unheated tent. Once inside, the victim stood in a large basin of water as a woman in a mask and protective gear scrubbed him or her with a bleach and water mixture. Following the scrubbing, the victim was hosed off with cold water. Warm water was not available, according to Chris Bosch, division chief of research/planning and emerging technologies, Kansas City Fire Department. After decontamination, victims were given disposable blankets to wrap themselves in and then exited the tent. They walked barefoot to a waiting vehicle. The civilians were brought to a city bus parked nearby, and the decontaminated firemen were brought to a HAZMAT truck. Once aboard, they dressed in dry wrappings, sweatsuits, and shoes provided by the Salvation Army.

“We were all embarrassed to strip,” said Greg Ono, one of the seven firefighters who went through decontamination, “but some objected more than others.” He felt sympathy for one woman in particular, he told me, “an older lady who clearly did not want to go out there and undress. She kept coming back into the building. She really felt troubled, but eventually she went.” A front-page photograph in the
Kansas City Star
the next day underscored the sense of distress caused by the ordeal. A woman with an anguished expression, wrapped only in a blanket, is shown being escorted to the bus. She is walking barefoot in the icy outdoors with hair soaked from the decontamination washing.

A few days after the event, Christine Vendel, a
Kansas City Star
reporter who covered the incident, received a fax from one of the firemen. He expressed anger about having been forced to undergo the decontamination washdown in the nude and by a woman. Vendel told me that he urged her to write about his being a victim of sexual harassment, but she demurred. None of the three members of the fire department whom I interviewed acknowledged knowing that anyone had sent such a fax.

The event prompted potentially serious health problems for two women who had to be taken to the hospital. After decontamination, one complained of breathing difficulty and the other became unconscious from an allergic reaction to the bleach solution. The psychological impact on many victims was profound. Toni Blackwood, chair of the local Planned Parenthood Board, lamented that patients and staff had been “traumatized . . . and terrorized.”

Rebecca Poedy, financial officer at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Boise, Idaho, opened a letter on Friday afternoon, February 26, 1999. She immediately took it to the clinic director, who called 911. Police detectives were the first to arrive and told her to wash her hands and face. Soon after, with the arrival of medical and fire emergency responders, “there were people all over and it was kind of jumbled,” Poedy told me. “No one seemed in charge. One of them said to send the staff outside, but others said no, stay in the building.”

Initially, the 24 people in the clinic were kept inside but were then directed outside to the parking lot. After an hour they were brought inside again and were quarantined for another 3 hours. Meanwhile the street around the clinic was blocked off. For more than 3 hours, people in other offices in the area complex were not permitted to leave. Poedy estimates that around 150 were detained.

Poedy had been kept separate from the others and said that when firefighters in masks and full gear came for her, “I really began to worry.” They had put up a makeshift shower and wading pool in the middle of the street. A tarp was strung up above the shower, reaching down to her knee level. She was instructed to go under the tarp, disrobe, slide her clothes out, and shower. After washing with soap and “very cold water,” she had to don a white suit, gloves, and surgical mask. An ambulance had been summoned and paramedics insisted on placing her in a bodybag before taking her to the hospital. “I objected to the bodybag, but they said I had no other option. They zipped it up to my neck.” At the hospital a doctor told her that if she had contracted anthrax, there might be no cure.

Still in mask and gloves, Poedy was made to lie in the bodybag for 3 hours. She was allowed out only after word was received that initial tests found no evidence of anthrax in the letter. When the shaken Poedy returned to the clinic, Mary McColl, the office’s chief executive officer, became distressed about how upset Poedy appeared. McColl had been among the 24 people in the building who had been kept isolated. Months after the incident McColl still expressed her chagrin about Poedy’s treatment and her impression that no one seemed to be in charge.

On Monday, April 19, 1999, a sheriff’s deputy found a note in the parking lot of the county courthouse in Biloxi, Mississippi. It claimed that anthrax had been placed in the building’s ventilation system. About 100 people were evacuated, and the building remained closed until the next day.

The public read about the incident 2 days later in the local newspaper, the
Sun Herald
. Health and law enforcement officials were cited as doubting that anyone had been exposed to anthrax. But an unnerving warning appeared in the story: “As a precaution, however, health officials are warning people who were at the courthouse Monday to be on the lookout for flulike symptoms such as a cough, runny nose or fever, and to contact their doctor if they have concerns.” According to Blake Kaplan, the reporter who wrote the story, no one knew how many people had been in the area or how many ended up concerned if they had a cough or runny nose. He did say that not until a week later was final confirmation received that no harmful biological agents had been present.

A month later, on Monday, May 17, Robert Duffy was opening mail in the alumni office at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. When Duffy, assistant director of the office, unsealed a slightly bulging envelope, a white powder puffed out onto his clothes. “The letter was all folded up so I had to paw around in the envelope and got the stuff all over my hands,” he said.

The letter said, “Anthrax. Congratulations. Death to the Catholics who oppose abortion,” Duffy told me. Duffy instructed his assistant to move away and call security; then he locked himself in his office. After the police arrived, he was told to remain in his office while they evacuated approximately 30 other people to an area outside. A Catholic high school across town had just received a similar threat letter and HAZMAT crews were busy over there. Duffy and the people who were detained outside had to remain in place for 3 hours until the high school was secured. During that time Duffy was on the telephone answering calls from the FBI, county health officials, and HAZMAT experts. He described the powder to them as “coarse and grainy, like ground-up chalk.” Their answer was, “Yes, that’s what anthrax looks like.”

Panicky, Duffy went on the Internet to learn more about anthrax, but the information made him more anxious. “When I read about 90 percent fatality rates, I stopped reading.” Three hours later paramedics arrived in protective gear and masks and told him to undress and wash. Duffy was then dressed in a mask and protective outerwear and escorted to an ambulance. His assistant was already in the ambulance, and the two were brought to a hospital where they were scrubbed with soap and water and told to wait. After a few more hours they were informed that tests indicated anthrax almost certainly was not present.

In describing the event to me a month after it happened, Duffy rued the delayed response. “I was in the office for 3 hours, waiting,” he said. “I think the emergency people should have responded to me sooner.” He also regretted that authorities did not later contact victims to help with psychological problems brought on by the ordeal.

The stunning increase in the number of anthrax hoaxes was underscored at a congressional hearing in May 1999. A statement by Robert Burnham, chief of the domestic terrorism section of the FBI, indicated that in 1997 the bureau had opened 22 cases involving the “threatened use or procurement of . . . biological materials with intent to harm.” In 1998 the figure was 112. Between January and May 1999 the number had already reached 118. Neil Gallagher, assistant director of the FBI’s national security division had observed: “Not a day goes by without us hearing from somewhere in the United States about an anthrax threat.”

The spate of hoaxes began after several months of publicity about the horror of germ weapons, anthrax in particular. Media coverage of the B’nai B’rith incident in April 1997 had been extensive. But the most widely reported event that year concerning anthrax was the display of a bag of sugar by Secretary of Defense William Cohen on national television. A November 17
New York Times
column said that he “scared everyone by going on ABC’s ‘This Week’ and holding up a 5-pound Domino sugar bag to show the small amount of anthrax . . . it would take to send half of Washington into writhing death throes.” The secretary’s performance was repeatedly shown on other programs and broadly reported in the press. It received at least three repetitions in the
Times
itself. On November 23, November 30, and December 16, articles recounted Cohen’s vivid show-and-tell. Thus, for more than a month the most influential newspaper in the United States was regularly reminding readers of Cohen’s frightening anthrax metaphor. (Two years later the secretary’s sugar display and his “half-of-Washington” threat could still be seen both on ABC and government Web sites.)