Tom Fedor/The Gazette Fort Detrick in the City of Frederick is at the center of the nation's efforts to fight bioterrorism.

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After the worst terrorist attack on American soil on Sept. 11, 2001, the East Coast was slammed again days later when deadly anthrax was mailed to media outlets and members of Congress.

Five letters laced with anthrax were mailed on Sept. 17 and 18, eventually killing five people and sickening 17 others, though the cause was not identified until Oct. 4, 2001, a day before a photo editor in Florida died of inhalation anthrax.

Two postal workers in Washington, D.C., died on Oct. 21 and 22; a New York hospital stockroom employee died on Oct. 31; and an elderly woman from Connecticut died on Nov. 21.

People began dreading trips to the mailbox, worried that a whiff of a powdery substance could kill them. The U.S. Postal Service sent postcards advising people how to identify and handle suspicious mail. “Don’t shake it, bump it or sniff it,” the postcard read.

Pranksters capitalized on the national anxiety by sending out hoax mailings, and a trail of powered sugar in the office became cause to call hazmat teams.

Emergency personnel in Frederick County responded by staffing a van with two hazmat technicians outfitted with everything they needed to test for anthrax, said Doug Brown, Frederick County emergency services bureau chief. The crew handled any calls reporting a suspicious substance.

“Everything started to look suspicious,” Brown said. “…We would literally get calls to check into bathrooms at businesses. Toilet paper, as you spin it out of the roll, makes a white powder. People were so on edge, they were suspicious of everything. ... And that’s OK because we are absolutely public servants and most of the time we are the last call anyone wants to make.”

Brown even recalled an inmate at the Frederick County Detention Center who habitually ground up anything he could find that would make a white powdery substance and mail it to the Frederick County Courthouse.

For months the team responded to calls, and while Frederick County was fortunate to not get any “direct hits,” the adage an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure was never more applicable than during that time, Brown said.

Spending increases

On Capital Hill, Congress began spending billions to research bioterrorism. The budget approved to combat the threat of dangerous pathogens jumped from $3 billion in 2002 to a total of $54 billion invested during the following eight years, according to the Center of Biosecurity, an independent research group in Baltimore.

Fort Detrick was a major recipient of the additional funding. Since Sept. 11 and the anthrax letters, plans for six new biodefense buildings at Fort Detrick were put into motion to create the National Interagency Biodefense Campus.

The campus includes new facilities for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the Department of Homeland Security’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, and a National Institutes of Health’s Integrated Research Facility.

The goal of the campus is to identify and research bioterrorist threats and create vaccines for those potential threats, according to its the Department of Homeland Security website. The expansion increases the amount of high-containment laboratory space at the fort, but the total square foot of expansion has not been publicized.

“The general idea of the biodefense campus was that co-location of the labs would facilitate cooperation among partners engaged in developing medical solutions so that work could be done more efficiently,” said Caree Vander-Linden, the spokeswoman for USAMRIID.

According to Congressman Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Dist. 6) of Buckeystown, the new campus is needed to handle an increased workload.

"Based purely upon merit, America's leading biomedical scientists chose Fort Detrick as the location for the post-9/11 expanded responsibility of developing the science critical to protect all Americans at home and abroad in addition to military personnel against natural biomedical hazards as well as bioterrorism,” he said in an email to The Gazette.

Concerns of the residents

But the growth of high-containment biolabs set off alarms for residents concerned about the public health hazards of scientists working with dangerous pathogens, many of which have no vaccine and no cure, and raised questions about oversight and intent.

"The lab complex at Fort Detrick has grown 10-fold since the anthrax attacks. It's a whole new ball game. The community has raised a lot of questions about risk, and about health and safety,” said Beth Willis, chair of Frederick Citizens for Biolab Safety. “The National Academy of Sciences has agreed that the community's concerns need to be respected and really addressed. ... We’re starting to have a better dialogue between the community and the labs. But people need to stay involved, and keep speaking up.”

The National Academy of Sciences, an independent advisor to government on science and technology based in Washington, D.C., has scrutinized plans for the new facilities and though its scientists will not comment about appropriateness of the work at the fort, it outlined ways to make the operation more transparent.

One of the recommendations from the academy was the formation of a citizens’ advisory committee to track activities and protocols at the labs, ask questions, and keep the public informed. The Containment Laboratory Citizens Advisory Committee was formed last year and meets monthly.

Amerithrax

Unlike the events of Sept. 11, officials could not identify a source of the bioterrorist attacks.

In an operation dubbed “Amerithrax,” the FBI investigated and discarded leads for seven years before honing in on Frederick anthrax researcher, Bruce Ivins.

The FBI focused on Ivins after a case against former Detrick researcher Steven Hatfill crumbled. Hatfill sued the Department of Justice for ruining his career and was paid nearly $6 million.

Ivins, who worked 28 years at USAMRIID at Fort Detrick, committed suicide in 2008, shortly before facing charges of murder from the Department of Justice. Two years later, the FBI officially named Ivins the sole perpetrator on evidence it acknowledged was circumstantial, and closed the case.

Many of Ivins’ colleagues said Ivins did not have the knowledge or equipment to produce the type of anthrax used in the mailings, but the FBI maintains that he did.

Last year, a National Academy of Sciences panel questioned the validity of the genetic science used in the FBI investigation that pointed to Ivins, and concluded that the evidence was inconclusive.

Most recently, three scientists reviewed FBI documents obtained by the academy, and found more specific information about the compounds in the makeup of the anthrax spores, specifically the existence of tin, that also questions the FBI’s conclusions.

The U.S. General Accounting Office is also revisiting the FBI’s investigation, and is scheduled to release a report this month.

kheerbrandt@gazette.net