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When the first infection struck, authorities assumed it was a naturally occurring strain--one of those rare cases that pop up from time to time. Robert Stevens, a photo editor at the Sun, was an avid outdoorsman, and anthrax is endemic in wild animals. True, Stevens had contracted his infection by inhaling anthrax bacteria--so rare a form of transmission that no case had been reported in a quarter-century (several cases of plague, by contrast, turn up in the U.S. each year). But on Oct. 5, the day Stevens succumbed to the disease, health officials who met with American Media staff members were still sticking with the theory that he had picked up the infection from a natural source and that his co-workers had nothing to fear.
The staff members, many of them experienced journalists, were not convinced. Given how rare and deadly anthrax can be--and that Stevens lived up the road in Lantana, where the Sept. 11 hijackers perfected their flight skills--shouldn't the building be shuttered for a day or two to check for traces, just in case? "There was a feeling," one of Stevens' colleagues recalls, "that if the building had been located in New York City or Washington, they would have paid more attention to us."
That official complacency would not last long. Within days, testing had revealed the presence of anthrax spores on Stevens' computer keyboard and in the nostrils of two American Media mailroom employees. Both were dosed with antibiotics, and neither developed the disease. But it was clear that Stevens had not picked up anthrax during a jaunt through the Everglades. The amount of anthrax involved and the fact that it was inhaled convinced authorities that someone had deliberately "weaponized" the bacterium--that is, cultured the spores to produce a significant quantity, then mixed the results into a powder.
How the spores got into Stevens' lungs is still a mystery. One theory involves an eccentric "love letter" sent to the actress Jennifer Lopez in care of one of American Media's publications. Tabloid staff members recall that Stevens was present when the letter was opened and passed around. It contained a powdery substance ("some kind of aphrodisiac," someone joked at the time) and a charm that looked like a Star of David. The letter was apparently discarded.
As for who might be responsible, the FBI and CDC are hoping the bacterium itself might provide a clue. Every strain of Bacillus anthracis has a genetic fingerprint; no one knows exactly how many strains of anthrax exist, but scientists have collected more than 1,200 samples from outbreaks in animals around the world. Only about a third have been studied extensively so far. The American Media bacterium is similar to strains that were isolated as early as the 1950s in places as far apart as Haiti and Iowa State University, but this one doesn't definitively match any of them. That has raised concerns that the bug may have come from overseas--from Iraq perhaps, or from rogue scientists in parts of the former Soviet Union.