|
Letters laced with anthrax were mailed just a week after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Postmarked Trenton, NJ, September 18, 2001, they were sent to the New York offices of ABC News, NBC News, and the New York Post, and the Boca Raton, FL, office of the National Enquirer. The pattern of infection indicated five envelopes, some containing a coarse, granular form of anthrax, others with a finer grade.
In New York, some of the victims suffered cutaneous (skin) infections—possibly due to the coarser form—while two persons died, which might indicate a finer powder, or some of the less-refined powder had been crushed finely enough to inhale. There is a theory that the anthrax sent to Florida may have been more refined, as well, since it caused a similar death from inhalation.
Two additional letters, also from Trenton, NJ, were postmarked October 9 and sent to the Washington, DC, offices of Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. The fine powder in these letters was more refined than some of the September 18 samples, but it wasn’t “weapons grade” anthrax, as was reported early on. The Washington Post reported one scientist as saying, “It wasn't weaponized. It was just nicely cleaned up.”
Faced with a second deadly threat so soon after 9-11 attacks, the American public scrambled for the antibiotic Cipro. There was concern that the antibiotic would be in short supply—should a more extensive attack be launched—and priorities were set for police, military, health care workers, the young, and the elderly. Across the country tense law enforcement professionals watched for suspicious packages in public places, at times causing buildings to be evacuated and public transit to grind to a halt.
The incidents bred widespread copycats, notably envelopes containing powdery substances which were sent to dozens of offices of Planned Parenthood and clinics run by the National Abortion Federation. Hoaxes of this sort were frequent, and easily added to the fear that gripped the nation.
The anthrax killer was dubbed “Amerithrax” by the FBI.
As of November 9, 2001, according to an official posting by the FBI, only three of the Amerithrax letters had been recovered
Letter 1
One page, hand-printed letter
Transmittal envelope, also similarly hand printed
Addressed to "NBC TV – Tom Brokaw" – No return address
Postmarked Trenton, NJ 09/18/2001 (Tues.)
Letter 2
One page, hand-printed letter
Transmittal envelope, also similarly hand printed
Addressed to "NY Post" – No return address
Postmarked Trenton, NJ 09/18/2001 (Tues.)
Letter 3
One page, hand-printed letter
Transmittal envelope, also similarly hand printed
Addressed to "Senator Daschle – 509 Hart Senate Office Building"
Return address – "4th Grade, Greendale School, Franklin Park, NJ"
Return address zip code – "08852"
Postmarked Trenton, NJ 10/09/2001 (Tues.)
Five people died in the Amerithrax incidents, beginning with Robert Stevens, 63, a photo editor at The Sun tabloid published by American Media, Inc. (publishers of The National Enquirer). Thomas Morris, Jr. and Joseph Curseen, postal workers in the Washington, DC, area died, as did Kathy Nguyen, a New York City hospital worker from the Bronx. Both she and 94-year-old widow Ottilie Lundgren of Oxford, CT, were counted as victims, despite the fact that there was nothing to connect them with the attacks.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, there were 22 cases of infection. Survivors of the attacks included the baby of an ABC news producer who had been in the network building, and was diagnosed with a case of cutaneous (skin) anthrax. An assistant to NBC anchor Tom Brokaw was treated for the skin form of the disease, as was Post editorial assistant Johanna Huden, who appeared on the famous Post front page under the headline “Anthrax This!” Ernesto Blanco, a 73-year-old mailroom employee at the American Media building, tested positive as well.
No one has been arrested for the Amerithrax attacks, though the FBI focused attention on Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, a former Science Applications International Corp. biodefense researcher. According to the Baltimore Sun, Hatfill had once received a paper theorizing “the danger of anthrax spores spreading through the air and the requirements for decontamination after various kinds of attacks. The author, William C. Patrick III, [described] placing 2.5 grams of Bacillus globigii, an anthrax simulant, in a standard business envelope.”
The anthrax strain used in the attacks was the Ames strain, and was originally thought to be linked with the United States biodefense network. But further investigation revealed that the strain appeared in nations worldwide. “Ames was available in the Soviet Union," said former Soviet bioweapons scientist Sergei Popov, now a biodefense expert at George Mason University. "It could have come from anywhere in the world.”
As of September 2006 the FBI said there were 17 FBI Special Agents (SAs) and 10 U.S. Postal Inspectors assigned to the AMERITHRAX Task Force. Two additional SAs were scheduled to be assigned positions on the Task Force in October 2006. More than 9,000 interviews had been conducted, more than 6,000 grand jury subpoenas issued, and 67 searches completed.
What is anthrax?
Anthrax is an acute infectious disease caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Most commonly found in mammals such as cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and antelopes, it can infect human beings when they are exposed to infected animals or animal products, when they inhale spores from animal products, or eat undercooked meat from an infected animal. Anthrax spores can live in the soil for years.
There are three forms of infection:
- Cutaneous (skin)
- Inhalation
- Gastrointestinal
The vast majority of infections—about 95 percent—occur when the spores enter a cut in the skin. The infection begins as a raised itchy bump that resembles an insect bite, and soon turns into a painless ulcer with a black center at the middle. Lymph glands around the infection may swell. About one in five untreated cases result in death.
More serious is intestinal anthrax, which is generally the result of eating contaminated meat, leading to a severe inflammation in the intestinal tract. Symptoms include nausea, loss of appetite, vomiting and fever, followed by abdominal pain, vomiting blood and severe diarrhea. Between 25 percent and 60 percent of cases are fatal.
Inhalation anthrax is much more serious, beginning with flu-like symptoms: mild respiratory illness, fatigue, low-grade fever, and dry coughing. It can lead to severe breathing difficulty and shock, and in February 2006 a musician from New York City, African dancer and drum maker Vado Diomande, was hospitalized in critical condition from inhalation anthrax having made drums from untanned animal hides, including goat and cow hides from Africa. Though he survived, inhalation anthrax is usually fatal.
Spores must be between 1 and 5 microns to be inhaled into the lungs where they can do the most damage, experts say. Larger spores cannot be inhaled and smaller spores would be exhaled. A micron is equal to 1,000th of 1 millimeter.
Weapons grade is a difficult term to pin down—since it (may) involve genetic adjustment to accelerate growth and confer antibiotic resistance, superior drying techniques, as well as removal of cell debris from the final powder—“nicely cleaned up.” Transfer of plasmids is likely the best way to genetically modify the anthrax (and in fact, two plasmids are all that separate anthrax from BT—commonly used in gardens.) But the silicon supposedly added to weapons-grade anthrax to keep it from clumping may not have been seen in the samples from Amerithrax.
So the killer didn’t need to have to worked at Fort Detrick—or any other military facility—to have made the substances that were sent by Amerithrax.
A brief history of Anthrax:
Scholars have characterized the fifth and sixth biblical plagues, as well as the "burning plague" described in Homer's Iliad, as being caused by anthrax. Virgil provided one of the earliest and most detailed descriptions of an anthrax epidemic in his Georgics, and noted that the disease could spread to humans.
Though it had not yet been named, anthrax continued to appear throughout history, with acute outbreaks in fourteenth-century Germany, and seventeenth-century Russia and central Europe. There was a report of an outbreak in Haiti (then called Saint-Domingue) in 1770 of what was called charbon, beginning shortly after an earthquake and killing 15,000.
In the early 18th century, Nicolas Fournier investigated outbreaks of disease in villages around Montpellier, witnessing fatal cases associated with the consumption of meat from diseased animals. In 1769 he classified the disease as anthrax, or charbon malin, a name likely derived from the black lesions caused by the cutaneous variety. In 1876, Robert Koch, a Prussian physician, isolated the anthrax bacillus and established it as the first disease linked to a microbial agent. Soon thereafter John Bell linked anthrax with the so-called "woolsorter disease." This led to the development of a procedure to disinfect wool. William Greenfield was the first to immunize livestock successfully against anthrax in 1880, and Louis Pasteur tested a heat-cured vaccine on sheep in 1881.
During World War I, German agents were sent to the neutral countries of Romania, Spain, Norway, the United States, and Argentina to infect animal shipments sent to the Allies. Targeted were infected by having anthrax injected directly into their blood or by being fed sugar that had been laced with anthrax.
The Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibited biological weapons, yet several nations—including the United States—were said to have experimented with anthrax during the 1930s and 1940s. The Japanese Imperial Army reportedly performed covert experiments on anthrax and began deploying biological weapons in Manchuria. During World War II, it was said that the Allies developed thousands of anthrax bombs. Hitler had forbidden biological weapons research; nevertheless, the Nazis were said to have conducted anthrax and biological weapons research.
In 1942 the British feared that the Nazis would attack using biological weapons—so much so that their scientists released their own anthrax on a herd of sheep on Scotland’s Gruinard Island, exploding a bomb that released the spores. So intense was the contamination that “Anthrax Island,” as Gruinard was called, remained contaminated for nearly five decades.
Following World War II, the American program was centered at Fort Detrick, MD, the facility where Steven Hatfill had worked. In 1972, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) became the main international treaty governing biological weapons, supplementing the prohibition on use of biological weapons contained in the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Article I of the BWC states: “Each state party to this Convention undertakes never in any circumstances to develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise acquire or retain: (1) Microbial or other biological agents, or toxins whatever their origin or method of production, of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purpose; (2) Weapons, equipment or means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict.” Ultimately 140 nations endorsed the BWC.
There was a major outbreak in the Soviet Union city of Sverdlovsk in April 1979, which killed 64 and which the Soviets blamed on tainted meat. Intelligence sources indicated that the death toll was much higher, and claimed that the source was a military facility. In the 1980s, Iraq bought anthrax from the American Type Culture Collection (Maryland).
|
