Episode 1: Isolated Incident. Right after 9/11, the FBI scrambles to stop a second-wave attack using a deadly toxin. When a Florida photo editor is poisoned by a rare bacteria, agents uncover a possible al-Qaeda plot to spread anthrax from the air. But are they already too late?Check out Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer everywhere you get your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What happened in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 regarding anthrax threats?
Weeks after 9-11, a second wave of terror struck the US, but this time the weapon was invisible. Anthrax-laced letters sent the nation into panic, shutting down government buildings and overwhelming law enforcement. The FBI launched one of the largest investigations in its history, unravelling a complex web of scientific clues, human error, and personal cost.
The gripping new podcast series, Aftermath, Hunt for the Anthrax Killer, takes you deep inside the case, from the science that cracked it to the mistakes that nearly derailed it.
With exclusive access to declassified materials and first-hand accounts, this eight-part series from Wolf Entertainment, CBC Podcasts and USG Audio reveals how the attacks reshaped America and the hidden consequences that still linger today. Now stay tuned for a sneak peek of episode 1.
I mean, this was a huge crime scene. Most people don't think of that as a crime scene, but it was a crime scene of seven blocks.
The unthinkable happened today. The World Trade Center, both towers, gone. There are survivors trapped in that rubble, Mayor Giuliani.
Now it's obvious, I think. I think we have a terrorist act of proportions that we cannot begin to imagine at this juncture.
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Chapter 2: Who is FBI Special Agent Scott Decker and what was his role after 9/11?
It was the evening of September 11th, about 12 hours after the terrorist attacks, and Scott Decker, a special agent with the FBI, was already on the move. He'd packed his bags and said goodbye to his family in Virginia.
I was told to grab four of the guys, load up our Suburbans with evidence collection equipment, hazmat gear, Tyvek suits, masks, gloves. We loaded up the trucks that evening. Oh, dark 30. September 12, we started heading up to New York. I think five black Suburbans in a row.
While everyone else was trying like hell to get out of New York City, Decker drove all night to get in.
As we went through Maryland, we went through Delaware on Route 95, the main corridor. We got to the Delaware Memorial Bridge and the big alert sign above the traffic. And usually the letters are in yellow, but in my memory it was orange. I don't know why, but I remember orange. And it just said in bold letters, New York City closed.
They arrived outside Manhattan near dawn, but those orange letters were right. New York City was closed, even to the FBI. Bridges were shut down, landlines were out, and cell phones weren't working well. So Decker went to an FBI field office in New Jersey, just across the river.
I saw a Black Hawk helicopter sitting on the grass between the office and the Passaic River. And I said, yeah, I need a lift over to New York. So he said, jump in. And we flew over Manhattan, and we flew over Ground Zero. Doors opened on the Black Hawk. And as we flew over through the smoke, we just looked down, and it was just ashes. Buildings were in ashes.
They were just big piles on the ground.
He landed near Ground Zero and, like everyone there, struggled to make sense of what had just happened.
The morning of the 12th of September, things were a little up in the air. I don't think any of us knew what to really expect.
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Chapter 3: How was the anthrax infection first discovered in Florida?
I want to look my fellow Americans directly in the eye and declare to them, I am not the anthrax killer.
And even after all of that, after the seven-year odyssey the FBI went on to try to solve this case, some people still wonder if the FBI got it right.
I would not consider the case to be closed. In my mind, it certainly is not solved.
I believe there are others who can be charged with murder.
This is a story about people who have to look at chaos and try to make sense of it while it's still happening and how hard it is to get that right.
The worst thing that can happen to an FBI agent working a criminal investigation is to solve it in your mind before you really have the evidence.
It's about the stories we tell ourselves and the price we pay when we tell the wrong ones. We're going to go inside one of the largest FBI investigations in history to figure out why we all lost track of this case and to explore the aftershocks we still feel today. From Wolf Entertainment, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Episode 1, Isolated Incident.
I want to go back to the beginning of this story, to a time when most Americans never gave much thought to face masks or deadly particles in the air. It's October 2nd, 2001, three weeks after the attacks of 9-11, and we're in suburban Florida. It's the middle of the night, and a man named Robert Stevens wakes up feeling sick. He has chills and a fever. Robert Stevens is 63.
He's a newspaper photo editor who lives in Lantana, Florida. That's a coastal town about an hour north of Miami. He's raised a few kids and is getting close to retirement. But when he wakes up that night, he feels disoriented, dizzy, and things seem to be getting worse. His wife, Maureen, is worried.
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Chapter 4: Why was the initial anthrax diagnosis met with skepticism?
Chapter 5: What was the FBI’s early intelligence about a second wave biological attack?
House of Representatives is closing offices today until— What is perhaps worrying Americans the most is that they still have no idea who is behind these attacks.
What's weird is that almost 25 years later, most Americans still have no idea who was behind these attacks. Anthrax was on the nightly news for months, and then it's like the story just disappeared. I've talked to hundreds of people about it, and no one, it seems, remembers what happened with this case. Who mailed those letters? Do you know? My name's Jeremiah Kroll.
I'm a documentary filmmaker, and I was living and working in New York when all this happened. In those weeks right after 9-11, I remember the stillness of the streets and the collective sense of raw outrage and sadness in the city. And then, anthrax. I felt the fear those letters created, the terrifying way they just kept coming, one after another.
Another day of germ warfare and still no sign the worst case of bioterrorism in this country is close to being solved.
Almost two decades later, when the pandemic hit, I felt that same sense of unpredictable terror in the air. It reminded me of the anthrax story, and I wondered, whatever happened with that? So my team and I started digging into it. We tracked down people who were involved, either affected by the attacks or part of the investigation. FBI agents, victims, wrongly accused suspects.
And the stories they shared, many for the first time, surprised me. They painted a picture of these events and their aftermath that revealed how, at its core, this was all so personal. Like stories about investigative mistakes right from the start, about civil liberties trampled, and about lives destroyed.
They broke the front door, and there are agents with Uzis and moon suits.
It's one of the most devastating things that's ever happened to me. It'll follow me forever.
I want to look my fellow Americans directly in the eye and declare to them, I am not the anthrax killer.
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Chapter 6: Who was Zacharias Moussaoui and why was he significant to the investigation?
FBI Special Agent Scott Decker is one of only a few agents to have investigated nearly the entire case. And he's got skills that few other FBI agents have. A Ph.D. in genetics with a postdoc from Harvard. So that's why he's on the FBI's new hazmat team that was deployed at Ground Zero.
We would be there ready to help in case there was a biological attack, a chemical attack, or even a radiological release.
And one reason they even had Decker and his team on site is because of something odd that had happened earlier that summer. In August of 2001, weeks before the Twin Towers fell or anyone got sick in Florida, the FBI uncovered something in Minnesota. And that discovery would ultimately set the stage for the entire anthrax investigation. One of Decker's FBI colleagues was right in the middle of it.
The two flight instructor whistleblowers from a suburban flight school had called our office to tell the duty agent that they were very concerned that there was the most suspicious flight student they had ever come across.
Colleen Rowley was an FBI agent in Minnesota at the time.
He was, first of all, asking questions that would never be asked by a normal flight student who was trying to actually learn how to fly. There were things about, you know, communications with the ground, things like that, that had nothing to do with what he said was an ego-boosting trip in order to learn how to fly a 747.
The flight student's name was Zacharias Moussaoui. He was a Muslim French national. When FBI agents interviewed him, they learned his visa had lapsed, so they had him detained on an immigration violation. Agents suspected he was up to something, but they couldn't prove it. And remember, this is all before 9-11, so he's just one strange guy asking strange questions at a flight school.
They couldn't even get a search warrant for his computer. Then, September 11th happened.
The day of 9-11, we got word from the jail that he was kind of jumping up gleefully when the towers were coming down, looking at a television or something.
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Chapter 7: How did government agencies respond to the threat of crop duster attacks?
Chapter 8: Why is the anthrax case considered unresolved by some experts?
But it just doesn't make sense. Anthrax is a natural bacteria that usually only infects livestock. Cattle tend to catch it in dry, rural areas. They eat or breathe in anthrax cells called spores while they're grazing. So it's not like a guy in suburban Florida is going to just accidentally breathe this stuff in while going about his life.
And if he did somehow, he'd be the first person in the entire U.S. in almost 25 years. And that person had gotten it from inhaling anthrax spores off of wool shipped over from Pakistan. Larry runs more tests.
He had an overwhelming amount of bacteria, but what struck me was the shape and the color of these bacteria.
He sees tiny, blue-stained bacterial rectangles all in a line. Imagine looking down on a train from high in the air.
I'm an infectious disease person. I lecture, I write on infectious diseases. I look at bacteria under a microscope every day. I knew what I was looking at.
In retrospect, now knowing how everything would play out, this is the moment that it all began. Right here, for the first time in 25 years, it seems that someone in America has anthrax in their lungs.
I'm convinced this is anthrax. I don't have 100% proof.
Imagine you're him right now. You're the chief of staff for the whole hospital, and you're very sure that what you see is one thing. But that one thing is so rare and so deadly that when you tell people about it, they'll either not believe you or panic.
My fear was creating chaos in the hospital.
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