Throughout the investigation, Dr. Callis repeatedly offered Fitzsim-mons and his boss an opportunity to visit Plum Island to obtain information firsthand. Downey hardly knew the extent of Fitzsimmons's efforts, and the intern balked. He would say almost three decades later that an official visit would have amounted to "total bullshit…. We felt they would show us a laboratory building we wouldn't understand or know anything about." Instead of attending a dog-and-pony show, he preferred to stand on his interviews with current and former employees, who he figured knew the real Plum Island.
To Fitzsimmons's chagrin, the story that reporters Cummings and Fetherston published in Newsday that fall noted the links between Plum Island and Fort Detrick, but didn't address employee safety and health, issues he believed were vital. Titled "the plum island lab: for mankind or against it?", the article did not mention employees like Bruce Becker with his mysterious illness brought on by the lab. It failed to mention the lone medical official stationed on the island, a part-time nurse who confessed she did little more than dispense aspirin and Ace bandages. Nor did it address the assistant director who placed a package of live virus on the seat next to him on a trans-Atlantic commercial airline flight. Fitzsimmons had shared his painstakingly detailed notes with Cummings and Fether-ston, and little of it made print. "I was frustrated," he says, "hoping [the Newsday investigators] would report about the people and how they were getting sick from exposure to these deplorable conditions." Plum Island management branded the article as a distortion of facts written to sell newspapers, brazenly denying any germ warfare research. "This center has not been, nor is it now, engaged in biological warfare," said Director Callis.
Making matters worse for the probing intern, the Suffolk Times rushed to the aid of Plum Island and publicly whipsawed the "college students" and the "irresponsible" actions of Newsday. "The desire to uncover another Watergate scandal runs strong in the hearts of all investigative reporters," the paper acknowledged, but tarnishing reputations and suggesting the island was a cover-up for biological warfare was appalling. Fitzsimmons had acted recklessly. And noting that the Marxist-Communist publication Daily Worker charged Plum Island with germ warfare back in 1952 — sending comrades to fight the laboratory during the public hearings — the editorial mused it was "somewhat surprising to find Newsday following the [Communist] party line" today. The Suffolk Times had done everything but brand Ronnie Fitzsimmons a hippie Communist and Newsday an organ of the Soviet Politburo. The editorial marked the apex of the local community's support of Plum Island, support that would wane soon enough.
"I felt they did something on Plum Island — even though they always denied it. The very nature of the secrecy of the place gave fuel to the rampant speculation that existed," says Downey, today one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists, still youthful three decades later at age fifty-four.
"Because they wouldn't tell you anything, everybody believed the worst," Downey says. "And who would believe them? This was a period of time when lying was part of the operation. People wouldn't tell you the truth — they didn't tell the soldiers the truth [at Edgewood Arsenal] and they're giving them these drugs." After the LSD scandal, "It would not have been a long shot to think that the Army was testing biological agents at Plum Island or working with the USDA — it would have been an easy connection to make. I never believed that — with all due respect to the Army, not that they are inherently dishonest people — but I never believed they told the whole truth. We just assumed they were not going to tell the truth about things, until you beat them to death with it. And they didn't.
"It was a rough time, a time very, very different from today," Downey continues. "The 1970s was the end of an era for them, too. You had a post-Vietnam period, and the military was up against it. And to [be browbeaten by] some freshman member of the House Armed Services Committee? They weren't going to pay attention to me, they were just hoping I went away."
Which he did. Or rather, his intern did. A Newsday editorial called Downey's Plum Island inquiry "not enough." Busy with other high-profile matters, Tom Downey launched no formal investigation. And Ronnie Fitzsimmons went back to Stony Brook to finish up college.[24]
Years after the Downey-Plum Island inquiry, Fred Kass confessed to Ronnie that they never expected anything to come of his work.
It was, after all, just another summer intern project.
7
"The Disastrous Incident"
A safety-designed building should be constructed in such a manner that it is virtually fireproof and so that each floor and room can be considered relatively waterproof, airtight, and insect and vermin proof. Thus, only the controlled entrances and intakes and exits and exhausts would need continual surveillance for trouble on the outside….
September 15, 1978, 7:00 a.m. — This is going to be a rough day, Billy thought, holding his stomach and trying to gain some composure as the ferry bumped and tilted through the choppy waters of Plum Gut. Thursday nights were always fun nights to put back a few with the guys at happy hour, their practice run for the weekend. It was Indian summer, the best time of the year on the North Fork. The weather was warm, the humidity finally beginning to break and, thank heavens, those damn city summeristas disappeared on Labor Day. Every Memorial Day weekend an exodus begins from New York City. America's rich and famous (and those aspiring to the same) disperse into the two forks of eastern Long Island to escape the city's blistering heat and cramped quarters. The population of a quaint little enclave like Southold or Southampton swells to innumerable tallies. For those without a private helicopter the traffic becomes murderous; and the local, modest-living populace waits out the summer in agony.
Just eight more hours left in the week, but for now, Billy Doroski would have to deal with the consequences of the booze. The early boat to Plum Island was typically a unique but enjoyable commute — like an oversized carpool where a shared and sheltered camaraderie reigned. The regulars were always there to goof around with on the way over, and most of the stuffed-shirt scientists usually caught the later 8:00 a.m. boat. No fun this morning, though. A tall coffee nursed the pressing pain at the back of Billy's neck, but didn't do a thing for his ailing stomach, which churned with each methodical thud of the boat over the Gut's strong currents. A laboratory technician, Billy was responsible for all the preparatory work for the scientists — inoculate the animals with viruses, draw blood serum samples, culture viruses in dishes, and prepare sample slides. In reality, Billy handled the lion's share of the labor so the doctor could stroll in, take a look at his work, and postulate.
Leaving the ferry, he boarded the old school bus stenciled lab 257, and slowly eased himself down into the small seat. He exhaled. Yeah, this is going to be some day — some day. Now why the hell did you have to go and do that to yourself? He slumped over and rested his palm squarely on his forehead as the bus careered south along the narrow path, past the marshy lake, before screeching to a halt a few minutes later at 257. Billy waited patiently for his turn to stand and exit, then filed into the compound through the guardhouse door at the outer fence along with twenty-five or so other techs and building engineers, before passing through the gray airlock entrance into the animal corral chute. Today, he would be assisting Dr. Ahmed H. Dardiri, the chief of Lab 257, who was conducting the annual foreign animal disease school, teaching doctors and veterinarians from around the country how to recognize the symptoms of exotic virus and bacteria infections. That morning, the doctor planned to demonstrate the effects of bovine herpes mammillitis virus, and asked Billy to set things up. Or, in other words, to inject the animals with the virus.
24
Later, he would find the recognition in the political arena he so desperately sought, when he became the first man ever hired by the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, better known as NARAL. Today, he lives with his wife and two children in the Washington, D.C., area, and is the national spokesperson for an association of abortion clinics.