Anthrax Letter Attacks Post 9-11 - an Office Manager's Experiences on Capitol Hill

During the latter part of 2000, I started working on Capitol Hill in a congressman's office. My official duties were those of office manager as well as systems administrator. But in our office, because it had a small staff, everyone wore many hats. So along with everyone else, one of the duties I had was writing one-minute speeches for the congressman. I won't ever get credit for some of those speeches, but at least I know that no less than two of them are in the Congressional Record.

I guess that means that in some small way I am a part of American history, And something I did will remain there for future generations to see. I've left a mark of some importance that says I was here, even if I won't get credit for that handful of speeches.

Nevertheless, I had many duties during my time on the Hill. And when I didn't have any interns, it fell to me to deal with the inbound mail, which came two, sometimes three times a day. I can't say it's something I looked forward to, but it wasn't that bad.

One day ran into the next until 9-11 happened. I remember that day clearly. I remember being stuck on in Washington traffic and listening to the radio when I heard that the Twin Towers were struck in New York. I found out quite quickly that Congress was already being evacuated, and I did some very creative driving to turn around my direction and try my best to avoid the massive traffic jam which was forming at this point.

I can't tell you how many hours it took me to get home, I was almost at Capitol Hill when I heard the news, so my return trip was around 25 miles. It doesn't sound like a long drive but even on regular days it was no unusual to spend up to three hours in Washington traffic.

I can't hardly tell you what I felt that day as I just felt like I was living in a nightmare of some sort. Congress remained evacuated for quite some time but I didn't really have time to recover because the Congressman had to be evacuated to a safe place and that safe place was my house.

Congress continued to function, however all the offices were functioning on skeleton crews, so luckily I didn't need to be involved in those activities.

Either a few days or a few weeks passed, I couldn't tell, and things started getting back to normal. We returned to our office and aside from some major security changes, things were starting to be business as usual. With obvious exceptions naturally.

Then the second wave of insanity hit within a few weeks of 9-11. I remember it so clearly, I was driving to work and had just arrived, gone through security, and pulled into my designated parking lot. I was listening to the radio, interestingly enough and I remember the very song that was playing at that moment, (the song playing was "Because I Got High") I don't recall who the artist was. Anyway, I went inside through the metal detectors, said hello to the Capitol Police guys that I had made friends with, got in the elevator and went up to the fourth floor of the Rayburn building.

After "starting up the office" i.e. turning on the phones, checking messages, starting up the computer network and changing the backup tape, I sat down at my desk and started going through the huge pile of mail that had already been delivered.

I opened the first couple of letters, when the Chief of Staff/Press Secretary comes running into the room and yelling at me not to open any more mail. I asked him why and he proceeded to inform me that an Anthrax laced piece of mail had been delivered to Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick Leahy of Vermont. This was the second wave of terrorism that we were all to be exposed to.

We carefully put the remaining mail into a large plastic bag and Capitol security came to each office and picked up all the inbound mail. This was the time when they started slicing the corner off of every piece of mail (to allow potential spores to fall out) and irradiating it in a very, initially, time consuming process.

Since I had already opened some of the mail from that morning, the bio-hazard guys came to check if there had been any Anthrax in any of the mail that I had opened. The tests were all negative but it was a terribly unpleasant experience. Needles to say, the bio boys were very busy that whole day and for several weeks later.

We didn't get any inbound mail for several weeks after this initial Anthrax incident, and considering that we got about three, 80 pound bundles of mail per day I knew that the backlog was going to be daunting.

In anticipation of the inbound mail service being re-instated there were several, "rules for what to look for as it pertained to suspicious packages" being distributed to every congressional office. To say that these rules were vague would be an understatement but in any case that's what they offered us in the form of security.

They started irradiating all the inbound mail, as I stated previously, and finally the backlog of mail started being delivered to all the offices again. We were assured that the irradiation process would kill any biological agents that might be contained in an envelope but that if we should encounter any strange "powder" in any of the packages or envelopes we should immediately "lock-down the office" then call the Capitol Police, and to make sure that nobody is allowed to either enter or leave the office until the substance in question could be field tested.

As I said, there was a huge backlog of mail that suddenly started being delivered, the amounts of mail were so large that three times a day I had to go through and "airline" style luggage dolly which had several hundred pounds of mail in it.

I started doing my duty and tackled my daunting task, I wore a flimsy filter mask and latex gloves but luckily in the initial flood of backlog mail there were no suspicious powders or poisons. However, due to the fact that the mail was being put through a type of RADIATION process, I started to develop an interesting side effect.

One day, I'm sitting at my desk and am going through the truckload of mail, when my Chief of Staff exclaimed to me; "***, what's wrong with your ear?" Apparently, I had started bleeding from the ear. I went to the infirmary on Cap Hill and they assured me that it was nothing and that simply a blood vessel had burst in my ear. They gave no explanation but said it was probably nothing.

So I went back to work, and every few days it would be called to my attention that my ear was literally pouring blood. I went to the clinic and doctors and always got the same vague answer. However, my Chief of Staff contacted the right people and they said they would investigate the situation. In the meantime he told me to just pile up the inbound mail in the unused office we had and to not touch until he said it was ok. As far as the bleeding ear thing, he said to me "Robert, I can't tell you not to go to the press with this information but I think it would be bad for the office and Congress as a whole if this story were to pick up momentum in the media. I told him that I would keep quiet about this odd problem I had experienced.

Anyway, the backlogged mail was taken care of eventually, not by me, and things returned to a somewhat normal state.

Several weeks had passed and I was OK'd for dealing with the mail again, and everything was going off without incident. Then, one day we get a visit from a "Man in Black" who has a CLOSED DOOR meeting with the staff, myself included, and he proceeded to inform us that they have reason to believe that our office has been targeted for another "Mail Involved terror attack" and that we need to just be aware of what's going on in our surroundings.

I'm not one to panic or freak out so I took the information and went on like a good little soldier.

My guess is that the powers that be made some adjustments to their mail irradiation process and I was no longer experiencing any odd blood spilling. This was not the end of the story though, you see it had only been a short period of time since the initial Anthrax mail attacks and even though it was a crime to do so I suspect that there were several assholes out there who started sending all sorts of "powders" to many of the congressional offices, mine included.

It happened so many times that I would open an envelope and out would come a cloud of powder. I would be covered in it but still I would not panic. I followed procedure, we locked down the office, we called the hazard boys and they would come and do field tests on the powder, they always showed up in their bio-hazard suits and it made me feel a little uneasy.

They would take samples of the powder and do some sort of chemical test on it right there in the office, I had every orifice in my head swabbed and tested, the whole procedure was very time consuming and nerve-racking.

If this were an isolated incident then it would make for an interesting story, but this scenario repeated itself far more times than I care to count. Honestly, that was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. I started to become more and more withdrawn, I became more and more antisocial, I developed phobias where I would be afraid to open my E-MAIL for weeks at a time, there were times when I couldn't deal with the phone, and many many times when I just couldn't deal with opening the mail.

Luckily, or unluckily (depending on your point of view) my boss had to leave Congress. And, as a result, I lost my job as the congressman I worked for had essentially lost his.

This story is already much longer than I anticipated it to be, I didn't feel like writing a book here, or trying to expose any secrets, or do anything except get my thoughts down on paper or rather in Blog form.

In essence, following these experiences on top of the experiences that I had in my very early youth, I had a nervous breakdown. I don't want to go into details about that at the moment. The point is that I now realize that I am injured and that I need help. I realize that I need to reconnect with humanity, and that I need to start returning to reality. So if someone asks me why I had a nervous breakdown, I'll just point them to this article.

In conclusion, from the start of this wave of terror I had a deep suspicion that it wasn't a foreign entity attempting to terrorize us but rather, it was home grown right here in the United States.

Since the man who was suspected of perpetrating this Anthrax attack is dead, we'll probably never know the truth for sure. Nevertheless it looks extremely likely that this was the work of a single person attempting to capitalize on the 9-11 attacks that took place just a couple of weeks earlier and that may be the saddest part of the infamous Anthrax attacks, that they were perpetrated by an American.