Paul Keim
Appearances
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
This was not a natural strain that occurred just randomly around the United States or in Florida in particular. This was a laboratory strain. And that was sobering.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
And that's unusual. Most cases of anthrax are what we call cutaneous. You get it from handling material like hides or wool, and then you get a skin type of infection.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Inhalation is the way that biological weapons are developed and deployed.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
This was a particular type of Bacillus anthracis, and that particular type was the Ames strain.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
As it turns out, the Ames strain came from Texas.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Every laboratory in the world wanted to have access to the AIM strain. And so that strain had been distributed to multiple laboratories in the United States, foreign laboratories.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
And on top of that... There was no inventory of the laboratories that had the AIM strain. We didn't know how many laboratories in the country or in the world had it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Yet. Nobody had done this before because it was just prohibitively expensive.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
And in the wake of 9-11, al-Qaeda was the number one suspect. And so all of us were thinking that this was a biological attack carried out by al-Qaeda.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
There was no linkage of that strain to the Middle East or to al-Qaeda. But we also knew the controls over the laboratories were light. In other words, it would have been possible for a scientist to walk into a laboratory and walk out with one of these strains.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
When you get those spores deep into your lungs, it progresses to systemic or body-wide disease very rapidly and very catastrophically. The vast majority of people who get inhalational anthrax will die. And so that was chilling to know that we were handling a sample of an individual who's likely to die of anthrax.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
Yeah, so I was doing my normal college professor stuff at the beginning of a fall semester here in Flagstaff, Arizona. And out of the blue, an acquaintance of mine from the FBI called me up and said, said, hey, we have an unusual case of anthrax down in Florida.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
For the last 30 years, I've been involved in trying to develop DNA methods for precisely identifying strains of dangerous pathogens so that we can identify where they came from, link them together with outbreaks, and in particular, how they're related to biological weapons.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
And so it was like, wow. It felt like all the blood was leaving my body at that point because it's like, this isn't an academic exercise anymore. This is the real thing. So after I hung up, I quickly went around and found all the anthrax DNA fingerprinting people. I told them I expected to have the anthrax back in the lab by about 8 o'clock in the evening.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
So I said, you know, take care of whatever you need, but be back here around 8 o'clock and be prepared to start doing the analysis.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
The general aviation guy just went and opened up the gate and let me drive out on the tarmac. Gulfstream's a pretty impressive plane. And so it landed right around sunset. Then this woman, this blonde woman, came walking down the stairs with a box.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
And as she stepped onto the tarmac, you know, all I could think about was the movie, Casablanca, where Humphrey Bogart is on the tarmac with Ingrid Bergman. And I thought, that'd make me Humphrey Bogart. Then I kind of slapped my face and said, get your head back in the game, you know.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
And there's a box, you know, like, I don't know, 18 inches by 18 inches by 18 inches, a cardboard box. And inside of it was a styrofoam pack and then a crush-proof pack.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
When you're looking at it by eye on a culture, it's kind of this white, creamy stuff. Kind of like mayonnaise smeared on top of Jell-O. We knew for sure it was anthrax because it had a DNA fingerprint pattern that was very consistent with Bacillus anthracis.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
And my laboratory had been developing DNA fingerprinting methods to identify the different strains from around the world. And if it was a laboratory strain, this wasn't an accident in the wake of 9-11. Paul and his team work through the night. By morning, they have an answer. It was a laboratory strain, you know, and so how does a laboratory strain end up infecting a gentleman in Florida?
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
Instantly, we knew that this was a biological weapons event because it had to be an intentional act. And in the wake of 9-11, al-Qaeda was the number one suspect.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
At that point, if there were any doubts that this was a bioterrorism event, they were gone.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
No witnesses, no fingerprints, no personal DNA. And then there's another case, and then another, and another.