DAY FIFTY:Oct. 30:
I awoke this morning to my alarm clock radio, with a voice saying, "More terror news in a moment but first...".The Attorney General told us yesterday that some unnamed major nastiness was afoot, and the city was taking no chances. This morning in downtown Brooklyn there were so many police officers, of all kinds, standing on corners, sitting in cars, strolling in front of the many government buildings and courthouses that it seemed like a movie scene. "America is on a high alert," the newscaster continued on my wake-up reveille.
My friend Susan, an eye surgeon, Emailed her consternation:
Is it really possible that anything can be gained by informing 250 million people to be on alert for a major terrorist attack next week? They might as well give out free Valium and tell everyone to take the week off.
I had to vote this morning by absentee ballot, as I will be speaking in Washington DC during this Thursday's final Mayoral showdown. Because the mails have slowed to a crawl amid searches for suspicious anthrax-carrying envelopes it wasn't possible to vote by mail. I walked the few blocks from my house to the city building that houses the registrar of voters, counting more than three dozen Federal Marshals, NYPD and New York State Troopers along the way - a scale of security I have never previously witnessed in Brooklyn.
As I voted surgeon Susan was standing across the street from her hospital, watching the CDC hand out antibiotics and epidemiology forms. A 61-tear-old woman was struggling for her life in another hospital, Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, the first of New York's inhalational anthrax cases. She wasn't an employee of any of the media organizations in this city that have received anthrax mailings. She wasn't an U.S. Postal worker. Rather, she was a clerical worker in Susan's Manhattan Eye and Ear Infirmary. Her case raises serious questions about the virulence and transmissibility of the spores in question. I spent much of the day hunting down evidence on exactly how many spores must be inhaled to produce a pneumonic infection. Scrutiny certainly calls into question the CDC and US Army's claims that some 8,000 to 10,000 spores must be inhaled. In fact, the monkey studies performed at Ft. Detrick decades ago that are the basis of the dose assertions are contradictory, and were performed using liquid suspensions of anthrax, rather than fine dust powder. Spores are far more infectious in the dry form.
Meanwhile the Mayoral candidates were exchanging angry words across the Bridge, near Ground Zero. My Newsday colleague, Joe Dolman, was there taking note of the escalating debate when he noticed a curious site. Smoke was billowing out of the nearby subway station, but nobody seemed particularly upset about it. Sure, New Yorkers cursed their ways through the stuff, but nobody seemed worried. After all that has transpired in this city billows of smoke pouring out of subway stations provoke little more than pissy curses. No doubt contributing to the blasé attitude was recognition by the regular users of downtown stations that such moke often sweeps through the subways in that area these days. It's Ground Zero's emissions, carried down the tunnels by strong winds.
On my subway journey to the office I studied a New York Times piece about famous - infamous, in fact - Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci. In the late 1960s Fallaci inspired an entire generation of would-be journalists, myself included, with her remarkable book, Interview With History. Now, the Times tells us: "at age 71 and sick with cancer,
she has suddenly returned to her role as professional provocateur. In an expletive-rich indictment of Muslim immigrants and Italian ambivalence toward the United States that filled four full pages in the country's leading newspaper recently, she sent Italy's intelligentsia on a search of its soul.
Her essay, ÔThe Rage and the Pride,' began by announcing that reports that some Italians had celebrated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America had so enraged her that she had decided to break Ôthe self- imposed silence I have kept for 10 years to avoid mixing with cicadas.'
ÔThey say: ÔGood. Serves the Americans right.' Ô she wrote. ÔAnd I am very, very, very cross. Cross with a cold, lucid, rational rage, that commands me to answer them and first of all to spit on them.'"
That was just a warm-up for Fallaci, who has gone on to condemn anti-Americanism in her home country.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/30/international/europe/30ITAL.html
Americanism remains very much alive and well here in Gotham. Though tomorrow is Halloween, arguably flamboyant New York's favorite holiday, there are few spooks, Jack-o-lanterns or smiling skeletons in evidence in this town. Rather, Old Glories continue to dominate. Tonight's World Series game opened in the Bronx with the Yankees taking the field wearing NYPD and FDNY hats, and the Fire Chief's son singing the national anthem. A trained bald eagle, the national symbol, swooped out of the sky as the singer hit his high note and digitally produced flags waved all over Yankee Stadium. It that weren't enough, President George Bush took the field, dressed in a FDNY sweatshirt, and threw out the first ball, prompting the crowd to chant, "USA! USA! USA!".
Late this afternoon, however, my colleague Earl Lane, working out of our Washington DC Bureau, discovered the Justice Department was about to hand don indictments on four laboratories, right here inside the USA, that have allegedly been the sources of the anthrax that has caused such terror across the land. I await the details in tomorrow's Newsday, but as soon as I learned the basic outlines of what Earl had I thought of people I had interviewed about bioterrorism five years ago.
Back then I obtained a pile of books and pamphlets written by right-wingers in this country. One, published by Loompanics Unlimited of Port Townsend, WA in 1988, is THE POISONER'S HANDBOOK. The alleged author (who I was never able to track down and believe to be a pseudonym) is Maxwell Hutchkinson.
On page 70 he writes:
POISON LETTERS: Normally we dislike self-praise, but we do feel this method of killing, which we, to the best of our knowledge, have authored, may be one of the best means of assassination devised in this century.
If you take some precautions..even if the letter is still around, the kill is untraceable.
There is only one difficulty with this means of killing. you have to make sure that your mark is the only one who looks at or touches the letter.
This may be next to impossible. The subject of the letter should be something that the target will read thoroughly, or mostly through, but still dispose of afterwards. Perhaps you could write something around a secret of your target.
If you cannot guarantee to yourself that no one else will look at the letter, use one of the many other methods of killing found in this book.
Also, use a very thick envelope or even spray the inside with silicone sealant used for water-proofing shoes. You don't need to kill a mailman on a rainy day."
Another such book, authored by a fellow who calls himself Uncle Fester (he lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin) is entitled SILENT DEATH. On page 120 Fester writes:
"An alternative to the Ôblack bag' approach is to have the item mailed or delivered to the mark....The typical mark is not likely to be receiving gifts from anyone. Some ingenuity on the part of the attacker may overcome this. example, on birthdays or holidays, a package may arrive from out of town family or business associates. Alternatively, a promotional giveaway can be concocted for some new product.
....Important point number two for the successful poisoner is to guard against fingerprints. Very good fingerprints can be lifted off paper, so all packaging is done with great care. Typewriting can also be traced back to a typewriter, so hand printing is generally employed.
Point number three for the successful poisoner in delivering the item is to have no contact with any delivery service. They may remember faces. The U.S. Mail is much preferred in this respect, because all one needs to do is apply a bunch of stamps and drop the package into a mail box. Anonymity is a scarce commodity these days."
Well, it's two minutes to midnight, the Yankees lead 2 to 1 in the top of the ninth. Mariano is pitching. The Diamondbacks have two outs and a full count. This could be the final pitch of Game Three and POW; a hit straight into the hands of Bernie Williams who throws it to first and the batter is out. YANKS WIN!
It's midnight. Frank Sinatra is singing "New York, New York" again in the Bronx and as far as can be told nothing truly horrible happened today. All in all, it was a reasonable day in the Big Apple.
Be well. Stay safe. Stand defiant.
Laurie Garrett
