Just as the White House assures the public that the Florida attack is an isolated case, another anthrax attack strikes—this time in the heart of Manhattan. Major TV news outlets are hit, and one reporter finds herself at the center of the story she is covering.
Chapter 1: Who is Dr. Marcy Leighton and what was her role in NYC's anthrax preparedness?
This is a CBC Podcast. It's a breezy day outside a warehouse on a pier on the west side of Manhattan. It's September 2001, before 9-11, and before anthrax showed up in Florida. A group of health officials are setting up hospital beds inside the warehouse.
Chapter 2: What was the planned bioterror drill in NYC before 9/11?
It was the first time, I think, that we were planning to do a large-scale exercise.
Dr. Marcy Leighton was the assistant commissioner for the health department in New York City.
The consequences were quite high if something was released in a place like New York City with the potential to cause, you know, hundreds of thousands or more cases.
Which is why Marcy and the team set up those emergency beds all around them. They've been planning a drill for months, and now it's time to set it in motion.
It's one thing to sort of talk about it and have a written plan. It's another thing to set this up quickly.
All of this was to make sure that they were ready in case of a large-scale biohazard attack, like the release of a lethal toxin, gas, or maybe powder, that could kill thousands of people. And one kind of toxin was front and center in her mind. Anthrax.
Part of the preparation for a large-scale aerosolized release of anthrax was the recognition that we would need to give antibiotics out quickly to potentially a large number of people.
Marcy and her team were designing a simulation of a bioterror attack on New York to try to understand how the city could respond effectively. And to accomplish that, they'd hired hundreds of police academy cadets and fire department trainees to act as victims.
The plan was the cadets would go through, but then get back in line as new people.
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Chapter 3: How did the events of 9/11 impact the anthrax preparedness efforts?
I'm Jeremiah Kroll, and from Wolf Entertainment, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Episode 3, Anthrax This. One month after the attacks of 9-11, the FBI is caught in a conundrum. three people at a news office in Florida have been infected with anthrax.
And despite lots of signs that suggest it may have been a second wave attack by al-Qaeda, the FBI doesn't have any evidence to support that theory. And on top of that, unlike the plot of 9-11, there's no clandestine chatter or public statements that link al-Qaeda to anthrax.
Some people will say, well, then it could have been. It could have been a lot of things, but we don't have any proof that it was.
Chapter 4: What were the initial anthrax cases in Florida and NYC and how were they linked?
Special Agent Scott Decker is charged with helping find that proof. He's at the center of it all, at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. His office was just down the hall from Robert Mueller, who was the new director of the FBI, and by sheer bad luck, had been sworn in only one week before 9-11.
Now, less than a month into the job, he was facing both the 9-11 and anthrax cases, which would soon become two of the largest investigations in FBI history.
The new director, Mueller, was in a little room off to the side. You could see him in there. I don't think he ever went home. I think he just lived there. But he was bound that no stone would go unturned.
But so far, none of those stones are turning up much. All the FBI knows at this point is that a letter with white powder that made its way through that Florida news office may have been what infected the victims.
The areas that were highly contaminated were the mail folders. where they would sort the mail. And those were very, very hot.
There's something maliciously simple about using the U.S. mail to poison U.S. citizens, much like there was about exploiting American airplanes to crash into American buildings. But was the mail really the delivery mechanism? One month after waiting for those M&Ms on September 11th, Dr. Marci Leighton is still bracing the city for a fight against an enemy she can't even see.
So I think it was a Friday. It's always a Friday. And so it was like 3 o'clock in the morning when I got a call from a friend of mine who worked at CDC. Marci, this is David. I'm calling because the director of CDC wants to talk to you. We're going to call you back in a few minutes. We'll give you a couple minutes to wake up for the call.
Marshy's lab had sent out dozens of biosamples in the last few weeks, monitoring for anthrax and other biohazards. And now the phone was ringing before dawn.
And I'm like, David, if you're calling me to tell me at 3 o'clock in the morning that the CDC director wants to talk to me, you're basically telling me the result is positive.
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Chapter 5: Who is Johanna Huden and how did anthrax affect her?
Chapter 6: How did the anthrax attack affect NBC News and the media?
Their destination is in some ways as scary as the anthrax itself. Marcy is racing towards one of the most iconic buildings in New York City, 30 Rockefeller Center, aka 30 Rock. It's a skyscraper full of thousands of people, smack dab in the heart of Manhattan. And on top of that, Marcy's also struck by where in the building the victim worked. NBC News.
The fact that it was a media site was really concerning to us.
NBC is the second news company to be hit in 10 days. And Marcy worries there could be many more anthrax infections about to show up. She learns the victim here is an assistant for legendary news anchor Tom Brokaw. She'd spilled white powder on herself when she'd opened a letter addressed to Brokaw.
Chapter 7: What was the public and government reaction to the anthrax attacks?
Remember that in Florida, the FBI and local investigators had suspected that a letter had been the source of infections, but they'd never found one. So if Marcy, the FBI, and police can find an envelope at 30 Rock, they'd have the case's first physical evidence.
So part of the response at NBC that Friday was to try and find what the source of exposure was. So that letter, there was an intensive investigation done by NYPD and FBI.
And the CDC and a hazmat team. Together, they start scouring the building, looking for that envelope or anything that can tell them how anthrax got inside the building. As they search, NBC finds itself in an unusual spot, not just reporting the news, but being the news.
We want to give me a cue when we're ready, when we're good to go. We all set? Good morning. I'm Andy Lack. I'm with NBC. I'm here with the mayor and with Bob Wright and Tom Brokaw and some of the mayor's key colleagues. This morning, as many of you know now, we received a positive test for cutaneous anthrax for one of our colleagues who works on Nightly News.
Good evening. Tonight we find ourselves in the unusual and unhappy position of reporting on one of our beloved colleagues who has contracted a cutaneous anthrax infection.
The reaction in New York City is bonkers.
Another infection, this time at NBC News in Rockefeller Park. A media building in Florida was targeted. One man died.
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Chapter 8: How did Johanna's experience illustrate the fear and confusion surrounding anthrax?
It has been, as I'm sure a lot of you know, a very strange day here in New York. Investigators say it's too soon to tell whether the same person is responsible for the anthrax attacks in both Florida and New York.
Suddenly today, the anthrax scare that is sweeping this country turned up on its doorstep.
An NBC employee tested positive for what's known as cutaneous anthrax.
Today... There's been another reported case of anthrax in New York City at NBC News. And it has got to cause concern for our nation. But I want everybody in the country to know we're responding rapidly.
What President George Bush doesn't say here, but what many Americans are beginning to fear, is that with anthrax surfacing in both Florida and New York, these exposures aren't accidents. An attack is unfolding. And what no one knows yet is that NBC isn't the only new case.
About a week after 9-11, and well before the FBI or anyone knows anything about anthrax in New York or even Florida, someone else also had a suspicious lesion.
It was so strange. At first, it was just red and itchy. And then it started to look like white cauliflower.
Johanna Huden was 30 years old at the time, and before she got that lesion, before 9-11 happened, she had her dream job, writing a column at one of New York City's fabled tabloid newspapers, the New York Post.
I covered drink trends, nightlife trends. And I also sat next to the Cheap Eats restaurant critic. And we'd all get dishes and we'd all kind of share it because she had to try all of the dishes. So it was fun.
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