Tabloid employees line up for anthrax tests

By ANDREW GUMBEL

If it weren't so grimly serious, it could almost be funny. The corporate headquarters of America's sleaziest supermarket tabloids, the place where the editors of the National Enquirer, Sun and Star usually spend all day dreaming up "UFO Aliens Ate My Grandmother" headlines, has been overrun by government inspectors in white moon suits and green boots murmuring darkly about bioterrorism and the risks of contamination by a deadly disease.

Less than a month after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, America is being forced to wake up to a new horror: the strong likelihood that it has received its first taste of biological warfare.

Two cases of anthrax have been diagnosed so far, and one man has died. The health inspectors who began testing the American Media building in Boca Raton, Florida, over the weekend discovered further traces of anthrax on the dead man's computer keyboard, and the possibility of further cases has not been ruled out.

Government officials have yet to confirm that they have launched a full-scale criminal investigation, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken control of the health inspection teams and the likelihood of foul play is growing so strong as to be virtually irrefutable.

By yesterday, something akin to panic was spreading out from Boca Raton across the country. The office building had turned into a crime scene out of a science fiction movie, and hundreds of American Media employees, their families and casual contacts were lining up for anthrax tests and a hefty dose of precautionary antibiotics.

One of Florida's two senators, Bob Graham, was widely quoted yesterday as having asked the head of the federal Centers for Disease Control what the chances were of an outbreak of anthrax in an office building through anything other than human intervention. "His words were, 'nil to none'," Senator Graham said.

The alarm bells were first sounded last Thursday, when Bob Stevens, a British-born photographer and lay-out editor at a tabloid called The Sun, was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of airborne anthrax. He had returned home early from a holiday in North Carolina complaining of flu-like symptoms when he started vomiting and running a high fever. Last Tuesday, he was rushed to hospital and lost consciousness within hours. By Friday, he was dead.

At first, health experts and government officials insisted this was an isolated case and urged people, including Mr Stevens' family and co-workers, not to panic. But then, over the weekend, a 73-year-old mailroom supervisor called Ernesto Blanco was found to be carrying anthrax spores. He was in hospital with an unrelated heart problem and was tested twice before the anthrax showed up. He is not believed to have developed symptoms and is expected to recover.

Now authorities have called a third person, 67-year-old librarian Martha Moffett, back for further testing. She was in hospital with pneumonia last week and initially tested negative for anthrax. The disease can take up to seven days to develop, however, and can then incubate for a further 60 days, so health officials are taking no chances.

At America's latest "ground zero", the American Media building was off-limits to all but "hazmat" (hazardous materials) inspectors in their white body suits who worked through Monday night and yesterday morning. The car park outside was jammed with police vehicles, unmarked refrigeration trucks, two large moving vans bearing Budget rent-a-car logos and a handful of cars belonging to BellSouth telephone engineers apparently called to the scene to set up a telecommunications system for a swarm of FBI special agents.

Eight kilometres away in Delray Beach, employees of American Media, their families and recent visitors to the building lined up at a public health clinic for a second day to be tested for anthrax and to fill out detailed questionnaires about their precise movements within the office and about any suspicious or unusual activity they may have spotted.

Each of them had their nostrils swabbed, and the samples were rubbed on a red petri dish, sealed and packed in a van for transportation to a CDC laboratory. The results are expected to take several days, possibly weeks, to establish.

As a precaution, most of the adults were given a 15-day supply of the antibiotic Cipro, with instructions to obtain more, along with a blood test, from their usual doctors. Children and pregnant women were prescribed a more common but less effective antibiotic, amoxycillin, to avoid any dangerous side-effects.

If the employees and their families had any deep forebodings, they were largely forced to keep them to themselves. FBI agents monitored their every move around the health clinic, and a number who were approached by reporters said they had been warned by their employer not to talk to the press on pain of being fired.

A number of the September 11 hijackers stayed in Delray Beach during the summer. Their apparent ringleader, Mohamed Atta, flew planes out of Lantana airport, just a mile from Bob Stevens' house, in mid-August and is also believed to have asked about cropduster planes - perhaps for use in a biological attack - at another airfield some 64km away.

Officials have found no concrete link between the hijackers and the anthrax outbreak. And they have not excluded the possibility that a biological attack was launched after September 11, by any number of possible suspects including people who have developed a grudge against the tabloids for their take-no-prisoners reporting style. According to a report in The Miami Herald, citing unnamed sources, health inspectors believe anthrax entered the building around September 23-25.

When used as a weapon, anthrax would most likely be distributed via an aerosol-style spray, making it likely it came in through the air-conditioning system. Less likely, investigators say, is that it came into the buildling through the mail.

The FBI is developing lists of people with access to the building, including interns, former employees, guests, couriers and deliverymen. They are also looking at members of a construction crew who have been building a new cafeteria.

Meanwhile, Florida governor Jeb Bush, the president's brother, announced that extra supplies of antibiotics were being shipped into Palm Beach County as a precaution. "This is all pretty new," Mr Bush said. "To be honest with you, I'm not an expert on anthrax. I never thought I would need to be."

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