Besides my main work for NEWSWEEK, I have a part-time job as a contributing correspondent for NBC News. My office there is on the third floor of Rockefeller Center, about 50 feet from where the exposure took place. We’d heard some rumors about strange mail early in the week but didn’t think much of it. Now, with a confirmed case, almost everyone stayed impressively calm. “Hi! I’m fine. I don’t have anthrax!” I heard more than one person say on the phone. Unfamilar people (FBI agents? health officials?) milled around, but they didn’t stop staffers from eating pizza not far from where the letters had been opened. “Nightly News” was moved across the street to the “Today” set, a precaution that turned out to be unnecessary.
I heard some nervous jokes about how the other networks would cope with their “anthrax envy.” Would Peter and Dan do cross talk with Tom? No. The avuncular Brokaw–always the picture of ease–looked wan and made no pretense of being “OK.” “This is outrageous and maddening beyond my ability to express in socially acceptable terms,” he told “Nightly News” viewers in an accurate measure of his mood. Later, in an interview with Stone Phillips of “Dateline,” he choked up over his assistant having to suffer for an attack directed at him.
All day, NBC folks got a feeling of what it’s like to be on the other side of the camera, which is always useful. One NBC employee stopped in the lobby to talk to a local TV reporter, only to find that the reporter had been secretly taping their whole conversation.
In late afternoon, those of us who work on the third floor were told to go for testing. The line looked like a soup kitchen at Thanksgiving. Two hours, minimum. We were given the option to come back later or wait. I asked three women behind me which it would be: “Wait,” they said in unison. I came back later, in time to hear a technician loudly bellyaching about filing a grievance because some people cut in line. A comforting trace of normalcy.
Inside, we filled out several forms, asking about everything from symptoms to where and when we were in different parts of the building. The only question that troubled me was whether I had a vent in my office. Could anthrax be spread that way? The fact that the white powder on the letter from St. Petersburg, Fla., tested negative was worrisome; where, then, did the anthrax come from? A viral immunologist I called earlier said that the spores are heavy and don’t travel easily by air. Nice to know. The next day, the FBI finally identified anthrax on an earlier letter from Trenton, N.J. In our new twilight zone, a positive reading was positive news. Less uncertainty.
After being interviewed in a cursory way by NYPD detectives, we had our nostrils swabbed. This is not, I learned, a reliable test for anthrax, but it’s useful for the New York Department of Health, which has little data on the disease. Or maybe it’s just a placebo. (“I got it checked,” we can tell ourselves). Then we were given two weeks’ worth of Cipro as a precaution and advised we’d need to take the antibiotic for two months total to be effective. Side effects can include diarrhea, abdominal pain, rashes.
As I left, a doctor scoffed at all of the people outside the building phoning their physicians or crowding emergency rooms for Cipro. It’s totally unnecessary for them, she said, though the anthrax scare might do wonders for curing the clap.
With rumors flying, the only thing we knew for sure was that we didn’t like watching the FBI publicly blame Brokaw’s assistant for being “unavailable” to be interviewed. Mayor Giuliani was said to be furious over the bureau’s delay in analyzing the lab results. Three weeks elapsed between exposure and diagnosis. Prompter action at NBC could have prevented attacks elsewhere and given more time for treatment.
You may have noticed that NBC News chose not to air the name of the assistant. Not surprisingly, the network was pummeled with e-mail charging hypocrisy. Typical of the media, they said. You only react like human beings when it’s about you. Fair enough. But it’s also true that post-Sept. 11 some of the old rules are being reappraised. A new sensitivity is creeping back in, and a recognition that not everything has to be reported in every situation. Even so, last week reaffirmed my faith in truth as a cure for almost anything, especially fear.
