0:00

1942, Europe. Soldiers

0:03

find a boy surviving alone in

0:05

the woods. They make

0:07

him a member of Hitler's army.

0:10

But what no one would know for decades, he

0:13

was Jewish. Could

0:16

a story so unbelievable

0:18

be true? I'm

0:20

Dan Goldberg, and from

0:23

CBC's Personally, Toy Soldier. Available

0:26

now, wherever you get

0:28

your podcasts. This

0:31

is a CBC podcast. I

0:40

mean, this was a huge crime scene. Most

0:42

people don't think about it as a crime

0:44

scene, but it was a crime scene of

0:46

seven blocks. The unthinkable happened

0:49

today. The World Trade Center,

0:51

both towers, gone. Thousands

0:53

are dead and injured. The

0:55

skyline of New York and

0:57

the psyche of the American

0:59

population has been forever changed. Now

1:01

it's obvious, I think. I think

1:03

we have a terrorist act of proportions

1:05

that we cannot begin to imagine

1:07

at this juncture. It

1:11

was the evening of September 11th,

1:13

about 12 hours after the

1:15

terrorist attacks. And Scott Decker, a

1:18

special agent with the FBI, was

1:20

already on the move. He'd

1:22

packed his bags and said goodbye

1:24

to his family in Virginia. I

1:27

was told to grab four of

1:29

the guys, load up our suburban

1:31

with evidence collection equipment, hazmat,

1:33

gear, Tyvek suits,

1:36

masks, gloves. We

1:38

loaded up the trucks that evening. Oh,

1:40

dark 30. September 12, we

1:42

started heading up to New York. I

1:44

think five black suburban in a row. While

1:47

everyone else was trying like hell to

1:49

get out of New York City, Decker

1:51

drove all night to get in.

1:53

As we went through Maryland, we

1:56

went through Delaware on Route 95,

1:58

the main corridor. We got to

2:00

the Delaware Memorial Bridge and big

2:02

alert sign above the traffic. And

2:04

usually the letters are in yellow, but in

2:07

my memory it was orange. I don't know

2:09

why, but I remember orange. And it just

2:11

said in bold letters, New York

2:13

City closed. They

2:16

arrived outside Manhattan near dawn,

2:18

but those orange letters were

2:20

right. New York City was

2:22

closed. Even to the FBI,

2:24

bridges were shut down, land

2:26

lines were out, and cell phones

2:29

weren't working well. So, Decker went to an

2:31

FBI field office in New Jersey, just across

2:33

the river. I saw a Black Hawk

2:35

helicopter sitting on the grass between the office

2:37

and the Pisaic River. And I said, yeah,

2:39

I need to lift over to New York.

2:41

So he said, jump in. And

2:44

we flew over Manhattan, and

2:46

we flew over ground zero.

2:49

Doors opened on the Black Hawk. And

2:51

as we flew over through the

2:53

smoke, we just looked down and

2:55

was just ashes. The

2:58

buildings were in ashes. They were

3:00

just big piles on the ground.

3:03

He landed near ground zero. And

3:06

like everyone there, struggled to

3:08

make sense of what had just happened.

3:10

The morning of the 12th September, things

3:13

were a little up in the air. I

3:15

don't think any of us knew what to

3:17

really expect. But Decker isn't looking at the

3:19

scene the same way as most first responders.

3:22

In fact, he's there for something

3:24

else. What the public didn't

3:26

know at the time is that there

3:28

was another looming threat. We

3:31

expected a secondary attack. There

3:33

was rumors of a biological

3:35

attack. The country took steps

3:37

to get ready for it, unbeknownst

3:39

to the public. There was

3:41

reliable intelligence from the weeks right

3:43

before 9 -11. that Al Qaeda

3:45

was planning a different kind of

3:47

attack in addition to September 11th,

3:49

one involving the release of biotoxins

3:51

into the air. A

3:53

second attack was going to be coming at

3:55

any moment. Decker was

3:57

part of the FBI's new hazardous response

3:59

team. So while everyone else

4:01

was looking at the wreckage, he was on

4:04

high alert, searching for signs

4:06

like unusual illnesses that this

4:08

second attack, this time biological,

4:11

was already underway. What

4:13

no one knew at the time is

4:15

that they were looking in the wrong

4:17

city. The

4:22

Florida man has contracted a very

4:24

rare and potentially deadly form of

4:26

anthrax. As all Americans know, recent

4:28

weeks have brought a second wave

4:30

of terrorist attacks upon our country.

4:32

The deadly bacteria have now turned

4:34

up in the American capital. Deadly

4:37

anthrax spores sent through the US

4:39

mail. One of the

4:41

most lethal weapons of all time,

4:43

comes from an almost indestructible bacteria

4:45

called anthrax. And in

4:47

the fall of 2001, envelopes

4:49

laced with powdered anthrax started showing

4:51

up in the mail. The

4:53

latest letter to have been discovered

4:56

is thought to contain literally billions of

4:58

spores. The letters sent to NBC

5:00

and the New York Post were the

5:02

same. There's a warning. Take penicillin

5:04

now. You cannot stop us. We have

5:06

this anthrax. You die now. Anthrax.

5:09

Anthrax. Are you afraid?

5:16

The anthrax attacks created

5:18

chaos. The U .S.

5:20

Capitol and the Supreme Court were

5:22

contaminated and shut down. Thousands

5:24

of buildings across the country

5:26

were evacuated. And innocent

5:29

people died just from opening their

5:31

mail. The U .S.

5:33

House of Representatives is closing offices

5:35

today until... What is perhaps worrying

5:37

Americans the most is that they

5:39

still have no idea who is

5:41

behind these attacks. What's

5:43

weird? is that almost 25

5:45

years later, most Americans still have

5:47

no idea who was behind

5:49

these attacks. Anthrax was on

5:51

the nightly news for months, and

5:53

then it's like the story just

5:56

disappeared. I've talked to

5:58

hundreds of people about it, and

6:00

no one, it seems, remembers what happened

6:02

with this case. Who

6:04

mailed those letters? Do

6:06

you know? My

6:09

name's Jeremiah Kroll. I'm

6:11

a documentary filmmaker. And I was living

6:13

and working in New York when all this happened. In

6:15

those weeks right after 9 -11, I

6:18

remember the stillness of the streets and

6:20

the collective sense of raw outrage and

6:22

sadness in the city. And

6:24

then, anthrax. I

6:27

felt the fear those letters created. The

6:29

terrifying way they just kept coming,

6:32

one after another. Another

6:34

day of germ warfare and still

6:36

no sign, the worst case of

6:38

bioterrorism in this country is close

6:40

to being solved. Almost two

6:42

decades later, when the pandemic hit, I

6:44

felt that same sense of unpredictable terror

6:46

in the air. It reminded me

6:48

of the anthrax story, and I

6:50

wondered, whatever happened with that? So

6:53

my team and I started digging into it. We

6:56

tracked down people who were involved, either

6:58

affected by the attacks or part of

7:00

the investigation, FBI agents,

7:02

victims, wrongly accused suspects, and

7:05

the stories they shared, many for

7:07

the first time, surprised me. They

7:09

painted a picture of these events

7:11

and their aftermath that revealed how,

7:13

at its core, this was all

7:16

so personal. Like

7:18

stories about investigative mistakes right from

7:20

the start, about civil

7:22

liberties trampled, and about lives

7:24

destroyed. They broke

7:26

the front door, and there are

7:28

agents with oozes and moon suits.

7:31

It's one of the most devastating things

7:33

that's ever happened to me. It'll

7:35

follow me forever. I

7:37

want to look. My fellow

7:39

Americans directly in the eye

7:41

and declare to them, I

7:43

am not the anthrax killer. And

7:47

even after all of that, after the

7:49

seven year odyssey, the FBI went on

7:51

to try to solve this case. Some

7:53

people still wonder if the FBI got

7:56

it right. I would not consider the

7:58

case to be closed. In

8:00

my mind, it certainly is not solved.

8:02

I believe there are others who

8:04

can be charged with murder. This

8:06

is a story about people who have

8:08

to look at chaos and try to make

8:10

sense of it while it's still happening

8:12

and how hard it is to get that

8:14

right. The worst thing that can happen

8:17

to an FBI agent working a criminal investigation

8:19

is to solve it in your mind

8:21

before you really have the evidence. It's

8:23

about the stories we tell ourselves and

8:25

the price we pay when we tell

8:27

the wrong ones. We're

8:29

going to go inside one of

8:31

the largest FBI investigations in history. to

8:34

figure out why we all lost

8:36

track of this case, and to explore

8:38

the aftershocks we still feel today. From

8:41

Wolf Entertainment, this is

8:43

Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Episode

8:47

1, Isolated Incident.

8:54

I want to go back to the beginning

8:56

of this story, through a time when most

8:58

Americans never gave much thought to face masks

9:00

or deadly particles in the air. It's

9:02

October 2nd. 2001, three weeks

9:05

after the attacks of 9 -11, and

9:07

we're in suburban Florida. It's

9:10

the middle of the night and a

9:12

man named Robert Stevens wakes up feeling sick.

9:15

He has chills and a fever. Robert

9:17

Stevens is 63. He's

9:20

a newspaper photo editor who lives in

9:22

Lantana, Florida. That's a coastal town

9:24

about an hour north of Miami. He's

9:26

raised a few kids and is getting close

9:28

to retirement. But when he wakes

9:30

up that night, he feels disoriented, dizzy.

9:32

and things seemed to be getting worse. His

9:35

wife, Maureen, is worried. She

9:38

found him awake in the

9:40

bathroom, vomiting over the toilet bowl.

9:43

Confused. Dr. Larry Bush

9:45

was chairman of infectious diseases and chief

9:47

of staff at the JFK Medical Center

9:49

in West Palm Beach, the hospital

9:51

closest to Robert and Maureen Stevens' house. She

9:54

drove him to the hospital. He walked

9:56

into JFK emergency room at around two

9:58

in the morning. And after

10:00

they put him on a ventilator and

10:02

got a chest radiograph, They sent

10:04

him for a spinal fluid examination looking

10:06

for bacteria. Robert's

10:08

condition gets worse. He

10:10

goes into a coma. Larry

10:12

and his team suspect that he has

10:14

meningitis, an infection that makes the brain

10:16

swell. So he looks at

10:19

Robert's spinal fluid. When I look

10:21

at the microscope, I'm looking to see if I

10:23

could see what type of bacteria this is because

10:25

that's important for how I'm going to treat him.

10:28

In a healthy patient, Larry shouldn't see much

10:30

of anything. You're lucky if

10:32

you can see one or two

10:34

bacteria that help you determine what type

10:36

of bacterial processes may be. His

10:39

was overwhelming. I saw an

10:41

overwhelming amount of pus cells. That's

10:44

a bad sign. That means there's

10:46

habit going on in your nervous

10:48

system. These bacteria

10:50

suggest a cause of infection

10:52

that shocks Larry. They

10:54

almost never ever cause spinal

10:56

fluid infection, meningitis. But

10:58

one does. Anthrax.

11:03

Larry can't get his head around this. Most

11:05

of us are now familiar with

11:08

Anthrax largely because of this case,

11:10

but back then, in 2001, this

11:12

was nuts. Most people

11:14

didn't think about Anthrax at all. And

11:17

for doctors, it was something you read

11:19

about in textbooks, not something you expected to see

11:21

in a patient. There were a lot of

11:23

things going through my mind. There's nothing else that

11:25

explains it. But it just

11:27

doesn't make sense. Anthrax

11:29

is a natural bacteria that

11:31

usually only infects livestock. Cattle

11:34

tend to catch it in dry,

11:36

rural areas. They eat or breathe

11:38

in anthrax cells, called spores, while they're

11:40

grazing. So it's not

11:42

like a guy in suburban Florida is going

11:44

to just accidentally breathe this stuff in while

11:46

going about his life. And if

11:48

he did somehow, he'd be the first

11:50

person in the entire U .S. in almost

11:52

25 years. And that person had

11:54

gotten it from inhaling anthrax spores

11:56

off of wool, shipped over from Pakistan.

11:59

Larry runs more tests. He

12:02

had an overwhelming amount of bacteria, but

12:04

what struck me was the shape and the

12:06

color of these bacteria. He

12:08

sees tiny, blue -stained bacterial

12:11

rectangles, all in a

12:13

line. Imagine looking down on

12:15

a train from high in the air.

12:17

I'm an infectious disease person. I lecture,

12:19

I write on infectious diseases. I look

12:21

at bacteria under my scope every day. I

12:23

knew what I was looking at. In

12:26

retrospect, now knowing how everything

12:28

would play out, this is

12:30

the moment that it all began. Right

12:33

here, for the first time in

12:35

25 years, it seems that someone

12:37

in America has anthrax in their

12:39

lungs. I'm convinced

12:41

this is anthrax. I don't have 100

12:43

% proof. Imagine you're

12:45

him right now. You're the chief of

12:47

staff for the whole hospital, and you're

12:49

very sure that what you see is

12:51

one thing. But that one

12:54

thing is so rare and

12:56

so deadly that when you

12:58

tell people about it, they'll

13:00

either not believe you or

13:02

panic. My fear was creating

13:04

chaos in the hospital. Chaos

13:06

not just in his hospital,

13:08

but also likely all of

13:10

Florida and probably the nation.

13:13

After 9 -11, the whole country

13:15

was bracing for another attack. Larry's

13:18

afraid that this could be it.

13:20

He can't be the only one

13:22

exposed. That's my concern. My

13:24

fear was missing bioterrorism and

13:26

being the person who could blow

13:29

the whistle. He has

13:31

to risk creating that chaos. So

13:33

he does. Larry

13:36

calls Dr. Jean Malecki, a friend

13:38

and colleague who's the health director for

13:40

all of Palm Beach County. But

13:42

she was busy at that moment. I

13:44

was giving an actual seminar

13:46

on bioterrorism. At the time,

13:48

the phone call came in.

13:51

And so we were in the middle of

13:53

that when my secretary rushed over to

13:55

hand me a note from Dr. Bush. So

13:57

I left the seminar and went to

13:59

my office. And I got the call from

14:02

Larry. And he said, oh, Gene, I

14:04

need to talk to you. So make sure your door's closed.

14:07

Larry tells Gene he thinks Robert

14:09

Stevens has anthrax. They

14:12

both know more tests need to be

14:14

done to prove it. So Gene calls

14:16

up the Centers for Disease Control. But

14:18

the CDC pushes back. They

14:20

refuse to believe anyone could catch anthrax

14:22

in suburban Florida. I was told

14:24

by the state of Florida, the

14:27

public health laboratory and the CDC, you

14:29

don't have enough information. And

14:31

I said, wait a minute, I have

14:33

a potential anthrax event occurring in my backyard

14:35

here. I am the chief health officer

14:37

here, and you're telling me not to act

14:39

on this? And that's exactly what

14:41

they were telling me. And I

14:43

said, well, too bad. You're

14:46

getting specimens in the mail.

14:48

You will have them within 12

14:50

hours. Despite the

14:52

CDC's hesitancy and the testing that

14:54

still needs to be done, Larry and

14:56

Jean have little doubt that it's

14:58

anthrax. The real worry on their

15:00

minds is that this could be the beginning

15:02

of another attack by al Qaeda. And

15:06

what they don't know is that the

15:08

FBI is worried about another attack, too.

15:11

The underlying current among government

15:13

and scientists was A

15:15

second wave of attack is coming

15:18

in a very well likely be

15:20

a biological or chemical bomb. Anthrax

15:22

at the top of the list

15:24

is a biological threat agent number

15:26

one. FBI

15:29

Special Agent Scott Decker is one

15:31

of only a few agents to

15:33

have investigated nearly the entire case.

15:35

And he's got skills few other

15:37

FBI agents have. A PhD in

15:39

genetics with a postdoc from Harvard.

15:42

So that's why he's on the FBI's new

15:44

hazmat team that was deployed at ground zero. We

15:46

would be there ready to help

15:48

in case there was a biological

15:51

attack, a chemical attack, or even

15:53

a radiological release. And

15:55

one reason they even had Decker and

15:57

his team on site is because of

15:59

something odd that had happened earlier that

16:01

summer. In August

16:03

of 2001, Weeks before the

16:05

Twin Towers fell, or anyone got

16:07

sick in Florida, the

16:09

FBI uncovered something in Minnesota. And

16:12

that discovery would ultimately set the

16:15

stage for the entire anthrax investigation. One

16:18

of Decker's FBI colleagues was

16:20

right in the middle of it.

16:22

The two flight instructor whistleblowers

16:24

from a suburban... flight school

16:26

had called our office to

16:28

tell the duty agent that they

16:31

were very concerned that there

16:33

was the most suspicious flight student

16:35

they had ever come across. Colleen

16:38

Rowley was an FBI agent in

16:41

Minnesota at the time. He was

16:43

first of all asking questions that

16:45

would never be asked by a

16:47

normal flight student who was trying

16:49

to actually learn how to fly.

16:52

There were things about, you know, communications

16:54

with the ground, things like that that

16:56

had nothing to do with what he said

16:58

was an ego -boosting trip in order to

17:00

learn how to fly a 747. The

17:03

flight student's name was Zacharias

17:06

Musawi. He was a Muslim

17:08

French national. When FBI agents

17:10

interviewed him, they learned his visa had

17:12

lapsed, so they had him detained on

17:14

an immigration violation. Agents

17:16

suspected he was up to something,

17:18

but they couldn't prove it. And

17:20

remember, this is all before 9 -11,

17:22

so he's just one strange guy

17:24

asking strange questions at a flight

17:26

school. They couldn't even get a

17:28

search warrant for his computer. Then,

17:31

September 11th happened. The

17:33

day of 9 -11, we got word

17:36

from the jail that he was

17:38

kind of jumping up gleefully when the

17:40

towers were coming down, looking at

17:42

a television or something. Now,

17:44

they get the search warrant and

17:46

search his computer. The only

17:48

thing that was eventually found on

17:50

his laptop was a lot of

17:52

information about wind and wind directions

17:54

and how to fly like a

17:56

crop duster, things like that. A

17:59

crop duster? A crop duster is

18:01

a small plane used in agriculture

18:03

to spray pesticides. He

18:05

initially says, well, I was involved

18:07

in other plots, but not the 9

18:09

-11 -1. So if he's not involved

18:12

in the 9 -11 -1 and he's in

18:14

a second wave, he actually kind

18:16

of admitted I was going to be

18:18

a second wave. What he's

18:20

saying is that he is a member of Al

18:22

Qaeda and that they were planning a second attack.

18:25

The FBI already know the 9 -11 hijackers

18:27

were studying at flight schools around the US.

18:30

So now agents worry that Musawi was part

18:32

of a bigger plot still to come.

18:34

that he was studying wind direction and crop

18:36

dusters because he and maybe the others

18:38

were planning to spray some kind of poison

18:40

from the air. With all

18:42

of this info in mind, President Bush

18:45

and the Department of Justice take action,

18:47

hoping to prevent whatever that second wave

18:49

might be. Yesterday, the FBI

18:51

issued a nationwide alert

18:53

based on information they received

18:55

indicating the possibility of attacks

18:57

using crop dusting aircraft. They

19:00

ground all crop dusters across

19:02

the country. That solves the

19:05

immediate problem. But they

19:07

still have a larger issue. Are

19:09

there other extremist pilots out there

19:11

waiting to launch an attack? Director

19:13

Mueller and Attorney General

19:15

Ashcroft gave press conferences announcing

19:17

the names of all

19:19

19 hijackers. The director of

19:22

the FBI and I just returned

19:24

from a memorial service at the National

19:26

Cathedral and wanted to take this

19:28

time to give you a report. Announcing

19:31

the names was a call for help

19:33

to the public. If you'd seen something, say

19:35

something. The FBI requests

19:37

that anyone who may

19:39

have information about these

19:41

individuals immediately contact an

19:43

FBI field office or call

19:46

the toll -free hotline. And

19:49

someone did. I'm

19:55

Sarah Chlevin, and for over a

19:57

year, I've been working on one of

19:59

the most complex stories I've ever

20:01

covered. There was somebody out there who

20:04

was faking pregnancies. I started, like,

20:06

warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

20:08

It was fake. No pregnancy. And

20:10

the deeper I dig, the more

20:12

questions I unearth. How long has she

20:14

been doing this? What does she

20:16

have to gain from this? From CBC

20:18

and the BBC World Service, the

20:20

con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story.

20:22

Settle in. Available now. They

20:26

didn't want to learn how to land. They just want to

20:28

learn how to fly. Willie

20:30

Lee is a crop dusting pilot who

20:32

had an eerily similar story to the

20:34

one in Minnesota. Suspicious

20:36

acting men from the Middle

20:39

East asking unusual questions about

20:41

planes. You know, that would

20:43

tip me off right off the bat. But

20:45

Willie isn't in Minnesota. He's halfway

20:47

across the country at a different crop

20:50

dusting business. He'd been

20:52

flying crop dusting planes for decades. On

20:54

any given day during his regular

20:56

job, he'd pack as much as 500

20:58

gallons of pesticides into his AirTractor

21:00

502 crop plane. He'd fly

21:02

incredibly low to the ground to avoid spraying

21:04

homes and people. We'd fly two or

21:06

three feet off the ground whenever we were

21:08

spraying. It takes some

21:10

experience to do it. But these

21:13

men didn't sound like they wanted that experience.

21:15

They were asking about tank capacity

21:17

and flight distances. It

21:19

sounded off. So

21:22

six weeks before September 11th, Willie

21:24

called the police. But

21:30

the police didn't do

21:32

anything about it. They

21:34

couldn't really. No one had done anything

21:36

illegal. After

21:39

9 -11, when Willie saw

21:41

the names and pictures of the

21:43

hijackers on television, he knew he'd

21:45

been right to be suspicious. Because

21:47

some of the men who'd visited him

21:49

were the same men who flew the planes

21:51

into the Twin Towers. In

21:54

fact, one of them was

21:57

Mohamed Atta, the chief US

21:59

operative who directed the attack. Whaling

22:01

his team called the FBI. This

22:04

time, they took action. So

22:07

now the FBI has a question to answer.

22:10

Why were Al Qaeda members in at least

22:12

two different places around the country trying to

22:14

learn how to fly crop dusters? And

22:16

meanwhile, there's another team with a

22:18

question the FBI hasn't heard about yet.

22:21

Dr. Bush and his colleagues, who are

22:23

trying to figure out how a

22:25

man in suburban Florida has anthrax. And

22:28

now those two mysteries are about to

22:30

collide. Because the

22:32

airfield that the 9 -11 terrorists visited,

22:35

Willy's airfield, it's less

22:37

than an hour away from the home

22:39

of anthrax patient, Robert Stevens. Back

22:42

in that hospital, Robert Stevens'

22:44

health is deteriorating. And

22:46

Dr. Bush still doesn't know for certain what

22:48

he's dealing with. Eight o

22:50

'clock the next morning, I call Jacksonville

22:52

Reference Lab and I say, what

22:54

was the result? And he said to

22:57

me, I shouldn't tell you that. I

22:59

said, wow, that's a

23:01

bold answer. I said, well, there's two things with that

23:03

answer. I said, first of all, I'm the treating

23:05

doctor. I'm taking care of this patient.

23:07

I'm responsible for him. I sent the lab

23:10

to you. I said, and by

23:12

you telling me you shouldn't tell me that, you just

23:14

told me that. He said, I

23:16

gotta go. I said, where you

23:18

going? He says, I have to call the people

23:20

I work for. You hung up.

23:23

The people he works for are high up

23:25

on the chain. In an

23:27

instant, the CDC calls the National Department

23:29

of Health, who calls the White House, who

23:31

calls the Department of Justice. And

23:34

now, finally, the FBI

23:36

learns Anthrax is in Florida.

23:39

Because of his background in science,

23:41

Agent Scott Decker knows an anthrax

23:43

infection shouldn't have happened in Florida. So

23:46

for the FBI who'd been worried for

23:48

weeks about some kind of biological attack,

23:50

likely from the air, maybe involving crop

23:53

dusters, if this isn't the work of

23:55

the same 9 -11 terrorists, who they

23:57

now know took flight lessons at an

23:59

airfield only an hour away, it's

24:01

an awful lot of coincidences. We

24:03

didn't know if it was an act of

24:06

terrorism, so that was the first thing we had

24:08

to do is prove one way or another. And

24:11

in order to do this, prove

24:13

it's terrorism, Decker and the FBI need

24:15

to know what kind of anthrax

24:17

this is. Because anthrax comes in strains,

24:19

like the flu. And

24:21

if they can figure out the strain,

24:23

that might tell agents where or how

24:25

Stevens got infected. He had been

24:27

up in North Carolina when he

24:29

got sick visiting his daughter. And

24:31

they had gone to a state

24:33

park. There was a thought

24:35

that he had got infected up there,

24:37

one of the plants or the bad

24:39

water or something. FBI agents head to

24:41

the state park to look for any

24:43

signs that Stevens could have been infected

24:45

in nature. But the scarier

24:48

scenario is that the anthrax came from

24:50

a laboratory. Because if it's from

24:52

a lab, there's a good chance somebody spread it

24:54

on purpose. To figure this

24:56

out, the FBI knows exactly who

24:58

to turn to. We agreed to

25:00

call up Dr. Paul Keim in

25:02

Arizona, Northern Arizona University. He was

25:04

the unquestioned expert in the country.

25:08

Yeah, so I was doing my

25:10

normal college professor stuff at

25:12

the beginning of a fall semester

25:14

here in Flagstaff, Arizona. And

25:16

out of the blue, acquaintance of mine

25:18

from the FBI called me up and said,

25:21

hey, we have an unusual case of

25:23

anthrax down in Florida. Dr.

25:26

Paul Keim hoped to find the

25:28

source of the anthrax in a biological

25:30

database he'd been creating for decades. For

25:34

the last 30 years I've

25:36

been involved in trying to

25:38

develop DNA methods for precisely

25:41

identifying strains of dangerous pathogens

25:43

so that we can identify

25:45

where they came from, link

25:47

them together with outbreaks, and

25:49

in particular how they're related

25:51

to biological weapons. So

25:54

as Robert Stevens is lying in

25:56

a coma, investigators put a sample

25:58

of his spinal fluid on a

26:00

private jet and fly it halfway

26:02

across the country directly to Paul.

26:04

And so it was like, wow.

26:07

It felt like all the blood was leaving

26:09

my body at that point because it's

26:11

like, this isn't an academic exercise anymore. This

26:13

is the real thing. So

26:15

after I hung up, I quickly went

26:17

around and found all the anthrax DNA fingerprinting

26:19

people. I told them I expected to

26:21

have the anthrax back in the lab by

26:24

about eight o 'clock in the evening. So

26:26

I said, you know, take care of

26:28

whatever you need, but be back here around

26:30

eight o 'clock and be prepared to start

26:32

doing the analysis. A

26:34

few hours later, Paul gets in his

26:36

truck and heads to the small

26:38

local airport in Flagstaff. He

26:40

doesn't know quite what to expect. The

26:43

general aviation guy just went and opened up

26:45

the gate and let me drive out on

26:47

the tarmac, you know? And Gulfstream's a pretty

26:49

impressive plane. And so it landed

26:51

right around sunset. Then

26:53

this woman, this blonde woman,

26:56

came walking down the stairs with

26:58

a box. And as she

27:00

stepped onto the tarmac, you

27:02

know, all I could think about was the

27:04

movie, Casa Blanca, where Humphrey Bogart is

27:06

on the tarmac with Ingrid Bergman. And

27:08

I thought, would that make me Humphrey

27:10

Bogart? Then I

27:12

kind of slapped my face and said, get your head back

27:14

in the game, you know. Paul

27:17

may not be in a Hollywood movie right

27:19

now, but in a way, he is a detective.

27:22

And in this very moment, the

27:24

fate of American biosecurity is

27:26

quite literally in his hands. So

27:28

he takes that package and drives it

27:30

back to his lab. And there he

27:32

goes into the biosafety suite and opens

27:34

the box. And as a box, you

27:36

know, like, I know, 18 inches by

27:38

18 inches by 18 inches, a cardboard

27:40

box, and inside of it was a

27:42

styrofoam pack and then a crush -proof

27:44

pack. And inside that is

27:47

a vial with the spores found in

27:49

Robert Stevens' spinal fluid. When

27:51

you're looking at it by eye on

27:53

a culture, it's kind of this white,

27:55

creamy stuff. That kind of like mayonnaise

27:57

smeared on top of Jell -O. We

27:59

knew for sure it was anthrax because

28:01

it had a DNA fingerprint pattern that

28:03

was very consistent. with bacillus anthracis. It's

28:06

anthrax, 100%. Once Paul

28:08

knows that, he needs

28:10

to figure out what

28:12

strain it is. And

28:15

my laboratory had been developing DNA

28:17

fingerprinting methods to identify the different

28:19

strains from around the world. And

28:21

if it was a laboratory strain,

28:24

this wasn't an accident in the

28:26

wake of 9 -11. Paul

28:28

and his team work through the

28:30

night. By morning, they have an answer.

28:32

It was a laboratory strain, you

28:34

know, and so how does a laboratory

28:36

strain end up infecting a gentleman

28:38

in Florida? Think

28:41

about this. Here's a

28:43

college science professor, an expert in

28:45

theoretical bioterrorism. And now he's seeing

28:47

right up close anthrax from what

28:50

appears to be an actual bioterrorist.

28:52

Instantly, we knew that this was

28:54

a biological weapons event because it

28:56

had to be an intentional act.

28:58

And in the wake of 9

29:01

-11, Al Qaeda was the number

29:03

one suspect. Paul's

29:05

lab is the only place in

29:07

the world that now knows the very

29:09

threat weighing on Agent Scott Decker

29:11

and the FBI is the real deal.

29:14

At that point, if there were

29:16

any doubts that this was a bioterrorism event, they

29:18

were gone. For

29:24

the moment, the story hasn't spread to

29:26

the media. Paul Keim and the FBI

29:28

have only a short window to try

29:30

to get answers before the bad news

29:32

spreads. And they're all wondering the

29:34

same thing. Was it the 9

29:37

-11 hijackers who deployed this anthrax? Gene

29:39

Malecki, the health director in

29:41

Florida, worries about that too. In

29:44

Palm Beach County, we use crop

29:46

dusters all the time. They go up

29:49

and down all the time spraying

29:51

our vegetables and our fruits. If

29:53

there was an aerial attack, Is

29:55

it possible the 9 -11 hijackers, or

29:57

people working with them, had dropped anthrax

29:59

in an area that included Robert

30:01

Stevens' backyard? Is that how it ended

30:03

up in his system? Stevens'

30:05

home was less than a mile from an airstrip, so

30:08

his house could have easily been in the

30:10

path of travel. My focus

30:12

was to go to the home,

30:14

to speak to everybody there,

30:16

to take samples, to investigate the

30:18

entire... of the home, inside

30:20

the home, to look at potential

30:23

sources for anthrax. Gene takes

30:25

a biohazard crew to scour the

30:27

property from top to bottom.

30:29

The home itself was three bedrooms,

30:31

probably two baths, lice little

30:33

kitchen and living room. The powder

30:35

is so fine that if

30:37

it was sprayed from the sky,

30:40

it could be anywhere. In

30:42

the backyard, they had lots of

30:44

plants and lots of trees. We

30:46

looked for any type of white

30:48

powder substances that could have been

30:50

in the trees or on the

30:52

ground. I remember distinctly bending down

30:54

and taking samples off of various

30:56

bushes that were in the backyard.

30:59

On the surface, nothing looks suspicious.

31:02

There's no obvious white powder anywhere. But

31:05

Jean sends samples she's taken to her lab.

31:07

She then heads back to the

31:09

hospital to check on Robert Stevens

31:11

and discovers... A deadly disease putting

31:13

a Lantana man in the hospital.

31:15

The story was out. Muhammad

31:17

Atta, who was the lead terrorist on

31:19

board one of the flights that

31:21

crashed into the World Trade Center, apparently

31:23

took flight lessons in Palm Beach

31:25

County at a flight school. Anthrax can

31:27

enter the body in three ways.

31:29

It can be swallowed, seeped through cuts

31:31

in the skin, and the most

31:33

deadly way, inhaled. State

31:35

and federal health officials hurry to

31:37

put together press conferences to

31:40

address everyone's concerns. This individual is

31:42

being cared for by a

31:44

very well -trained and expert team

31:46

of physicians from within the hospital

31:48

in Palm Beach. As

31:50

one of those well -trained physicians, Dr.

31:52

Larry Bush is called upon to answer

31:54

some tough questions. The difficult part for

31:56

me in that press conference was Marine

31:58

Stevens was sitting in the front and

32:00

they said to me, is Bob Stevens

32:02

going to die? Larry knows

32:04

that historically inhalation anthrax is likely

32:07

fatal. But he's conflicted about

32:09

sharing the worst case scenario. Meanwhile,

32:19

the press keep on with their

32:22

questions, and the CDC seems entirely focused

32:24

on hitting the same reassuring note

32:26

over and over again. I

32:28

want to stress two things. First

32:30

of all, that this is an

32:32

isolated case. And second, that this

32:34

is not contagious. This is a

32:37

very serious illness. But once again,

32:39

it's an isolated case. But I

32:41

do want to stress again. I

32:43

want to reiterate, this is an

32:45

isolated case. This is an isolated

32:47

case. The disease is not contagious.

32:51

If the hope was to keep people calm,

32:53

to reassure the media that this situation was

32:55

nothing to worry about, It

32:57

didn't work. The Centers for Disease

32:59

Control has just confirmed the

33:01

diagnosis of anthrax in a patient

33:03

in a Florida hospital. There's

33:06

more media in the area because things

33:08

are leaking out than you can imagine.

33:11

The parking lots full of every type of media

33:13

there is. The chaos

33:15

Dr. Larry Bush was afraid

33:17

of is here. All

33:19

this coming just a day

33:21

after the FBI warned Americans

33:23

that another terrorist attack could

33:25

be imminent. The hospital is

33:27

going crazy. People are calling the hospital

33:29

and want their loved ones transferred because

33:32

we have anthrax in the hospital. The

33:34

Florida man has contracted a very rare

33:36

and potentially deadly form of anthrax. The

33:38

outside of the hospital was one of

33:40

those things like you see when, you

33:42

know, somebody's coming out of a courthouse

33:44

and everybody's rushing them with a microphone

33:46

to get some type of sound bite.

33:48

It was, you know, really chaotic. Everyone

33:51

is now watching Larry's team closely

33:53

to understand what this one case of

33:56

anthrax might mean for the rest

33:58

of the world. And the

34:00

news he has is not looking good. Bob

34:02

Stevens is in the ICU. He's

34:04

not doing well. Robert Stevens'

34:06

health is failing quickly. And

34:09

Larry fears the worst. With

34:11

the story out in the world, panic is

34:13

going to grow. And the public wouldn't

34:15

be wrong to worry. It seems

34:17

Robert Stevens may be patient

34:19

zero of a colossal new

34:21

attack. Agent

34:24

Decker and the FBI now

34:26

face what could be the largest

34:28

bioterror threat in American history. So

34:31

the question on their minds is, if

34:33

Al Qaeda does have anthrax, what will

34:35

they do with it next? The

34:37

worst case is if somebody had

34:39

succeeded in making a pound of

34:41

powder that would float into the

34:44

air and drift over a population.

34:46

Hundreds, thousands of people would breathe this

34:49

in and probably die. But

34:51

it seems that agents are closing

34:53

in on their suspects fast. The

34:55

confirmation of a plan for a second

34:57

wave attack, the pilots learning about crop

34:59

dusters, the airstrip near

35:01

Stephen's house, it's all adding up. The

35:03

FBI just needs a little hard

35:06

evidence, a link that proves who did

35:08

this so they can stop more

35:10

deaths. I get a call

35:12

to come down and see this woman and

35:14

I said to the emergency room doctor, you know,

35:16

this is getting a little overwhelming. You're calling me

35:18

for every cough that's walking in there. I said,

35:20

why this one? They said, this

35:22

woman's got an interesting story. But

35:26

of course, it's not going to be

35:28

that easy. The information

35:30

they're about to get will

35:32

send the FBI down a rabbit

35:34

hole of false suspects, shocking

35:36

twists, and damning revelations, including a

35:38

liar in their midst. This

35:41

season on Aftermath, the hunt

35:44

for the anthrax killer. No

35:46

witnesses, no fingerprint, no

35:48

personal DNA. And then there's another

35:50

case, and then another, and

35:52

another. There was such enthusiasm

35:54

over a conspiracy theory that had

35:56

no basis. I felt betrayed.

35:58

It'll haunt me for the rest

36:00

of my life. American and

36:02

coalition forces are in the early

36:04

stages of military operations to

36:06

disarm Iraq. As Saddam Hussein could

36:08

have produced 25 ,000 liters of

36:10

this deadly material. Do you

36:12

think they're going to submit evidence

36:14

that implicates them? This is

36:16

United States. Half of the FBI

36:18

field office from Washington is at your

36:20

home. This is not a joke. What is

36:22

everybody, a dead man walking? Aftermath,

36:33

The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

36:35

is a production of Wolf Entertainment,

36:37

USG Audio, and Digg Studios, in

36:39

collaboration with CBC Podcasts. The series

36:41

is hosted by me, Jeremiah Kroll.

36:43

It's created, written, and executive produced

36:46

by Scott Tiffany and me at

36:48

Digg Studios. Aftermath is

36:50

executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliot

36:52

Wolf, and Stephen Michael at Wolf Entertainment,

36:54

Josh Block at USG Audio, and

36:56

John Yael Kassner at Spoke Media. The

36:59

series is produced by Kelly Kulf.

37:01

Story editing by Jean -Yel Cassner.

37:03

Sound design and mix by Evan

37:05

Arnett. Original composition by John O 'Hara.

37:08

Production by Spoke Media. Production

37:10

support for USG Audio by

37:12

Josh LaLonghi. Tanya Springer is the

37:14

senior manager of CBC Podcasts.

37:17

Arif Narani is the director of

37:19

CBC Podcasts. Thank you for

37:21

listening. Tune

37:28

in next week for an all -new

37:31

episode of Aftermath, The Hunt for the

37:33

Anthrax Killer. Or you can binge the

37:35

whole series ad -free by subscribing to CBC

37:37

True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts.