The Anthrax Letters: The Attacks That Shocked America (9 page)

By late 2001 the FBI was consumed with the issue of terrorism. Special agent Judy Orihuela, who had spent most of her 11 years with the bureau working on bank fraud, recalled that soon after the anthrax diagnosis, “nobody was sure of anything.” Now the media spokeswoman for the bureau’s Miami division, she said, “At that point, in October, it was like 100 percent of our agents were doing either 9/11 or anthrax, one of the two.” The division’s 400 agents were reinforced by scores more sent from Washington and other offices. About a hundred agents alone were combing through the AMI building. Others were conducting interviews, and still others were planning and analyzing information back in the office.

Located in an industrial area near Interstate 95, the FBI’s Miami building is ringed by dozens of 4-foot-tall cement planters. The bulky gray objects stand as sturdy barriers against any unwanted vehicle. Orihuela’s third-floor office is adjacent to a long conference room, where in April 2002 she reviewed with me the events that took place 6 months earlier. Dressed in a red jacket and black pants, she glanced at the two dozen empty chairs around the oval table and the 20 others against the wall.

On Sunday, October 7, she was at home playing with her daughter when the phone rang. “You need to come down here,” the voice from her office said. FBI agents had already been accompanying search teams looking for the cause of Bob Stevens’s anthrax. When she arrived at the office she learned that spores had been found in the AMI building.

Orihuela looked around the conference room as if to recapture that Sunday moment.

Roz Suss told her FBI interviewers about a strange letter that had arrived at the
Sun
weeks earlier. “I saw what I thought turned out to be the anthrax because of the way Bob Stevens handled this particular thing.” A week or so after the initial interviews in Miami with the
Sun’s
staff, the FBI summoned people from the paper to the bureau’s office in West Palm Beach. Suss estimated that about 10
Sun s
taffers were there. “They asked each of us to write down what we saw, and they talked with us as a group.” The accounts sometimes varied. “I think this helped convince them that there was more than one letter or package with anthrax.”

Although holding the same job title as Bob Stevens, that of assistant photo editor, Suss acknowledged that she shared none of his artistic talent. Rather, her forte is her recall ability. “My eyes are my whole job and my memory.” Suss’s work includes selecting photographs that are appropriate to stories. Over the years the paper had accumulated files containing thousands of pictures. “They rely on me to remember what was in these files,” she said, “and I could always tell them what file had what picture in it.” Joan Berkley, the
Sun’s
office manager, nodded in agreement and said, “I have to tell you, she has a fantastic memory.” Suss’s recollections, then, would seem to deserve particular respect.

“From my vantage—I’m down in the photo section with Bob Stevens—I remember Bobby Bender bringing a letter over.” Bender, a news assistant, had been working for the
Sun
for 2 years. His job was to find stories for the paper from the Internet and other newspapers and to draw from leads that might come in the mail. His desk was at the far end of the room containing the
Sun’s
two dozen cubicles and offices, about 40 feet from the photo section. “The letter was trifolded, and he had it in his hands this way,” Suss said, as she drew her hands together, palms up. “I looked up and just watched the scenario occur with the letter in his hands.”

“Look at this crazy letter that came to Jennifer Lopez,” Bender said, according to Suss. He said that the letter had been sent to Lopez care of the
Sun
. The letter’s message was apparently aimed at dissuading Lopez from a forthcoming marriage, but no one is sure of its text now. Suss did not see the words in the letter, but she did see that it contained powder.

Bob Stevens had just gotten up from his desk and was walking to the hallway when Bender rounded the corner into the photo section. Stevens, apparently heading for the library, according to Suss, stopped when he came upon Bender. “Let me see that,” Stevens said. Suss describes Bender’s handover to Stevens as “sort of like an automatic exchange. Bob took the letter from Bobby and held it in the same manner that Bobby was holding it—with whatever was in it.” Bob Stevens walked back to his desk. He sat down with the letter over his keyboard, looking into it. Suss’s chair was 6 feet away. Behind the L-shaped desks in their cubicle, Stevens faced north and Roz Suss east. “I’d seen all kinds of things drop out of letters and all kinds of junk, so I wasn’t especially curious,” she said, but then Stevens turned his head and looked over his shoulder at her:

Suss’s fingers barely touched the powder as she plucked the charm out. “It looks like something from a Cracker Jacks box,” she observed to Stevens. She examined it for a moment longer. It was a tiny plastic gold-colored Star of David with a loop attached. Stevens still seemed absorbed by the letter as she turned away. “I threw the star in my wastebasket and went back to the work I was doing.”

Carla Chadick, a staff writer whose desk was nearby, also came over to see the letter. She remembers the powder and the charm. She saw the first line or two but does not recall whether the writing was in script or block lettering. “It was nothing that really struck me. It was just a cursory glance. We get these kind of letters all the time.” She does remember thinking: “How stupid of them to send it to the
Sun
.” And she chuckled to Bob Stevens: “We don’t do celebrities. They should have sent it to the
Globe
.” Roz Suss also recalled Chadick saying, “What crazy nut would send us something for Jennifer Lopez when we don’t even deal with celebrities?”

Stevens joined in the mirth. “Boy, we get idiot letters, but this one was really off,” he said. After a few more laughs, Chadick went back to her desk and resumed work. So did everyone else. “That was the end of it as far as I was concerned. It was just such a nonissue,” she said. Stevens surely thought the same and probably tossed the letter into the trash, which was routinely incinerated.

There is no doubt that the incident took place on September 19. That is because on that day, Joan Berkley, who usually receives and opens mail for the
Sun
, was absent. Had she been at work, she would have been aware of the letter and its contents. In fact, as Roz Suss was looking over Stevens’s shoulder, she recalled thinking at that moment that, if Joan Berkley had been here, she would have been the first to see the letter.

If the powder in that letter was anthrax, it was almost surely what killed Robert Stevens. Symptoms of inhalation anthrax are likely to occur during the first week or so after exposure, though they may appear up to 60 days later. Stevens’s symptoms began around September 29, 10 days after he hovered over the powder.

Assuming the powder was anthrax, the fact that neither Roz Suss nor Carla Chadick became ill could mean that they did not inhale as much as Bob Stevens. It could mean that despite their exposures, their bodies were more resistant. Or it could mean that their incubation period was longer and that, had they not started to take antibiotics on October 8, they too would have come down with the disease.

Complicating their contentions, however, is the fact that Bobby Bender disputes much of Suss’s account. After listening quietly to Suss’s and Berkley’s recollections, he said he does not remember giving a letter to Stevens. Rather, he recalls handling a large envelope or box addressed to Jennifer Lopez, care of the
Sun
. In it, he says, was a cigar tube containing a cigar, a small Star of David charm, and something that seemed like soap powder. “You could smell the powdered detergent,” he said. In the middle of his description Joan Berkley turned to him: “Bobby, there were two different letters or boxes, because I remember that cigar. I remember that one. I was out for the other one.” Suss then said: “See, this is why the FBI felt there was more than one package. I never saw this package or anything related to this package.”

FBI agent Judy Orihuela also referred to Bender’s presumably handling “one of the Lopez letters.” The likelihood of more than one mail item is strengthened by Jean Malecki, the county health department director. The epidemiological investigation pointed to “at least two anthrax letters sent to AMI,” she said. The investigation turned up:

The fact that an anthrax letter went to the old
Enquirer
building in Lantana raises provocative questions. Beginning in January 2001, the address listed for all AMI publications was that of the refurbished AMI headquarters in Boca Raton—previously the Globe Communications building. Not since December 2000 had the masthead of the
National Enquirer
listed the Lantana address. Whoever targeted the
Enquirer
apparently would have taken the address from a very old copy. Or perhaps not. If the mailer lived in the Boca/Delray/West Palm area in 2001, he would have had access to the
Bell South
telephone directory for those communities. In the business section of the 2001-2002 directory, the address for the
National Enquirer
is listed as 600 S.E. Coast Avenue, Lantana 33462. In contrast, the address for the
Sun
was that of the building in Boca Raton as it always had been, because the
Sun
had been owned by the Globe company.

Thus, if the anthrax mailer obtained the
Enquirer’s
address from current issues or from the Internet, the letter would have gone to the Broken Sound Boulevard address in Boca Raton. The only current source that still lists the old Lantana address is the telephone directory. And the directory is easily accessible only to people who live or work in the area.

In 1974, when Bob Stevens began to work for the
National Enquirer
, among the first people he met there was Mike Irish. Three years earlier, Irish, like Stevens, had emigrated from England, and became assistant managing editor. The connection between the two men led to Mike’s wife, Gloria, a real estate agent, finding a home for Bob and Maureen. The house she found for them was the one in Lantana, where Bob lived until his death.

Through the years Mike Irish held various positions with different tabloids before becoming the
Sun’s
chief editor. His round face accentuates his cherubic appearance. The most visible spot of hair in the vicinity of his totally bald pate is his faint gray mustache, which curls upward with his smile. He finds no pleasure in recalling the particular problems he and his wife faced after September 11.

The Irishes live in Delray Beach, 15 minutes from the AMI building in Boca Raton. Behind the wooden fence in front of their house, the pathway is surrounded by a lush garden of tropical plants and flowers. A large piano and soft sofa are centerpieces of the living room. Gloria spoke softly. She told of the trauma she shared with all Americans as she learned about the hijacked planes crashing into the World Trade Center. At 10:15 that September 11 night, Mike and Gloria were in bed watching the television news when the phone rang. It was the FBI.