DAY EIGHTY-FOUR:Dec. 3:
It was another beautiful, but unnaturally warm day in New York. This morning’s walk over the Brooklyn Bridge was akin to a spring stroll. The only sight marring the day was a blanket of dark air hovering over Manhattan, from Ground Zero, upwards. The fire’s smoke was carried over the city by winds off the harbor.
Meanwhile, the whole city went on alert again. This morning the White House told Americans to go on a high state of alert at least through the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, or until mid-December. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said vague threats have been received by law enforcement officials. This is the third time since September 11 that the entire nation has been placed on such an alert, based on unspecified “threats”.
Attorney General John Aschroft seized the moment to issue another threat to alleged terrorists: “People who hijack a religion and make out of it an implement of war will not be free from our interest,” Ashcroft said yesterday. He said that the FBI should be permitted to violate the Constitution’s First Amendment by monitoring political or religious groups.
“We’re going to do what we need to do to protect the American people,” Ashcroft said on ABC’s “This Week” yesterday. “We will respect the rights of political freedom and religious freedom, and we are deeply committed to that. But for so-called terrorists to gather over themselves some robe of clericism ... and claim immunity from being observed, people who hijack a religion and make out of it an implement of war will not be free from our interest. Can you imagine apprehending a terrorist, either in the deserts of Afghanistan or on the way to the United States to commit a crime, and having to take them through the traditional justice system?” Ashcroft asked. “Reading them the Miranda rights? Hiring a flamboyant lawyer at public expense? Having sort of Osama television?”
While Ashcroft talked about whittling down the scope of the Constitution, some members of Congress once again threatened to cut its promised $20 billion commitment to rebuilding New York City.
“I just think it’s ridiculous politics in Washington,” New York Gov. George Pataki said. “Do we get a big check on the steps of the White House for $20 billion now or as the bills come due, and as the need arises, will we get the money? The answer is yes. We’re going to get the money and we’re going to get more than $20 billion and I am, and have always been, 100 percent confident of that.”
Tomorrow the Senate Appropriations Committee will consider a Department of Defense spending bill that contains New York’s World Trade Center aid. The committee’s chairman, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., says he’ll seek more emergency aid for New York above the roughly $11 billion secured in the House. The White House budget office says the money will come “in installments”. That has local politicos sweating, fearing that as time passes and the nation forgets September 11, the money will never materialize.
“In my judgment, I’d rather have the money in the bank, ready to spend from it,” New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver told AP today.
Federal health officials say it is probable, but not certain, that the deaths of a Bronx woman and another from Connecticut were due to mail contaminated with anthrax spores when it passed through the Hamilton, New Jersey U.S. Postal distribution center. They repeatedly cautioned that no smoking gun has been found, but also said that cross-contamination in the mail appears to be the most likely explanation for the deaths of Ottilie Lundgren of Connecticut and Kathy Nguyen of the Bronx.
It is not clear what might be the implications of these findings. But Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a press conference today that it might be “prudent” to have, “someone else open your mail” if you suffer from any condition that lowers your natural immunity. Presumably that warning might pertain to the estimated one million Americans who have HIV, 35 million who are over 65 years of age, and millions more who have recently undergone cancer or transplant treatments that can render the immune system temporarily inactive.
“People have a right to be uncomfortable about this,” Koplan said. “We don’t have all of the answers yet.”
The clues have piled up, however.
Over the weekend researchers discovered that a man living a few blocks from 94-year-old Lundgren’s Connecticut home also received a letter that had anthrax on it. Today Koplan revealed that letter had precisely one anthrax spore on its envelope—a quantity considered insufficient to cause disease, and an amount that surely would never have been noticed had there not been an intense investigation underway. Similarly, a sparsely contaminated letter was discovered in a business in the South Bronx, located less than two blocks from the home of anthrax victim Nguyen. Both the Connecticut and Bronx letters have time stamp bar codes on them that reveal they went through the Hamilton sorting facility at roughly the same time as did the anthrax-laced letters posted to Senators Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle.
“It is clear that cross-contamination through the mail has occurred,” Health and Human Services Sec. Tommy Thompson said yesterday in a press briefing in Washington. Though, “we do not have clear evidence at this moment in time that contaminated mail was the cause of Ottillie Lundgren’s death,” Thompson continued, evidence is leaning in the direction of blaming the mail. Koplan and Thompson’s new bioterrorism chief Dr. D.A. Henderson were less prepared to reach that conclusion. “From all that we have seen,” Henderson said,” it is just not that easy to infect someone with spores of anthrax and cause inhalational anthrax. So it’s for that reason that we are reluctant to say this is how the infection happened. The answer is by no means definitive.” Figuring out with further certainty how Lundgren and Nguyen contracted anthrax will be difficult, Koplan said. Studies of the Hamilton center reveal that there are several mechanized steps in the time stamping and sorting of mail during which spores could be shaken loose from an envelope. And when spores were loosened, they spread to neighboring machines, further complicating efforts to track the current whereabouts of mail that may have passed through Hamilton on October 9 at precisely the same time as did the Leahy and Daschle letters.
Meanwhile, Koplan said, CDC investigators and the FBI are still looking for more immediate explanations for the women’s infections, including contact with an individual who is responsible for the mailings.
It’s hard to have a lot of confidence in the FBI’s ability to solve this mess. Today FBI Director Robert Mueller announced he was restructuring the bureau to cover “gaps” discovered after a series of blunders over the past year. These have included the “misplaced” files in the case of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, thousands of weapons lost or stolen from FBI warehouses and the discovery of a Russian spy within the agency’s own ranks. Since September 11 members of Congress have openly expressed skepticism about the agency’s ability to stop and solve terrorist acts.
“I need to be fully engaged in the day-to-day running of the bureau,” Mueller told reporters, announcing creation of four new executive assistant director positions that will focus on criminal investigations, counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence, law enforcement services and administration.
“The leader of the Taliban has challenged George Bush to a duel,” comedian David Letterman said on TV tonight. “And Bush said well, all right, as long as we can have it in Florida.”
Be well. Stay safe. Stand defiant.
Laurie Garrett
