Anthrax Taints Off-Site White House Mailroom

October 24, 2001

THE DISEASE

Officials Voice New Worry as Anthrax Taints Off-Site White House Mailroom

By FRANCIS X. CLINES

ASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — Traces of the deadly anthrax germ showed up in a remote White House mailroom today, as health officials announced that more "hot spots" had also been found at the capital's main mail sorting center, necessitating intensified treatment of workers.

"I'm confident when I come to work tomorrow that I'll be safe," President Bush said after the White House announced the discovery of a "small concentration of anthrax" on a letter-slitting machine in a mail room several miles from the White House. President Bush said he did not have anthrax, but there was no word on whether he had undergone the nasal swabbing or antibiotic treatment now familiar in the more intense anthrax precautions.

Two postal workers in Washington have died, two others are suffering from anthrax and more than a dozen other people showing symptoms are being tested to see if they, too, have the disease. The authorities in New Jersey reported a new case today of a postal worker with a suspected case of inhaled anthrax.

"This country is too strong to let terrorists affect the lives of our citizens," Mr. Bush said, once more offering suspicions but no outright evidence that the anthrax assault was the work of associates of the terrorist group that attacked New York and Washington Sept. 11 and killed more than 5,000 people.

After anthrax findings at 14 of 29 swab checks at the main mail center on Brentwood Road, public health officials stepped up precautions this morning. They ordered the center's 2,000 workers to undergo a 60-day antibiotic treatment, rather than the 10-day treatment initially ordered. Workers at other postal stations in the city, where environmental tests were planned, were offered 10 days of antibiotics to ease their concern despite the lack of more definitive testing.

"We need to treat and to treat quickly," Dr. Ivan Walks, the health commissioner for the District of Columbia, declared at a news conference this afternoon, saying that the findings made fast treatment of Brentwood workers, not larger city- wide testing, the top priority.

The Bush administration announced tonight that it had negotiated a significantly lower price from Bayer A.G. for Cipro, an antibiotic approved for treating anthrax. The government had threatened to override Bayer's patent if the company refused to lower its customary price for goverment purchase: $1.83 a tablet. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human services said the government had agreed in principle with Bayer to buy the medicine for less than $1 a tablet. [Page B7]

So far, three deaths have been attributed nationwide to anthrax, including those of two postal workers here and a tabloid newspaper editor in Florida Thus far, two postal workers are hospitalized here with the disease. In addition, four people have shown symptoms considered suspicious, Dr. Walks said. He added that specialists were watching another 12 postal cases of "very low" suspicion among postal workers.

As the White House became involved in the anthrax scare, the Secret Service reported that no White House mail workers or any executive staff had tested positive as yet for anthrax and that the source of the germ on the mail machine was unknown.

"However, the mail brought to the remote delivery site is processed through the Brentwood facility," the Secret Service announcement noted.

This only increased law enforcement focus on the center, which earlier handled a letter to Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle's office, where 28 staff workers and Capitol police officers tested positive last week for exposure, although none has yet been reported stricken.

After a weekend sweep of the lawmakers' premises, the House and Senate returned to the Capitol today, trying to resume business. The streets of their neighborhood looked deserted and forlorn under a cordon of security precautions. Main office buildings remained closed with lawmakers resorting to cell phones and lap-top computers in neighboring office sanctuaries.

Some of the most striking Capitol comments of the day was the open speculation by Senator Daschle and Senator Bill Frist, a physician and Tennessee Republican who has closely monitored the anthrax threat, that more than the initial Daschle letter may indeed have passed from the Brentwood complex to the Capitol, although none has yet been found.

"This is a sophisticated delivery of anthrax," Senator Frist emphasized when asked about the capital debate on whether the detected anthrax is of a "weapons grade" or something less threatening.

The growing anxiety of postal workers lining up for treatment at D.C. General Hospital was reflected in parallel concern among ordinary Washington residents.

"When the post office workers are scared, I'm scared," said Clyde Jackson, a a 66-year-old Washingtonian who pays his bills by money order at a downtown post office. "This all isn't as deep as Sept. 11, but it's got that inertia, that bad feeling. You don't know what's going to pop next, big or little."

In New York, postal officials said antiobiotics would be distributed to 7,000 mail workers because of their increasing concern about anthrax.

Tommy G. Thompson, secretary of Health and Human Services, speaking this morning at a Congressional hearing, promised a more thorough effort to test and treat postal workers at each point of delivery of a tainted letter.

But under questioning, Secretary Thompson expressed greater concern about a possible terrorist attack on the nation's food supplies. "I am more fearful about this than anything else," he said.

As concern grew over how well the anthrax could be contained, public health officials conceded that the threat of this rare disease has been giving them some harsh day-to-day lessons.

"We don't fully understand — and that's the focus of the investigation — the circumstances of the Brentwood post office that led to us being in this tragic situation," Dr. Rima Khabbazz, director of Viral Diseases for the Center for Infectious Diseases, said at the midday City Hall news conference with Dr. Walks, Mayor Anthony Williams of Washington and other officials.

They faced a wave of questions about whether government and health leaders had incorrectly minimized the anthrax risk in some initial reassurances to the public. Deborah Willhite, vice president for government relations with the United States Postal Service, conceded that "this has been a learning experience" but she noted that government officials were hardly the enemy.

"The enemy is whoever sent this letter because they have now murdered two people," Ms. Willhite declared of the postal workers who died suddenly last weekend.

The F.B.I. released the text of letters sent in earlier anthrax mailings to Senator Daschle, Tom Brokaw, the NBC news anchor, and The New York Post. All carried a general death threat but no clear indication of what individual or group sent them.

The discovery this morning of anthrax traces at the remote White House mail room — a protected facility at Bolling Air Force Base on the district's perimeter — was made under routine security checks that have been in effect for years and were enhanced after the Sept. 11 attacks, White House officials said. Other tests were conducted within the White House, with no positive findings of anthrax, officials emphasized.

The "trace findings" in the mail room measured less than 500 germ spores, well short of the 8,000- to 10,000-spore range that can prove deadly or the 4,000 to 5,000 range that produces severe sickness, according to one White House official. Whatever left the traces has not yet been found, but an intensified search of a backlog of mail at the remote center is to be conducted by hazaradous- material specialists.

Representative Richard A. Gephardt, the House Democratic leader, once more differing with some Senate and White House officials, insisted the anthrax found so far was "weapons grade material."

"We've got to stop parsing words and trying to be anything other than accurate," Mr. Gephardt said.

Officials emphasized that the anthrax tested was of a similar strain, one that Iraq had unsuccessfully sought to obtain from American research laboratories in years past.

Frustrations with the anthrax alarm marked the Capitol day.

"We have two phones, one computer and one TV and seven people," said Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana. He spoke from his crammed Capitol hideaway office and said he was as optimistic as ever but taking his Cipro.