For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
October 25, 2001
Gov. Ridge, Medical Authorities Discuss Anthrax
Press Briefing by The Director of the Office of Homeland Security, Governor Tom Ridge; and the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, Major General John Parker; and Deputy Surgeon General Admiral Kenneth Moritsugu on Homeland Security
The James S. Brady Briefing Room
Listen to the President's Remarks
12:55 P.M. EDT
MR. FLEISCHER: Now I would like to introduce Governor
Ridge, the Director of the Office of Homeland Security. He
is joined by Major General John Parker, the Commanding General of the
U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command; as well as Admiral
Kenneth Moritsugu, the Deputy Surgeon General.
GOVERNOR RIDGE: Good afternoon. Today I'd
like to share with you the latest information and actions we are taking
to protect the American people from the anthrax threats here at home.
Our investigation continues. We are aggressively
pursuing every conceivable lead to find and bring to justice those
responsible for these terrorist acts. Our health system
nationwide is on full alert, and is working around the clock -- and is
working around the clock -- to identify and treat those potentially
affected by anthrax.
Today we want to share with you the latest scientific analysis of
the anthrax samples. Major General John Parker, Commanding
General of the United States Army Medical Research and Materiel
Command, has joined me today to further explain and answer your
questions concerning these latest findings.
As I outlined last week, Department of Defense DNA tests showed the
anthrax samples from Florida, New York and Washington are
indistinguishable, meaning that they all come from the same strain of
anthrax or the same family of anthrax. That continues to be
the case. The DNA tests have also revealed that none of the
anthrax samples have been genetically altered, which is very good news,
obviously, because it means that the samples all respond to
antibiotics. And, therefore, people who are exposed can be
treated.
This week, we have received new information from additional
laboratory tests. I convened a meeting at the White House
last night to bring together the scientists, as well as representatives
of the different agencies, to analyze and evaluate this
information. It shows that the anthrax in the letter
received in Senator Tom Daschle's office had some different
characteristics. It is highly concentrated. It is
pure. And the spores are smaller. Therefore,
they're more dangerous because they can be more easily absorbed in a
person's respiratory system.
We've also received a new preliminary analysis on the anthrax that
was mailed to The New York Post. The preliminary analysis
shows that it is more coarse and less concentrated than the anthrax in
the Daschle letter. But I want to tell you, it's still highly
concentrated. The New York Post anthrax is also sensitive to
antibiotics.
Unfortunately, we have not been able to conduct similar tests on
the anthrax from Florida or the Brokaw letter because of limited
amounts of substance retrievable from the scene. Just wasn't
enough for us to retrieve from the scene to conduct the same tests.
Now, I know there has been a lot of both public and private
discussion, some of it with me and much of it among yourselves and even
within this country, about the term "weaponize." It seems to
have different meanings, different definition and meanings to different
people. Based on these latest lab reports, it is clear that the
terrorists responsible for these attacks intended to use this anthrax
as a weapon. We still don't know who is responsible, but we
are marshaling every federal, state and local resource to find them and
bring them to justice.
And General Parker is here to give you more of the details. But
before he briefs you, I would like to take a minute to share with the
American people the steps we are taking to protect postal workers.
As of this morning, health officials have tested and treated more
than 4,000 postal workers in the impacted areas. In
addition, the Postal Service, working with federal, state and local
officials, have begun environmental testing at the 200 postal
facilities along the Eastern corridor. The Postal Service
will also conduct random environmental testing at major postal
facilities nationwide. It will conduct random testing
nationwide. It is strictly a precautionary
measure. It is taken to protect the mail.
I want to reiterate: There is no indication of any new
exposure at this time at these sites, but the Postmaster General felt
that it was appropriate to begin conducting random sample testing.
As the President announced on Tuesday, we are authorizing funds to
implement immediate security measures to better protect our nation's
mail. These funds will help purchase new technology to sanitize mail,
and protective gear to help protect postal workers.
Clearly we are up against a shadow enemy, shadow solders, people
who have no regard for human life. They are determined to
murder innocent people. President Bush is very proud of the
federal, state and local health care officials whose quick actions have
no doubt saved many lives in the face of a new and horrible
threat. Our country has never experienced this type of
terrorism. Tragically, we have lost lives, starting with
those in New York City in the Towers, but also including those who wear
the uniform overseas in this war, and those who wear the uniform of the
Postal Service here at home.
Our government will continue to do everything we can to make our
nation safe, stronger and more prepared. We will continue to
provide the American people with as much accurate information as we
can, as soon as we can, to protect them from future attacks.
Before I respond to some questions, I would like Major General
Parker to brief you, as well.
MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: Thank you, Governor
Ridge. I represent some great scientists and engineers at
Fort Detrick who are currently working 24 hours a day, seven days a
week, processing samples and helping to define the characteristics of
the compounds that are given us to take a look at.
I can say to you without question, this is anthrax, and the samples
from New York, Washington and Florida are all from the same family or
strain. That's been documented by DNA
testing. When we look at these spores underneath the
microscope, they are uniform in size and highly concentrated, and
highly pure. And these individual spores are very light, and
if given some energy from, say, wind or clapping or motion of air in a
room, they will drift in the air and fall to the ground.
The good news is that this strain is susceptible to all of the
antibiotics that we have in the United States, from penicillin all the
way to the most recent advanced quinolines that we have available.
The characteristics I already mentioned. When you look
at it, it's like a very, very fine powder. And you can
imagine, in your bathroom, if you take a fine talcum powder and you
blow it, it drifts up into the air and then eventually drifts down to
the ground and falls to the floor, where it sticks.
We are continuing to try to characterize the
products. When we looked at the New York Post sample and
compared that to the Daschle sample, even in gross introspection, it
appeared that the New York Post sample was clumpy and rugged, and the
Daschle sample was fine and floaty.
Now, one of my scientists actually described the New York Post
sample as looking like Purina Dog Chow, clumpy like a pellet.
Q Under the microscope?
MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: No, that's not under a microscope,
that's grossly. Under the microscope, the spores are densely
packed in both samples, and highly concentrated in both samples.
I just want to mention one other thing, is that I know there's a
lot of questions about some other things. We are trying very
hard to characterize anything that would be associated with the sample,
and we continue to do that research and we're continuing to do that
investigation. And I don't have the absolute answers until all of
those investigations are in.
Q Can I ask you a question about, given the
nature of the powder, especially that was sent in the letter to Senator
Daschle, what can you and the others say about where this was produced,
how it was produced, and ultimately by whom -- domestically or
foreign?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: Tests may give us answers to some or all
of those questions, as well as investigations being conducted by the
FBI and the Department of Justice. The tests now give us
very specific characteristics, but the tests may or may not lead us to
the source.
Q Can I follow and say, at this point, are
you able to say at any level, preliminarily or otherwise, that this is
the kind of anthrax that could have been produced by an individual or
several individuals here in the United States? Or is this
the kind of stuff that could only be produced by a foreign nation?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: I believe further testing will give us
the range. It will either expand it or contract
it. But right now there are other, I believe chemical tests
and other tests in a series of tests that have to be conducted.
I mean, one of the challenges we have with trying to give you as
much information as we have as quickly as we get it, and give America
this information, is that the properties of this anthrax and our
ability to describe its characteristics really depend on ability for us
to conduct several tests -- some simultaneously, some in different
parts of the world, some one after another.
I will tell you that one set of tests often generates a
recommendation that another set of tests, so we just -- the testing is
incomplete, and we can't give you the answers to that question yet, if
ever.
Q There was a report today that preliminary
tests suggest that the anthrax could not have been produced in Russia
or Iraq.
GOVERNOR RIDGE: Could not have been?
Q Could not have been, implying that it was
produced in the United States. Is that accurate or
not? Preliminary tests suggest this.
GOVERNOR RIDGE: I don't think I've seen any preliminary
tests that drew any conclusions as to where it could or could not have
been produced.
Q -- is aggressive? In other
words, if these were mailed over a series of days and the Daschle is
much more sort of concentrated, could it be that somebody is testing
and getting more aggressive with the anthrax, and will that continue,
perhaps?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: I think people are inclined to draw
conclusions about the number of letters in the mail, or the ability,
the capacity of one letter to have contaminated multiple
stations. I mean, right now, as we continue to conduct the
investigation, we alert you to the letters we have and to the samples
we have, and until we have thoroughly completed our investigation, we
can't draw any conclusions as to number or source.
Q Governor Ridge, the apparent lethality of
the anthrax sent to Senator Daschle was apparently understood more
quickly in Congress than it was throughout other federal
agencies. Are you and Major General Parker satisfied that
the information flow about what was learned about the anthrax in the
Daschle letter went to all of the agencies as fast as possible, and
therefore, everything was done to protect the postal workers who have
since been exposed, whereas, members of Congress were not?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: My sense was that -- I think it may have
been General Parker and other people within the administration gave --
briefed Senator Daschle. And I think -- I'm not certain
where the Senator got his information, but I suspect it's from the
information that we had. And the recognition of the pureness
of the spores, the concentration -- the highly concentrated nature of
these spores, it's the conclusion that it hasn't been genetically
altered, a lot of these things have occurred since that initial
briefing, as we've had a series of tests to confirm it.
I will tell you what, I think because it was respirated, because we
had several people who died because of inhalation anthrax, and because
there's a body of scientific evidence out there that it is easier and
certainly has much greater potential for infection if it's a smaller,
purer form of anthrax, people legitimately, without doing the samples,
could conclude that it had to be of higher concentration, it had to be
a purer form, based on the information that we had at the time about
anthrax.
We're now running through the series of tests. We're
finding not only what might have been a good thing to conjecture from
previous research on anthrax, but we have confirmed it. But
there are other characteristics that we may or may not be able to
confirm in future tests.
Q Doesn't the very fact that, as General
Parker said, this is free and floaty anthrax that was sent to Senator
Daschle, aerosolized, show that it is a very sophisticated operation
that produced it, not a grad student in a basement, and that the
knowledge of how to do that would be limited to a very narrow circle of
people, some state actors and some people with access to American
secrets?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: I'm not prepared to tell you what level
of competency, accessibility to equipment, and other training either an
individual or an institution needs in order to develop this level of
anthrax.
Q General Parker, can we ask you a question,
sir? If you wouldn't mind stepping up to the
podium. I take it that some of the tests that you were
alluding to are on this chemical agent that's been mixed in with the
anthrax to modify the electro-static properties of the
anthrax. Can you tell us what your preliminary investigation
shows about that? And who has the ability to alter the
electro-static properties of anthrax spores?
MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: Well, first of all, your question
is complex, and I'd like to say that, although we may see some things
on the microscopic field that may look like foreign elements, we don't
know that they're additives, we don't know what they are, and we're
continuing to do research to find out what they possible could
be. They're unknowns to us at this present time.
Q Can you tell us who has the ability to
alter the electro-static properties of anthrax spores in order to allow
them to become more easily aerosolized?
MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: Sir, that's beyond my
knowledge. I don't know.
Q Isn't it limited to a very small number of
countries?
MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: I don't know, sir.
Q -- sophisticated product? Are
you looking at a sophisticated product, essentially?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: What the General is trying to relate to
you is that this still has -- there's a series of tests that need to be
conducted by these men, who are far better equipped intellectually and
by experience, to draw some conclusions from those
results. And the fact of the matter is, we don't have all
the information available to us yet to draw any of the conclusions to
answer some of the questions you're asking.
Q When you say they're from the same -- all
letters are from the same strain or family, how much does that really
narrow this down?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: Not much.
Q Not much?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: I don't think. I mean, I've
got -- my sense is, it doesn't narrow it much at all. My
brother and I are from the same family. So it means, it's a very broad
and genetic classification. But, apparently, there are
several strains available for research around the world.
Q Can you tell us which strain it is,
sir? And does the fact that these are a little bit --
GOVERNOR RIDGE: Ames strain.
Q And can you tell us -- let me just finish
my question. If you could tell us, since these are a little
bit different in their qualities, does that suggest that these letters
came from different people?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: Well, right now, first of all, you
should know that, even though preliminary tests on The New York Post
letter shows it to be of a different quality and, I guess, more readily
in clumps than the other, it is still highly
concentrated. And I don't think, to date, with the
preliminary tests, we can point to one source or multiple sources.
Q Yes, sir. Two children,
according to various -- including The New York Times, Agence France
Presse, have been checked into Children's Hospital -- a girl age 2, a
boy age 11, with, apparently, anthrax-like symptoms. Do you
know anything about it?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: I do not. And what hospital?
Q Children's Hospital in Washington.
GOVERNOR RIDGE: Children's in Washington? I
do not know that.
Q Governor, a non-scientific
question. Chances are that the person or persons who did
this would be inclined to follow every briefing, every
statement. That said, what would your message be to the
person or persons who have sent this stuff?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: We'll find you. We'll bring
you to justice.
You know, trying to think the way some individual who would use the
United States mail service and take an envelope and turn it into a
weapon of terror, it's pretty difficult for me to be able to, I
suspect, to be able to communicate with that individual on any terms
and within a value system that we share in this country. So
I'm not sure we could communicate to him in a democratic, American way,
how we feel about him and how we feel about this
incident. But we'll get him.
Q Governor Ridge, there have been reports
recently of tensions between the FBI, CDC and other federal agencies
over the sharing of information or full disclosure of information on
the quality of anthrax in the Daschle letter. Could you
address that, please? And also, could you tell us a little
more about the meeting last night at the White House?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: Yes. First of all, you know
that as Director of Homeland Security, I interact with these agencies
on a daily basis, if not an hourly basis. And I would tell
you from day one, there has been collaboration and coordination, and
every day it continues to accelerate as the circumstances of the threat
bring people and people closer together.
There has -- everybody is intensely working on this
issue. There has been extraordinary
collaboration. There has been new relationships that have
developed. And I thought it was important to have the
meeting last night not just with the principals, but with the
scientists that we're all relying upon, in order to consolidate
whatever information we have, and to see if we can further accelerate
the process of answering the questions that America seeks from the
administration.
And I thought it was a very productive meeting. They
have been working together, side by side. They will continue
to work together. There's intense effort to collaborate. We
live in a virtual world, but we can't always come up with virtual
answers. And so, there's a process that goes along with
trying to answer the questions that you and the rest of America
has. But their coordination is fine. Maybe last
night accelerated it even further. But it's not a question
-- they share information; I assure you.
Q You said a few moments ago that this was
intended as a weapon, whoever sent this intended it to be used as a
weapon. Does that meet your definition of weapons?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: I don't use that word, because I don't
think "weaponize" has any medical or scientific value. I
mean, we never thought a 747 could be turned into a
missile. But someone who took an instrument that's part of
who we are and what we do every day, an airplane, turned it into a
weapon. Somebody took an envelope and turned it into a
weapon.
Q What I'm getting at is, based on what you
know to this point, can you put into context how lethal this -- how
concentrated, how pure, how dangerous this was --
GOVERNOR RIDGE: It is -- it was not contaminated, which
meant that the mass -- again, the General could answer this better --
but as I understand it, explained to me as a layman, and relate to
people who don't have a background in microbiology or chemistry -- but
as I understand it, if you took a look at the spores under the
microscope, there was not any extraneous material. It was
very pure. Practically everything you saw, every -- was an
anthrax spore, and it was of such a size that with -- it was
respirable; that if it was given a little energy, it could get up into
the air.
Q I just want to clarify something from an
earlier question. The fact is much of what you've told us
here today we've already heard from other sources, and the debate over
"weaponized," whether or not you want to use that word, has been going
on for some time. But I just want to be clear --
GOVERNOR RIDGE: I don't want to use it, so there's no
debate with me. It adds no scientific -- you could put this on the
head of a missile, you could put it in an envelope, you could
distribute it other ways. So it can -- anthrax, itself, is a
weapon. I'm sorry.
Q My question is, if you, standing in front
of us, are the definitive voices on anthrax, and you cannot even tell
us, based on what you've discovered so far, the countries that can
produce this strain and whether or not we can rule any of these
countries out, be it Iraq, Russia, or the United States?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: We know it's -- I do not
know. It is a an Ames strain -- look, there are other
characteristics that may be discovered in the course of this
investigation that may lead this government and our scientists to
further conclusions. Right now, I'm not prepared because we
don't have the answers.
Q -- characteristics to the strain developed
by those countries, military --
GOVERNOR RIDGE: I don't know.
Q Governor, given all the things that are on
your plate, Governor Ridge, given all the things that are on your
plate, is your day defined more by facts you know, that expand what you
know, or is it defined more by questions that expand what you don't
know?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: It's a little bit of both. I
mean, there are questions that I seek in my capacity as Director of
Homeland Security that I ask, just because of information that comes
across my desk. There's also information that I receive
that's unsolicited that expands my knowledge as well. So, I
mean, I think it's a little bit of a combination of both.
Q Do you have any preliminary idea -- forget
which country or what the strain is -- do you have any preliminary idea
about whether or not this is something that would have had to have been
produced by a large organization such as a state, or if it's something
that could possibly have been cooked up in a laboratory somewhere in
Trenton?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: I'm not prepared to tell you today the
range of potential actors who could have -- the range of potential
actors who could have created as pure and as concentrated and as
respirable an anthrax as we are working on and investigating
now. I don't know whether it's a large range or a narrow
range.
Q But do you know and you won't tell us, or
-- I mean, isn't this information that the government has?
Q -- you and the government intentionally
downplay the threat to the American public? And why, over
time, have your statements changed about what the American public
should be worried about?
GOVERNOR RIDGE: The information in the literature on
anthrax that existed before this threat suggested the only way you can
get inhalational anthrax -- that it would be much easier to get
inhalational anthrax if the spores were smaller. And we not
only have cases of anthrax, but we also have fatalities. So,
based on the literature that existed, and even prior to the testing,
that confirmed our worst suspicions that this was a different kind and
a different grade of anthrax. It had to be -and so we shared
that information with you. We shared it with the people on
the Hill.
We run through a series of tests. The test tells us very
specifically, the anthrax spores are not only smaller and concentrated,
they are very pure. There are still some additional tests to
be run on these individual spores. When we get additional
information, I'll --
Q What about --
Q Governor, is there --
GOVERNOR RIDGE: Thank you.
END
1:15 P.M. EDT
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