Sunday. This was a Mysterious Illness that caught everybodys attention. Highly lethal, and it started to spread, people died. This was on the heels of 9 11. It was chaos. We didnt know what was going to happen next. We knew it was intentional but we didnt know who was doing it. [theme music] welcome to how it really happened. Im jesse l. Martin. A suspicious letter arrives in the mail. Inside the envelope, a white powder. The fbi responds because today, thoughts immediately turned to terrorism. That fear was born out of an attack in september 2001. Just one week after the tragedy of 9 11, powderlaced letters began to make their way through the us postal system. The potential of murder by mail gripped the country with fear and launched one of the largest investigations in fbi history. This is how it really happened. [music playing] [people screaming] get out get out look out look out look out today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. It was something that the imagination didnt capture. That is about as frightening a scene as you will ever see. I spent that entire day in the president ial bunker, trying to ground every civilian aircraft which had suddenly become a missile. Terrorism is about disruption and creating fear, and it just woke us up to a very different world. [siren wailing in distance] the entire country was in shock. We were all kind of in that situation where we didnt know what was going to happen next. The first thing we thought of as the knowledge that when theres one attack, you need to be prepared for a second event, socalled reload, or a completely different event. So while youre concentrating on whats going on over here, a clever terrorist will figure out how to do something over here. It looked as if a threat was going to pop out of a door at any moment, that it might come from anywhere, that it might be any kind of attack. That was very much present for us Every Single Day after september 11. [ominous music] my husband was in his friends wedding. I was sitting by myself in the back of the church, and i had had this huge blister on my finger. I just thought it was a bug bite. And all of a sudden, it ruptured. It was like white bubbly stuff just spilled out all onto my skirt. And then it turned black, like jet black. The inside was dry. It was the strangest looking wound. I remember showing people at work and they were like, wow, that doesnt look right. And they kept spreading around my finger. And i started to feel like i had the flu. When i went to a walkin type of clinic and they thought it was a spider bite. Then i went to New York University hospital and a surgeon came in to look at it after the doctor had looked at it, and they couldnt figure out what it was. I didnt think it was like germ warfare. And it was the first victim, but we didnt know there were other victims to come. [waves crashing] at 9 oclock in the morning, im giving a lecture across the street from my office to doctors and nurses and paramedics on bioterrorism. And i got a phone call. The phone call was from a dr. Larry bush, who actually was a comrade of mine. He worked at the same hospital, Infectious Disease expert. So larry says, jean, close your door, make sure theres nobody else in the room. And he told me that he was the consultant on the case of a patient, mr. Robert stevens. He had been admitted during the evening. He said to me, it looks like meningitis. Theres a 63yearold man who presented with signs and symptoms of meningitis. He was confused, having fever, and was vomiting. But it just didnt fit the picture of what is going on here. He had been a healthy person and he came in with no particular medical history. And in the beginning, it was a complete mystery. I went over to the hospital and interviewed ms. Maureen stevens. She gave us a love story, a remarkable love story of this man that she just adored and the children they had. He liked to fish and hike, he ate all kinds of different things, he worked at ami, the National Enquirer, and the star, and mirror. These tabloids that you see when youre checking out at the supermarket, and bob stevens was a photo editor. His job was to take photos and add them to the stories. The first set of symptoms was that he felt awful, and it seems like the flu. In the middle of the night, Early Morning hours, hes gasping for breath. Maureen drove him up to the Emergency Room. When he was brought to the Emergency Room at jfk hospital, he was not breathing properly and he had to be intubated and ventilated. So no one ever spoke to him. They go through all the battery of the tests and dr. Larry bush is looking at bob stevens spinal fluid and hes not liking what hes seeing. When that doctor saw the Microscope Appearance of what was going on in the spinal fluid of the patient, he sounded the alarm. And thats how it started. [audio logo] the case of bob stevens was such a mystery to the Emergency Room personnel because it made no sense. The patient, a 63yearold photographer, showed up at john f. Kennedy Memorial Hospital confused, vomiting, and running a fever. They didnt know why he was sick. Now, larry bush was very attentive to bioterrorism alerts. He just knew that something was not right. So we discussed this and i said, given the situation were having today, we have to consider this as a possibility. This could be anthrax. So we had bob stevens spinal fluid sent to the cdc for analysis. And the cdc identified the sample from bob stevens as anthrax. The centers for Disease Control has just confirmed the diagnosis of anthrax in a patient in a florida hospital. That was really the day 1 for us, october 4. Most people knew nothing about anthrax before 2001. Anthrax has been called the poor mans nuclear bomb. It is only a few microns in size and has the capability to kill millions. Anthrax is actually the disease. Bacillus anthracis is the, well call it the microbe that causes the disease. So people use them interchangeably. Anthrax is a sporeforming bacterium, easy to make, easy to weaponize. And the ability to grow up anthrax in the laboratory, turn it into spores, and then distribute those spores as a biological weapon, it can be devastating. But anthrax does exist in nature. Anthrax is a very uncommon Human Disease in the United States. Its primarily a disease of grazing animal, cattle. You might see a farmer in a certain situation might be exposed to that. But you dont typically see people working at like the National Enquirer being exposed to anthrax. Anthrax comes in a lot of different disease forms. Theres Cutaneous Anthrax, meaning its infected in the skin. And that usually presents with a very unattractive scab and scar, usually black. The second form is gastrointestinal, which would be more likely if you ingested something that was contaminated with anthrax spores. But Inhalational Anthrax is the form thats used for biological weapons because thats the most deadly form of anthrax. Because the infection that it creates in your lung system is very toxic and really shuts down your ability to breathe. And bob stevens was very quickly identified as a pulmonary or inhalational case. A florida man is hospitalized infected with anthrax. I think it was 1976, was the last Inhalational Anthrax victim seen in the us. I dont know if there are any doctors in the us who had seen an anthrax patient. First priority is really to investigate why, where, when, how. The pressing issue now is determining where the anthrax came from. We interviewed the wife at length for many, many hours. I asked her to try do your best going back to time, place, person. Where he went, where he ate, where he played, who he was with, and give me descriptions. He ate all kinds of different things, and he could have gotten it from eating goat, and he did buy goat from a delicatessen down the road from where he lived. During the time that mr. Stevens was incubating, he was traveling up to North Carolina to visit his daughter. He had done a hike in the woods. He had drank some water out of a spring there. Could he had gotten it from spring water . There had been anthrax historically in North Carolina. So it wouldnt be impossible. Thats just really unusual. You cant completely rule out that thought. But context is everything. And in the context of 9 11 and what we were looking for, we had to on the side of assuming that this represented something intentional. The people who flew those planes on 9 11 learned how to fly in our county. Where sharecroppers would use their planes to fertilize their crops. Mr. Robert stevens, he lived an hour from one of those airports. Yesterday, the fbi issued a nationwide alert indicating the possibility of attacks using cropdusting aircraft to distribute chemical or biological Weapons Of Mass Destruction as potential threats to americans. And i went there and actually saw white powder all over the place. So it didnt take too much to put two and two together that this could be a spot where Something Like this could occur. Youre still open to the possibility of this Being Bioterrorism . Were open to were open to the possibility of anything. We contacted the people who worked at the ami building. One of the coworkers of mr. Stevens recalled that an envelope had been received in the office a few weeks before he was ill. The letter had come in addressed to jlo. And so one of mr. Stevens friends brought the letter in to show him. And mr. Stevens, he opens the ladder up and the envelope had some powder in it and some of the powder spilled on the keyboard. When we examined ami building, we took a swab and we swipe it along the keyboard. We put it in a little device, clicked it sent it off, and it was positive. And the minute they found that, they knew that this was a bioterrorism attack. [ominous music] [audio logo] shell renewable race fuel. Reducing emissions by 60 . Were moving forward with indycar. Because were moving forward with everybody. Shell. Powering progress. And theyre all coming . Those who are still with us, yes. Grandpa whats this . Your wings. Light em up gentlemen, its a beautiful. Day to fly. Shell renewable race fuel. Reducing emissions by 60 . Were moving forward with indycar. Because were moving forward with everybody. Shell. Powering progress. ] shell. The bad news came out. Robert stevens died of anthrax. A florida man infected with an extremely rare and lethal form of anthrax has died. Earlier this afternoon, he suffered a Cardiac Arrest and passed away. He never regained consciousness from the time he enters the Emergency Room. I was always as National Security advisor the kind of first line to the president with information. And i remember first mentioning it to the chief of staff, to andy card, who went with me, to tell the president that there had been these attacks. I said, people are dying. And the first thing out of his mouth was, is it alqaeda . And i said, mr. President , we have no way of knowing that right now. Federal investigators are working to find the cause of a deadly anthrax infection in florida as coworkers of the victim wait and worry. All that night, we contacted the people who worked or were on contract at the ami building. The building was shut down and the process of sampling began to see if there were any spores that had landed anywhere. But we also sampled peoples noses. The nose was the sniffer of the spores. Not only did each of the employees have to be tested, all of their children have to be tested. We were leaving no stone unturned. We didnt want people to die. By tomorrow, the fbi should be done collecting samples at the building where traces of anthrax were found on a computer keyboard. Robert stevens, who worked there, died of anthrax last week. But that wasnt the end of the story because we had to figure out, well, how did it get there . We traced the spores back to the mailroom. Ernesto blanco worked in the mail room sorting the mail. And so they tested mr. Blanco, and lo and behold, his nasal swab was positive. And thats how we knew within 5 days it was in the mail. I always credit dr. Brad perkins, who is one of the lead cdc investigative officers because brad, he literally traced backwards from that mailroom throughout the postal system, the vehicles that move the mail, the local postal facility, and so on and so forth. A very small amount of anthrax was found in a post office Sorting Facility in boca that served the ami building. We didnt know what other letters could have been sent, where that particular letter could also have gone. Do you think this is some sort of thing against you and what you publish . I think this is attack against america and that it could happen to anybody. [ominous music] i was hired at nightly news a month before 9 11. I was opening the mail as a Desk Assistant for tom brokaw. We received love letters, we received hate mail. It ran the gamut. But i came across this letter that looked a bit different. I opened it, you know, it said, 9 11, death to israel, allah is great. This is really creepy. And i saw this brown substance that looked like it was a cross between brown sugar and sand. And i took the substance, i dumped it in the trash, folded up the letter, put it back in the stack of mail, gave the stack of mail to toms assistant. 10 days later, when i woke up and my glands were enormous. I basically had no neck and i had a really high fever. And it was like a super intense flu but in a totally different way. Because i had lesions all over my legs. They look like dark bug bites. Im freaked out. That time span and the next week or so is when bob stevens opened his letter. [ominous music] when i came back to work, we learned that toms assistant was also ill and had been out of the office. And i mentioned that there had been a letter that i came in contact with. Folks started to put the pieces together. This morning, we received a positive test for Cutaneous Anthrax for one of our colleagues who works on nightly news. So im back at work. I just had a black lesion removed on my finger. I have this little funnylooking cast on the tip of my finger. And there are tv monitors playing news throughout the newsroom. And the nbc case broke. An Nbc Nightly News employee has tested positive for a skin anthrax infection. They were going over all of the symptoms, and i just slowly turned around and looked at the television, and my heart just sunk to my stomach. It was terrifying. I was like, oh my god, i have this. Its anthrax. Excuse me. [ominous music] shell renewable race fuel. Reducing emissions by 60 . Were moving forward with indycar. Because were moving forward with everybody. Shell. Powering progress. Shell renewable race fuel. Reducing emissions by 60 . Were moving forward with indycar. Because were moving forward with everybody. Shell. Powering progress. It really happened. Shell. Just weeks after the terror attacks on 9 11 while our country was still reeling, another threat. This time, by a silent killer. Letters containing deadly anthrax are being sent to Media Outlets around the country. But why . By whom . And where would the terrorists strike next . The news story started to break that i had anthrax. There is a case of Cutaneous Anthrax. The woman diagnosed with it works at the New York Post. At the time, i did the Arts And Entertainment calendar, so i got tons of press releases. And in the same bins, we would also get the letters to the editor. The New York Post editor received a letter, but it was never opened. It was a sealed letter, and they found it sealed. Yet three of us got sick which just goes to show you the potency of this chemical. In the beginning, i think there was a sense that if the mail wasnt opened, it wasnt dangerous. Obviously, a lot of us were wrong in what we thought. I mean this was a whole, whole new world, and a scary one. The president was briefed every morning on what was happening. We knew that these letters were arriving at news outlets. America has now confirmed several Different Cases of anthrax exposure. Yet another case of possible anthrax exposure. This one at abc news. The cbs news employee whos an assistant to anchorman dan rather has tested positive for anthrax. And that meant that we had multiple outbreaks happening simultaneously. And there was going to be more to come. Im wolf blitzer reporting tonight from washington, where anthrax has now hit capitol hill. On the morning of october 15, i came to my office and was told immediately upon arriving that an intern had opened an envelope that exploded in the office. And they thought it was anthrax and we were in a crisis. It had at the top 911, 9, dash, 11, reference to what had happened 3 weeks before. And then it said, allah is great. Death to israel. We have this anthrax. Take penacilin. Penicillin was misspelled. They called the capitol police. The capitol police, they had field what we call tickets. Theyre like a covid home test. They tested the powder. The tickets turned a double line of bright red, meaning positive. At 10 30 this morning, we had a staffer for Senator Daschle open up a letter. It was found to contain a powdery substance and it tested positive for anthrax. The staff who were exposed, everybody was confined to the room because they were all contaminated. The decision was made to evacuate the entire Hart Senate Office building almost immediately because the assumption was that the anthrax would get into the Ventilation System and contaminate others as well. We had to shut down the building, an extremely daunting task. We then learned other senators had been targeted, including sen