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Postmaster General Speaks on Anthrax Threat to Postal Employees and Customers

Aired October 24, 2001 - 07:37   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The numbers in the anthrax story continue to change and that's where our focus goes right now at this part of the morning. To date, there are 12 known cases of anthrax infection. Of this, six are the most serious form, inhalation anthrax, and three people have died from it. There are also six cases of skin anthrax, which is more easily treated. All told, there are at least 32 known instances of anthrax exposure.

As we mentioned earlier, for the first time ever some postal customers are now being told to begin taking antibiotics. They are business bulk mail customers who may have dropped off loads of mail at an anthrax tainted facility in New Jersey and postal workers have been infected by anthrax laden letters. All this puts the postal service on the front line of bioterrorism.

And Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer of the U.S. Postal Service John Potter joins us from Washington this morning.

Welcome, thank you very much for being with us this morning, sir.

JOHN POTTER, POSTMASTER GENERAL: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: First of all, your reaction to this alert in New Jersey and in particular, the focus on customers who are now being asked to take antibiotics.

POTTER: Well, the customers that are being asked to take antibiotics are the ones in Washington, D.C. who leave their vehicles and come into our facility where in -- at the Brentwood facility. We're asking anyone who was in that Brentwood facility in the last 10 days to have themselves tested and treated with antibiotics.

ZAHN: And then you, of course, heard (ph) in New Jersey this morning the bulk mail customers who may have dropped off large packages at this facility near Trenton are being asked to do the same.

POTTER: Exactly.

ZAHN: Let's move on to the whole debate about where you find yourself at the moment. To many it would seem that you are under the direct control of the CDC right now. You guys are getting beaten up for treating post office workers differently than politicians. I wanted to give you a chance to defend your turf here this morning, were you simply following the guidelines of the CDC?

POTTER: Well, we sought out the best medical experts in the world and certainly the Department of Health Human Services, the CDC, the Surgeon General are -- you know we feel that they're the best experts in the world and we were following their direction. And at the time, we were -- we were informed and we had -- we were not able to get those physical letters. They were part of evidence that, you know, was being analyzed by the FBI. We were told that there was very slight chance that there would of -- any of the anthrax could have escaped from those envelopes. And if it had -- on the, you know, faint chance that it had, it would probably be of a cutaneous type which would be a skin anthrax. So, you know, we used that information to make judgments about, you know, how we should respond to the anthrax threat.

ZAHN: But now, of course, that whole landscape has changed, so what now? How much more aggressively are you going to deal with the prospect of anybody having come in contact with anthrax either through a machine poking holes in a letter and escaping that way or through someone opening a letter?

POTTER: Well, we are out on the market buying electro beams -- electron beam equipment that can penetrate the mail and kill any bacteria in the mail. We're going to begin receiving that equipment in early November. Our long-term plan is to make sure that all mail that comes in has either been treated or is from a known source, a manufacturer of mail like a periodical magazine or advertising mail. So we're going to make sure that we have a system that -- where we irradiate mail and eliminate -- sanitize the mail, so to speak, eliminate any anthrax in the mail.

Short term, however, we've been working closely with the CDC, first of all, to determine the size of the anthrax spores. We are going to move out very quickly, beginning today, to get masks on our employees throughout the country in locations where there might be dust raised from the mail.

We are also working very feverishly to make sure that we have a reporting system so that if people go to the hospital, they notify the medical physicians that they are postal employees that we are informed so that we can communicate to others who might work in their area to be on guard. And we're going to take and work, again, very aggressively to test and treat those employees who might be in an affected area.

ZAHN: You mentioned the issue of masks, and I know that you know -- as you know, many postal workers are very concerned in the interim whether they're safe or not. And you've got William Smith who is the president of the New York Metro Area Postal Workers Union accusing the United States Post Office of not providing adequate safety needs -- respirator masks, gloves and equipment -- because of cost concerns. What do you say to him this morning?

POTTER: This is absolutely not a cost issue. What -- we're reacting to the situation that's extremely fluid. You know we could have easily gone out last week and said to everybody wear a mask, but if you're not giving somebody a proper mask, you know it's like a false sense of security.

So we again are working with all the officials that we can, the medical officials, to determine what it is that we can do to protect our employees. Certainly gloves, the proper mask, not just any mask, will be, you know, distributed beginning today. We're going to start on the East Coast where the threat is and move through the rest of the country. This is a major logistical undertaking. We have some 800,000 employees so, you know, we're moving out in that direction.

Let me just say one thing, though, if I could, Paula.

ZAHN: Sure.

POTTER: You know we in the postal service are mourning the loss of two of our employees. We're also very concerned and praying for those employees who may have been infected by anthrax. You know today and now is not a time to spend looking back. We're working very closely with Governor Ridge and the Homeland Security group because this truly is a homeland security issue. We're working as a team with the rest of the federal government. You know we are not perfect. You know people can look back and suggest that we might have made a change here or there, but we did what we thought was best in the postal service based on the information that we were fed. The key here is, though, we lost two employees and we're mourning the loss of those employees.

ZAHN: Mr. Potter, the final question for you this morning, do you see any need to shut down the postal system across the country for a couple days, like the airline industry did, to take an inventory of security at offices all over the country?

POTTER: Right now the risk -- we have -- we have very defined incidents in four locations around the country. I don't believe that there is a need to shut down the postal service. You know life is filled with risk and you know you could -- you could die crossing a street, you can die driving a car and that's not to minimize what's going on here because we did lose two of our own, but it's to suggest that, you know, you just don't shut the postal service down. You know if you think about it, how would you ever start it up. You know there are no guarantees that there aren't you know -- there isn't anthrax anywhere, and if someone were to say, you know, give me a guarantee that there's no anthrax in any location throughout America, I don't think there are people who could do that.

ZAHN: All right, Postmaster General John Potter, again, thank you for joining us this morning. We very much appreciate your time.

POTTER: Thank you. And thank you for your concern about postal employees.

ZAHN: Yes, we are -- I think the whole nation is deeply concerned about their welfare. Lord knows we're completely reliant on them in many of our businesses and our homes, of course, are dependent on their services as well.

Thank you very much, Mr. Potter. POTTER: Thank you again.

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