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Chertoff Orders Review of Anthrax Response
Preliminary results are due Friday from a review ordered by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff of the federal government’s response to the anthrax scare last week in Northern Virginia, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, March 17). Governors Mark Warner of Virginia and Robert Ehrlich of Maryland and Washington Mayor Anthony Williams said their governments have also initiated an “after-action” study of the event. Local and state agencies have criticized the Defense Department for failing to notify them on March 14 after test results indicated a Pentagon mailroom had been contaminated by anthrax. There have also been questions on communication between federal agencies. Later tests indicated the mailroom was clean of anthrax. A separate biological agent alert on March 14 at a Defense Department mail facility in Fairfax County is not believed to be connected, the Post reported. “Before we can draw accurate conclusions about what went well and areas needing improvement, we need facts,” Warner said in a joint statement with Ehrlich and Williams. “This state and local review will be merged with federal findings to create a comprehensive picture of what transpired” (Washington Post, March 25). Meanwhile, the president and CEO of Commonwealth Biotechnologies Inc. rejected suspicions that his firm might had accidentally contaminated samples from the Pentagon mailroom while testing them for anthrax, United Press International reported. Robert Harris said two government laboratories also independently detected anthrax on the samples. Testing at Commonwealth Biotechnologies has never led to a false positive, he said “It is a fact that we had a presumptive positive test come up,” Harris said. “That presumptive positive test was confirmed by us and by at least two other labs as being a true positive.” A spokeswoman for U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Maryland confirmed the additional testing. “There is a component of the Homeland Security Department that has a laboratory that is located in our building,” spokeswoman Carlee Vander Linden said. “They have a presence here at Fort Detrick. The samples were basically parted out and there was analysis done by USAMRIID and by the forensics lab under DHS. I know that the negatives that we got were on the ones that came directly from the (mail) facility and did not pass through the contractor. The positives that we got were on samples that had been handled already by the people in Virginia.” “USAMRIID is not saying that, 'Gee, there probably was a contamination event,’” Vander Linden said. “I think some people are surmising that. It certainly has been reported that way. I think that we'll just have to wait and see” (Dee Ann Divis, United Press International/New Kerala, March 21).
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