Chapter 1

BACKGROUND

September 11, 2001, is forever etched in the history of America. Americans watched in disbelief as jumbo jets crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. The country was under attack. President Bush was whisked into Air Force One and hidden away as the members of the presidential line of succession were secreted in bunkers. United States airspace was cleared by order of the president. Families huddled around their televisions, waiting to see if other hijacked planes were still in the sky, ignoring the emergency grounding.

In the weeks following the attacks, American air travel came to a virtual standstill, leaving the skies eerily empty. Devastated New Yorkers with thousand-yard stares posted photos of their missing relatives on makeshift shrines. Footage of an army of rescue and recovery workers sifting through the rubble of the Twin Towers flooded the twenty-four-hour newsfeeds. Images of the flag raised at the World Trade Center filled Americans with a frantic patriotism reminiscent of the day six United States Marines hoisted the flag on Mount Suribachi. In a state of collective shock, America anxiously waited for the next shoe to fall.

Then the anthrax letters came.

What Is Anthrax?

Anthrax is a disease caused by the bacteria Bacillus anthracis. Anthrax primarily affects livestock, but humans can contract anthrax by coming in contact with infected animals. In normal times, the disease in humans is the province of farm workers and others who are employed in veterinary work or the processing of livestock. The bacteria enters the body through either ingestion, inhalation, or touch. The gastrointestinal type affects the GI tract and results generally from eating the meat of infected animals. The inhaled type affects the lungs and is more serious than the cutaneous type contracted through touch, which causes skin infections.

The disease is very serious in humans. Untreated, it is frequently fatal. According to the FDA, about 20 percent of people with untreated cutaneous anthrax die. Somewhere between 25 and 75 percent of patients with gastrointestinal anthrax don’t survive, and the mortality rate for inhalation anthrax is a whopping 80 percent.

The scariest aspect of Bacillus anthracis is that the bacteria forms spores, which are extremely resilient to harsh conditions, making cleanup of a contaminated area extraordinarily difficult. The spores can lie dormant for months or years then find their way into the body and “wake up,” multiplying and releasing their dangerous anthrax toxin into the body of their victim. It was this spore aspect of Bacillus anthracis combined with its high mortality factors that made it so attractive as a bioweapon—and what brought it into the US government labs, which were the source for the material used in the attacks.

WHAT HAPPENED?

In September and October 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, at least five envelopes containing significant quantities of Bacillus anthracis were mailed to media organizations located in Boca Raton, Florida, and New York City, and to United States Senators Thomas Daschle and Patrick Leahy at the US Capitol. The opening line of the poison-laced letters sent to Tom Brokaw and the editor of the New York Post answered the question that had been fueling the country’s anxiety since the morning of September 11: “This is next.”

Letter sent to Tom Brokaw and the New York Post and envelopes. (FBI.gov)

According to the Justice Department’s investigative summary of what the DOJ called the Amerithrax case, the letters addressed to Tom Brokaw and the New York Post did not have a return address, and they both contained the same photocopied letter.

Letter sent to Senators Daschle and Leahy and envelopes. (FBI.gov)

The two envelopes addressed to Senators Daschle and Leahy bore the same fictitious return address. The mail purported to have been sent by the “4TH GRADE, GREENDALE SCHOOL, FRANKLIN PARK NJ 08852.” They, too, contained the same letter, but the text of the Senate letters was not the same as those mailed to the media.

Like a German U-boat sneaking up on an unsuspecting Allied freighter, the terrible anthrax plot was well underway before the country had the slightest idea anything was wrong. The first inkling of a bioweapons attack came when Robert Stevens, a photo editor employed by the publisher of the National Inquirer, American Media, Inc. in Boca Raton, was admitted to a Florida hospital for pneumonia-like symptoms and was subsequently diagnosed with inhalation anthrax.

The individual events involved in the attacks transpired in the context of post-9/11 chaos, fear, and confusion. Law enforcement and intelligence resources were laser-focused on the events of September 11, probably providing some working room for the anthrax attacks to proceed more effectively than what might have been the case in calmer times. Government agencies hurried to downplay the events, possibly in an effort to calm an already-on-edge public. Were they the victims of their own wishful thinking? Were they confused by fragmented and incomplete information? Were they lying through their teeth? We’ll probably never know, but in any case, the government bungled the early days of investigation and woefully misinformed the public about the status of national security.

Timeline of Events

In order to understand what actually happened, it’s helpful to put the critical events of the crime in a timeline. I found a very well-done chronology at the website of the UCLA School of Epidemiology. Working from that and the timeline the FBI included in its investigative summary of the Amerithrax investigation, we can get a fairly clear picture of the muddled series of events that sputtered into the light during and immediately following the attacks.

It Begins

Unlike the other sites, no anthrax envelope or letter was ever recovered from American Media, Inc., so it was not possible to determine when the weaponized mail was sent or from where. But we do know that just a week after the 9/11 attacks, the letters to Tom Brokaw and the New York Post entered the mail stream sometime between 5:00 p.m. on September 17 and noon on September 18. On September 18, the media letters were postmarked in Trenton, New Jersey.

Flying under the Radar

In the chaotic time following 9/11, Johanna Huden, an editorial page assistant at the New York Post, was a very busy woman—way too busy to open what she took to be a crank letter to the editor that arrived in her daily mail. She stuck the letter in a box by her desk where it stayed—unopened. On September 21, Huden became ill with a sore on the middle finger of her right hand. She sought medical attention and was given antibiotics.

Meanwhile, on September 18, at the NBC offices at Rockefeller Center, an intern named Casey Chamberlain opened the envelope addressed to Tom Brokaw. Perplexed by the odd letter, Chamberlain brought the strange correspondence and the powdery substance that came with it to the attention of Brokaw’s assistant, Erin O’Connor. On September 22, Chamberlain noticed a blister on her finger. O’Connor noticed a skin lesion on September 28. While both women became ill, the connection between their illnesses was not recognized, and the cause of their maladies was not known. The same day O’Connor noticed her rash, a producer at ABC brought her seven-month-old baby to work with her at the network’s New York headquarters at 147 Columbus Avenue in Manhattan.

The Plot Thickens

On September 30, AMI photojournalist and editor Robert Stevens of Boca Raton, Florida, started coming down with something.

On October 1, the terrible effects of the attacks in New York and Florida bubbled closer to the surface. Erin O’Connor of NBC started feeling ill. She went to her doctor with a fever and a rash and was prescribed Cipro, a broad spectrum antibiotic. The baby who went with its mother to her office at ABC became ill with a rash and was admitted to the hospital with a mysterious ailment originally thought to be a bite from a brown recluse spider. And AMI mailroom employee Ernesto Blanco was hospitalized with pneumonia.

The next day, the second of October, Robert Stevens was admitted to the hospital with a fever, vomiting, and confusion. On October 3, Stevens’s doctors determined that anthrax infection was the cause of his illness. His condition deteriorated, and he was placed on a ventilator.

Trust Us, We’re from the Government

Here’s one of my favorite parts: On October 4, while their mailroom employee was in the hospital with pneumonia and their photo editor was on a ventilator with anthrax, AMI did the responsible and appropriate thing and called the CDC to ask if their offices should be evaluated as a possible source of the illnesses. The CDC told AMI that no evaluation was appropriate, and, acting on their advice, the entire AMI staff continued to work in the offices.

Here’s a quote from the CDC website:

Most people who get sick from anthrax are exposed while working with infected animals or animal products such as wool, hides, or hair.

Inhalation anthrax can occur when a person inhales spores that are in the air (aerosolized) during the industrial processing of contaminated materials, such as wool, hides, or hair.

Cutaneous anthrax can occur when workers who handle contaminated animal products get spores in a cut or scrape on their skin.

The CDC seems pretty clear on their position that folks naturally contract anthrax from working with or around infected animals. Mr. Stevens was a photo editor for a tabloid in urban Florida, not a sheep shearer wrestling animals to the ground in the filthy feedlots of remote West Texas. Yet, this apparently didn’t ring any alarm bells with the CDC, enlightening them with the idea that Stevens’s office might offer clues to the source of his infection.

The First Horseman

On October 5, sadly, Mr. Stevens succumbed to the inhalation type of the bacteria in the hospital in Boca Raton and became the first fatality associated with the attacks—and the first person in the US to die of anthrax since 1976.

To be continued…

While the entire contents of Anthrax to Zodiac will be presented free of charge in these blog posts, for an easier reading experience, you can obtain the e-book version of all of Part 1 – Who Mailed the Anthrax Letters? for free by clicking on the button below. You can also buy the entire anthology of all seven cases covered in Anthrax to Zodiac at Amazon.com.