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CNN Talkback Live

Does America Have Anthrax Anxiety?

Aired October 18, 2001 - 15:10   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BOBBIE BATTISTA, HOST: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to TALKBACK LIVE: "America Speaks Out."

Today: Do you have anthrax anxiety? A New Jersey postal worker has tested positive for cutaneous anthrax now, and a second worker may have been exposed to the spores as well. Also today, word that an assistant to CBS anchor Dan Rather has cutaneous anthrax, as well.

And each day the list of questions builds: How do you investigate these anonymous attacks? Could another country have provided the anthrax? Is the U.S. government doing enough, and should you feel safe?

With us first today, Bill Daly, a former FBI investigator and security consultant. And on the phone with us, Dr. David Tierno. He's a microbiologist at New York University and Mount Sinai Medical Centers, and a member of Mayor Giuliani's anthrax task force.

Welcome to both of you.

Bill, if I could start with you quickly. How do you go about investigating a crime or a terrorist attack, if you will, that uses the mail system as its deliver M.O.?

BILL DALY, FMR. FBI INVESTIGATOR: First of all, Bobbie, is that unfortunately the U.S. mail system is not really user friendly to investigators, at least from the standpoint of just letters being tossed into a mail drop. Of course, you have registered, you have other mail, which has more traceability to it.

But these type of letters that are just dropped into one of many hundreds of mailboxes, then are collected and brought to, for instance, the Trenton facility -- difficult and a challenge for investigators to look on the face value. But let's not forget, they look beyond that.

They look at issues such as, what's the ink made up of, where did the envelopes come from? Were they bought from post office, were they bought from a store. The letter itself, what was it made of? What kind of paper?

So they start looking at all these various aspects and then try to link them together, much as we're starting to link together the actual anthrax, from a microbiological standpoint. They'll look to link these together and find if there's any leads, if there's anyone they can go after.

BATTISTA: Dr. Tierno, by the way, our information is incorrect. Your first name is Philip. We apologize for that.

DR. PHILIP TIERNO, MICROBIOLOGIST: That's OK.

BATTISTA: It does seem that it's another day and another anthrax exposure, or two or three. Do you feel like the situation is contained, or is it something that we're just going to have to be fearful of, it could pop up anywhere, anytime?

TIERNO: Well, there is no way to know how many letters or how many other articles might have gone out. As you know, it would seem to the population that it is a very tricky business as to whether you do get anthrax or not, even after exposure. And in most cases, you don't.

In fact, a terrorist group in Japan first tried to use anthrax, to inoculate the populous, and were unsuccessful. So it is rather difficult to do. But there's no telling how many other spores might be about, and in fact, the mayor has responded in an exemplary fashion -- the mayor and the health officials -- to contain anthrax, as it exists at this point in time.

BATTISTA: I don't think we can over stress that there have been a number of exposures to anthrax. But there are really only, with the postal worker today, six confirmed cases, correct?

TIERNO: That's correct. In fact, if you look back in the literature, you will find that even people such as goat mill workers, who deal with hides of animals that may have anthrax on it, inhale more than 500 spores into their lungs during the eight-hour work period, and don't develop disease. So you can imagine how difficult it is to get the infection. And most of the infections are cutaneous, which are the easiest to treat.

BATTISTA: Bill, it seems to me that a lot of clues here, in trying to track who is responsible for this, may come from determining what kind of anthrax was used. I mean, where do you start with that?

DALY: Well, certainly with the Center for Disease Control and other laboratories that are looking at this, to determine not only what the consistency is, from a biological standpoint of the anthrax, but the powder, as well, that's used to adhere the anthrax.

Also, to let you know, we talked about these postal workers in New Jersey being affected. And as tragic as that is, it may also help investigators on another lead, and that would be: where were these people working, what post -- what boxes were they servicing, when might they have come in contact with the letter or letters? And might help investigators determine a little bit more as to when these went into the mail system, or perhaps where.

BATTISTA: Dr. Tierno, what does identifying the kind of anthrax -- what will that tell you? TIERNO: Well, every organism has a fingerprint. In fact, just as we are all homo sapiens, by genus and species, each of us are unique. We have fingerprints that distinguish us. So too, do bacteria. And their fingerprints are on the genetic elements, the DNA. So we can molecularly type these organisms and understand that they are unique, and therefore trace them. We can tell whether one strain is identical with another strain, and in so doing, gain a lot of information as to the origin.

For example, this strain is pan sensitive, meaning it's antibiotic susceptible. Even to those antibiotics like penicillin and tetracycline, where some of the terrorist groups have developed strains that are resistant to those drugs. So this appears to be a natural strain. But that doesn't necessarily mean that any group would not use a natural strain in an event like this, but it helps to identify.

BATTISTA: Let me break away for just a moment here.

(INTERRUPTED FOR LIVE EVENT)

BATTISTA: I'm not sure what we're looking at here. Oh, the vice president is in New York today, in this, what appears to be foggy or cloudy weather in New York. He is touring ground zero, where of course, the two Twin Towers of the World Trade Center used to stand.

The president, as you know, is out of the country, so the vice president has taken this time to choose to visit New York and tour what is left there at ground zero.

All right, back to our guests here, if we could.

Bill, one of the things about this investigation, it was a new development today, was that we now have a package that was mailed from Atlanta that arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, that supposedly had anthrax in it, and a person there was exposed to it. How does that complicate your investigation now?

DALY: Well, on one hand it complicates it because we now have another origin or another postmark that is perhaps involved in this mailing campaign. The question would be whether or not the anthrax itself was linked up. What is the -- who are the people who are receiving it, you know, in Nairobi? Are these people who have been associated in the past with the embassy bombing incidents, either victims or witnesses?

We just don't know at this point what the connection might be, if there is any. And does this start to suggest then, that it's going down a different path than some terrorist organization who's, you know, working in concert with bin Laden and his followers?

It does start to put a twist on it, but in some ways, Bobbie, it provides more information, from which investigate can start to draw some more conclusions, as to whether or not it's something that is coming from an international influence, or whether it's coming from a more domestic influence. BATTISTA: Let me take some questions here from the audience quickly. Ron, go ahead.

RON: Yes, I was just wondering, in light of the fact that it's somewhat difficult to infect a lot of people with anthrax, and even if you infect people that many of them can be treated, how likely is it that a major terrorist group like Al Qaeda would choose this type of a weapon to create terror in our country, for example?

DALY: Well, I think that's a very good question. And I think the -- we won't really know until we get further into this inquiry. But it does start to suggest some things here that might be inconsistent with people who might have the access, might have the knowledge and, given the time and money behind doing a -- performing a campaign which would be more horrific.

So I think there is something here that we need to look at and say, you know, was it just something they could get their hands on? Was it a fall back to what they would have liked to have used? Or is this someone else or some other group who isn't as sophisticated?

BATTISTA: While we're focusing on who might be responsible for this, let me bring in another guest. And before I do that, I want to throw to a sound bite from former weapon's inspector Richard Butler today, who appeared on CNN this morning, when he talks about how he feels the focus should be on Iraq.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD BUTLER, FMR U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: What I know, Iraq bought a number of years ago to make sophisticated anthrax.

Iraq actually made the most strenuous attempts to keep us away from that. I formed the view that the stronger those attempts were, the more important the weapons system was to Saddam. And in that case, quite frankly, I had conclude that Saddam's weapon of choice was biology.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: Not everyone agrees with that. David Albright is with us, and he's the president of the Institute for Science and National Security, and a former inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency.

And, David, you know, we're told that Iraq has the means. They certainly have the motive. Why should they not be a focus of this investigation -- a strong focus?

DAVID ALBRIGHT, INST. FOR SCIENCE & NAT'L SECURITY: They should be a suspect, I mean, there's no doubt about that. But I think it's a mistake to focus too early on one suspect. It could be the Al Qaeda network, it could be a domestic group. It could a nut who just has a grudge. So I think it's very important for the effort to focus as broadly as possible and as deeply as possible. And in that group, Iraq is certainly there. BATTISTA: I understand that, but there's an awful lot -- and I grant you, it is circumstantial -- evidence and links to Iraq. You know, we know that Mohammed Atta, who was supposedly one of the head hijackers who died in the attacks, had a long history with Iraqi intelligence agencies. We know that Saddam Hussein himself has a long history, long links with Osama bin Laden.

If you start looking at all these little circumstantial pieces, though, a lot of it adds up, don't you think?

ALBRIGHT: It may or may not. I mean, there's many ways to get anthrax. And it's -- while it's difficult to turn into this aerosol size and encapsulate it, it can be done. There has been assessments for years that it doesn't require a sophisticated state, or a state that's had a lot of experience at this, in order to accomplish this.

And I think we heard these same things about Iraq after September 11th. People were convinced that the World Trade Center bombing was done by Iraq. And so I think that it -- we need to be very careful. And part of the reason is, the stakes are quite high. If the focus is on Iraq and we don't have the proof and we move forward with military action, we could destroy the coalition that has been assembled by the United States on this war on terrorism.

BATTISTA: Let me read you another quote from an op-ed piece "the New York Times" today that written by Richard Butler: "Biological weapons are closest to President Hussein's heart. He seemed to think killing with germs has a lot to recommend it. If the scientific path leads to Iraq as the supporter of the anthrax use by the terrorist mailers in the United States, no one should be surprised."

ALBRIGHT: I guess I would disagree with what Richard Butler is saying about weapon of choice. I mean, we didn't really gain a complete understanding of how Iraq or Saddam Hussein work this.

BATTISTA: Was that on purpose that you didn't?

ALBRIGHT: It was not possible to. They have to volunteer this information. And Butler is forming a conclusion based on an action by Iraq which is resistance. There is many people believe that Iraq wants all these weapons of mass destruction and it wants nuclear weapons and it's seeking nuclear weapons, because it knows that they have a special cachet in the Middle East. And they are particularly militarily useful and politically useful. If Iraq had nuclear weapons, it would be the only Arab state with nuclear weapons.

BATTISTA: I guess what I'm asking is, if Iraq did have a functioning biological weapons research facility going on, why wouldn't they show it to you unless they were trying to protect themselves against you thinking it was for nefarious purposes?

ALBRIGHT: They certainly showed many of their facilities to the inspectors and those facilities that were shown were destroyed. I think what Butler is talking about is there were additional facilities or additional activities that were not revealed. And it true that Iraq did not fully reveal its biological weapons program and held back.

I think -- realistically, when you look at Iraq and its capabilities, what they were mostly trying to preserve was their people power, their capabilities -- in a sense, their ability to reconstitute their programs once inspections ended or could be undermined, and then to proceed along multiple paths to get weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.

BATTISTA: Sabrina is on the phone from Washington. Sabrina, go ahead.

SABRINA: My comment to him was: I feel, myself, that Bin Laden's next plan of attack was to release this anthrax through people -- he has his cells here for us retaliating in case we did retaliate for the bombings at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

ALBRIGHT: It could be. I mean, it's not his MO. He looks usually for symbolic targets and large casualties. You can't exclude the possibility that this is an attack by Bin Laden to try to create as much terror and disruption here as possible. In that sense, it's succeeding.

BATTISTA: All right, I have to take a quick break here. And we say good-bye to Dr. David Tierno, Bill Daly and David Albright. Thank you all for joining us.

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