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Dying Words of D.C. Postal Worker Raise Troubling Questions; President Bush Tours CDC in Atlanta

Aired November 08, 2001 - 07:00   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: A postal worker's dying words -- his 911 call is the latest piece in the anthrax puzzle. And an intelligence shakeup -- a proposal to shift some power from the Pentagon to the CIA. And making the mail safe -- the anthrax attacks are costing the postal service billions. Will Congress deliver any relief? And defending the homeland -- President Bush prepares for a major speech tonight on safeguard the nation.

Good morning. Thanks so much for being with us on this busy Thursday morning. It is November 8. From New York, I'm Paula Zahn.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Miles O'Brien. Thanks for being with us this morning.

ZAHN: Time to very quickly check in with some of our reporters who are tracking the latest developments on anthrax and homeland security. White House correspondent Kelly Wallace previews the president's speech tonight and what is being done to keep the country safe. And national correspondent Eileen O'Connor reports on a postal worker's 911 call just hours before he died from anthrax. We'll begin with them in just a moment.

O'BRIEN: Also this hour, Washington, D.C.'s chief health officer on whether the worst is over in the anthrax attacks. He'll talk about the 911 call from the postal worker with anthrax. And airline security, the legislative fight to keep security screening in private hands. We'll hear from the lobbyist for one embattled security firm.

ZAHN: First, though, we want to get the very latest headlines. Let's check in with Bill Hemmer in Atlanta, who has our war alert.

BILL HEMMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Paula, good morning. He's what's happening now.

The search continues in the Arabian Sea for a sailor who went overboard yesterday from the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. Details not available now, but the Kitty Hawk is being used as a mobile staging area for U.S. special operations forces. If that sailor is not found it would be the fourth military casualty since the operation began.

A Washington postal worker who later died of anthrax told a 911 operator that same day that he suspected he had the disease. On a tape released yesterday, Thomas Morris, Jr. said he thought he contracted anthrax from a powdery letter processed at the Brentwood mail facility where he worked.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THOMAS MORRIS, JR., ANTHRAX VICTIM: My breathing is labored. My chest feels constricted. I am getting air but to get up and walk and what have you, it feels like I might just pass out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: Morris was admitted to a hospital. He died about 15 hours after making that phone call. And a coworker, Joseph Curseen, died the next day of anthrax. The postal service did not order either man to be treated with antibiotics.

Also, the postal service says that anthrax mail attacks will cost billions and is asking Congress now for a bailout. The postmaster general will make that appeal later today to a Senate panel. And his deputy, John Nolan, says costs have soared while mail volume has dropped.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN NOLAN: There's really two big buckets that you've got here. One is what is the cost to recover from the terrorist attacks that we've had, to keep employees safe and to build an infrastructure going forward that enables us to do the right thing for the security of the mail. That's one bucket.

The other bucket is we've obviously had a dramatic impact on postal revenues over this last two month period since September 11.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: Also in New Jersey, a federal judge has ordered a postal facility closed there until an arbitrator can resolve a union grievance regarding safety. Anthrax detected there at the facility and a hazmat team first decontaminated the wrong equipment then had to go back in and clean up the right one.

A big shake-up reportedly being proposed for U.S. intelligence agencies. According to the "Washington Post," a presidential commission will recommend that the Pentagon's top three intelligence agencies be put under control of the CIA director. The three are the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency and the National Security Agency. Opposition to the idea expected from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and both the House and Senate Armed Services Committee. More on this throughout the morning here.

President Bush will try and reassure Americans about their safety later tonight in what's being billed as a major address on homeland security. The president heads for Atlanta to tour the CDC here in town. That agency on the front lines in the war on bioterrorism, but it's been criticized for its initial handling of the anthrax attacks. The president's address later tonight, 8:00 Eastern time, 5:00 on the West Coast and, of course, CNN will have live coverage when that happens.

A federal court hearing scheduled today in Chicago for Subash Gurung, accused of trying to carry nine knives and other weapons onto a jet liner. In Washington, meanwhile, House and Senate conferees trying to resolve differences over airline security bills. They held their first meeting yesterday and scheduled another one for Tuesday of next week.

President Bush also trying to hit Osama bin Laden in his wallet. The president announced action yesterday to shut down two groups of underground currency exchanges that allegedly funnel money to bin Laden's terror network. Raids were carried out in the Boston area, Columbus, Ohio, Minneapolis and Seattle, among other cities. Investigators believe tens of millions of dollars a year flow overseas through the currency exchanges now targeted.

On the military front, the opposition Northern Alliance forces claim they have captured 280 Taliban troops in fighting near Mazir-i- Sharif. Like past claims, these ones cannot be independently confirmed. In the air war, though, U.S. war planes targeted Taliban front line troops today along the Shamali Plains and also near the strategic air base at Bagram. The bombs fell at 15 to 20 minute intervals over a 10 mile range.

And the City of -- New York City got a big check yesterday from the City of Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville Mayor Dave Armstrong presented New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani with a check for $1.4 million. That's a gift from donors in the Blue Grass State to victims of the attacks from 9-11.

Now, back to New York and again with Paula with more -- Paula.

ZAHN: Thanks, Bill.

Now back to the anthrax attacks. The dying words of a Washington, D.C. postal worker raise the troubling question how could this have happened? How could officials have been unaware of the deadly anthrax danger? The man was one of two workers at the Brentwood facility who died from inhalation anthrax.

National correspondent Eileen O'Connor reports on his 911 call.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

EILEEN O'CONNOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Thomas Morris Jr. needed help.

MORRIS: My breathing is labored, my chest feels constricted. I am getting air, but if I get up and walk and what have you, it feels like I might just pass out.

O'CONNOR: From his home in Maryland, Morris told a 911 operator what he said he had already told his doctor.

MORRIS: I suspect that I might have been exposed to anthrax. It was last Saturday, a week ago, last Saturday morning, at work.

O'CONNOR: That would have been October 13, just four days after a letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle laced with anthrax is postmarked in Trenton, New Jersey, on October 9.

MORRIS: A woman found the envelope and I was in the vicinity. It had powder in it.

O'CONNOR: The letter to Senator Daschle was opened two days after that, on October 15. But some of the senator's staff members claim they remember getting the letter on the 12th, the day before the incident Morris describes, and left it unopened until the 15th. Still, in the following days, while the senator's office was getting tested, Morris asked if he might have been exposed.

MORRIS: They never let us know whether the thing was anthrax or not. They never treated the people who were around this particular individual and the supervisors who handled the envelope.

O'CONNOR: Meanwhile, Capitol Hill staffers, even those nowhere near where the letter was opened, were given the option of taking antibiotics.

MORRIS: I couldn't even find out if the stuff was or wasn't. I was told that it wasn't, but I have a tendency not to believe these people.

O'CONNOR: The postal inspector says the letter Morris described did test negative. Morris told his doctor about the powdery letter that had gone through Brentwood and his concern that he had anthrax.

MORRIS: But he said he didn't think it was that. He thought it probably was a virus or something.

O'CONNOR: Postal authorities say they didn't give out antibiotics to their workers because the CDC said the spores couldn't pass through the envelope. But that doesn't explain why they wouldn't give individuals like Morris, reporting possible exposure from a leakage, antibiotics to be safe.

JOHN NOLAN, DEPUTY POSTMASTER GENERAL: We don't need you all to cause us to second guess. We second guess ourselves all the time and say, you know, what could we have done differently, knowing what we knew then.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Calling for the ambulance.

O'CONNOR: Morris was taken to Greater Southeast Community Hospital, where he died about 15 hours later. His colleague, Joseph Curseen, died the next day.

NOLAN: Of course knowing what we do, we know now, you'd love to be able to have time back. You'd love to be able to find a way to save those two individuals. But unfortunately we didn't know it then.

(END VIDEOTAPE) O'CONNOR: The postal department says that they have instituted new measures. They're using gloves and masks for their workers and they say if there is another scare, obviously they'll do things differently. They have put all of the workers and actually even other workers downstream from the Brentwood facility on antibiotics now, protectively, and they've been on those antibiotics for several weeks -- Paula.

ZAHN: Eileen, thanks so much.

The District of Columbia's chief medical officer says doctors are now more aware of anthrax than they were at the time of that 911 call.

Dr. Ivan Walks joins us now from Washington. Welcome back. Good to see you, sir.

DR. IVAN WALKS, D.C. CHIEF HEALTH OFFICER: Thank you.

ZAHN: What is your reaction when you heard those final words of Thomas Morris?

WALKS: It just made me cold. It's really hard to know that the family of Mr. Morris is listening to that over and over again. They really are the last call for help from a dying man and it's, and you can't be human and not be touched by that.

ZAHN: So within the medical community or the government at large, who's fault is it that he died?

WALKS: I think that when you listen to the entire tape you hear several things that are critical. One is his own doctor, who had no stake in protecting anyone but him, believed, knowing what that doctor knew then, that he didn't have anthrax. You also hear that he was told that what he found didn't contain anthrax but he said he didn't believe it. And that, I think, is the most critical piece for me.

From a public health perspective, if we don't find a way to get a clear message out to people about when they really are at risk and stop all the hoaxes -- people are finding powder all the time. Most of the time it's not anthrax. And that happened to Mr. Morris. The powder he found did not contain anthrax. Everybody said you're fine. The postmaster, everybody is in the Brentwood back room several days after that holding a press conference. All of those officials are now on medication.

There's something about a clear message to the public to let them know when to worry and when not to worry that is really critical here.

ZAHN: So essentially you're saying this is a P.R. debacle.

WALKS: I don't know if it's a P.R. debacle or if it's a combined debacle between how quickly we can find out who's putting anthrax in the mail, how quickly we can get folks to stop pretending this is fun -- it's not fun to put powered someplace and call somebody and say I think it's anthrax. And that level of hoax behavior may have been what caused folks not to be as serious about this. But I know, I know that the medical science back then was so different than what it is now and no one believed that postal workers were at risk from a sealed letter. The letter Mr. Morris talks about was not a sealed letter and did not contain anthrax.

ZAHN: You no doubt are familiar with some of the stinging testimony you heard in a congressional hearing last week coming from some of the doctors who've treated some of these stricken postal workers and I'm going to quickly read a quote from a small part of that testimony when an emergency room doctor said, "It became readily apparent that a lack of coordinated communication and inconsistent leadership from the top was hindering the ability of the medical community to respond in a coordinated fashion."

True?

WALKS: Actually, I think that's true and actually the doctor who I think spoke those words is someone who I consider a hero in this. Those doctors on the front lines...

ZAHN: Dr. Dan Henthling (ph).

WALKS: Dr. Dan Henthling, who I do know, is, I think, one of the heroes. His folks did not listen to the medical experts' conclusions. What they listened to was the move that all of us made her regionally to go from diagnosis reporting to symptom reporting. And when he became suspicious, that hospital Inova Fairfax called the D.C. Health Department and they said I know what you guys are saying, but guess what? What we are seeing doesn't fit with that.

And that mobilized a lot of people. That medical detective work, I think, saved a lot of lives.

ZAHN: These doctors also indicated, their charge was that the CDC demanded more information than they shared with these doctors.

WALKS: One of the challenges that the CDC had is that everybody looks to them as miracle workers. They are, in fact, the top scientists with the top labs and all the hard stuff and fancy questions go to them. They didn't know then what they know now. They've admitted that. They've taken a real public beating for that. And I think a lot of that is really deserved.

But none of us should go back now and say they should have known that because no one -- and I remember talking to people, listening to folks, meeting with people -- no one stood up before the Daschle letter got there and said you guys are crazy, of course the anthrax is going to leak out and give somebody inhalation anthrax.

No one said that then and I think none of us should pretend now that we were smarter then than we were. We weren't that smart then.

ZAHN: There is a particularly harsh article on the front page of the "Washington Post" this morning pointing to some of these weaknesses in the system that we're addressing here this morning. And according to the "Washington Post," the CDC official assigned to actually track new anthrax cases had to rely, according to this report, largely on cable news reports for his information. Isn't that ridiculous?

WALKS: Well, again, I don't think the things that we know we need were in place then and we have a lot of lessons learned from all of that. I think it is ridiculous that we -- but, again, think about how we all learned about the Daschle letter. We all learned about the Daschle letter on television. The president announced this is what had occurred.

And I think television is really a good partner for us now because if we can be honest with the folks who report the news and let the news people know real time what are the hoaxes, what is real, what is not real and you guys can report it real time, then us in the medical community can begin to depend on you as a partner. I don't think we're there yet and I think that that's a real concern.

But I would like to see us move to a point where the public can look to public health officials, look to the media and know they're getting one consistent message.

ZAHN: That would be a great relief to us all, wouldn't it, Dr. Walks?

WALKS: I think it would.

ZAHN: All right, the best of luck to you, as always. Thank you for your candor.

WALKS: Thanks. You're welcome. Take care.

ZAHN: Appreciate your thoughts this morning.

O'BRIEN: As the battle against bioterrorism expands, President Bush today tours the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Kelly Wallace is at the White House with more on the president's day -- good morning, Kelly.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Miles.

As you heard in that interview with Paula and Dr. Walks, a lot of criticism of the federal government in its handling of these cases of anthrax. But senior Bush administration officials say that the president's speech tonight, a major address to the American people, is not in response to that criticism. They say he felt it was a good time to deliver a progress report on the military campaign but also to talk about what the federal government is doing and make sure the American people are safe.

So officials say we should expect Mr. Bush, we saw him yesterday focusing on the financial fight against terrorism, we should expect him to talk a little bit about what White House officials call a new normalcy, urging the American people to continue and go about their normal business but to remain on alert. And yesterday we heard the president's homeland security chief, Tom Ridge, say that Americans should be on alert indefinitely.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM RIDGE, HOMELAND SECURITY DIRECTOR: I think this heightened sense of awareness, I mean one of the challenges is to take the legitimate anxiety and fear that Americans still have and just, we will be on alert indefinitely. But -- and when we have specific information from credible sources, we will appropriately give it to law enforcement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: But it is a challenge for the president to encourage people to continue to remain on an indefinite heightened state of alert. The president, as you see there, will take a tour first of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As we heard, the CDC playing a leading role in investigating these cases of anthrax.

Look for the president in his speech tonight to talk a bit about how the federal government has been learning new information almost every day about how to handle anthrax. Also look for the president to address concerns about another FBI alert, this one issued a week ago, again urging Americans to be on alert, warning of an imminent terrorist attack in the United States or against American interests overseas.

Also, the president expected to call on every day Americans to do their part to make sure Americans are safe.

So all in all, Miles, a bit of a challenge for the president, trying to reassure Americans, as some polls show that just only about half of the American people think the Bush administration has a well thought out plan for dealing with terrorism here in the U.S. -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Kelly, I've got to admit listening to you it's just a lot of mixed messages coming from the administration. I assume there's a lot of talk internally as to how to straighten this all out, how to find that balance. It's difficult when you're learning as you're going along, I guess.

WALLACE: Well, two things. Definitely learning as you go along. As you heard Dr. Walks say, obviously the CDC in the very beginning did not know that anthrax spores could be transmitted from a sealed envelope, which is why the Bush administration, the federal government not testing postal workers at that central mail facility here.

You did have conflicting messages, different statements coming from different parts of the administration. The administration thinks it's rectified that problem by having Tom Ridge really be the point person for information.

But this other point about urging Americans to go about their business while being on a heightened state of alert, officials here say it's not easy but they believe the American people get it. They think people know that, look, these are different times and uncertain times. They should still do their normal things, but that they have to sort of be on a heightened state of alert. They think the American people are getting it here but they know it's a difficult message to send -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: I guess we're all learning together. CNN's Kelly Wallace on the White House lawn, thank you very much.

Now, the financial news, and tightening it. The U.S. takes another step at choking off the money supply to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. Agents fanned out from Boston to Seattle, targeting assets of two money changing networks.

Susan Candiotti has details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In a sweeping bust designed to put a chokehold on Osama bin Laden's finances, U.S. Customs agents raided the offices of the Al Barakaat financial network. Search warrants served in several cities including Dorchester, Massachusetts, Columbus, Ohio, Seattle and Minneapolis.

PAUL O'NEILL, TREASURY SECRETARY: They are a principle source of funding, intelligence and money transfers for bin Laden.

CANDIOTTI: Treasury Department officials charge the Al-Barakaat operation funneled tens of millions of dollars to Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

O'NEILL: Millions of dollars have moved through these U.S. offices of Al Barakaat. This organization is now exposed for what it is, a pariah in the civilized world.

CANDIOTTI: As part of the crackdown, the U.S. froze assets of 62 organizations and individuals mainly linked to the two financial networks, Al Taqua and Al Barakaat. Authorities say the networks operated under the guise of legitimate banking, telecommunication and construction companies.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They provide terrorist supporters with Internet service, secure telephone communications and other ways of sending messages and sharing information. They even arrange for the shipment of weapons.

CANDIOTTI: One of two people charged in the U.S. sweep appeared in court. Mohamed Hussein, identified as a Barakaat financial officer. Hussein is being held without bond for operating a money transfer business without a license. According to a criminal complaint filed in Boston, Hussein was surveilled going from his headquarters in Dorchester, Massachusetts to this bank, where federal agents later seized deposit slips from January through September totaling more than $2 million.

Court documents say the money was tracked to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Authorities say Barakaat skimmed transaction fees from its U.S. customers to fund terrorism.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are sending, you know, for back from our families, you know, the back room. We send, you know, for some money. That's what I'm sure. There is no terrorists here.

CANDIOTTI (on camera): No one in the administration is calling this the knockout punch for Osama bin Laden's financing. They do call it a significant blow and warn round two is coming.

Susan Candiotti, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAHN: And still to come, we will bring you the latest on the Middle East. Joining us here in the studio this morning, former prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. Plus, could you be profiled as a possible terrorist the next time you get on a plane? Kathleen Koch on what you can expect when you check in. And, saying good-bye to Rudy the rock. Jeanne Moos and a fond farewell you don't want to miss.

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