The Hunt For The Anthrax Killers

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By this time, New Jersey doctors had warned state health officials, who in turn told the CDC and the FBI that two of their patients--including one who worked in the post office that processed the Daschle letter--appeared to have skin anthrax. This should have been a red flag that sealed envelopes might put postal workers at risk. Still no changes at Brentwood. On Thursday, Oct. 18, it was announced that one of the New Jersey workers, Teresa Heller, had tested positive for skin anthrax. Both the Trenton and Hamilton facilities were immediately closed for testing.

But at this point the CDC still had not advised Brentwood postal officials to test or shut down that station. In their defense, CDC officials say that early tests of another Washington facility that gets congressional mail from Brentwood were negative. Only later did the results flip to positive.

On its own initiative, the post office asked an outside firm to take samples from Brentwood. Tragically, it would be four days before that firm came back with results--too late to save Morris and Curseen. Even though the Postal Service was concerned enough to test the facility, that same day Postmaster General John Potter held a press conference inside the Brentwood center to quell anxieties. "There's only a minute chance anthrax spores escaped from [the letter] and into this facility," he declared. The next day, a third New Jersey postal worker, also from the Hamilton facility that postmarked the Daschle letter, as well as contaminated letters sent to NBC and the New York Post, was diagnosed with skin anthrax--more evidence that a sealed envelope is not protection enough.

On Friday the 19th, a Brentwood employee with flu symptoms showed up at a Virginia hospital. Suspecting inhalation anthrax, doctors put him on antibiotics. The hospital informed the post office. Local health officials, led by Dr. Ivan Walks, head of Washington's department of health, reacted far more aggressively than the feds. They began setting up the infrastructure to dole out antibiotics, and Mayor Anthony Williams held a press conference to warn of the dangers. The next day, postal officials, on the CDC's advice, closed the Brentwood facility. Workers were urged to seek treatment.

But few employees learned of this development because, incredibly, the center has no emergency phone numbers. The postal union, fearful of managers harassing sick employees at home, had negotiated a contract in which employees do not have to reveal home phone numbers or addresses.

Morris died on Sunday. The same day Curseen went to Southern Maryland Hospital Center complaining of severe flu symptoms. He did not reveal that he was a postal employee, and he was apparently not asked. Despite an earlier CDC alert to look for anthrax infections, the hospital released Curseen, who died the next day. It was only after both deaths that the CDC conducted its own tests of Brentwood, the results of which still have not been released.

Clearly, none of these agencies intended to neglect the Brentwood workers. Many of them, including the FBI, put their own senior officials at risk by sending them to the facility without protective gear. If officials knew the danger intellectually, they had no experience to back it up. The country has scant knowledge about the effects of weaponized anthrax. And Washington bureaucrats are creatures of caution.