Episode 3: Anthrax This!
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Who is Dr. Marcy Leighton and what was her role in NYC's anthrax preparedness?
This is a CBC Podcast. It's a breezy day outside a warehouse on a pier on the west side of Manhattan. It's September 2001, before 9-11, and before anthrax showed up in Florida. A group of health officials are setting up hospital beds inside the warehouse.
What was the planned bioterror drill in NYC before 9/11?
It was the first time, I think, that we were planning to do a large-scale exercise.
Dr. Marcy Leighton was the assistant commissioner for the health department in New York City.
The consequences were quite high if something was released in a place like New York City with the potential to cause, you know, hundreds of thousands or more cases.
Which is why Marcy and the team set up those emergency beds all around them. They've been planning a drill for months, and now it's time to set it in motion.
It's one thing to sort of talk about it and have a written plan. It's another thing to set this up quickly.
All of this was to make sure that they were ready in case of a large-scale biohazard attack, like the release of a lethal toxin, gas, or maybe powder, that could kill thousands of people. And one kind of toxin was front and center in her mind. Anthrax.
Part of the preparation for a large-scale aerosolized release of anthrax was the recognition that we would need to give antibiotics out quickly to potentially a large number of people.
Marcy and her team were designing a simulation of a bioterror attack on New York to try to understand how the city could respond effectively. And to accomplish that, they'd hired hundreds of police academy cadets and fire department trainees to act as victims.
The plan was the cadets would go through, but then get back in line as new people.
The whole thing was nearly ready to go. The NYPD, firefighters, the FBI, FEMA, all the volunteers, and even the mayor at the time, Rudy Giuliani, were all going to show up in two days. There was now a sea of stretchers and a bunch of medical equipment on the pier. There was even a delivery of fake antibiotics on the way.
We didn't want to waste true antibiotics, ciprofloxacin and doxycycline. So instead of using real medication, they just had two different kinds of M&Ms, one for cipro and one for doxies.
70,000 M&Ms, divided by color, to stand in for the medicine. They were scheduled to arrive the next day, a Tuesday. Tuesday, the 11th of September. They never arrived. All of those white hospital beds became ER stretchers for victims of 9-11. And in the wake of that, Marcy, who had spent so much time preparing for a hypothetical biological attack, was about to face the real thing.
How did the events of 9/11 impact the anthrax preparedness efforts?
I'm Jeremiah Kroll, and from Wolf Entertainment, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Episode 3, Anthrax This. One month after the attacks of 9-11, the FBI is caught in a conundrum. three people at a news office in Florida have been infected with anthrax. And despite lots of signs that suggest it may have been a second wave attack by al-Qaeda, the FBI doesn't have any evidence to support that theory. And on top of that, unlike the plot of 9-11, there's no clandestine chatter or public statements that link al-Qaeda to anthrax.
Some people will say, well, then it could have been. It could have been a lot of things, but we don't have any proof that it was.
What were the initial anthrax cases in Florida and NYC and how were they linked?
Special Agent Scott Decker is charged with helping find that proof. He's at the center of it all, at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. His office was just down the hall from Robert Mueller, who was the new director of the FBI, and by sheer bad luck, had been sworn in only one week before 9-11.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Dr. Marcy Leighton and what was her role in NYC's anthrax preparedness?
0:35–1:01
2
What was the planned bioterror drill in NYC before 9/11?
1:01–3:40
3
How did the events of 9/11 impact the anthrax preparedness efforts?
3:40–4:31
4
What were the initial anthrax cases in Florida and NYC and how were they linked?
4:31–9:47
5
Who is Johanna Huden and how did anthrax affect her?
9:47
6
How did the anthrax attack affect NBC News and the media?
7:34–8:20
7
What was the public and government reaction to the anthrax attacks?
8:20–9:57
8
How did Johanna's experience illustrate the fear and confusion surrounding anthrax?
9:57–35:09