Government's Anthrax Muddle: Many Voices, Few Facts
washingtonpost.com
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 18, 2001; Page A13
[This, of course, is yesterday's news. Additional denials concerning the weaponized nature of the contamination were issued today. Highlights mine. --fl]
As public worry about anthrax attacks increases, Bush administration officials and congressional leaders have been responding with inconsistent and, at times, incorrect information about the incidents.
The government has been slow in the release of some information, and, some critics have said, there has been no single reliable source of information. "It's not clear who is in charge," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee.
Yesterday, lawmakers gave contradictory accounts of whether there was anthrax in a Senate building's ventilation system and whether the bacterium found in Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle's office was a weapons-grade microbe. The Bush administration has been unable to agree whether the attacks amount to terrorism and what kind of risk the public faces.
Conflicting accounts of the anthrax investigations from Capitol Hill have been further muddled by the administration's reluctance to divulge information. While a sense of siege gripped Washington yesterday, there were no White House briefings, and President Bush left the country on a trip to China. He barely mentioned the anthrax subject in a speech to Sacramento business leaders before leaving.
Ed Gillespie, a Bush campaign adviser who has close ties to the White House, said the message reflects the overall uncertainty. "If there seems to be some confusion, it may be because there's some confusion," he said. "This is just a reflection of the fact we're dealing in an entirely new environment. . . . It will take the public and government and our institutions some time to get our bearings."
The White House is planning to unify the government's public message in the form of Tom Ridge, the new head of homeland security. The former Pennsylvania governor has kept a low profile so far and does not even have a press secretary. "Governor Ridge, in his new coordination role, will begin to have a strong, regular, public presence," said Jim Wilkinson, the White House deputy communications director.
Until now, agencies have been reluctant to speak for themselves. Telephone messages left with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta have gone unreturned, and the CDC office here has been unable to provide information. Health experts at the Department of Health and Human Services have largely not spoken in public, and the FBI can only say the matter is under investigation.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said earlier this week that the administration has sometimes been stingy with information to prevent the release of false information. The administration hopes to avoid a repeat of what happened on Oct. 4, the day the first anthrax case was reported, when Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, at the White House, suggested the cause of the first anthrax case in Florida was environmental. "We do know that he drank water out of a stream when he was traveling through North Carolina last week," he said.
Because of incorrect information in the media about how many people have been affected by anthrax and how they have been treated, Fleischer said, "it's a particularly important job for the federal government -- and I speak for the president and for agencies in the government, to some degree -- to make certain that the information they have is considered and is accurate before rushing to report it."
But public health experts say the mixed messages about anthrax fuel public anxiety. "There is no federal coordination of this whole effort," said Mohammed Akhter, executive director of the American Public Health Association. "There is no central authority to tell the public what is going on, what [health officials] are doing and what the public needs to do."
Akhter said the government needs to put forth a spokesman on the subject "who is professional and has the ability to calm people down. This is Public Health 101."
Consider the question of what type of anthrax was sent to Daschle's office. On Tuesday Daschle called it "a very strong form of anthrax, a very potent form of anthrax that was clearly produced by someone who knows what he or she is doing." One senator said the bacterium was characterized at a briefing as "weapons grade."
Asked to elaborate at a news conference yesterday, Daschle (D-S.D.) said: "I don't think I used the word 'weapons grade.' " Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said they were told it was "garden-variety" anthrax.
That message was quickly contradicted by House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), who said the exposure of the strain to some 30 Senate staffers "led the people who have looked at this to believe it is a higher grade, weapon-grade kind of anthrax."
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), at Gephardt's side, called it "sophisticated."
Thompson, at a hearing, declared that "we do not know the exact strains or where it comes from." Just to be sure, he said a moment later: "Senator, I wanted to correct something that -- I guess somebody sent me a note. I did not in any way imply that there is countries behind this attack on Daschle and that it's weapons grade."
On the Hill, the two chambers were at odds yesterday as they explained events. Hastert inadvertently sparked a frenzy when he announced yesterday morning that investigators had identified anthrax "in the ventilation system" in the Senate Hart Office Building, as well as in the Senate mailroom. "That is inaccurate," said Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) when told what Hastert was saying.
By the afternoon, however, Hastert had modified his remarks, saying there was only "a possibility" that anthrax had entered the Senate's ventilation system.
Even basic matters of definition have eluded the government. The administration has yet to conclude whether this is an act of bioterrorism. Thompson, speaking on "Fox News Sunday," said: "It certainly is an act of terrorism to send anthrax through the mail." Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said much the same thing Tuesday: "Any time someone sends anthrax through the mail, it's an act of terror. It's terrorism."
But also on Tuesday, Fleischer offered a different view. "You know, that's a determination that will be made by the appropriate law enforcement officials. The line between whether this is merely criminal or terrorist is something that often involves whether or not a foreign nation is involved or whether or not cells of any type of foreign nation or terrorist group operating in this country. All that is under investigation right now, and I don't want to get ahead of that story."
Staff writers Juliet Eilperin, Helen Dewar, Eric Pianin and Ceci Connolly contributed to
this report.
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