Newsday investigative reporter Bill Bleyer just couldn't believe it. We were talking one morning about the new germ outbreaks on Plum Island that occurred over the summer of 2004, a story Bleyer broke after he received a tip from one of his sources close to the island. In an all too familiar sequence of events, Plum Island engaged in a cover-up of the outbreak. The two laboratory accidents occurred just days before a fiftieth anniversary celebration the scientists were planning. I can tell you from years of research that if Doc Shahan, Plum Island's first director, were at the helm, a biological event of this magnitude would have prompted him to cancel the festivities and close the lab. Everything I learned about Doc Sha-han is summed up in one simple rule he repeated to a reporter in the 1950s: "We take no risks," Doc Shahan said. "We may be extreme, but I don't think so. It's better to be overcautious all the time, than not cautious enough just once." But that was then. Too much at stake to heed Doc Shahan's prescient advice, went the current thinking. Probing newspaper and television reporters, and that meddling author would have a field day with this one if we told them about it. Plum Island had organized a full gala, replete with speeches, alumni gatherings, tours, and gauzy media press kits. Nothing would stop it from proceeding. Not even a germ outbreak.
After the excitement faded a month later, the scientists called up Senator Clinton and confessed: "Oops." A week or so after that, Clinton and Bishop wrote yet another letter, thanking the scientists for "notifying our offices about the two inadvertent foot-and-mouth disease cross-contaminations that occurred in the biocontainment areas of Plum Island Animal Disease Center. We urge you to immediately investigate these alarming breaches at the highest levels, and to keep us apprised of all developments." The immediacy of their letter, tied to a six-week-old germ outbreak was disheartening. Plum Island called it an "incident," just as they had years ago when germs escaped the laboratory, instead of calling it what it was — a biological outbreak. Same as then, they refused to use the "O-word" that prompted scientist Dr. Don Morgan to dub the earlier outbreak the "disastrous" incident.
What actually happened is very easy to understand. On at least two separate occasions, healthy animals on one side of the laboratory — suppos-edly sealed from the rest of the laboratory compartments and sealed to the outside world — became infected with the same germs being studied in a different laboratory module on the other side of the building. If this germ outbreak doesn't once and for all condemn this half-century-old laboratory, I'm not certain anything will. Some questions come to mind: Who knew about the outbreak? Why didn't the scientists disclose the outbreak to the public? How did it happen? Were proper safety measures followed? What are the effects of the germs leaking outside of containment? Who was responsible for the outbreak? What action has been taken against him, her, or them? What kind of repairs and training and education is under way to prevent an outbreak from occurring again? Why elected officials like Clinton and Bishop aren't taking to the streets after this cover-up is a question whose answer is beyond the scope of this epilogue.
As I've written in this book, it is high time to stop the letters, press releases, photo-ops, and empty condemnations, and start doing something meaningful out there.
Perplexed, Bleyer could not reckon why Plum Island officials didn't call him up and tell him what had happened. He was infuriated — he had reported on the anniversary party days before and given them positive coverage. And months before that, Plum Island had given him an exclusive "Day in the Life" tour of Plum Island that he turned into a comprehensive feature story in his newspaper. They had promised Bleyer they would be forthright about things the public ought to know about, and to him, this certainly topped this list. He was also angry at Clinton and Bishop, who also didn't tell him what had happened so he could report it (the letter they wrote to Plum Island wasn't released to the public until he cajoled them into releasing it). Unfortunately, Bleyer didn't get it. Plum Island used him as free PR tool to promote a positive image of the island, then reneged on their openness pledge the moment it didn't suit them to keep it.
Perhaps worst of all is what I learned last summer, when giving a talk on tiny Fishers Island, which sits about five miles northeast of Plum Island along the shoreline of Connecticut. Two fine groups, the nature conservancy and the local library, invited me there to address the residents. More than one hundred people showed up to hear what I, and the director of a Long Island group called The North Fork Environmental Council, had to say. It's not what was said that night, but rather what I later learned wasn't said which was most troubling.
The talk was after the germ outbreak, but before Bleyer's Newsday story, so at that time no one except the Plum Island scientists, and the senator and congressman knew. Or so I thought. The evening progressed and the understandably concerned citizens of Fishers Island became increasingly outraged at the antics of their neighboring island, but the invited guest seated to my right knew about the outbreak and didn't tell the assembled citizenry. She had been part of a select group of "community leaders" briefed by Plum Island scientists. Why she would keep this critical information from the now smoldering neighbors of Plum Island is an enigma. Perhaps this community leader figured she and her group could solve Plum Island's problems all by herself? One thing is for sure: had not Bleyer stumbled upon the germ outbreak, the public would have known nothing about it.
The Plum Island PR machine keeps on churning. In October 2004, Dr. Dan Bradway, a scientist from Washington State, who put in brief stint researching on Plum Island, weighed in with an opinion piece in Newsday, oddly entitled "'Mystery Island' is no threat to us," (italics mine) when Brad-way himself could not live farther away from Plum Island and still be in the continental United States. He playfully discusses Nelson DeMille's novel Plum Island, and then brushes off my book as another work of fiction:
This history of secrecy has led to all kinds of wild conspiracy and accident theories about diseases escaping from Plum Island. In a recently published book, "Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory," author Michael Carroll tries to connect Plum Island to Lyme disease and the 1999 outbreak of West Nile virus. Other non-scientist authors have blamed the island for Saint Louis encephalitis virus and even AIDS.
He then goes on to describe how well protected Plum Island is, and meticulously details its biological safety practices. "Conspiracy and accident theories?" Bradway has shown great impudence here, failing to mention the covered-up germ outbreak that occurred two months before he penned his opinion, the two stolen laptop computers, and the workers hired with felony criminal arrest records, among other mishaps. For a place hatched by Nazi Germany's top germ warfare scientist, host to germ outbreaks (like the two painstakingly detailed in this book), and a myriad of accidents and safety violations sprinkled upon Plum Island like rainbow jimmies on an ice cream cone, this is a fatally flawed opinion. Classic Plum Island spin, Dr. Bradway throws in AIDS and St. Louis encephalitis for good measure to obscure the true facts.