Anthrax

At first, authorities had no idea how or where Stevens had been contaminated. On October 8, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft told reporters that they did not yet have enough information to say “whether or not this could be related to terrorism” or what he called “an occurrence.” The next day, the FBI took over the investigation and by October 11, after a second newspaper mailroom employee was found to have been exposed to anthrax, officials focused on the newspaper’s mailroom, and by extension, the mail.

The mail link drew national attention after an assistant to Tom Brokaw of NBC News tested positive for anthrax infection. She remembered that a threatening letter she opened two weeks earlier contained “a sandlike substance.”(1) Many began to approach their mail with extra caution. Herbert Bush of Flushing, New York began handling his mail with gloves, “I keep it at a distance and wear gloves definitely. I told my wife and daughter not to be too anxious to open anything.”(2)

Speculations flew over motives for the mailings; many feared they were a continuation of the 9/11 attacks. The fears were widespread. In Berlin, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder’s office was sealed off after white powder leaked from a letter in the mailroom. Similar discoveries led to led 55 people being taken to hospitals in Paris, the evacuation of Canterbury Cathedral in London, the evacuation of Canada’s main Parliament building, and the closing of the international airport terminal in Vienna in the weeks following Stevens’ death.

Two letters, addressed to Senators Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Tom Daschle of South Dakota, carrying the fictional return address of “4th Grade / Greendale School / Franklin Park NJ 08852, entered the mail stream in Princeton, New Jersey. They passed through the Hamilton Township facility in New Jersey, and later the Brentwood facility in Washington, DC. Senator Daschle’s letter had traveled to the Capitol from Brentwood while Senator Leahy’s letter was sidetracked to the State Department after a computer misread the letter’s ZIP code from 20510 for 20520.

On October 17, the U.S. Capitol was shut down after employees in Senator Daschle’s office tested positive for exposure, but the Hamilton Township and Brentwood facilities continued to process mail. The day after the Capitol shut down, a Hamilton postal worker tested positive for cutaneous (skin contact) anthrax. A second worker from the same facility tested positive the next day. Meanwhile, at Washington, DC’s Brentwood postal facility, postal workers continued work as usual. Senior postal officials were assured by Centers for Disease Control experts that the envelopes carrying anthrax were not a danger to postal workers.

The experts did not realize that because of the way mail moves through the mostly automated systems in postal facilities, the nation’s postal workers were on the front line of this particular terrorist attack. When the anthrax letters passed through sorting centers they were shaken, squeezed, and jostled by machinery that culled, cancelled, processed, and sorted them. Not only did the pressure of the processing machines force spores into the open air, but the routine use of blowing air to clean machines and surrounding areas spread those spores even further. The spores that escaped the envelopes in sorting centers also found their way onto other envelopes in a cross-contamination scenario that was also unanticipated by field experts.

The Hamilton facility closed for testing on October 18. The Brentwood facility remained open and operational. In the meantime, some of the Washington postal workers had begun seeking medical treatment for virus-like symptoms. One was Thomas Morris Jr., a distribution clerk in the Brentwood facility. His symptoms began on October 17, but were considered the result of a simple virus. In the early morning hours of the next Sunday, Morris called 911 to report his breathing was “very, very labored.” He arrived by ambulance at the hospital but died only a few hours later from anthrax inhalation. The same Sunday morning a second Brentwood postal worker, Joseph Curseen Jr., arrived at a local hospital emergency room with flu-like symptoms. Doctors sent him home where his symptoms worsened, and he returned to the hospital. He died six hours after his second arrival, also from anthrax inhalation.

Above: Joseph Curseen Jr. and Thomas Morris Jr. were the two postal workers who were killed during the Anthrax terror attacks. The Washington, DC, postal facility formerly known as Brentwood was renamed the Curseen-Morris facility in their honor.

The Brentwood facility closed on October 21. The nation’s focus turned from the U.S. Capitol, which reopened on the next day, to the postal facilities and their stricken workers. In spite of prevailing expert opinion, it had become clear that anthrax spores not only could escape from envelopes, but in fact had done so in alarming numbers. The seven other postal workers infected with anthrax survived.

The Brentwood facility reopened in 2003 after a cleaning and decontamination process that cost $130 million. The Hamilton postal facility reopened in March 2005 at the cost of $65 million.

In recognition of the deaths of Brentwood’s postal workers, the facility was official renamed Curseen-Morris. On February 19, 2010, the FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service announced that the investigation of the anthrax letters was over, with evidence pointing to Dr. Bruce Ivins, a government scientist, as the culprit. Ivins, aware of the government’s suspicions, had committed suicide in July 2008.

1. “Anthrax Found in NBC News Aide,” New York Times, October 13, 2001 p. A1.
2. “Scares over Anthrax Send Jitters Through the U.S. Mail,” New York Times, October 14, 2001, p. A31.