FBI takes charge of anthrax case: Workers edgy as officials seek source
By Mary McLachlin, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Tuesday, October 9, 2001
WEST PALM BEACH -- A tabloid empire trembled and hundreds of worried people lined up to get tests and antibiotics Monday as the hunt for the source of deadly anthrax intensified in Palm Beach County.
The Boca Raton office building of American Media Inc. turned into a surreal setting that could have been lifted from one of its science-fiction supermarket tabloids -- moon-suited figures prowling its empty corridors in search of an invisible killer while the nation waits to learn whether it slipped in by accident or in another act of terrorism.
Rumors flew among anxious employees, of a mysterious, foreboding e-mail message left by a departed "Middle Eastern" intern, and a strange letter containing a powdery substance and a Star of David charm.
The FBI took over the investigation after a 73-year-old mail-room worker tested positive for anthrax spores, the second employee known to be exposed. Ernesto Blanco of North Miami was reported in stable condition at Cedars Medical Center in Miami.
Authorities say they might never know whether he had anthrax because antibiotics might have killed it before it was detected.
"They haven't told us anything yet," said Blanco's wife, Helva, who was tested for the disease Monday. "We're not sure if he's got it or not."
Co-workers said Blanco, who had been in the hospital for an unrelated illness, usually walked throughout the building delivering mail to employees.
Bob Stevens, 63, a photo editor at The Sun, one of AMI's publications, died Friday of inhalation anthrax. He was the first person in 25 years in the United States to die from the extremely rare and lethal form of the disease.
Bacteria also were found on a computer keyboard that Stevens used, and the spore found in the nasal swab from Blanco matched those found on the keyboard, said Dr. Jean Malecki of the Palm Beach County Health Department.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said during a news conference in Washington that the search could become a "clear criminal investigation."
"We don't have enough information to know whether this could be related to terrorism or not," Ashcroft said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is providing expertise, Ashcroft said, but Florida Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan confirmed that the FBI is "in control of the investigation."
When asked whether officials were concerned because Mohamed Atta, the suspected terrorist leader and pilot of one of the jetliners that hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, had lived in Delray Beach, Ashcroft said:
"I think it's fair to say that we are taking the matter very seriously. . . . (but) on the basis of the investigation, we haven't ruled out anything at this time."
American Media is within 2 miles of the Delray Racquet Club, where some of the terrorists stayed last summer, and about 12 miles from the Lantana airport, where Atta flew a light airplane that he rented on four separate occasions in August.
The FBI is relying on the CDC, and on local and state health officials, to determine whether the anthrax was naturally occurring or developed in a laboratory, Ashcroft said.
Gov. Jeb Bush Bush said he was told that the CDC was shipping extra supplies of antibiotics to Palm Beach County in case more outbreaks are reported. He acknowledged he was concerned.
"This is all pretty new," Bush said. "To be honest with you, I'm not an expert on anthrax. I never thought I would need to be."
This is the first recorded case of the disease being found in an office building, officials said.
David Pecker, chairman and chief executive of AMI, said health officials inspected the AMI office Friday, but didn't tell him until Sunday evening that the office would be closed.
FBI investigators indicated they did not believe anthrax was intentionally planted in the AMI office, Pecker said. He gave officials a list of records, including personnel records, but did not know whether those records were given to the FBI.
U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, who had a telephone briefing Monday from CDC Director Dr. Jeffrey P. Koplan, said he asked Koplan the likelihood that the two anthrax cases in the AMI building could have occurred without human intervention.
"His words were nil and none," Graham said. "So they are first focusing on this building, and then second that there was some human intervention that introduced the anthrax into this building.
"This didn't just happen by some natural cause -- a sheep happened to come into the press room. . . . This is not the type of thing you would do by accident or just inadvertently."
Graham said he knew of no specific link between the anthrax cases and the presence of hijacking suspects in the county before the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Only 18 cases of anthrax were reported in the U.S. during the 20th century, mostly among sheep handlers and those who worked around sheep's wool.
For that reason, Graham said, its presence in an office building setting is "highly unusual."
Lt. Gov. Brogan and state Health Department Secretary John Agwunobi, who appeared together last week to announce the discovery of the first anthrax case, went before the media again Monday to ask all employees who work at the building as well as all visitors who spent more than an hour there since Aug. 1 to go to the Palm Beach County Health Department Annex at 345 S. Congress Ave. in Delray Beach for screening and medications.
Yellow police tape encircled the American Media building throughout the day. Boca Raton police and fire officials said they were on the scene to assist the FBI. FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said agents were there to assist the CDC.
Boca Raton police officers patrolled the golf course behind the building and shooed away onlookers and delivery men. The only nonofficials allowed beyond the roadblocks were BellSouth crews, who appeared to be installing additional telephone lines for the FBI.
A caravan of more than 15 vehicles, including a large RV and trucks hauling trailers, arrived at the building around 3 p.m. Men unloaded boxes and duffel bags from a Budget rental truck and sorted through them. Around 5:30 p.m., several donned white protective suits with green boots. Orihuela said crews probably would stay at least through the night.
Rumors and conspiracy theories multiplied throughout the day. Talk focused on some of the strange letters the Sun tabloid gets. One of them, received after the Sept. 11 attacks, seemed particularly strange.
The letter contained a white powder that smelled like detergent. Newsweek said sources described it as a "weird love letter to Jennifer Lopez" and that it contained a Star of David charm.
FBI spokeswoman Orihuela said the letter was not being investigated as a plausible lead.
A joking, 2-month-old goodbye note also focused the FBI's attention briefly on a Florida Atlantic University senior who worked as an intern at American Media. But a university spokesman called it all a misunderstanding.
"He meant nothing by it," FAU spokesman Bob Nichols said.
Nichols described the student, Jordan Arizmendi, as a skilled writer who is well liked by his professors and by his bosses at American Media.
In an e-mail in early August, Arizmendi told colleagues he would miss them, and that "they were going to miss the little jokes he had planted around the office," Nichols said, paraphrasing the note. Nichols didn't know what the "jokes" were, but said they probably were harmless practical jokes.
Arizmendi has spoken to FBI agents and campus police and left the Boca Raton campus with his father Monday, Nichols said. Arizmendi is a third-generation U.S. citizen of Spanish-Basque descent, Nichols said -- not "from a Middle Eastern country," as Newsweek reported on its Web site Monday.
More than 400 people were tested Monday at the health department in Delray Beach. Many did not work at AMI, but had spent time in the building.
AMI employees said they received one or more calls on Sunday, informing them that the building would be closed and that they should report to the health department. Palm Beach County Sheriff Ed Bieluch said he was told to expect as many as 1,000 people, including family members of about 500 employees.
Health department workers speculated some people didn't come Monday because of the line, which ended by 5 p.m. The clinic will open at 7:30 a.m. today.
Red Cross staff separated AMI employees from those who merely visited the building. The groups waited in two lines with numbered cards, filling out multiple-choice questionnaires. The forms asked how often individuals visited the mail room, text library and photo library, which publications they worked for, how often they spent time just outside the building eating lunch or taking breaks, whether they suffered flu-like symptoms since Aug. 1 or noticed any "unusual occurrences at work" since Sept. 11.
Once they completed the forms, groups of about 10 employees were led in to be tested on the first floor, visitors to the second floor, until they were accidentally mixed shortly before 4 p.m. By then, AMI writers and advertising clerks sat waiting in a narrow hallway beside FedEx messengers who had carried their mail, the garbage contractor who took out their trash and the BellSouth employee who installed their phones a year ago.
After signing a health department release, they were led into a smaller room where a doctor swabbed inside both nostrils. That swab was rubbed on a red petri dish, sealed and packed in a van for CDC testing, according to doctors.
FBI agents guarded doorways outside testing and waiting rooms and the exit, where they asked all AMI employees to sign releases allowing investigators to search their work stations.
After getting nasal swabs, most left carrying supplies of 500-mg doses of the antibiotic Cipro, as well as patient information sheets. They were told to take the Cipro twice daily for 15 days, then get another 15-day supply and a blood test from their own doctors. The sheets said they could develop anthrax infection while taking antibiotics, so they should watch for fevers, flu-like symptoms and sores, especially on their faces, arms or hands.
Women who couldn't confirm that they were not pregnant and young children received the antibiotic Amoxycillin.
Outside, most workers declined to give their names to reporters, and several said company leaders told them they would be fired if they discussed the situation.
Amy Persenaire, an employee in the online department of AMI, said she found out she had to go to the health department through a round of phone calls from colleagues.
"It's weird. It's surreal," Persenaire said. "It's still scary, but yeah, I do feel relieved."
People are now fearful that they may fall ill, she said.
"Once they start talking about flu-like symptoms," Persenaire said, "then everybody starts having a cough."
Don Gentile, a National Enquirer reporter who usually writes about Jon-Benet Ramsey and Whitney Houston, said he wasn't sure whether, or how, the Enquirer would write about such a bizarre story focusing on its own parent company.
"It's not a funny thing," Gentile said, "but it's almost a tabloid headline: `Anthrax strikes tabloid.' "
Staff Writers Jim Ash, Joe Brogan, S.V. Dáte, Dani Davies, Alice Gregory, Howie Paul Hartnett, Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Robert P. King, Clay Lambert, Larry Lipman, Chuck McGinness, Meghan Meyer, Kathryn Quigley and Pilar Ulibarri, and Palm Beach Post wire services contributed to this story.
mary_mclachlin@pbpost.com
And the Basque separatists did their own terrorist attack in Madrid yesterday. That is a big reason why Spain announced yesterday that they were even willing to send troops to help out. All of these terrorist groups are internetworked: Al Qaida, PLO, Hamas, Hezbola, KLA, ETA, IRA, Chechens, etc., etc. Check out the countries that are being most cooperative with us, and you will see that by and large they are the countries with the biggest terrorist problems of their own. They definitely see that there is something in this for them. These groups exchange resources and cooperate quite freely, and are quite willing to help each other on occasion. The media talking heads are always leaping to the conclusion that any suspect who is not a Muslim of middle-eastern background can't possibly have any connection to Al Qaida. I suggest that this may not in fact be a correct assumption.