0:01

Weeks after 9 -11, a

0:03

second wave of terror struck the

0:05

US, but this time the

0:07

weapon was invisible. Anthrax

0:09

-laced letters sent the nation

0:11

into panic, shutting down government

0:14

buildings and overwhelming law enforcement. The

0:17

FBI launched one of the

0:19

largest investigations in its

0:21

history, unraveling a complex web

0:23

of scientific clues, human

0:25

error, and personal cost. The

0:28

gripping new podcast series, Aftermath,

0:30

Hunt for the Anthrax Killer,

0:32

takes you deep inside the

0:34

case, from the science that

0:36

cracked it, to the mistakes

0:38

that nearly derailed it. With

0:41

exclusive access to declassified

0:43

materials and first -hand accounts,

0:45

this eight -part series

0:47

from Wolf Entertainment, CBC

0:49

Podcasts, and USG Audio

0:51

reveals how the attacks

0:53

reshaped America. and the

0:55

hidden consequences that still

0:58

linger today. Now

1:00

stay tuned for a sneak peek

1:02

of Episode 1. I

1:10

mean this was a huge crime scene. Most

1:12

people don't think about it as a crime

1:14

scene, but it was a crime scene of

1:16

seven blocks. The unthinkable happened

1:18

today. The World Trade Center,

1:20

both towers. It

1:32

was the evening

1:35

of September 11th,

1:37

about 12 hours

1:39

after the terrorist attacks. And

1:41

Scott Decker, a special agent with the

1:43

FBI, was already on the move. He'd

1:47

packed his bags and said goodbye

1:49

to his family in Virginia. I

1:52

was told to grab four of

1:54

the guys, load up our Suburbans with

1:56

evidence collection equipment, hazmat,

1:58

gear, Tyvek suits,

2:00

masks, gloves. We

2:02

loaded up the trucks that evening, ODark

2:05

30. September 12, we started

2:07

heading up to New York. I think

2:09

five black Suburbans in a row. While

2:12

everyone else was trying like hell to

2:14

get out of New York City, Decker

2:16

drove all night to get in.

2:19

As we went through Maryland, we went

2:21

through Delaware on Route 95, the

2:23

main corridor. We got to the Delaware

2:25

Memorial Bridge and the big alert

2:27

sign above the traffic. And usually

2:29

the letters are in yellow, but in my

2:31

memory it was orange. I don't know

2:33

why, but I remember orange. And it just

2:35

said in bold letters, New

2:38

York City closed. They

2:41

arrived outside Manhattan near dawn.

2:43

But those orange letters were

2:45

right. New York City was

2:47

closed. Even to the FBI,

2:49

bridges were shut down, land

2:51

lines were out, and cell phones

2:53

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

2:55

FBI field office in New Jersey, just across

2:57

the river. I saw a Black Hawk

3:00

helicopter sitting on a grass between the office

3:02

and the Pisaic River. And I said, yeah,

3:04

I need to lift over to New York.

3:06

So he said, jump in. And

3:09

we flew over Manhattan, and

3:11

we flew over Ground Zero. Doors

3:14

opened on the Black Hawk. And

3:16

as we flew over through the

3:18

smoke, we just looked down and it

3:20

was just ashes. The

3:23

buildings were in ashes. They were

3:25

just big piles on the ground.

3:28

He landed near ground zero. And

3:30

like everyone there, struggled

3:32

to make sense of what had just

3:34

happened. The morning of the 12th

3:37

September, things were a little up in

3:39

the air. I don't think any

3:41

of us knew what to really expect. But

3:43

Decker isn't looking at the scene the same way

3:45

as most first responders. In fact,

3:47

he's there for something else. What

3:50

the public didn't know at the time

3:52

is that there was another looming threat. We

3:56

expected a secondary attack. There was

3:58

rumors of a biological attack. The

4:01

country took steps to get ready for

4:03

it, unbeknownst to the public. There

4:06

was reliable intelligence from the weeks

4:08

right before 9 -11. that Al -Qaeda

4:10

was planning a different kind of

4:12

attack in addition to September 11th,

4:14

one involving the release of biotoxins

4:16

into the air. A

4:18

second attack was going to be

4:20

coming at any moment. Decker was part

4:22

of the FBI's new hazardous response

4:24

team. So while everyone else

4:26

was looking at the wreckage, he was on

4:28

high alert, searching for signs

4:30

like unusual illnesses that this

4:33

second attack, this time biological,

4:35

was already underway. What

4:38

no one knew at the time

4:40

is that they were looking in the wrong

4:42

city. The

4:46

Florida man has contracted a very

4:49

rare and potentially deadly form of

4:51

anthrax. As all Americans know, recent

4:53

weeks have brought a second wave

4:55

of terrorist attacks upon our country.

4:57

The deadly bacteria have now turned

4:59

up in the American capital. Deadly

5:01

anthrax spores sent through the US

5:03

mail. One of the

5:05

most lethal weapons of all time,

5:08

comes from an almost indestructible bacteria

5:10

called anthrax. And in the

5:12

fall of 2001, envelopes laced with

5:14

powdered anthrax started showing up in

5:16

the mail. The latest letter to

5:18

have been discovered is thought to

5:20

contain literally billions of spores. The

5:23

letters sent to NBC and the New

5:25

York Post were the same. There's a warning.

5:27

Take penicillin now. You cannot

5:29

stop us. We have this anthrax.

5:31

You die now. Anthrax. Anthrax.

5:34

Are you afraid? The

5:41

anthrax attacks created chaos.

5:44

The US Capitol and the Supreme

5:46

Court were contaminated and shut down. Thousands

5:49

of buildings across the country

5:51

were evacuated. And innocent

5:53

people died just from opening their

5:55

mail. The US House

5:57

of Representatives is closing offices

5:59

today until today. What is perhaps

6:01

worrying Americans the most is that they

6:04

still have no idea who is

6:06

behind these attacks. What's weird?

6:08

is that almost 25 years

6:10

later, most Americans still have no

6:12

idea who was behind these

6:14

attacks. Anthrax was on the

6:16

nightly news for months, and then

6:18

it's like the story just disappeared. I've

6:21

talked to hundreds of people about

6:24

it, and no one, it seems, remembers

6:26

what happened with this case. Who

6:28

mailed those letters? Do

6:31

you know? My

6:33

name's Jeremiah Kroll. I'm a documentary

6:35

filmmaker. And I was living and working

6:37

in New York when all this

6:39

happened. In those weeks right after

6:41

9 -11, I remember the stillness of

6:43

the streets and the collective sense of

6:45

raw outrage and sadness in the city. And

6:48

then, anthrax.

6:51

I felt the fear those letters created. The

6:54

terrifying way they just kept coming,

6:56

one after another. Another

6:58

day of germ warfare and still

7:00

no sign, the worst case of

7:02

bioterrorism in this country is close

7:04

to being sold. Almost two

7:06

decades later, when the pandemic hit, I

7:08

felt that same sense of unpredictable terror

7:11

in the air. It reminded me

7:13

of the anthrax story, and I

7:15

wondered whatever happened with that. So

7:18

my team and I started digging into it. We

7:20

tracked down people who were involved, either

7:22

affected by the attacks or part of

7:24

the investigation, FBI agents,

7:27

victims, wrongly accused suspects,

7:29

and the stories they shared, many

7:31

for the first time, surprised me.

7:34

They painted a picture of these

7:36

events and their aftermath that revealed

7:38

how, at its core, this was

7:40

all so personal. Like

7:42

stories about investigative mistakes right from

7:44

the start, about civil

7:46

liberties trampled, and about

7:48

lives destroyed. They

7:50

broke the front door, and

7:52

there are agents with Oozies and

7:55

Moonsuits. It's one the most

7:57

devastating things that's ever happened to

7:59

me. It'll follow me forever. I

8:01

want to look. My fellow

8:03

Americans directly in the eye

8:06

and declared to them, I

8:08

am not the anthrax killer.

8:11

And even after all of that, after

8:13

the seven year odyssey, the FBI

8:15

went on to try to solve this

8:17

case. Some people still

8:19

wonder if the FBI got it right.

8:21

I would not consider the case

8:23

to be closed. In my mind, it

8:25

certainly is not solved. I believe

8:27

there are others who can be charged

8:29

with murder. This is a

8:31

story about people who have to look at

8:33

chaos and try to make sense of

8:35

it while it's still happening and how hard

8:38

it is to get that right. The

8:40

worst thing that can happen to an FBI

8:42

agent working a criminal investigation is to

8:44

solve it in your mind before you really

8:46

have the evidence. It's about the

8:48

stories we tell ourselves and the price

8:50

we pay when we tell the wrong

8:52

ones. We're going

8:54

to go inside one of the largest

8:56

FBI investigations in history. to figure

8:59

out why we all lost track of

9:01

this case, and to explore the

9:03

aftershocks we still feel today. From

9:06

Wolf Entertainment, this is

9:08

Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer.

9:12

Episode 1, isolated

9:14

incident. I

9:27

want to go back to the beginning of

9:29

this story, through a time when most Americans

9:31

never gave much thought to face masks or

9:33

deadly particles in the air. It's

9:36

October 2, 2001, three weeks

9:38

after the attacks of 9 -11, and

9:41

we're in suburban Florida. It's

9:43

the middle the night, and a man

9:45

named Robert Stevens wakes up feeling sick. He

9:48

has chills and a fever. Robert

9:51

Stevens is 63. He's

9:53

a newspaper photo editor who lives in

9:55

Lantana, Florida. That's a coastal town about

9:57

an hour north of Miami. He's

9:59

raised a few kids and is getting close

10:01

to retirement. But when he wakes up

10:03

that night, he feels disoriented, dizzy,

10:05

and things seem to be getting worse. His

10:09

wife Maureen is worried. She

10:12

found him awake in the

10:14

bathroom, vomiting over the toilet bowl,

10:16

confused. Dr. Larry Bush

10:18

was chairman of infectious diseases and chief

10:20

of staff at the JFK Medical Center

10:22

in West Palm Beach. The hospital closest

10:24

to Robert and Maureen Stevens house. She

10:27

drove him to the hospital. He walked

10:29

into JFK emergency room at around two

10:31

in the morning. And after

10:33

they put him on a ventilator and

10:35

got a chest radiograph, they sent him

10:37

for a spinal fluid examination and looking

10:39

for bacteria. Robert's

10:41

condition gets worse. He

10:44

goes into a coma. Larry

10:46

and his team suspect that he is

10:48

meningitis, an infection that makes the brain

10:50

swell. So he looks at Robert's

10:52

spinal fluid. When I look at

10:54

the microscope, I'm looking to see if I

10:56

could see what type of bacteria this is because

10:58

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

11:00

them. In a healthy patient,

11:02

Larry shouldn't see much of anything. You're

11:05

lucky if you can see one or

11:07

two bacteria that help you determine what

11:09

type of bacterial processes may be. His

11:12

was overwhelming. I saw

11:14

an overwhelming amount of pus cells.

11:17

That's a bad sign. That means

11:19

there's havoc going on in your

11:21

nervous system. These bacteria

11:23

suggest a cause of infection

11:26

that shocks Larry. They almost

11:28

never ever cause spinal fluid

11:30

infection, meningitis. But one

11:32

does. Anthrax.

11:38

Larry can't get his head around this.

11:40

Most of us are now familiar with

11:43

anthrax largely because of this case.

11:45

But back then, in 2001,

11:47

this was nuts. Most people

11:50

didn't think about anthrax at all.

11:52

And for doctors, it was

11:54

something you read about in textbooks, not something you

11:56

expected to see in a patient. There were a

11:58

lot of things going through my mind. There's nothing

12:00

else that explains it. But

12:02

it just doesn't make sense. Anthrax

12:05

is a natural bacteria that

12:07

usually only infects livestock. Cattle

12:09

tend to catch it in dry,

12:11

rural areas. They eat or breathe in

12:13

anthrax cells, called spores, while they're

12:15

grazing. So it's not like

12:17

a guy in suburban Florida is gonna just

12:20

accidentally breathe this stuff in while going

12:22

about his life. And if he

12:24

did somehow, he'd be the first person

12:26

in the entire U .S. in almost 25

12:28

years. And that person had

12:30

gotten it from inhaling anthrax spores off

12:32

of wool, chipped over from Pakistan. Larry

12:35

runs more tests. He had

12:37

an overwhelming amount of bacteria, but what struck

12:39

me was the shape and the color

12:41

of these bacteria. He

12:43

sees tiny blue stained bacterial rectangles

12:45

all in a line. Imagine looking

12:47

down on a train from high

12:50

in the air. I'm an infectious

12:52

disease person. I lecture, I write

12:54

on infectious diseases. I look at

12:56

bacteria under my scope every day.

12:58

I knew what I was looking

13:00

at. In retrospect, now

13:02

knowing how everything would play out, this

13:05

is the moment that it all

13:07

began. Right here, for the

13:09

first time in 25 years, it

13:11

seems that someone in America has

13:13

anthrax in their lungs. I'm

13:17

convinced this is anthrax. I don't have

13:19

a hundred percent proof. Imagine

13:21

you're him right now. You're the

13:23

chief of staff for the whole

13:25

hospital, and you're very sure that

13:27

what you see is one thing.

13:30

But that one thing is so

13:32

rare and so deadly that when

13:34

you tell people about it, they'll

13:36

either not believe you, or panic.

13:39

My fear was creating chaos

13:41

in the hospital. Chaos

13:43

not just in his hospital, but

13:45

also likely all of Florida

13:47

and probably the nation. After

13:49

9 -11, the whole country was

13:51

bracing for another attack. Larry's

13:54

afraid that this could be

13:56

it. He can't be the only one

13:58

exposed. That's my concern. My

14:01

fear was missing bioterrorism and

14:03

being the person who could blow

14:05

the whistle. He has

14:07

to risk creating that chaos. So

14:09

he does. Larry

14:12

calls Dr. Jean Malecki, a friend

14:14

and colleague who is the health director

14:16

for all of Palm Beach County. But

14:19

she was busy at that moment. I

14:21

was giving an actual seminar on bioterrorism

14:23

at the time the phone call

14:25

came in. And so we were in

14:27

the middle of that when my

14:29

secretary rushed over to hand me a

14:31

note from Dr. Bush. So I

14:33

left the seminar and went to my

14:36

office. And I got the call

14:38

from Larry. And he said, oh, Gene,

14:40

I need to talk to you. So make sure your

14:42

door's closed. Larry

14:44

tells Gene he thinks Robert

14:46

Stevens has anthrax. They

14:48

both know more tests need to be done

14:50

to prove it. So Gene calls up the

14:52

Centers for Disease Control. But

14:54

the CDC pushes back. They refused

14:56

to believe anyone could catch

14:59

anthrax in suburban Florida. I

15:01

was told by the state of Florida, the

15:03

public health laboratory and the CDC, you

15:05

don't have enough information. And

15:07

I said, wait a minute, I have

15:10

a potential anthrax event occurring in my backyard

15:12

here. I am the chief health officer

15:14

here. And you're telling me not to act

15:16

on this? And that's exactly what

15:18

they were telling me. And I

15:20

said, well, too bad. You're

15:22

getting specimens in the mail

15:24

and you will have them within

15:26

12 hours. Despite

15:28

the CDC's hesitancy and the testing

15:30

that still needs to be done, Larry

15:32

and Jean have little doubt that

15:34

it's anthrax. The real worry

15:36

on their minds is that this could be

15:38

the beginning of another attack by al -Qaeda.

15:42

And what they don't know is that

15:44

the FBI is worried about another attack

15:46

too. The underlying

15:48

current among government and scientists

15:50

was A second wave

15:53

of attack is coming in

15:55

a very well likely be a

15:57

biological or chemical bomb. Anthrax

15:59

at the top of the list is

16:01

a biological threat agent number one. FBI

16:05

Special Agent Scott Decker is one

16:07

of only a few agents to

16:09

have investigated nearly the entire case.

16:12

And he's got skills that few other

16:14

FBI agents have. A PhD

16:16

in genetics for the postdoc from Harvard. So

16:19

that's why he's on the

16:21

FBI's new hazmat team that was

16:23

deployed at ground zero We would

16:25

be there ready to help

16:27

in case there was a biological

16:29

attack a chemical attack or even

16:32

a radiological release and One reason

16:34

they even had Decker and his

16:36

team on site is because

16:38

of something odd that had happened

16:40

earlier that summer in August of

16:42

2001 weeks before the Twin Towers

16:44

fell or anyone got sick

16:46

in Florida The FBI uncovered something

16:48

in Minnesota, and that discovery would

16:51

ultimately set the stage for the

16:53

entire anthrax investigation. One

16:55

of Decker's FBI colleagues was right in the

16:58

middle of it. The two

17:00

flight instructor whistleblowers from a

17:02

suburban flight school had called

17:04

our office to tell the

17:06

duty agent that they were

17:08

very concerned that there was

17:11

the most suspicious flight student

17:13

they had ever come across. Colleen

17:16

Rowley was an FBI agent in

17:18

Minnesota at the time. He was,

17:20

first of all, asking questions that

17:22

would never be asked by a

17:24

normal flight student who was trying

17:27

to actually learn how to fly.

17:29

There were things about, you know, communications

17:32

with the ground, things like that that had

17:34

nothing to do with what he said

17:36

was an ego -boosting trip in order to

17:38

learn how to fly a 747. The

17:41

flight student's name was Zacharias

17:43

Musawi. He was a Muslim French

17:45

national. When FBI agents

17:47

interviewed him, they learned his visa had

17:49

lapsed. So they had him detained on

17:51

an immigration violation. Agents suspected

17:53

he was up to something, but they

17:56

couldn't prove it. And

17:58

remember, this is all before 9 -11.

18:00

So he's just one strange guy asking

18:02

strange questions at a flight school. They

18:05

couldn't even get a search warrant for his computer. Then,

18:08

September 11th happened. The

18:11

day of 9 -11. We got word

18:13

from the jail that he was

18:15

kind of jumping up gleefully when the

18:17

towers were coming down, looking at

18:19

a television or something. Now

18:21

they get the search warrant and

18:24

search his computer. The only

18:26

thing that was eventually found on

18:28

his laptop was a lot of information

18:30

about wind and wind directions and

18:32

how to fly like a crop duster,

18:34

things like that. A

18:36

crop duster? A

18:38

crop duster is a small plane used in

18:40

agriculture to spray pesticides. He

18:43

initially says, well, I was involved

18:45

in other plots, but not the 9

18:47

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

18:49

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

18:51

a second wave, he actually kind

18:53

of admitted I was going to be

18:55

a second wave. What he's

18:58

saying is that he's a member of Al Qaeda

19:00

and that they were planning a second wave

19:02

attack. They already know the

19:04

9 -11 hijackers were studying at flight schools

19:06

around the United States. So now

19:08

agents worry that Musawi was part of a

19:10

bigger plot still to come. that he

19:12

was studying wind direction in crop dusters because

19:14

he and maybe the others were planning

19:16

to spray some kind of poison from the

19:18

air. With all of

19:20

this info in mind, President Bush

19:23

and the Department of Justice

19:25

take action, hoping to prevent whatever

19:27

that second wave might be.

19:29

Yesterday, the FBI issued a nationwide

19:31

alert based on information they

19:33

received indicating the possibility of attacks

19:35

using crop dusting aircraft. They

19:38

ground all crop dusters across

19:40

the country. That solves the

19:42

immediate problem. But they

19:44

still have a larger issue. Are

19:46

there other extremist pilots out there

19:48

waiting to launch an attack? Director

19:51

Mueller and Attorney General

19:53

Ashcroft gave press conferences announcing

19:55

the names of all

19:57

19 hijackers. The director of

19:59

the FBI and I just returned

20:01

from a memorial service at the National

20:03

Cathedral and wanted to take this

20:05

time to give you a report. Announcing

20:08

the names was a call for help to the

20:10

public. If you'd seen something, say

20:13

something. The FBI requests

20:15

that anyone who may

20:17

have information about these individuals

20:19

immediately contact an FBI

20:21

field office or call

20:23

the toll -free hotline. And

20:26

someone did. They

20:39

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

20:41

learn how to fly. Willie

20:44

Lee is a crop dusting pilot who

20:46

had an eerily similar story to the

20:48

one in Minnesota. Suspicious

20:50

acting men from the Middle

20:52

East asking unusual questions about

20:54

planes. You know, that

20:56

would tip me off right off the

20:58

bat. But Willie isn't in

21:01

Minnesota. He's halfway across the country

21:03

at a different crop dusting business. He'd

21:05

been flying crop dusting planes for

21:07

decades. On any given day during his

21:09

regular job, he'd pack as much

21:12

as 500 gallons of pesticides into his

21:14

AirTractor 502 crop plane. He'd

21:16

fly incredibly low to the ground to

21:18

avoid spraying homes and people. But

21:24

these men didn't sound

21:26

like they wanted that

21:28

experience. They were asking

21:30

about tank capacity and flight distances.

21:33

It sounded off. So

21:36

six weeks before September 11th, Willie

21:38

called the police. But

21:44

the police didn't do anything

21:46

about it. They couldn't really.

21:48

No one had done anything

21:50

illegal. After

21:53

9 -11, when Willie saw

21:55

the names and pictures of the

21:57

hijackers on television, he knew he'd been

21:59

right to be suspicious. Because

22:01

some of the men who'd visited him

22:03

were the same men who flew the planes

22:05

into the Twin Towers. In

22:09

fact, one of them was Mohamed

22:11

Atta, the chief U .S. operative

22:13

who directed the attack. Whaling

22:15

his team called the FBI. This

22:18

time, they listened. So

22:21

now the FBI has to figure out

22:23

why we're al -Qaeda members in at

22:25

least two different places around the country

22:27

trying to learn how to fly crop

22:29

dusters. And then, totally

22:31

separately, there's the question that

22:33

Dr. Larry Bush is asking. How

22:35

does a man in suburban

22:37

Florida have anthrax? And

22:39

these two mysteries are about to collide.

22:42

Because the airfield that the

22:44

9 -11 terrorists visited, Willie's airfield,

22:47

it's less than an hour from the

22:49

hospital where Robert Stevens is in

22:51

a coma. Back

22:58

in that hospital, Robert Stevens'

23:00

health is deteriorating. And

23:02

Dr. Bush still doesn't know for certain what he's

23:04

dealing with. Eight o 'clock

23:06

the next morning, I call Jacksonville

23:08

Reference Lab and I say, what was

23:10

the result? And he said to

23:13

me, I shouldn't tell you that. I

23:15

said, wow, that's a

23:17

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

23:19

that answer. I said, first of all, I'm

23:21

the treating doctor. I'm taking care of this patient.

23:23

I'm responsible for him. I sent the lab

23:25

to you. I said, and by you

23:27

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

23:30

told me that. He said, I

23:32

gotta go. I said, where you

23:34

going? He says, I have to call the people I work

23:36

for. He hung up.

23:39

The people he works for are high up

23:41

on the chain. In an

23:43

instant, the CDC calls the National Department of

23:45

Health, who calls the White House, who

23:47

calls the Department of Justice. And

23:50

now, finally, the FBI

23:52

learns Anthrax is in Florida.

23:55

Because of his background in science,

23:57

Agent Scott Decker knows an anthrax

23:59

infection have happened in Florida. So

24:02

for the FBI who'd been worried for

24:04

weeks about some kind of biological attack,

24:06

likely from the air, maybe involving crop

24:08

dusters, if this isn't the work of

24:11

the same 9 -11 terrorists, who they

24:13

now know took flight lessons at an

24:15

airfield only an hour away, it's

24:17

an awful lot of coincidences. We

24:19

didn't know if it was an act of

24:21

terrorism, so that was the first thing we had

24:23

to do is prove one way or another. And

24:30

in order to do this, prove

24:32

it's terrorism, Decker and the FBI need

24:34

to know what kind of anthrax

24:36

this is. Because anthrax comes in strains,

24:38

like the flu. And if

24:40

they can figure out the strain,

24:42

that might tell agents where or how

24:44

Stevens got infected. He had been

24:46

up in North Carolina when he got

24:49

sick visiting his daughter, and they

24:51

had gone to a state park. There

24:53

was a thought that he had got

24:55

infected up there, one of the plants

24:57

or the bad water or something. FBI

25:00

agents head to the state park to

25:02

look for any signs that Stevens could have

25:04

been infected in nature. But the

25:06

scarier scenario is that the anthrax came

25:08

from a laboratory, because if it's from

25:10

a lab, there's a good chance somebody

25:12

spread it on purpose. To

25:14

figure this out, the FBI knows exactly

25:16

who to turn to. We agreed

25:18

to call up Dr. Paul

25:20

Keim in Arizona, Northern Arizona University.

25:22

He was the unquestioned expert

25:25

in the country. Yeah,

25:27

so I was doing my normal

25:29

college professor stuff at the beginning

25:31

of a fall semester here in

25:34

Flagstaff, Arizona. And out of

25:36

the blue, an acquaintance of mine from the

25:38

FBI called me up and said, said,

25:40

hey, we have an unusual case of

25:42

anthrax down in Florida. Dr.

25:45

Paul Keim hoped to find the

25:47

source of the anthrax in a biological

25:49

database he'd been creating for decades. For

25:53

the last 30 years I've

25:56

been involved in trying to

25:58

develop DNA methods for precisely

26:00

identifying strains of dangerous pathogens

26:02

so that we can identify

26:04

where they came from, link

26:06

them together with outbreaks, and

26:09

in particular how they're related

26:11

to biological weapons. So

26:13

as Robert Stevens is lying in

26:15

a coma, investigators put a

26:17

sample of his spinal fluid on a

26:19

private jet. and fly it halfway

26:21

across the country directly to Paul. And

26:24

so it was like, wow. It

26:26

felt like all the blood was leaving

26:28

my body at that point because it's

26:30

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

26:32

is the real thing. So

26:34

after I hung up, I quickly went

26:37

around and found all the anthrax DNA fingerprinting

26:39

people. I told them I expected to

26:41

have the anthrax back in the lab by

26:43

about eight o 'clock in the evening. So

26:45

I said, you know, Take care of

26:47

whatever you need, but be back here around

26:49

eight o 'clock and be prepared to start

26:51

doing the analysis. A

26:53

few hours later, Paul gets in

26:55

his truck and heads to the small

26:57

local airport in Flagstaff. He

27:00

doesn't know quite what to expect. The

27:02

general aviation guy just went and opened up

27:04

the gate and let me drive out on

27:06

the tarmac, you know, and Gulfstream's a pretty

27:08

impressive plane. And so it

27:10

landed right around sunset. Then

27:13

this woman, this blonde woman,

27:15

came walking down the stairs with

27:17

a box. And as she

27:19

stepped onto the tarmac, you

27:21

know, all I could think about was the

27:23

movie Casa Blanca, where Humphrey Bogart is

27:25

on the tarmac with Ingrid Bergman. And

27:28

I thought, that'd make me Humphrey

27:30

Bogart. And then I

27:32

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

27:34

in the game, you know. Paul

27:36

may not be in a Hollywood movie right

27:38

now, but in a way, he is a

27:40

detective. And in this very

27:42

moment, the fate of American

27:44

biosecurity is quite literally in his

27:46

hands. So he takes

27:48

that package and drives it back to his

27:50

lab. And there he goes into the

27:52

biosafety suite and opens the box. And

27:55

there's a box, you know, like, I

27:57

know, 18 inches by 18 inches by 18

27:59

inches, a cardboard box. And inside of

28:01

it was a styrofoam pack and then a

28:03

crush -proof pack. And inside that

28:05

is a vial with the spores

28:07

found in Robert Stevens' spinal fluid. When

28:10

you're looking at it by eye on

28:12

a culture, it's kind of this white,

28:14

creamy stuff. That kind of like mayonnaise

28:16

smeared on top of Jell -O. We

28:18

knew for sure it was anthrax because

28:20

it had a DNA fingerprint pattern that

28:23

was very consistent with Bacillus anthracis. It's

28:26

anthrax, 100%. Once Paul

28:28

knows that, he needs

28:30

to figure out what

28:32

strain it is. And

28:35

my laboratory had been developing

28:37

DNA fingerprinting methods to identify the

28:39

different strains from around the

28:41

world. And if it was a

28:43

laboratory strain, this wasn't an

28:45

accident in the wake of 9 -11. Paul

28:48

and his team worked through the night. By

28:50

morning, they have an answer. It

28:52

was a laboratory strain, you know, and

28:54

so how does a laboratory strain

28:56

end up infecting a gentleman in Florida?

29:01

Think about this. Here's a college

29:03

science professor, an expert in

29:05

theoretical bioterrorism. And now he's seeing

29:07

right up close anthrax from

29:09

what appears to be an actual

29:11

bioterrorist. Instantly, we knew that

29:13

this was a biological weapons event

29:15

because it had to be

29:17

an intentional act. And in the

29:19

wake of 9 -11, Al Qaeda

29:21

was the number one suspect. Paul's

29:25

lab is the only place in the

29:27

world that now knows the very threat

29:29

weighing on Agent Scott Decker and the

29:32

FBI. is the real deal. At

29:34

that point, if there were any doubts

29:36

that this was a bioterrorism event, they were

29:38

gone. For

29:44

the moment, the story hasn't spread to

29:46

the media. Paul Keim, Scott

29:48

Decker, and the FBI have only a

29:50

short window to try to get answers before

29:52

the bad news spreads. And

29:54

they're all wondering the same thing. Was

29:56

it the 9 -11 hijackers who deployed

29:58

this anthrax? Gene Malecki,

30:01

the health director in Florida, worries

30:03

about that too. In

30:05

Palm Beach County, we use crop

30:07

dusters all the time. They go up

30:09

and down all the time, spraying

30:11

our vegetables and our fruits. If

30:14

there was an aerial attack, is it

30:16

possible the 9 -11 hijackers, or people

30:18

working with them, had dropped anthrax in

30:20

an area that included Robert Stevens' backyard? Is

30:23

that how it ended up in his system? Stevens'

30:26

home was less than a mile from an

30:28

airstrip. So his house could have easily been

30:30

in the path of travel. My

30:32

focus was to go to

30:34

the home, to speak to

30:36

everybody there, to take samples,

30:39

to investigate the entire outside

30:41

of the home, inside the

30:43

home, to look at potential

30:45

sources for anthrax. Gene

30:47

takes a biohazard crew to scour

30:49

the property from top to bottom.

30:51

The home itself was a three

30:53

bedrooms, probably two baths, lice little

30:55

kitchen and living room. The powder

30:57

is so fine that if it

30:59

was sprayed from the sky, it

31:01

could be anywhere. In the

31:03

backyard they had lots of plants and

31:05

lots of trees. We looked

31:07

for any type of white powder

31:09

substances that could have been in

31:11

the trees or on the ground.

31:13

I remember distinctly bending down and

31:15

taking samples off of various bushes

31:17

that were in the backyard. On

31:20

the surface, nothing looks suspicious. There's

31:23

no obvious white powder anywhere. But

31:25

Jean sends samples she's taken to her

31:27

lab. She then heads back

31:29

to the hospital to check on

31:31

Robert Stevens and discovers... A deadly

31:33

disease putting a Lantana man in

31:35

the hospital. The story was out. Mohammad

31:38

Atta, who was the lead terrorist on

31:40

board one of the flights that crashed

31:42

into the World Trade Center, apparently took

31:44

flight lessons in Palm Beach County at

31:46

a flight school. Anthrax can enter the

31:48

body in three ways. It can be

31:50

swallowed, steeped through cuts in the skin,

31:53

and the most deadly way, inhale. State

31:59

and federal health officials hurry to

32:01

put together press conferences to address

32:03

everyone's concerns. This individual

32:05

is being cared for by a

32:08

very well -trained and expert team

32:10

of physicians from within the

32:12

hospital in Palm Beach. As

32:14

one of those well -trained physicians,

32:16

Dr. Larry Bush is called upon to

32:18

answer some tough questions. The difficult

32:20

part for me in that press

32:22

conference was Marine Stevens was sitting

32:25

in the front and they said

32:27

to me, is Bob Stevens going

32:29

to die? Larry knows that historically, inhalation

32:31

anthrax is likely fatal, but

32:33

he's conflicted about sharing the worst -case

32:35

scenario. But I'm looking at Maureen Stevens

32:37

and I said, well, you know, he's

32:39

seriously ill, he's on the right

32:41

medication, and we have hope that he could survive. Meanwhile,

32:44

the press keep on with their

32:46

questions, and the CDC seems entirely focused

32:48

on hitting the same reassuring note

32:50

over and over again. I

32:52

want to stress two things. First

32:55

of all, that this is an

32:57

isolated case. And second, that this

32:59

is not contagious. This is a

33:01

very serious illness. But once again,

33:03

it's an isolated case. But I

33:05

do want to stress again. I

33:07

want to reiterate, this is an

33:10

isolated case. This is an isolated

33:12

case. The disease is not contagious.

33:15

If the hope was to keep people calm,

33:17

to reassure the media that this situation was

33:19

nothing to worry about, It didn't

33:21

work. There's

33:30

more media in the area because things

33:32

are leaking out than you can imagine.

33:35

The parking lots full of every type of media

33:37

there is. The chaos

33:39

Dr. Larry Bush was afraid of

33:41

is here. All this

33:44

coming just a day after the

33:46

FBI warned Americans that another terrorist attack

33:48

could be imminent. The hospital is

33:50

going crazy. People are calling the hospital

33:52

and want their loved ones transferred

33:54

because we have anthrax in the hospital.

33:56

The Florida man has contracted a

33:58

very rare and potentially deadly form of

34:00

anthrax. The outside of the hospital

34:02

was one of those things like you

34:04

see when, you know, somebody's coming

34:06

out of a courthouse and everybody's rushing

34:08

them with a microphone to get

34:10

some type of sound bite. It was,

34:12

you know, really chaotic. Everyone

34:15

is now watching Larry's team closely.

34:18

To understand what this one case of

34:20

anthrax might mean for the rest

34:22

of the world. And the

34:24

news he has is not looking good. Bob

34:27

Stevens is in the ICU. He's

34:29

not doing well. Robert Stevens'

34:31

health is failing quickly. And

34:33

Larry fears the worst. With

34:35

the story out in the world, panic is

34:37

going to grow. And the public

34:40

wouldn't be wrong to worry. It

34:42

seems Robert Stevens may be

34:44

patient zero of a colossal

34:46

new attack. Agent

34:51

Decker and the FBI now

34:53

face what could be the largest

34:55

bioterror threat in American history. So

34:58

the question on their minds is if

35:00

Al Qaeda does have anthrax? What will they

35:02

do with it next? The

35:05

worst case is if somebody

35:07

succeeded in making a large

35:09

amount. It's possible hundreds could

35:11

die, definitely hundreds, possibly thousands.

35:14

But it seems that agents are

35:16

closing in on their suspects fast. The

35:19

confirmation of a plan for a second

35:21

wave attack, the pilots learning about crop dusters,

35:24

the airstrip near Stephen's house, it's all

35:26

adding up. The FBI just needs

35:28

a little hard evidence, a link that

35:30

proves who did this so they

35:32

can stop more deaths. I

35:35

get a call to come down and see

35:37

this woman and I said to the emergency room

35:39

doctor, you know, this is getting a little overwhelming.

35:41

You're calling me for every cough that's walking

35:43

in there. I said, why this one? They

35:45

said, this woman's got an interesting

35:47

story. But

35:49

of course, it's not going to

35:51

be that easy. The

35:53

information they're about to get will

35:56

send the FBI down a

35:58

rabbit hole of false suspects, shocking

36:00

twists, and damning revelations, including

36:02

a liar in their midst. This

36:05

season on Aftermath, the hunt

36:07

for the anthrax killer. No

36:09

witnesses, no fingerprints, no

36:11

personal DNA. And then there's another

36:14

case, and then another, and

36:16

another. There was such enthusiasm over

36:18

a conspiracy theory that had

36:20

no basis. I felt betrayed. American

36:22

and coalition forces are in

36:25

the early stages of military operations

36:27

to disarm Iraq. At Saddam

36:29

Hussein could produced 25 ,000 liters

36:31

of this deadly material. Do you

36:33

think they're going to submit

36:35

evidence that implicates them? This is

36:38

United States. Half of the

36:40

FBI field office Washington is at your

36:42

home. This is not a joke. What

36:44

is everybody at man Be

36:55

sure to follow Aftermath,

36:58

hunt for the anthrax killer,

37:00

available now wherever you

37:02

get your