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77–387 PDF 2002

OVERSIGHT OF THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE: ENSURING THE SAFETY OF POSTAL EMPLOYEES AND

THE U.S. MAIL

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 30, 2001

Serial No. 107–43

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE WELDON, Florida

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

C.L. ‘‘BUTCH’’ OTTER, Idaho

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, Tennessee

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

——— ———

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

JAMES C. WILSON, Chief Counsel

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on October 30, 2001 .......................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Burrus, William, president-elect, American Postal Workers Union, AFL–

CIO; Mo Biller; William Young, executive vice president, National Association of Letter Carriers; Gus Baffa, president, National Rural Letter

Carriers’ Association; and William H. Quinn, national president, National Postal Mail Handlers Union .............................................................. 134

Potter, John E., Postmaster General of the U.S. Postal Service, accompanied by Patrick Donohoe; S. David Fineman, vice chairman, Board

of Governors, U.S. Postal Service; and Thomas G. Day, vice president,

engineering .................................................................................................... 86

Weaver, Kenneth C., Chief Postal Inspector, U.S. Postal Inspection Service; Mitch Cohen, Director, Division of Bacterial and Mycotic Disease,

National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention, accompanied by Rema Kabazz; and James F. Jarboe,

Section Chief, Counterterrorism Division, Domestic Terrorism/

Counterterrorism Planning Section, Federal Bureau of Investigation ..... 28

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Baffa, Gus, president, National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 159

Burrus, William, president-elect, American Postal Workers Union, AFL–

CIO, prepared statement of ......................................................................... 139

Burton, Hon. Dan, a Representative in Congress from the State of Indiana, prepared statement of .......................................................................... 9

Cohen, Mitch, Director, Division of Bacterial and Mycotic Disease, National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention, prepared statement of .............................................................. 37

Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York:

Letters dated October 30, 2001 ................................................................ 67

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 21

McHugh, Hon. John M., a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 5

Morella, Hon. Constance A., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Maryland, prepared statement of ............................................................ 184

Moser, Charles, president of the National Association of Postmasters ....... 104

Potter, John E., Postmaster General of the U.S. Postal Service, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 90

Quinn, William H., national president, National Postal Mail Handlers

Union, prepared statement of ...................................................................... 167

Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Connecticut, prepared statement of ........................................................ 18

Sombrotto, Vince, president, National Association of Letter Carriers, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 153

Towns, Hon. Edolphus, a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 186

Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 14

Weaver, Kenneth C., Chief Postal Inspector, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, prepared statement of ............................................................................ 31

Weldon, Hon. Dave, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Florida, article by Alan Robinson ................................................................ 108

Page

IV

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by—Continued

Young, William, executive vice president, National Association of Letter

Carriers:

A picture of letter carriers working out of tents ..................................... 150

An expression from the Brooklyn family ................................................. 148

(1)

OVERSIGHT OF THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE:

ENSURING THE SAFETY OF POSTAL EMPLOYEES AND THE U.S. MAIL

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2001

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 12 noon, in room 2154,

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dan Burton (chairman of the

committee) presiding.

Members present: Representatives Burton, Cummings, Weldon,

Norton, Shays, Maloney, Horn, Mink, Otter, Lantos, Duncan, Waxman, Schrock, Watson, Mrs. Davis of Virginia, Schakowsky,

LaTourette, Turner, Souder, Tierney, Morella, Kucinich, Barr,

Davis of Illinois, Kanjorski, and Clay.

Staff present: Kevin Binger, staff director; Daniel R. Moll, deputy

staff director; James C. Wilson, chief counsel; David A. Kass, deputy chief counsel; Mark Corallo, director of communications; John

Callender, Matt Rupp, Randall Kaplan, and Jennifer Klute, counsels; Caroline Katzen, professional staff member; Robert A. Briggs,

chief clerk; Robin Butler, office manager; Josie Duckett, deputy

communications director; Joshua E. Gillespie, deputy chief clerk;

Danleigh Halfast, assistant to chief counsel; Michael Layman, staff

assistant; Leneal Scott, computer systems manager; Corinne

Zaccagnini, systems administrator; Phil Schiliro, minority staff director; Phil Barnett, minority chief counsel; Kate Anderson, minority counsel; Josh Sharfstein and Denise Wilson, minority professional staff members; Ellen Rayner, minority chief clerk; and Jean

Gosa and Earley Green, minority assistant clerks.

Mr. BURTON. The Committee on Government Reform will come

to order.

A quorum being present, I ask unanimous consent that all articles, exhibits and extraneous or tabular material referred to be included in the record. Without objection, so ordered.

Because we have limited time of the first two panel witnesses,

we are going to ask the Members to limit their opening statements.

We were going to just have the chairman and the ranking member

give opening statements, but because others would like to make

opening statements, I’d urge you, because we want to get to questions as quickly as possible, to limit them to just what essentially

you have to say instead of giving the normal 5 minute opening

statement.

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Over the past 2 months, we’ve been struck by the terrorists not

once, but twice. They’ve attacked us with weapons developed from

things we use in our every day lives, commercial airplanes and the

U.S. mail. Prime Minister Netanyahu called the attacks on the

World Trade Center a wake up call from hell. It feels like we hardly woke up at all before we were hit with the anthrax infected letters. Now we have three people dead and at least a dozen more are

infected, and we heard this morning someone else is in critical condition.

We have thousands of people up and down the East Coast taking

antibiotics. Every day traces of anthrax are found in more post offices, more mail rooms and more office buildings. As a Nation, we’ll

probably never be the same. The sense of security that we once felt

has vanished. We now know that terrorists can strike at any time

and any place. We have no other choice but to fight back.

As we speak, the men and women of our armed services are

fighting to bring Osama bin Laden to justice and to destroy his terrorist network. The President has rallied the American people and

the world community to this cause. His leadership has given the

American people a lot of confidence.

But we can’t stop with the Taliban or al Qaeda. We have to

strike back hard at those who would use biological or chemical or

nuclear weapons. Eight years ago, terrorists tried to blow up the

World Trade Center. Obviously, not enough was done by our intelligence agencies because we saw what happened on September

11th.

This time it’s anthrax. We shouldn’t make the same mistake

twice. We need to take action now. We should strike hard at any

site that our intelligence agencies shows is producing chemical, biological or nuclear material for terrorists or terrorist nations anywhere in the world. And we need to do it very, very quickly. We

need to do it now before they perfect those weapons. Remember, 8

years ago, we had an attack on the World Trade Center and they

didn’t succeed. And 8 years later, they did succeed. So we’ve had

that wake-up call and we have to act.

We must not wait, even if the current anthrax attack is not from

a foreign entity. Our enemies abroad are watching and preparing.

If we don’t do anything, I think we’ll regret it.

Obviously, we also have to step up the security here at home.

Following the disaster of September 11th, we’ve gone to great

lengths to make our airports and airplanes more secure. After the

last 2 weeks, we have to do the same things with our Postal Service. We have to do what’s necessary to protect the American people

from biological and chemical threats. That’s why we’re holding this

hearing today.

We’re going to look at how the Postal Service has handled the

situation so far and what still needs to be done. I want to thank

our new Postmaster General, Jack Potter, who is going to be with

us later on this afternoon. I know it’s a very stressful time for the

Postal Service. The task ahead is monumental. The Postmaster

General is going to be here, I think, around 2 p.m. He’ll be accompanied by David Fineman, the vice chairman of the Postal Service

Board of Governors. I want to thank them in advance for being

here.

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I also want to thank our other witnesses, Mr. Jarboe, from the

FBI, who came on very short notice. I really appreciate that. The

FBI is working very hard to try to meet these new threats. Their

cooperation with this committee has always been very good and appreciated.

Dr. Mitch Cohen from the CDC also came on very, very short notice. A new case of inhalation anthrax was reported in New York

City last night, and I know that the CDC is doing everything they

can to stay on top of the situation. So I want to thank you for coming on short notice.

I want to also thank as well our Chief Inspector, Mr. Weaver,

from the Postal Service, for being here. I also want to thank our

witnesses from the four postal unions who are going to testify later

today.

I think it’s fair to say that the situation hasn’t been handled perfectly, but we’re in uncharted territory. With the advantage of

hindsight, it’s easy for us to second guess. Given the little experience that we’ve had with anthrax in this country, it’s not surprising that we’ve had some rough spots. I was told that the last time

we had a case of anthrax was about 25 years ago. So we’ll have

some questions about decisions that were made and the way the

situation was handled.

We lost two employees from the Brentwood facility. Did we wait

too long to start testing there? What lessons have we learned? I

think the most important thing we can do at this point is to work

together so we’re better prepared for the next attack, and we understand that there probably will be more attacks.

We have 800,000 people working in the Postal Service. Their

safety comes first. We have millions of people and businesses

across the country who rely on the Postal Service. They send and

receive mail every day. We have to restore their confidence that the

mail is safe.

We want to hear from the Postmaster General about what steps

they’re taking, what’s being done so we can open the mail again

without fear. What type of technology is the Postal Service investing in? How effective is it? How long will it be before it’s up and

running, and how much will this equipment cost?

The first figure we heard last week was $800 million, and before

long it was up to almost $2.5 billion, including infrastructure

changes. Where does this money come from? This is an area where

the Congress and the Postal Service need to work together. If the

Postal Service has to pass along all these costs to the ratepayers,

the impact on their finances will be devastating. The Postal Service

is already losing money, about $165 million last year. The combination of a sluggish economy and increased use of e-mail could make

this year’s losses even greater. And that’s not even considering the

cost that’s been a result of these terrorist attacks.

The September 11th attacks cost the Postal Service over $60 million in damages alone. The economic slowdown that followed cost

them another $300 million to $400 million in lost revenue. The

costs related to this anthrax attack will be many times that. In its

current financial condition, the Postal Service cannot absorb these

costs.

4

The White House has already committed $175 million in emergency funds to help the Postal Service take the first steps. More

is going to be required. I hope we can get a more exact idea on how

much more today or in the very near future. I’m going to work with

the White House, and so will the committee and the Postmaster

General and my colleagues on this committee will work as well to

make sure the Postal Service has the resources it needs to face this

challenge.

I also want all my colleagues to know that we’re not going to give

up on postal reform. It’s more clear now than ever that we need

to have a financially strong Postal Service. They need to have

greater flexibility or they can’t compete in today’s environment. I

know that John McHugh agrees with me, and so does Danny

Davis, who is not here yet, but they’ve been working very hard on

the postal reform issue.

John McHugh can’t be here with us because of a family problem,

but he has a statement that we will insert into the record, without

objection.

[The prepared statement of Hon. John M. McHugh follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. I just have a couple more remarks. This is probably

the great challenge America has faced in decades. I can’t remember

the last time so many Americans were afraid to go about their

daily lives. I can’t remember the last time so many people felt insecure. Yet we’re rising to that challenge. And it wouldn’t be possible

without the hard work of thousands and thousands of people, the

men and women of the armed forces flying combat missions over

Afghanistan, conducting commando raids in hostile territory, and

all the people at the Defense Department who are supporting them.

The Justice Department and the FBI have committed vast resources to investigating these crimes. They’re working tirelessly to

try to protect the public, and we appreciate that very much. At the

CDC, they’re working around the clock, and I really appreciate

them being here today, because I know how difficult it is right now

to contain this outbreak of anthrax. The men and women of the

Postal Service who continue to keep the mail moving despite all the

uncertainties they face, the local firefighters and policemen who

risk their lives to try to save others.

I’d like to correct one thing I said, I said $165 million. It’s $1.65

billion that the Postal Service was asking for.

On behalf of everyone on this committee, I want to thank everyone who is doing his or her part. With that, that concludes my

opening statement.

Mr. Waxman, you’re recognized.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Dan Burton follows:]

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Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you

for holding this important hearing.

There are two questions we need to focus on today: Is it safe for

families, businesses and Government agencies to open their mail?

And is it safe for postal workers to handle the mail?

Ensuring the safety of the mail is a paramount Federal responsibility. The public depends on the U.S. mail. We use the mail to

stay in contact with family and friends, to pay our bills and to

transfer goods. When the mail is not safe, our national economy

cannot function properly.

Since the attack on our country on September 11th, the Postal

Service has delivered 20 billion pieces of mail. Since that time, only

a handful of mail has been found to be contaminated with anthrax.

The odds of any family receiving a contaminated letter during this

period are vanishingly small.

But it is also clear that the mails are being used by terrorists

to kill and injure innocent Americans. Since the September 11th

attacks, anthrax contaminated mail has killed three people, caused

inhalation or cutaneous infections in at least one other. Most of

those killed or injured have been postal workers who were unknowingly infected while serving the public. I especially want to express

my sympathies to the families of Thomas Morris, Jr., and Joseph

Curseen, Jr., the two postal workers who died earlier this month

from inhalation anthrax.

We must do everything in our power to stop these terrorists and

ensure the safety of the mail. On September 11th, terrorist attacks

were launched on New York and Washington using airlines; 3 days

later, Congress provided $40 billion to help New York and Washington respond. And 1 week after that, Congress provided another

$15 billion to help the airlines cope.

The mails are now under attack. We must respond just as quickly and just as forcefully to protect the mail.

The Postal Service has said that the technology needed to respond to the anthrax attacks will cost $2.5 billion. I fully support

helping the Postal Service pay for its response to the anthrax

threat. In fact, I believe the Postal Service may need even more

money to adequately protect the mail.

But I also have questions about how this money will be spent.

We need to act fast. But we also need to do it right.

The Postal Service should have done emergency planning before

the recent attacks that would provide a blueprint for how to respond. But the Postal Service didn’t do this. In fact, the only emergency planning by the Postal Service before September 11th involved how the Postal Service would respond if attacks were

launched against other targets. For example, if airlines were attacked and couldn’t be used, the Postal Service looked at alternatives for delivering the mail. The Postal Service had no plan for

responding if the Postal Service itself were attacked.

As a result, the Postal Service is now trying to do emergency

planning at the worst possible time, in the midst of an emergency.

Along the way, serious mistakes are being made, such as the tragedy at the Brentwood facility. We cannot afford additional mistakes. Improvements will cost money, but throwing money into the

system doesn’t necessarily bring about more safety.

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I will ask hard questions today about whether there is a magic

technological fix to this problem. I will ask questions about whether the right process was in place for making sound judgments. Ultimately, what we may need is a common sense strategy that uses

both low tech safety precautions and new technologies.

It’s natural for families to have concerns about postal safety. But

there is a problem we can address, and it’s a problem that we must

fix. Today’s hearing will be an important part of that process.

I look forward to the testimony of the witnesses today and the

opportunity to ask questions so that we can evaluate what they

have to tell us and figure out the best response, given the difficulties we’re facing, the fast timeframe in which we have to act, and

the amount of money that will be involved.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Dr. Weldon.

Dr. WELDON. I too want to commend you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing. I practiced general internal medicine and infectious disease for 7 years prior to being elected. I also was in the

Army Medical Corps and received some training on chem-bio.

Also, interestingly, my father, who is now deceased, was a retired

postal worker. Certainly, my condolences go out to the family members of those who have been stricken and all postal workers. I certainly support efforts to get our postal system fully up and running

and do everything that we can to reassure the American public

that the postal system is safe. I commend you for the timeliness

of this hearing and I yield back.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Dr. Weldon.

Mr. Lantos.

Mr. LANTOS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to

commend you and the ranking member for holding this hearing.

First, Mr. Chairman, let me express on behalf of all the American people the sorrow and anguish we all feel for the postal employees who lost their lives. The postman or the postwoman on the

beat are beloved fixtures on the American landscape. And to see

this group of remarkably committed and decent and hard working

men and women under this threat pains every single American citizen.

Mr. Chairman, I am as confident that we will win the war domestically as I am confident that we will win the war in Afghanistan. But while we can express our confidence in our long term victory, it is important to put the minds of our loyal postal workers

at ease. Their prime concern at the moment, obviously, is a health

concern. And with the best health advice in the world, we will deal

with that issue.

I would like to spend a moment on their financial concerns. Long

before September 11th, the Postal Service was in very serious financial difficulties. As a matter of fact, in the 30 years since 1970,

the cumulative deficit of the Postal Service was about $5 billion. I

predict that the deficit of the Postal Service in the next 2 or 3 years

will exceed $5 billion. I for one want to put at ease the minds of

all the postal workers that this Congress will stand beside them in

meeting the financial challenge that the Postal Service will have to

face.

Since the first letter containing anthrax was mailed on September 18th, 25 billion pieces of mail were safely delivered by the men

and women of the Postal Service. And the very least these people

are entitled to expect from their Congress is that we will see to it

not only that their health is fully protected, but their financial future is fully protected for all postal employees currently working.

Now, in the long run, there may be a systemic impact of this

change. And that systemic impact may drastically reduce the use

of the Postal Service. But I think it would be eminently unfair to

impose a burden on men and women who have been devoting years

of their lives to this important endeavor.

My commitment, Mr. Chairman, is to see to it that we as a Government stand behind the men and women of the Postal Service in

these difficult days. I yield back.

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Lantos. Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for having this

hearing, and thank you, Mr. Waxman, for being so supportive of

this hearing.

I believe this is a hearing in honor of Thomas Morris and Joseph

Curseen and all their fellow employees. That’s what this hearing

is about, to make sure that they are protected in the future and

to never forget the two who have lost their lives.

I’m going to submit my written statement. I just want to say

these brief words. We are at war, we are at war, we are at war.

We are in a race with terrorist organizations to shut them down

before they have a better delivery system for chemical and biological agents, before they get nuclear waste material they can put in

a bomb and explode with all the toxicity that presents, and before,

heaven forbid, they get a nuclear weapon with which they can

blackmail us or detonate.

That’s what this is about, and Thomas Morris and Joseph

Curseen are victims, casualties of this war. We’re going to learn

how to fight it better and better as we go along, and we’re going

to succeed. But the bottom line is, we have a tough task ahead of

us. I know there are going to be lot of should haves. There isn’t

anyone in this room who can’t look at themselves in the mirror and

say, we should have or I should have. And that includes all of us.

But obviously, we in Government have a responsibility to take action, and we’re going to.

But I’m going to try real hard not to be part of the should haves,

because I know that list is endless and I know I’m part of that list.

I yield back.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Shays. Mrs. Maloney, do you have

an opening statement? I would urge everyone, because we’re going

to lose part of our panel, I think, at 1:30.

Mrs. MALONEY. Just very briefly, thank you, Mr. Chairman and

ranking member.

Three people, including two postal workers have died, and others

have been infected. We need to review and do everything possible

to protect their health in the future.

This is an issue of tremendous importance to me. Anthrax spores

were found in four sorting machines at New York City’s largest

mail distribution center. The executive board of the city’s largest

postal workers union voted yesterday to file a lawsuit to have the

facility closed for a thorough cleaning.

Health officials, however, have told the workers that there is no

danger for employees and that they should continue working in the

building. I must say that many postal workers have been calling

my district office and calling me saying, why will you not close the

post office when you closed the congressional buildings when spores

were found? And I think that’s a legitimate question.

On Wednesday night, the Postal Service began giving a 10 day

supply of the antibiotic Cipro to 7,000 New York City postal employees as a precautionary measure. The Cipro is being made available to employees at Morgan Sorting Center, the James A. Farley

Mail Building, Estonia Mail Station, Radio City Station, Rockefeller Center Station and the Times Square Station. So we are responding to their health.

I must mention that even before the September 11th tragedy and

the anthrax scares, the Postal Service was projected to lose $1.6

billion in 2001. Now it’s going to be much worse. Since September

11th, five magazines have gone out of business, many of them

housed in the District that I represent. Mademoiselle, that I grew

up with, is now out of business. One of the challenges that we face

is to make sure that we continue to have a competitive and universal mail service.

You can’t really blame anyone for being concerned about the mail

these days. But we have to keep things in perspective. 680 million

pieces of mail move each and every day. And the risk to the general

public is infinitesimal. And anthrax mailings have apparently been

confined to a small number of organizations and elected officials.

Though I must mention very disturbing news that a 61 year old

woman who worked in my district at Manhattan Eye, Ear, Nose

and Throat Hospital, had no contact, or didn’t work with the mail,

is deathly ill and has been exposed and infected.

The mailing industry is tremendously important to our economy.

It’s actually 8 percent of our GNP, a $900 billion industry. And

really, it’s tremendously important to our country. I certainly support the efforts by the Postal Service to purchase the sanitation

machines. The price tag alone for this is going to be in the neighborhood of $2 billion to $3 billion, I’m told. What many people have

not focused on is that the mail volume has dropped since September 11th, which means that the USPS is losing more money every

single day. I have seen some estimates that put this reduction at

10 percent.

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I applaud the administration for coming forward with a $175

million influx of funding to assist and support the U.S. mail service, and I applaud the efforts of my colleagues, Danny Davis and

Congressman McHugh. Danny Davis has come forward with a stirring resolution honoring the postal workers, their loss of life, their

bravery. They are soldiers every day going to work and getting the

mail out to people. And I applaud the work of the task force that

McHugh and Davis have put forward to look at postal reform. This

may be the time that we should move forward, not only the influx

of the dollars for the new machines, the new protections, but the

reform that has so long been debated.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Mr. Schrock, I guess you don’t have an opening

statement? Thank you, Mr. Schrock.

Mrs. Davis.

Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I’d just like to say thank you for holding this very important

hearing at a time when our postal workers have been put at high

risk and the possibility still remains that there will be even more

risk. I look forward to hearing the comments from the distinguished panel. Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you especially

for your rapid response in holding this hearing.

I don’t need to tell you that we in the District feel very much at

ground zero. We’re still grieving the loss of two postal workers who

served us valiantly, had a particularly good record in the Postal

Service. Soldiers go to battle prepared to die. People don’t go to the

post office prepared for their families to hear that they, too, have

died.

I believe, because I’ve worked closely with the Post Office and

the CDC, that our Federal officials are working very hard every

day, very long hours, trying to come to grips with this matter. I

agree with my good friend, Mr. Shays, who says the finger pointing

won’t do us any good now. I am a problem solver, not a finger

pointer.

I do think it is important to assure the country that the District

of Columbia experience will not be repeated elsewhere and that we

will get control of the experience in this city very soon, not only because Congress is here or the President is here, but because

600,000 people live here. I don’t believe that the people who live

here or even our postal workers have been guinea pigs, as some

have said out of bitterness, and bitterness is perhaps understandable. I do believe that we were the first to test the system and that

the test showed multiple defects, including the worst defect of all,

the death of two postal workers.

Unfortunately for the post office, the shutdown of the House has

created a gold standard. I was just on MSNBC, and I was asked

this question. After detailing these deaths, I was asked, ‘‘why then

should we not close down the mail system of the United States or

at least of the East Coast until we get this problem under control?’’

I want you to know I said, I don’t think you should do that. I said

that without a lot of evidence and information, except the information I have. And I told them this, that I am not about to be terrorized to the point of getting that far in front of the evidence before

us.

And I certainly hope we are not anywhere near there. But I do

say to you that we need an alternative to doomsday scenarios like

closing down the House. It’s going to be very hard for me to say

to the people now in two of our post offices in the District of Columbia, Southwest and Friendship, that they shouldn’t evacuate

the place immediately and close it down. We evacuated this place

before a single granule was found, and now we’ve only found trace

amounts. There have got to be alternatives to this kind of panic

scenario, panic that everyone understands in the absence of information, but surely not the best way to go about ensuring the counVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:09 May 29, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77387.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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try that we’ve got to get back to normal, as the President, I think

justifiably, says.

If we can terrorize a nation on the cheap this way, but putting

an envelope or two in the mail, then all our administration is doing

to close off the money supply becomes quite irrelevant. It doesn’t

take a lot of money to do what you have to do to terrorize a nation.

We’ve got to quickly find a way to meet the major challenge of lumbering bureaucracies that are being called upon to somehow be a

finely honed machine that can take on a crisis and solve it quickly.

I suggest that small, task-oriented groups, with all the major actors

working at the same time, at the same table, may be necessary if

you have an unprecedented crisis.

For example, postal facilities were not the logical place to start,

given the science that you knew. But the science that we knew

didn’t turn out to be definitive because you had so little science, so

little experience with anthrax, and it was so old. I think we need

new hypotheses in order to reach beyond the science. I’m very concerned that the two neighborhood facilities were there has been

some anthrax will send yet another perhaps false message to the

public, hey, it’s coming downstream, it’s finally going to get in your

mail.

We’ve got to stop. We’ve got to have enough information to make

people cautious without panicking them to the point of believing

that now one of the great institutions of the United States, without

which we cannot do, ought to be shut down until we can somehow

‘‘solve this problem.’’ As you get closer to the general public, that

is going to be your challenge. I’m sure you can meet it.

I’ll be very pleased to hear what you have to say today.

Mr. BURTON. I thank the gentlelady.

Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Because we all want to see our mail service continue, and because we must provide for the health of postal workers, and for the

security of our mail, those entities handling anthrax incidents need

to abide by at least three principles. First, affected individuals

must be given detailed information and receive consistent updates

as to the potential contamination, levels of confirmed contamination, the health risks posed, steps that can be taken to prevent infection, symptoms to watch out for, and treatment options.

Unfortunately, this has not occurred. Numerous postal employees

have complained to me about the lack of information from postal

and health authorities. Initially, for instance, the CDC did not believe postal workers and mail handlers were at risk of anthrax infection from handling sealed mail. Well, the first deaths of postal

workers from inhalation anthrax forced CDC to revise its assumptions. The conflicting information undermined the trust of postal

workers in their leadership and in the health authorities.

Moreover, though CDC has revised its recommendations and

many postal workers are now receiving prophylactic treatment,

those still on the job still have not received adequate instruction

on precautionary measures and symptoms to look out for. Many

postal employees have received gloves, but it appears few have

been told how to use them and how to dispose of them properly so

that potential contaminants are not spread.

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In the wake of these recent anthrax incidents, the Postal Service

is experiencing as much as a 40 percent absenteeism rate in cities

such as New York. This, I believe, is a direct consequence of postal

employees feeling under-informed about the threat, health risk,

safety precautions and treatment. This must change.

The second principle. CDC, the post office, mail operations and

Government entities and other potential targets and local health

authorities must better coordinate their efforts and respond aggressively to potential contamination and infection. Press reports suggest that health authorities have been unable to comprehensively

track the condition of all employees who work in contaminated

areas. This renders likely the possibility that an exposed individual

might contract anthrax infection and become seriously ill before the

CDC and other health authorities are even aware of the case. It

also appears that not all local health authorities and individual entities with mail operations are able to immediately recognize contamination or infection.

The mail room employee at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat

Hospital at New York recently hospitalized for inhalation anthrax

went 4 days after exhibiting initial symptoms before she was admitted. Now she’s on a ventilator.

Third, the FBI’s criminal investigation of these attacks, while

very important, must not trump the public health response to these

attacks. Though authorities have been reluctant to do so, the level

of contamination at affected sites, the nature of the contamination

and the way in which testing is being conducted to determine contamination must be made known to all interested parties.

Moreover, the FBI must expedite the sharing of information on

anthrax exposure and infection by Federal and local health authorities. This would seem self evident. However, we must make

sure that the interim guidelines for reporting of anthrax by the

CDC, which requires the FBI receive notice first, are not interpreted to mean that information in a criminal investigation takes

priority over emergent public health concerns.

In the weeks since the September 11th attacks, many officials

here in Washington have invoked the following principle, that a

Government’s No. 1 responsibility is the protection of its citizens.

Let us proceed with this hearing in that spirit. I thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Kucinich. Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I will be

brief.

Mr. Chairman, just a few days ago my colleague, Ben Cardin,

and I went to the main post office in downtown Baltimore and had

an opportunity to visit the post office. After seeing the many people

there hard at work with their masks on, many of them with gloves,

and having a chance to talk to them, it’s interesting, Mr. Chairman, that not one of them said we should slow down.

What they did say, Mr. Chairman, was that, Congressman, we

want you to look out for us. We want you all to make sure that

we are protected. We want you to do every single thing in your

power to make sure that there is not another death. And Mr.

Chairman, that’s why this hearing is so timely. Twenty men, when

we got to the end of the tour, after about an hour, who were sitting

in a lunch room, and I’ll never forget the questions that they asked.

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One of them said he had been at Brentwood, and should he not be

getting tested, should he be getting Cipro. Another one asked, well,

will it make a difference whether we wear gloves. It seems like

these particles are so minute that it won’t make too much difference, so does the mask make a difference.

And Ben Cardin and I stood there as the union people and the

administrators tried to answer their questions. On my way here

today, one of them said to me, I ran into him on the street, he said,

I heard they’re having a hearing on us today. And he said, don’t

forget what we said. Look out for us, don’t forget us. We’re the ones

that make sure the mail goes through.

So Mr. Chairman, a lot of people don’t realize it, but you, to your

credit, were addressing the issue of anthrax long ago, far earlier

than September 11th, because I remember sitting in the hearings.

And so we’ve got a major situation here. But I too agree with Congressman Shays. We’ve got to be careful that we make sure that

the mail goes through, but we’ve got to also do everything in our

power to protect these men and women who are very, very brave

and do a job that many Americans probably wouldn’t even want to

be bothered with.

But that American spirit, Mr. Chairman, that bold spirit that

Ben Cardin and I saw, just cries out for us to do everything in our

power to protect them. If we don’t do it, then they ask the question,

who will.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Cummings. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I

want to thank you and the ranking member, Mr. Waxman, for convening this hearing to discuss the safety of postal employees and

the mail.

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, life as we once

knew it has never been and never will be the same. The attacks

of September 11th have caused a ripple effect that has reverberated throughout our economy and throughout our entire society.

Earlier this month reports surfaced of anthrax-tainted mail. The

anthrax-tainted mail seems to have been targeted to Government

officials, media and other innocent civilians.

Since the founding of our postal system, there is no report of biological agents being used as a weapon of war in the mail. Our mail

system is vital to the Nation, accounting for approximately 8 percent of the gross national product. The overall goal of the Postal

Service is to bind the Nation together through a communication

system that is the best in the world.

The perpetrators of anthrax-tainted mail seek to disrupt our

communications network and threaten the viability of not only our

mail service but of our Nation. There are those who criticize the

Postal Service for responding too slowly to the anthrax threat. To

those I say, I understand the criticism, but I also suggest that it

is much easier to criticize than to find solutions, to find solutions

to fear and terror that is spreading throughout the country.

The threat of anthrax-tainted mail is new for all of us. Now is

the time to pull together to successfully combat it. I, along with

Representative John McHugh, will introduce a resolution later

today honoring the 800,000 plus men and women in the U.S. Postal

Service who have done an outstanding job of delivering the mail

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throughout this national emergency. Since the terrorist attacks of

September 11th, the men and women of the U.S. Postal Service

have processed and delivered more than 20 billion pieces of mail.

In addition to honoring postal workers, we pledge to help make

sure that the Service, with the resources that they are available to

ensure the safety of their employees and the general public.

I also, Mr. Chairman, want to extend my condolences and prayers to the families of the postal workers and all the rest of the people in our country who have actually died as a result of this assault. It is important that we hold this hearing today, as more than

13,000 USPS employees are being treated for anthrax prophylactically. And of course, three U.S. postal employees remain hospitalized, suffering from inhalation anthrax.

Today, Mr. Chairman, I believe that we send a message to the

terrorists that we will not be frightened into fear, we will not be

delayed and we will not be denied. We will make every effort to

make absolutely certain that every employee of the Postal Service

has the safest, most desirable work related and work experiences

that we can possibly have.

And yes, Mr. Chairman, there were problems relative to the

funding and financing and the business of the postal operation and

services before the anthrax scare. But I believe that this also provides us with an opportunity to look comprehensively at what is

needed, and at the same time that we find a solution to the problem of bioterrorism, that we also find a way to bind up the postal

system period, so that we can continue to provide service, be the

great Nation and continue to communicate as the postal system

has allowed us to do.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and yield back the balance of my

time.

Mr. BURTON. Mrs. Mink, do you have an opening statement?

Mrs. MINK. Mr. Chairman, I too want to join my colleagues in

expressing great appreciation for the convening of this hearing. I

hope that it’s a mere beginning of a series of hearings that you will

hold, so that we can find out exactly what happened in these last

2 weeks.

I’m very much distressed to read reports of dissatisfaction among

the postal workers that their needs and concerns about their health

are not being attended to. I’m concerned with the reliance of the

postal authorities on the CDC’s recommendations that the facility

at Brentwood did not need to be closed. We already knew 2 days

before that a cutaneous anthrax infection did occur in a postal

worker that merely handled mail in New Jersey.

I’m also distressed that it’s taken us 2 weeks to really get into

understanding the nature of this threat and who did it, and all the

rest of it. So I think that, Mr. Chairman, this should be a mere beginning of our inquiry, because I think we are expressing concerns

that are felt throughout this Nation.

Frankly, I think that the burdens of inquiry and protection and

safety for the workers ought not to be the expense of the postal system. The Congress ought to be willing to fund whatever is necessary. If the facilities are closed and there are expenses with relation to that, the Congress ought to fund it, just as we were ready

to fund the other atrocious events that have overtaken our country.

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So Mr. Chairman, I thank you for these hearings. Thank you

very much.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mrs. Mink.

Before we get to our panel, let me just ask that we have a moment of silence for Thomas Morris and Joseph Curseen and the

other people who have been infected with this terrible thing, and

for our Nation. Can we have a moment of silence.

[Pause.]

Mr. BURTON. Thank you.

We will now welcome our first panel, Chief Inspector Kenneth C.

Weaver, Dr. Mitch Cohen and James Jarboe. Would you please rise

and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. BURTON. Be seated.

Do any of you have an opening statement you’d like to make, or

do you want to go right to questions?

Mr. WEAVER. I do, Mr. Chairman, if you’ll permit.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Weaver.

STATEMENTS OF KENNETH C. WEAVER, CHIEF POSTAL INSPECTOR, U.S. POSTAL INSPECTION SERVICE; MITCH

COHEN, DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF BACTERIAL AND MYCOTIC

DISEASE, NATIONAL CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASES,

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION, ACCOMPANIED BY REMA KABAZZ; AND JAMES F. JARBOE, SECTION CHIEF, COUNTERTERRORISM DIVISION, DOMESTIC

TERRORISM/COUNTERTERRORISM PLANNING SECTION,

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

Mr. WEAVER. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the

committee. I appreciate very much the opportunity to update you

today on the activities of the Inspection Service as they relate to

the terrorist attacks of September 11th and the anthrax mailings.

I’m pleased to participate on a panel with our law enforcement

partners in this war on terrorism, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

We are in the midst of an unprecedented attack on our Nation’s

mail system. Never in our history has the mail been used to deliver

biological terror as we have experienced this month. Postal employees have been placed directly in harm’s way during this attack, and

sadly, we have lost two of our own in this new war. The entire

postal community mourns these two fine, dedicated employees who

died in the line of duty.

Since September 11th, the Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement and security arm of the Postal Service, has been on high

alert, as all law enforcement agencies across our country have

been. Our mission of protecting the U.S. Postal Service, its employees and customers from criminal attack, and protecting the Nation’s mail system from criminal mis-use, has never been more

challenging since September 11th.

I have directed all 1,900 postal inspectors and 1,400 uniformed

police officers that their highest priority is the investigative and security work in support of the terrorist and anthrax investigations.

Unless these personnel are involved in the investigation of crimes

of violence, such as assaults of postal employees, robberies of post

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offices or mail bombs, they are now on the front lines in this war

on terrorism.

As you may know, the FBI has been designated by the Department of Justice as the lead agency on all terrorist investigations.

In matters involving the Postal Service and the U.S. mail, and

where our investigative or forensic expertise can be beneficial to

the overall investigation, the Postal Inspection Service commits resources to terrorist investigations.

Postal inspectors are members of the Joint Terrorism Task

Forces and the Attorney General’s anti-terrorism task forces in all

parts of the country and are integral contributors to the September

11th terrorist investigation. Inspectors are assigned to the FBI’s

strategic information operation center and FBI agents are assigned

to Inspection Service headquarters, where they partner with postal

inspectors to coordinate our national efforts.

The Deputy Director of the FBI and my deputy chief for investigations are in regular contact to ensure our respective organizations are working together. Postal inspectors are assigned to

FEMA, and we are also coordinating our efforts with the new Office of Homeland Security. We have assigned some of our forensic

experts to assist in the examination of the anthrax letters and

other evidence.

On October 18th, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, in partner- ship with the FBI, offered a reward of $1 million for information

leading to the arrest and conviction of those who are responsible

for the anthrax mailings. In addition, a unique partnership has

been established with America’s Most Wanted to handle the phone

calls. To date, we have received over 165 investigative leads from

these calls and are following up on them.

The safety of postal employees remains the top priority of our

service. We are working with postal management to provide security updates and educating employees about the critical need to

make security everyone’s business.

Security of the mail also continues to be a top priority. Inspection

Service personnel are posted at selected postal mail processing facilities to screen mail. The Postal Service has established a mail security task force comprised of representatives of the labor unions,

management associations, postal operations and the mailing industry. The Postmaster General has put me in charge of this effort.

The safety of the American public is also paramount to our mission. We have produced an informational video on mailroom security, a poster on suspicious packages and letters, and a post card

that was delivered to every address in the Nation, advising them

of precautions to take in handling the mail.

Regular messaging continues via our Web sites, and inspectors

are making presentations to businesses, community groups and law

enforcement organizations on safe mail handling procedures. We

are coordinating our efforts with State and local governments. For

example, we’ve discussed mail handling procedures with the adjutant generals of all 50 States’ National Guards. And we have

reached out with the same message to over 500 congressional district offices via telecons.

Our joint investigative and security efforts are resource intensive. But we’ll continue until the mails are safe and the criminals

30

who are committing these crimes are behind bars. The strict devotion of resources is strained by the need to respond and investigate

anthrax hoaxes, threats and suspicious letters and packages. Over

7,000 incidents have been reported to the Inspection Service in the

past few weeks, an average of almost 600 per day. Almost 300 postal facilities have had periods of evacuation as a result of these

threats and hoaxes.

But we have a message for those who use this time to contribute

to the unrest and terror. If we find you, we are going to prosecute

you and send you to jail. So far, we have arrested 18 people and

have an additional 14 cases pending prosecution. The Inspection

Service has a long and proud tradition of aggressively pursuing all

types of postal criminals, from robbers to murderers, mail bombers

to child pornographers, mail thieves to mail fraud con artists. The

men and women of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service will stay on

the case until the perpetrators are caught and brought to justice.

Mr. Chairman, you can be assured the Postal Inspection Service

will continue this proud tradition and stay on this case to make

sure the mails are safe and ensure America’s confidence in the

mail. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Weaver follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you.

Any other opening statements? Dr. Cohen.

Dr. COHEN. First, Chairman Burton and Mr. Waxman, I’d like to

thank you for inviting me to participate in this hearing. I am the

Director of the Division of Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases at the

Centers for Disease Control. I’m accompanied today by Dr. Rema

Kabazz, who is the team leader for the investigative team in the

D.C. area.

I’ve provided a written statement for the record and just want to

make a couple of brief comments. Since October 3rd, we’ve been investigating cases of anthrax in four areas: Florida, New York, New

Jersey and in the District. To date there have been 15 confirmed

cases of anthrax; 9 of these have been inhalational; 6 of them have

been cutaneous. There have been three deaths.

The epidemiologic investigation has indicated that letters containing anthrax were the vehicle of transmission for these illnesses.

The Centers for Disease Control has expended a great effort to be

able to investigate these outbreaks. We are working very closely

with many State and local health departments, various Federal

agencies, Federal workers, to try to protect the public health and

the health of all of our citizens.

I’d be very happy to answer any questions that you might have.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Cohen follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Dr. Cohen.

Mr. Jarboe, you’re a Hoosier, I understand, so welcome.

Mr. JARBOE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the other

ladies and gentlemen of the committee.

Just a couple of things very briefly, so that the questions may

be put forth. Currently we’ve restructured the investigation from

where it was in the inception as far as the anthrax investigation

goes. We’ve brought in a senior agent from our Washington field

office, an assistant special agent charged to oversee the combined

efforts of the investigation for Miami, New York, Washington, DC,

and the ancillary investigation in Newark. We’ve done this to make

sure it’s compact, concise and there’s one single focus.

Yesterday, we brought in representatives from all those field offices as well as other offices that had lead information to Washington and had an all day conference to make sure everyone understood exactly what our process was, what our focus was, and to

make sure that all the investigators from the different offices were

aware of what was going on in the other offices, as well as the forensic information available. We did this, again, to make sure that

we continue to keep the investigation as sharply focused as we can,

so that we can get results as quickly as possible.

The case is obviously joined with the investigation of the September 11th bombings as the most intensive investigations that we’ve

had in the Bureau’s history. Up to 7,000 plus individuals, and that

fluctuates on a daily basis, depending on need, have been involved

in the investigation. In my 22 years with the FBI, I’ve never seen

anything this intense.

We have daily briefings with the Director. He wants to make

sure he’s totally engaged. And as incidents pop up during the day

that he needs to be aware of, I’ve spent many a day, many an hour

in his office to make sure he’s fully aware and fully engaged.

One thing I would like to say and bring out is the fact that not

only the FBI but State and local authorities are getting tremendously overwhelmed with the anthrax hoaxes that have cropped up

since the initial information about the actual threats. On a routine

basis, we’ll handle approximately 250 threat analyses per year in

the weapons of mass destruction arena. In the first 2 weeks of October, we handled over 2,000 of these. And that pace has not

slowed down.

So it’s not only the FBI resources, but we have local police departments, State authorities that have to respond in conjunction

with what the Federal authorities are doing and all of them are

being overwhelmed. I’m pleased to see that the Attorney General

and the U.S. attorneys throughout the country have taken a very

aggressive stance about prosecuting those who would perpetrate an

anthrax hoax. The resources that are required to respond to those

are indeterminable, and I don’t think the individuals have a concept of not only the resources that they use, but the terror that

they bring to the victims. They may think it’s a joke, but if you’re

in receipt of a letter that powder comes out of, it is no joke.

I would like to say that there’s been very, very close coordination

with the Postal Service and with CDC. Dr. Cohen, from the inception of the investigation in Miami, has been literally living in my

space at FBI headquarters. He’s there on a daily basis and he has

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been an absolute tremendous asset to us, to make sure that the

FBI keeps focused on the health issues. As Representative

Kucinich stated, the health issues are more important than the

prosecutive issues at this point. Dr. Cohen has been just a great

help, tremendously assistive.

We’ve also had Ray Smith from the U.S. Postal Service also

working in our space, in on every briefing, in the meetings at a

desk so that he can coordinate postal efforts with the FBI efforts,

and that there’s no information that we have or the Postal Service

has that doesn’t cross back and forth, so that we’re all totally informed of all aspects of the investigation.

I would like to say that the system did work in the inception. It’s

designed that if a disease breaks, that the State and local health

officials are first notified and then they follow on with CDC and

then CDC will make that proper notification to the FBI of a potential criminal investigation. That’s exactly what happened in the

case. In the initial steps, we were there to support CDC as an assist to their efforts to determine the epidemiological problems that

they had in Florida, and that gradually rolled into a criminal investigation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you very much.

Let me just start the questioning off by asking, what are the penalties for mail that is a hoax, where they put powder in it?

Mr. WEAVER. Those penalties can range up to the same penalties

for mailing the agent itself. And some U.S. attorneys, I’ve heard,

are charging people with the same seriousness of the crime as if

they had mailed anthrax.

Mr. BURTON. So the penalty could be 5, 10—— Mr. WEAVER. It could be up to life in prison.

Mr. BURTON. I think that’s a message that I hope everybody in

the country hears. If you start sending something like that out as

a joke, that you could end up in jail for a substantial period of

time. It really isn’t funny.

Yesterday the Attorney General, and I will ask this to Mr.

Jarboe, the Attorney General issued an alert warning of a possible

terrorist attack this next week. Let me just ask a couple of questions regarding that, and you can answer them at one time. What

can the American people expect, if you can tell us that? What kind

of information was this alert based upon, if you can tell us that?

I understand there’s classified material there.

Is there any intelligence about specific targets, or is this more of

a general threat? What should the American public do in response

to this alert? What should State and local law enforcement people

do?

Mr. JARBOE. As you said, Mr. Chairman, it is non-specific. And

I believe that’s the message that the Attorney General put forward.

The source of the information is classified, so I don’t want to go

into that source here in this open briefing.

What should the citizens do, what should State and local law enforcement do? And I know it’s been said before, they have to be on

even higher alert than is the normal. I know the Nation has been

on very high alert ever since September 11th. If we had specific information about a specific target at a specific time, that informaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:09 May 29, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77387.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tion certainly would be made known so that we could protect those

targets.

One of the reasons we set forth or put forth the warning is to

make sure that everything maintains an elevation at the highest

peak of preparedness. If we can do that, then hopefully we can disrupt any plans that are in process. Unfortunately, we do not have

specific information about what the targets may be.

Mr. BURTON. Does it appear that the anthrax that were in the

three letters to Tom Brokaw, Senator Daschle and the New York

Post, did they come from the same source? The information that we

had was that the anthrax in a letter to Senator Daschle was finely

milled, a very high grade, if you want to call it that, and the letter

to Tom Brokaw was a more unrefined kind of anthrax spore. Do

you believe these came from the same source, or are these different

sources?

Mr. JARBOE. Your description of the two separate packages is

correct. As of right now, the information we have is that the anthrax samples that we do have are indistinguishable from one another on a DNA analysis. There is continuing analysis being done

to bring them down to the rudimentary elements and see exactly

what we have. But again, as of this point, the information shows

that they are indistinguishable.

Mr. BURTON. Why would they send a more refined form in one

letter to Senator Daschle and not have the more refined form into

Brokaw’s office?

Mr. JARBOE. That’s a question that we do not have the answer

to yet, and part of the investigation will be to focus on that and

why the two separate types.

Mr. BURTON. I see. I presume you’re probably checking to see if

different cells had different mechanisms for delivery and refinement.

Mr. JARBOE. We are checking everything that we can think of,

yes, sir.

Mr. BURTON. This goes to Dr. Cohen. With respect to the contamination in the Brentwood facility here in Washington, I believe

the original theory was that the anthrax escaped from the Daschle

letter and contaminated other mail, is that correct?

Dr. COHEN. That’s certainly one possible explanation.

Mr. BURTON. Well, there’s more and more mailrooms in the Federal office buildings that are having positive tests. Does that lead

you to believe that those mail rooms were infected with the same

letter?

Dr. COHEN. There are other alternatives. A possibility would be

that there are additional letters. The cases of disease, particularly

inhalation disease, suggests that individuals were exposed to an

aerosol, and that potential possibility would suggest that there may

be more than one letter that had passed through the facilities.

Mr. BURTON. I presume that the FBI, I know there’s a huge volume of mail that’s over there being stored, are they going through

that to see if there are any other letters that are containing anthrax spores?

Mr. JARBOE. Yes, sir, we are. We’re making plans to go through

that piece by piece.

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Mr. BURTON. Let me ask one question of Inspector Weaver. A

large volume of mail has been collected and sent to Ohio and other

destinations to be sanitized using irradiation technology. Some

mail is also being held for investigation purposes. Are these pieces

of mail being checked for anthrax, and do you believe that there

may be one or more letters out there containing anthrax that

haven’t been detected?

Mr. WEAVER. You’re correct, we are sending that mail to be sanitized. Upon the return of that, as Mr. Jarboe indicated, we will

thoroughly jointly go through that mail and look for characteristics

that might be indicative of the mailings, prior mailings that were

made.

Mr. BURTON. Does that answer the question?

Mr. JARBOE. Yes, sir.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Waxman.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I know that all of you had to deal with an unprecedented and

difficult situation. But unfortunately, this may not be an unusual

situation in this country when we have a terrorist attack in one

form or another. So I’m going to ask you first of all, about the coordination, which of course leads to how the communications were

handled with the public, whether there were inconsistent messages

sent and whether there was a different standard for people that

were exposed to anthrax.

First of all, Mr. Jarboe, one of the most common complaints was

that the agency was not doing a good job coordinating with the

other agencies. I want to ask you about this, particularly as it relates to the anthrax in the mail. After anthrax was discovered in

Senator Daschle’s office, the Capitol Police turned it over to the

Army lab at Fort Dietrich.

My understanding is that the Army had the responsibility to inform the FBI of the test results, and then the FBI had the responsibility to inform the Centers for Disease Control. Is my understanding correct of the way it was supposed to be handled?

Mr. JARBOE. That’s correct. They informed us and we work in

conjunction with CDC, that’s correct, sir.

Mr. WAXMAN. So on October 18th, we had newspaper articles

quoting law enforcement sources as saying, the anthrax in Senator

Daschle’s office was weaponized. The article seemed to indicate the

anthrax was made up of fine particles. The next day, the newspapers contained different information. Those articles said the anthrax was just run of the mill anthrax. Then on October 25th, the

papers were again reporting that the anthrax was indeed made of

fine particles that were easily suspended in the air.

When did the Army and the FBI determine the small size of the

anthrax spores, and when did the Army and the FBI first suspect

the small size of these anthrax spores?

Mr. JARBOE. The first information we had about the physical

properties of the anthrax that was found in Senator Daschle’s letter was the evening of October 15.

Mr. WAXMAN. Why was there so much confusion about it, whether it was a large spore or small spore or whether it was different

than the other anthrax that we’d seen? Seems to me that it

shouldn’t be that difficult to determine the size of a spore.

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Mr. JARBOE. I think the most confusion came in media reports,

and that partial information or mis-information was given to the

media and they reported it as they received it. Dr. Cohen was in

our space the evening, I believe it was around 9 or 10 p.m., when

we got the first reports in, indicating the preliminary analysis of

size and composition. Again, that was a preliminary analysis and

had to go on to subsequent tests to be confirmed.

Mr. WAXMAN. Let me go into the question of the confusion about

communicating to the public. Jeffrey Copeland, the Director of the

CDC, has said that his agency did not have any opportunity to examine the letter that went to Senator Daschle’s office or its contents. According to the Washington Post, on October 26th,

Copeland indicated CDC investigators were not shown the letter

and had no idea of the condition of the envelope. Dr. Copeland has

stated that his agency did not recognize that the anthrax in the

Daschle letter consisted of tiny particles that could seep out

through the pores in the envelope until it was too late to save the

postal workers.

Why were the CDC investigators not shown the Daschle letter?

Mr. JARBOE. The letter was in the laboratory at USAMRIID.

Mr. WAXMAN. When was the information about the quality of anthrax spores, including the size and any additives, communicated

to the CDC?

Mr. JARBOE. The evening of the 15th, when the initial reports

came in, Dr. Cohen and CDC were made aware. Then once the scientists got together, after they had done a further analysis, and determined additional physical properties, a phone call was made to

the Deputy Director of CDC with that information.

Mr. WAXMAN. So you maintain that he was informed immediately, then, on October 15th?

Mr. JARBOE. Again, we had preliminary information. What we

were putting out is what the preliminary look-see was from the

laboratory without any formal analysis.

Mr. WAXMAN. I don’t want to rehash it all, but we have to learn

from this experience how to deal with these problems in the future.

I want to ask you one last question, because I know my time is

about to expire. The FBI retains the custody of much of the mail

that came to Capitol Hill along with the Daschle letter. There’s a

lot of anxiety about cross-contamination of mail with anthrax

spores. Americans justifiably would like to know the risk of contracting anthrax in their homes from mail that might have come

in contact with an anthrax laced letter.

One way to assess the risk of such cross contamination would be

to test some of the mail that the FBI has in its custody. These letters were part of the same batches of the Daschle letter or subsequent batches.

Has the FBI tested the outside of these other envelopes for anthrax spores? Has the FBI tested whether anthrax spores stuck to

these envelops have the capacity to aerosolize, and would the FBI

consider conducting such tests if you haven’t done so already?

Mr. JARBOE. They have not been conducted at this point. We

have all the mail and we have recently located a physical location

where we can go through the mail. We’re going to go through it

piece by piece to see if we can find any additional letters that may

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have gone through the system and just not have been delivered at

the same time that Senator Daschle received his letter and conduct

any appropriate laboratory analysis at that point.

Mr. WAXMAN. Why has it taken so long to see whether there’s

a cross-contamination with other letters? Because these other letters could be delivering the anthrax from exposure to the letter to

Senator Daschle. Why is it taking so long?

Mr. JARBOE. It’s been going through in a very slow—I shouldn’t

say slow, that’s the wrong word, a very specific procedural basis,

so that we can make sure that we have it. We had to have a place

to do it, and we had trouble getting a physical location to go to.

This is a large volume of letters that we’re talking about. Then we

have to get the procedures in place to go through it to make sure

that those who are reviewing it are not contaminated and we can

make sure that when if we have something there, it is properly

preserved and we can identify exactly what we do have.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Real quickly, was that mail sent out to Ohio to be

decontaminated so you can examine it?

Mr. JARBOE. I don’t believe—perhaps you can answer that, Mr.

Weaver.

Mr. WEAVER. It’s my understanding that was the process, that

we were going to send it out and get it sanitized and bring it back.

Mr. BURTON. Has it been brought back?

Mr. WEAVER. We’ve just begun that process, I think the first

trailer is coming back now.

Mr. BURTON. My colleague makes a very salient point here. If it

takes a long time for that, a lot of these people who may have been

touching some mail that was in close proximity to the Daschle letter, they could become infected and have inhalation anthrax and

have a death sentence because of the time delay.

Mr. WEAVER. Bear in mind, we’re capturing all that mail. None

of it’s going to be delivered for that particular location.

Mr. BURTON. So none of that mail was delivered, you’re sure of

that?

Mr. WEAVER. Right. That’s correct.

Mr. BURTON. And none of the mail that was in close proximity

to the Daschle letter was delivered?

Mr. WEAVER. That’s the mail that we have captured that we

want to send to Ohio to get sanitized and bring it back and then

go through a methodical examination of that with the FBI.

Mr. BURTON. Dr. Weldon.

Dr. WELDON. Dr. Cohen, could you comment on the number of

spores that an individual might have to inhale to become sick with

inhalation anthrax?

Dr. COHEN. Yes. The various studies that were done suggest that

one would need to inhale anywhere between 8,000 to 50,000 spores

to get inhalational disease.

Dr. WELDON. What about a quantity of spores that would have

to get on your skin to get the cutaneous form of anthrax?

Dr. COHEN. That’s not as well known.

Dr. WELDON. My understanding is that it requires a break in the

skin for the anthrax spores to cause infection. Is there any evidence

that intact skin can be infected by anthrax?

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Dr. COHEN. Historically, most of the cases of cutaneous anthrax

were in people who had injuries who had exposure to animal

sources which were contaminated with spores. We are seeing patients now who do not report having areas of skin that were damaged prior to developing a lesion. So there may be something that

is different about this in our past experience, suggesting that disease could occur under those circumstances.

Dr. WELDON. The question of level of exposure is a question I’m

getting asked a great deal. We have a situation in the Longworth

Building here on Capitol Hill. In the case of one of the offices, it

was a surveillance wipe that came up positive. The method that’s

used, as I understand, they take something resembling a four by

four gauze pad and rub it on a series of desks and then they put

it in a vial with some buffered solution, spin it down, extract a

sample of fluid out and plate that.

As I understand it, in these offices they got very little growth.

They got a few colonies on a plate. It is my opinion, my medical

opinion, that a level of anthrax like that poses no threat for inhalation anthrax, and it only poses a threat for cutaneous anthrax if

you had an open skin lesion and you happened to get the anthrax

into that area.

Would you concur with that?

Dr. COHEN. Generally, yes, I would agree. I think that you’re

talking about fairly low levels of presence of spores. In addition,

there were studies that were done in the 1950’s that showed that

these types of particles that fell out of an initial aerosol were generally heavier and were difficult to re-aerosolize, so that they would

be in fact even less of a risk for inhalation disease.

I think the risk, as you suggest, perhaps, would be to cutaneous.

Again, we have this unknown as to whether or not there may be

some factor that might make normal skin susceptible. But I would

agree with your assessment.

Dr. WELDON. Based on the fact that we have surveillance tests

coming up positive on a lot of postal equipment, but we do not have

reports of a letter with powder in them, it has been presumed that

a lot of this is cross-contamination, and it’s been reported that the

particles in the letter to Senator Daschle’s office was very, very fine

and had the ability to get through an envelope.

Is it safe to say that some of this that is coming up positive, the

anthrax, does not likely pose a threat of inhaled anthrax for the

postal workers in those areas, but more a cutaneous threat?

Dr. COHEN. Again, I think that it would in part relate to how it

got there. For example, if the letter was torn and some of the powder spilled out, if someone generated an aerosol with that by, say,

using a high pressure hose or something, then you could potentially

get particles into the air that could be a risk. If these were

particles——

Dr. WELDON. And that’s what happened at Brentwood, it’s believed, they were using a compressed air gun to clean out sorting

machines?

Dr. COHEN. Again, that’s one of the hypotheses as to how an aerosol could be created.

Dr. WELDON. I’m out of time. Can I just ask you a question,

though? What happened down in Florida? Was there a letter that

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came through? Is there evidence of the letter down there? And have

the postal facilities down there in Florida where the mail that went

to that publishing company, have they all been screened with surveillance cultures down in Florida?

Dr. COHEN. Yes, there has been an extensive evaluation. It is assumed that there was at least one letter that was received by the

company. None of them have been identified in part because of the

interval from when it would have been received and when the investigation was actually begun.

Dr. WELDON. Was an attempt to go through their garbage processing facilities made at all to determine if a letter came through

that had——

Dr. COHEN. The FBI would like to answer.

Mr. JARBOE. Yes, sir. Unfortunately, the material, waste material

that goes from the company, AMI, in Florida, is incinerated. So we

didn’t have an opportunity to go through it and dig up any letters

to find out where it came from.

Dr. WELDON. OK. I think my time has expired.

Mr. BURTON. Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Institutions other than Government buildings, as you might

imagine here, where mostly anthrax has been found, are trying to

be proactive and preventive. As I indicated in my own remarks,

they saw the House close down before anything was found, based

on something that was found in another building. So there is great

confusion about how to take the appropriate preventive steps.

May I ask you whether you think the neighborhood post offices,

the Friendship Heights post office and the southwest neighborhood

post office, in light of the precedents that have been set for Government buildings, should be closed down? The Supreme Court was

closed down when trace amounts were found. The House was

closed down before any amounts were found. Now, of course, some

trace amounts have been found.

Is the standard that when you suspect that there may be a problem, the institution itself should close, the building should close because we don’t know enough at this point to guarantee the health

of people? What would you suggest in light of what is happening

in Government buildings that others do to protect their employees

and their clients?

Mr. WEAVER. I’ll take the first shot at that. I think there are

some health considerations there too that I’m really not qualified

to respond to.

Ms. NORTON. Yes, both of you need to answer that one.

Mr. WEAVER. But in the case of the Postal Service, and I’m sure

you’ll get a much fuller briefing when the Postmaster General

comes in the next panel, but a lot of it depends on the facility and

the square footage and the size of the facility we find it in.

Ms. NORTON. That’s why I gave you two examples. These are two

neighborhood post offices.

Mr. WEAVER. I think where it is confined and there is again an

opportunity that it may be spread in a smaller location, that’s probably more prone for closure at that time than if it were a massive

facility where we could cordon off a specific area and deal with the

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problem in that way. I’ll defer to my expert in the health field to

comment.

Dr. COHEN. I think it would have to be done really on a case by

case basis. Because some of the variables that you’re hearing come

to play. The size, whether or not there was illness there which

might suggest the difference in risk that people would have. I think

that all of those things have to be looked at and a decision made

on the level of contamination, disease and a variety of factors.

Ms. NORTON. I presume that there’s not a great level of contamination in both of these neighborhood post offices, because as I understand, they are not closed down. Is that correct? These two

neighborhood post offices are not closed down?

Mr. WEAVER. No, they are not. As far as I know, they are not.

Ms. NORTON. The case by case notion is one that I understand

generically. Some of the factors you named might be important for

people to understand the differences. There is terrible suspicion,

most of it unfounded, I have to tell you, I believe it is entirely unfounded, that there was a class bias and certainly an official bias

that officials of the Government who in fact are paid to take risks

were willing to take none, and that low level people who have ordinary jobs, who are not paid to take risks.

So this difference simply has to be cleared up. It’s not enough to

tell us that it’s done on a case by case basis, when all the cases

that get closed down are uppity-up, and all the places that are left

open are closer to the people. So we need you to spell out as soon

as you can to the general public how, what size means. The people

in New York don’t have any reason to understand why Brentwood

was closed down, and they were not, why a single trace has kept

the Longworth closed for days, even though we’re told that trace

doesn’t really signify danger.

These differences need to be explained, or we all are going to

have the credibility problems we now have and deserve, and I’m

not willing to stand behind the differences even though I understand, analytically, as I follow them, why they occurred.

I’d like to know this. Is it not true that——

Mr. SHAYS [assuming Chair]. I’m sorry, just let me allow the

gentlelady to ask her question, get a response. We’re in an awkward—even though the time is up. We’re in an awkward situation.

Mr. Jarboe, we are somewhat duty bound to let you leave at 1:30.

It’s my understanding you have a meeting at the White House and

you need to leave now, is that correct?

Mr. JARBOE. Yes, sir, that’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. Is there anyone who can take your place?

Mr. JARBOE. No, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. So we need to let you go, regretfully.

Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Chairman, just a point of information here.

I can appreciate that Mr. Jarboe has to go to a meeting at the

White House. But since Mr. Jarboe knew he had to go to a meeting

at the White House, it would have seemed appropriate if he had

somebody else who would have been able to speak for the FBI. I

just point that out on the record.

Mr. SHAYS. I think that’s a mistake on the committee’s part. We

should have made that clear, regretfully. So you are free to go. This

is something we’ll try to make sure doesn’t happen in the future.

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And ask your question, please, if we could have a short answer

and then we’ll keep things moving.

Ms. NORTON. I’d like to know about, as best as I’ve been able to

tell, the latest and most relevant experience with anthrax has been

in the armed forces, where people in the Persian Gulf, of course,

had vaccinations, the whole rest of it. How much of that experience

has been shared with you? How much of that experience is factored

into your work? What is the nature of your relationship with people

in the armed forces that may have had greater experience than the

rest of us in this country?

Dr. COHEN. We work very closely with the folks in the Department of Defense. The actual experience for anthrax disease,

though, really dates to the last century in then United States.

There have been, since the early 1950’s, for example, a little over

250 cases. Most of those have been skin infections. There were only

18 cases of inhalational anthrax in the entire 20th century. So

there has not been a great deal of experience with anthrax.

Ms. NORTON. And there was none in the Persian Gulf? No member of the armed forces in fact contracted anthrax in the Persian

Gulf?

Dr. COHEN. I’m not aware of any cases.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, is my time up?

Mr. SHAYS. Yes, your time has long passed. But given the location of your district, we wanted to give you a little extra time.

I would recognize Mr. Horn.

Mr. HORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

This is directed to you, Dr. Cohen, in your Director role for the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in some of the sections.

On October 5th, the Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations, which I

chair, held a hearing on bioterrorism response preparedness. Dr.

Scott Lilibridge, Secretary Thompson, Special Assistant for National Security Issues and Emergency Management, he testified before our subcommittee.

At that point, Federal officials knew that Bob Stevens had been

diagnosed with inhalation of the anthrax in Florida. And they believed his case stemmed from natural causes.

At our hearing, Dr. Lilibridge said, ‘‘At this point, we are advised

by the FBI that this does not seem to be a biological agent attack.

We are not finding secondary cases. This person, Mr. Stevens, became ill nearly a week ago and by that time, we certainly should

see additional cases if this was going to be a widespread problem.’’

Even in the light of the limited amount of information available at

that time, do you think Mr. Lilibridge’s statement was either overly

wrong or optimistic?

Dr. COHEN. I think at that point in time, all of us hoped that

there was a natural explanation. As I pointed out before, most of

the cases in the United States had explanations, so that it was possible that there might have been an exposure to an animal product

by which he could have acquired the disease. So I think that all

of us hoped there would be a natural explanation to it.

Mr. HORN. Well, at that time, news reports indicated that Mr.

Stevens was originally believed to have meningitis. Is that correct?

Dr. COHEN. Yes, sir.

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Mr. HORN. Preliminary tests on his co-worker, Ernesto Blanco,

indicated Mr. Blanco did not have anthrax. Yet anthrax bacteria

were later found in his nasal passages. Could anything have been

done differently to obtain a more accurate diagnosis of this or other

cases earlier?

Dr. COHEN. Well, there were additional studies conducted. Some

of those studies require a length of time, for example, serologic

tests require a length of time for the human body to make antibodies. That’s one of the tests that we can do. There are some tests

that are more rapid, for example, the PCR test. When Mr. Blanco

actually developed a pleural effusion, one of those tests were done

on the pleural fluid, indicating further evidence that he was likely

infected with anthrax.

So there were a number of tests that were being employed to try

to determine whether or not the illness that he had could have

been anthrax. His initial presentation was not classical for anthrax. And I think as we’ve seen in several of the other patients,

there are some differences in the way they are presenting at hospitals in contrast to what we’ve expected to see with inhalation anthrax.

Mr. HORN. In light of that situation you just talked about, the

number of anthrax cases that have appeared since October 5th, a

number of them, what lessons has the public health community

learned from this disease, how is it contracted, and how can it be

contained and treated, and to what degree is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sending guidance to the hospitals of

America and the doctors?

Dr. COHEN. One of the most critical things that we can do is educate health care providers that these are the symptoms and signs

of these diseases, and to report them. In fact, with Mr. Stevens, I

think this was an example that, where a physician recognized that

this was something unusual and quickly notified the health department, which then commenced the investigation.

We have done a variety of other additional activities. We’ve been

trying to educate health care providers through satellite conferences, other kinds of informational material. Surveillance is critical, because there is no guarantee that this or any other disease

would be announced. So the people who will recognize it are the

health care providers.

Mr. HORN. In New York, I believe, the doctor really didn’t know

what was before him, but he put the right, Cipro, the right medicine to help him. And when they finally discovered it, he was way

ahead of everybody else.

Dr. COHEN. It was a good diagnostic choice.

Mr. HORN. Yes. Anything that you’ve done or are going to do in

terms of hospitals and doctors? Have you got some method that you

can do it across all the people in the United States?

Dr. COHEN. We’re looking at as many opportunities as possible

to try to educate physicians and other health care providers to

make them aware about this and other diseases. As I said, we’ve

worked with various groups, American Medical Association,

through satellite conferences, Infectious Disease Society of America, there are many efforts to try to do this.

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I’m going to be a little more strict on the

5-minute rule, because we need to get to the Postmaster eventually. Mrs. Maloney, you have 5 minutes.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much. I’d like to thank both of

you for your hard work here for the Nation and really in particular

for New York. New York faces yet another crisis. In my district, at

the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, a woman has come

down with anthrax. She’s in serious condition in the hospital. I’d

like to know if you know anything about her condition and her

case.

And second, I’d like to go back to the inconsistent responses. I

represent many postal workers, and many of them are not going

to work. They’re concerned about their health. Their question to me

is, why is our large sorting center where anthrax spores have been

found open, yet here in Washington, buildings were closed that

they just reviewed and they didn’t even find anthrax. In fact, there

have been at least four buildings and several mail facilities in D.C.

that are closed, and in New York—and in New Jersey several postal facilities are closed.

But in New York, facilities known to be infected and contaminated with anthrax remain open. This is of tremendous concern

and I request permission to put into the record a letter that I’ve

written to the Postmaster General asking for clear guidance on this

particular item.

Also there are questions on the treatment. Some people have

been told to take Cipro, some people have been told to take

Doxycycline. Does this mean that Cipro and Doxycycline are equally effective? And if you were exposed to anthrax, what medication

would you take?

[The information referred to follows:]

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Dr. COHEN. Let me start off. Yes, Cipro and Doxy are equally effective in treating anthrax. So the strategy has been, since initially

one did not know which antibiotics to which the bacteria was susceptible, that the most conservative choice was to use Cipro. But

once that information was available, Doxycycline is a very effective

drug. There are some issues about side effects, so that both drugs

have a role and both drugs can be equally used.

The patient, I did not have an update from this morning, but my

understanding was that the patient was quite ill and was on a respirator. But I do not know any further information.

With respect to the closing of facilities, in each instance we’ve

tried to work with the various groups that are responsible for making those decisions and providing recommendations. In many instances there are different groups. So some of the different decisions may reflect the fact that there are different decisionmakers.

Mrs. MALONEY. We need to have a unified approach.

Dr. COHEN. Well, we are trying to work with, again, the concept

of doing things on a case by cases basis is important, as well as

that our knowledge is evolving in this as we go through it. We’re

getting more information to help us make those decisions.

But we do want to remain flexible, because we’re getting input

from a variety of different sources. So we’re trying to approach

something that is somewhat standard. But again, we want to maintain some degree of flexibility.

Mrs. MALONEY. Could you talk about the side effects of these

antibiotics?

Dr. COHEN. There are various side effects that are associated

with them. Some are skin rashes that may be associated with

them, some may be other types of, different kinds of manifestations, neurologic manifestations, some that are more prominent in

older people.

I think the important point is that there is a delicate balance in

trying to make a decision about who you prophylax and who you

don’t prophylax. Because there are side effects that can occur.

Mrs. MALONEY. Can you explain the reasons why some postal

workers were given a nasal swab test and others were not?

Dr. COHEN. Yes. The nasal swab is not diagnostic. We’re not trying to determine if that person has an exposure to anthrax. It’s

helpful in the epidemiologic investigation. And in fact, we’re more

concerned that people would have a false sense of security because

they would have a negative nasal swab. So it’s important that we

identify who is at risk for the exposure.

Now, the nasal swab can help us identify the areas where that’s

occurring, but not all the people who are in fact exposed and need

treatment.

Mrs. MALONEY. If a nasal swab can’t determine, is there research

taking place now so that we can determine, tests that we can determine?

Dr. COHEN. At this point, one of the areas that we’re beginning

to think about is, are there rapid tests that we could use in people

who present to the hospital that might be able to differentiate between anthrax and other diseases. So we’ve begun considering the

possibility of those types of tests.

Mrs. MALONEY. My time is up.

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Mr. BURTON [resuming Chair]. Mrs. Davis.

Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to

yield to you for a short question.

Mr. BURTON. OK, this will be a real short question.

We had hearings on the anthrax issue and the military and the

vaccines. We understand there’s about 28 different strains of anthrax. The only thing I’d like to ask you is, because the anthrax

was a threat to the military, why didn’t CDC and the Postal Service and the other agencies in our Government think about the possibility that there might be an attack on the population of the

United States in addition to the military? And why wasn’t something done about that beforehand? I’m not trying to blame anybody, I’m just wondering why they didn’t think about that.

Dr. COHEN. There has been a number of activities that have been

interdepartmental, where folks have tried to get together and discuss the types of activities needed to be done to prepare for any

kind of an event like this. From CDC’s perspective, one of the critical elements was trying to build and rebuild the public health infrastructure, so that we could really better detect these kinds of

phenomena. And that’s both epidemiologic and laboratory, developing a network of laboratories where one could get a good confirmation fairly rapidly.

So there are a number of activities that have gone on to try to

detect. In addition, there have been efforts to stockpile various

antimicrobial agents that would be necessary for the treatment of

this and other diseases.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mrs. Davis.

Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think I’m glad to hear that the traces of anthrax in Longworth

is probably not threatening, and hopefully that means we can get

back into our offices soon, because my staff would like to get back

together.

The question I have, I’m not sure who it would be for, but it involves the Brentwood postal facility. Several of my constituents in

my district are non-profit organizations. For the last 10 days

they’ve not received their business reply mail. And when they call

to get answers as to why they’re not getting it, they are getting

other mail, but not that. The organization depends on that, and

we’re getting to the point, they’re going to have to start laying off

some employees, possibly.

Can anyone give me any answer as to what the status of that

type of mail is?

Mr. WEAVER. I can’t give you a quick answer on it. We can certainly check on that and find out. But if that mail was entered into

the system, they should be receiving it. We’ll followup on that,

ma’am, and find out.

Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. If you could followup and let me know,

I’d certainly appreciate it.

Mr. WEAVER. Sure.

Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. You had no other questions?

Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. No, sir, I just needed to get that one in

for my constituents.

Mr. BURTON. The gentlelady yields back her time.

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Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. Dr. Cohen, we’ve heard my colleague from New

York speak about the case where the Manhattan mail room employee contracted inhalational anthrax. Now, it’s my understanding

that this individual experienced preliminary symptoms 4 days before she was admitted. Are you aware of that?

Dr. COHEN. I do not have specific clinical information.

Mr. KUCINICH. I think it would be helpful for the CDC to look

into that, to make a determination whether or not this case could

have been prevented.

Now, what efforts, Dr. Cohen, has the CDC made to deliver clear

public health messages to susceptible populations, namely postal

workers and mail room employees?

Dr. COHEN. We’ve been working both with the U.S. Postal Service and with their workers. We’re trying at this point in time to finalize some interim recommendations that would help prevent the

exposure to this disease. We’re working in addition to that with

educational activities. We have also actually provided a full time liaison to the U.S. Postal Service who has an office there to try and

facilitate the coordination of all of these materials and information.

Mr. KUCINICH. You say you’re working with them, but do you already have in place such public health messages from the CDC to

the postal workers and mailroom employees? Are they in place?

Dr. COHEN. We have actually been revising some of those, with

discussions with the workers and the U.S. Postal Service.

Mr. KUCINICH. So you have them in place and you’re revising

them?

Dr. COHEN. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. OK. Now, could you comment on if and how the

CDC is keeping track of postal employees who work in contaminated areas? Is there some sort of comprehensive system, or is the

CDC only aware of employees who have actually sought out treatment or checked in to receive testing or antibiotics?

Dr. COHEN. Yes, the surveillance is being conducted by examining lists of employees who worked in affected areas, and actually

doing active surveillance to determine their health status.

Mr. KUCINICH. So you’re saying you’re making sure that no postal employee would be experiencing preliminary symptoms of infection without ever having been in contact with the CDC or other

health officials?

Dr. COHEN. We can’t guarantee every single person. But those

who have worked in those areas that are identified as high risk are

certainly under intense surveillance.

Mr. KUCINICH. Do you feel it’s the CDC’s responsibility to facilitate preemptive action and early intervention during a public

health crisis?

Dr. COHEN. We have traditionally tried to develop the best recommendations available based on the assessment of the scientific

data, and provide those to the people who need to make those decisions.

Mr. KUCINICH. Do you feel that America’s public health infrastructure has the capacity to deal with this anthrax crisis?

Dr. COHEN. I think it’s been recognized for a number of years

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ture. It’s part of the reason why there’s been an effort to try to rebuild the public health infrastructure. I think we need to continue

to do that going forward.

Mr. KUCINICH. Has the CDC issued any statements with respect

to public health structures having search capacity, being able to effectively treat any influx of cases that may arise as a result of our

current situation?

Dr. COHEN. I believe part of the planning has been involving the

issue of making sure that treatment is potentially available

through the stockpile and through other mechanisms.

Mr. KUCINICH. What are you doing with respect to communicating with the Nation’s physicians with respect to information about

detection and treatment protocols for anthrax?

Dr. COHEN. We’ve used a number of educational approaches, including satellite conferences. Our weekly publication, the morbidity

and mortality weekly report, is a source for many physicians on information about current problems and treatment choices.

Mr. KUCINICH. What’s the communication between the FBI and

the CDC with respect to the release of information to the public?

Dr. COHEN. We have been working very closely together. As Mr.

Jarboe pointed out, I am the liaison between CDC and FBI. I have

been there since October 8th trying to provide both the liaison

function and perspective on the clinical and microbiologic aspects

with respect to their investigation.

Mr. KUCINICH. Are you aware of any instances where the FBI

held out information for the purposes of a criminal investigation

and that delayed by even a day the communication of that information to public health authorities?

Dr. COHEN. As Mr. Jarboe pointed out, I was in the meeting on

the night of October 15th when we had the preliminary description

of the material that was being examined at Fort Dietrich. That information was rapidly transferred to CDC by a conference call

within 1 to 2 hours and shared at that point.

Within the next day or so I was shown copies, detailed

photomicrographs of the various envelopes and materials for further information.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Kucinich. Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Weaver, thank you for being here, and Dr. Cohen, both of

you for being here.

Mr. Weaver, it’s my understanding that the oldest law enforcement agency in the country happens to be your agency.

Mr. WEAVER. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. And you all have a fine tradition and obviously a

very long history. I’m interested to know how the law that we recently passed and was signed into law dealing with wiretaps and

the sharing of information is going to impact your job.

Mr. WEAVER. Well, certainly I think it gives law enforcement a

little more flexibility to do their job. At the same time, of course,

we’ve got to be careful on how we use that, that we protect people’s

rights also. But I think it’s going to give us the flexibility to have

more access to information, readily available information, some of

that on the wiretap.

75

Of course, you were only allowed to go to a certain physical piece

of equipment in the past. But now that has changed to where it’s

more or less going to follow the individual. So I think it is a benefit.

Mr. SHAYS. In your previous investigations, did you believe that

you were sometimes involved with terrorist organizations or is terrorism kind of a new concept for your agency to be dealing with?

Mr. WEAVER. I think we’re all learning that terrorism takes on

many forms. Certainly September 11th was a terrorist act. And

there have been many questions on whether the anthrax incidents

are directly related to that.

Mr. SHAYS. I consider that almost an irrelevant issue. I mean,

these are terrorist acts, aren’t they?

Mr. WEAVER. Yes, I was going to make the point that regardless,

this is still an act of terrorism, and we are treating it as such.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes, I can’t think of anything even remotely suggesting it wouldn’t be an act of terrorism.

Mr. WEAVER. Right.

Mr. SHAYS. These are acts against the general public, they are

indiscriminate and they do exactly what terrorism is intended to

do, they have paralyzed and shut down certain sectors of our activities. So you don’t have any doubt in your mind that you’re fighting

terrorism, whether or not it comes from bin Laden or any other

group?

Mr. WEAVER. Not at all.

Mr. SHAYS. The question I want to know, though, is I’d like to

have a more concrete kind of example of how you will be able to

utilize this law that can make me feel safer that because you have

this law, you’re going to be able to solve the crime more quickly.

Is there anything in the past that you can draw on that said, my

gosh, if we had this law, we might have been able to—— Mr. WEAVER. It doesn’t jump right out at me, Congressman.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. WEAVER. But let me think about it, and I would like to get

back to you.

Mr. SHAYS. Are you in need of any additional resources that

aren’t available to you right now?

Mr. WEAVER. I think we’re looking at that very closely. The

whole environment’s going to change from a security standpoint.

We’re looking at putting technology into our facilities to help us.

I’m sure the Postmaster General will talk about that in the next

panel.

Again, I think we have the resources we need to do the job.

They’re strained right now.

Mr. SHAYS. I don’t understand, candidly, why you feel you have

the resources. The only way I could suggest that you do is if you

had too many resources in the past. Do you have an excess of resources?

Mr. WEAVER. No, not at all.

Mr. SHAYS. So aren’t you being taxed a bit more than in the

past?

Mr. WEAVER. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. So can I make a natural assumption that you need

to assess, let me say it this way, can I make an assumption that

76

you need more resources? It’s a question of what resources you

need and how quickly you need them?

Mr. WEAVER. Well, the thing is, we’ve diverted resources. Again,

some of those resources that may have been working other crimes

are not working those right now. So you’re exactly right, if we’re

to continue at the same level plus take on terrorism, and if it continues, yes, I would say we need more resources.

Mr. SHAYS. I’ll just say, my concern would be that sometimes we

in the legislative side don’t do what we should do. But if you don’t

ask for them, then we’re not going to be as aware of them. I would

think that you will need to come forward with a tremendous

amount of thoughtful requests. I realize this is all new. But I hope

that you’re having time, besides coming to testify, where you can

do that.

Dr. Cohen, I fail to understand why we get in this debate if it’s

weaponized or not, if in fact whatever we’re dealing with in anthrax is a weapon. So is some of this debate—you know what, my

time is over. I know we need to move forward. So I’m going to withdraw the question.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Shays.

Let me just announce that the Postmaster has arrived. He’s

going to be with us until around 4 p.m. So we need to get him

down here as quickly as possible. I don’t want to cut anybody off,

though. So, Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Cohen, I want to just go back to something the chairman was

asking about, with regard to these anthrax vaccines. When we had

testimony before this committee several months ago, one of the

things that was very interesting, and it just kind of got some of us,

I think, a bit alarmed, was that there were so many people who

came before the committee who had an adverse reaction to the vaccine. What’s the status of that with regard to vaccines for anthrax?

Dr. COHEN. Well, we’re actually currently under a congressional

mandate examining the side effects and new regimens for administering the current anthrax vaccine. Plus there is research going

on in a variety of institutions, including National Institutes of

Health, that are attempting to develop new and more hopefully effective vaccines.

Mr. CUMMINGS. When I visited the main post office in Baltimore,

it was very interesting to see. I mean, this is a big post office. Lot

of machinery going, and I think two or three floors of machinery

going. I keep going back to the question Ms. Norton was asking

about how do you determine when to close a facility.

Do you give advice to the post office as to when they should close

a facility?

Dr. COHEN. We try to, whoever the partner is that’s responsible

for the——

Mr. CUMMINGS. Well, right now I’m talking about the postal system. Are you the key person, one of the key people from a health

standpoint to give advice to them?

Dr. COHEN. Actually, the individuals who are in the particular

geographic area who are part of the team would be the key people,

because they have developed all the specific data. So they would

work with them. Plus, as I said, we have a liaison now who is

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working directly with the U.S. Postal Service and with the U.S.

postal workers. That’s a combination, then, of the people in the

field as well as the liaison providing the technological and scientific

support.

Mr. CUMMINGS. When I was in Baltimore, a number of the people

who I met with, employees, said that they had been in the Brentwood facility but they had never gotten any kind of test. And they

were kind of concerned, because they said, you know, it seems like

if we had been, if we had visited that facility or picked up mail,

whatever, a lot of these guys were drivers, these were all men, and

they were drivers. They said, we don’t understand, why aren’t we

being given a test. And they were very upset about that.

How is that determined, who gets the test?

Dr. COHEN. Well, the test is not used to determine whether a

person has been exposed or is at risk for the disease. It’s helpful

in defining the area in which people may have worked, so that people who do go to that area, regardless of whether they have a test,

whether they have positive test or not, are offered prophylaxis. So

the test doesn’t tell a person whether they’re at risk or not, at risk

for developing anthrax.

Mr. CUMMINGS. So a lot of the people who are now taking Cipro

and the other medications may very well not have anthrax, is that

right?

Dr. COHEN. Yes, that’s correct, although they were potentially in

an area of exposure, and therefore it indicated they receive prophylaxis.

Mr. CUMMINGS. One of the things that was also interesting in the

Baltimore post office is that you had a number of people who had

gloves, some had gloves and masks, others had gloves, others just

had masks. I was wondering, and perhaps you, Mr. Weaver, might

want to address that. What is the advice that you’re giving them,

and what good do the gloves or the masks do?

Mr. WEAVER. Well, we have made gloves and masks available to

all employees. Again, it’s been highly recommended that if they are

in an area where they’re handling mail, or around machinery, that

they wear that equipment.

One thing I’d also like to mention on a prior comment you made,

for those employees that visited the Brentwood facility on the

workroom floor or in the back dock area, either dropping off mail

or picking up mail. We have put the alert out that they should report in and get the medication.

Mr. CUMMINGS. OK, well, maybe that’s happened since I met

with them. That’s good. I’m glad to know that.

What I want to go back to is the gloves and the masks. What

advice did you base that on? In other words, the distribution of the

gloves and the masks? Are you following me?

Mr. WEAVER. Yes. Early on, even when we got indications from

Boca Raton that mail may be involved in the anthrax situation, the

Postmaster General went out and made gloves and masks available. Initially there was some concern that, well, we can’t wear

gloves with the mechanization and it might present a problem. But

they have since resolved that, and I know we’ve spent a lot of

money getting the proper equipment, the proper types of masks, to

lower the risks that employees might contract it.

78

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Cummings. Mr. Otter.

Mr. OTTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for being here with us today.

Last night, we had another report of an anthrax by inhalation, in

fact, the first one in New York City. That is the first one, isn’t it?

Dr. COHEN. I believe so, yes.

Mr. OTTER. And it was also reported that this lady did not work

directly in the mail room in handling the mail and that sort of

thing. Is there any speculation, or maybe that’s a dangerous word

right now, but would you have any idea how she would have contracted that?

Dr. COHEN. I think that would be one of the major thrusts of the

investigation, trying to determine if there’s potential exposures.

Mr. OTTER. Also in the mail, in my mail last night at home, not

here, I received a very informative card. It told me as it did, I’m

sure, all patrons, what to do if they received some suspicious mail

and what to look for and how to handle it, and what to do to protect themselves. I think that’s very informative.

I’m wondering, sort of out loud now, there would a different

treatment for anthrax as opposed to, say, some kind of a chemical

agent, wouldn’t there?

Dr. COHEN. Yes, there would be.

Mr. OTTER. Would the Post Office or would the CDC advise the

post office to sort of get ahead of the game and say, in this, if a

chemical agent is being transferred via the mail, this is the action

that you ought to take and this is what you ought to look for? Perhaps Mr. Weaver would be better—— Mr. WEAVER. Yes, Congressman, and again, I think the advice

we give out is many times very generic. No. 1, if you receive something in the mail that you don’t expect, everybody kind of knows

what kind of mail you receive at home. You look through it and you

say, yes, I know what that is and that is. If you’re not expecting

it, if it doesn’t have a return address on it, if the return address

on it is fictitious or if it has markings on the mail that are unfamiliar to you, if there appears to be something bulky in the piece of

mail, certainly if there’s something emitting from it, whether it be

a chemical or whether it be a powder.

So they’re very similar, the types of messages that we send out.

But every time we run into a situation like this, certainly we need

to adjust.

Mr. OTTER. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Cohen, it’s my understanding that both the CDC and private

companies are doing testing for the presence of anthrax. Is that

correct?

Dr. COHEN. Yes, that’s correct.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. What’s the CDC’s role in making sure

that these companies, if there is any, are actually equipped and

able to determine whether or not there is the presence of anthrax?

Did you assess the companies?

Dr. COHEN. We have had some of our laboratorians visit with the

contractors and to go over some of the strategies that we use, some

79

of the methodologies, recommendations about quality control for

those. So in many instances, we’re an available resource and would

have direct interactions as indicated.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. And you don’t have any concerns about

whether or not any of these actually have the qualifications that

are necessary in order to do the work?

Dr. COHEN. I don’t know exactly the extent of who has been contracted by all of the private facilities.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Let me just ask, let’s say I’m a postal

worker. What is it that I need to know or need to understand or

need to have heard about in a particular facility that I might work

in to determine whether, I mean, I hear people saying that they

don’t feel comfortable going to work, or that absenteeism is up, and

I assume that’s the case, it’s because individuals feel unsafe and

insecure and feel that they might become contaminated.

What do I need to know, as an employee, to feel comfortable and

secure that I can go to work and be protected?

Dr. COHEN. I think that’s one of the major reasons why it’s important for us to work with the Postal Service and the workers to

develop an education program that answers those questions. Because I could talk about the low likelihood of risk because of the

few spores. But that may not be the answers that they want or

need. So that’s why I think it’s so critical for us to work together

to find out the answers to those questions and provide it to them.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. So you’re pretty much suggesting that

there are no quick and easy solutions, that there are no absolute

standards and outright conditions that we can guarantee, that yes,

everything is fine.

Dr. COHEN. I think it would be very difficult to have any absolutes that would guarantee that no one would become exposed or

become ill. There’s a number of things that could be done to reduce

the likelihood that people can become exposed and become sick.

But I think it would be very hard to deal with absolutes, particularly since we’re talking about an intentional act, that we do not

have control over, as much as when we deal with a disease in a

natural environment.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. And so the realities are that we simply

have to continue to work, explore, generate the resources that are

necessary if additional resources are needed in order to reach the

point where we can in fact feel comfortable that people can go to

work and not become contaminated, and will be fine?

Dr. COHEN. I think it’s continuing to evolve, and we have to work

together to try to get the answers to those questions to reduce the

risks as much as feasible.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. I thank the gentleman. I yield back, Mr.

Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Davis. Mrs. Mink.

Mrs. MINK. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Excuse me just a minute, Mrs. Mink. Mr. Horn, you

had something you wanted to submit for the record?

Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, I’d like to include in the record the following question. If I look through the testimony, the Postmaster

General gave us two human beings. And when I asked my quesVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:09 May 29, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00083 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77387.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tion, I had a human being there. The rest of it is sort of very important and all that, how many we did this and that.

But I’d like to put in the record at this point how many have

that, and unless they don’t want privacy on it, and put them in

here so that 4 months from now or something, where are we with

real people. Machiavelli, the Italian theorist, he said if you really

want people to forget all these things, put an individual in your

concerns and not thousands of people, because they can’t take it.

So I’d like to see the people that were—— Mr. BURTON. We’ll ask the agencies to give us a list of all those

people for the record.

Mrs. Mink.

Mrs. MINK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have some very basic questions I want to ask Mr. Weaver, having to do with the receipt of the letter in Senator Daschle’s office.

What was the postmark on that letter?

Mr. WEAVER. The postmark was September 18th, from Trenton,

NJ.

Mrs. MINK. So that would be the Trenton facility that was closed

on October 18th, is that correct?

Mr. WEAVER. That’s correct, yes.

Mrs. MINK. So that letter somehow was deposited in a mailbox

and then went through the sorting devices in the Trenton facility

and then where did it go? What was its next stop?

Mr. WEAVER. Then it would have been transported from Trenton

down to the Brentwood facility.

Mrs. MINK. Now, at the Brentwood facility, it was sorted out and

where would it have gone prior to its arrival at Mr. Daschle’s office?

Mr. WEAVER. It would have gone into the Government mails section. We have a section that specifically works all Governmental

mails.

Mrs. MINK. Where, at the Brentwood facility?

Mr. WEAVER. At the Brentwood facility, yes. Then it would have

been transferred from there to the Senate mail room operation.

Mrs. MINK. Now, at the Brentwood facility, would it have gone

through the general distribution system before it went to the Government sorting facility?

Mr. WEAVER. Yes, it would have.

Mrs. MINK. So once you closed the Brentwood facility on October

21st, following the closure of the Trenton facility on the 18th, how

has the new mail coming from wherever, all parts of the country,

where has that new mail gone to and why is it not reaching the

constituents?

Mr. WEAVER. That mail has come in and what used to go into

the Government mail section is now being held at the present time.

Mrs. MINK. I’m not talking about the Government facility. I’m

talking about all the rest of the mail. Once that facility was closed,

we hear that people are not getting their mail delivered.

Mr. WEAVER. I see. Yes, I believe the Postmaster General or the

Chief Operating Officer, who will be here in the next panel, can

give you some detailed explanation of where. But I believe the answer is, it is being processed in another facility in the Washington,

DC, area.

81

Mrs. MINK. So all the mail that was supposed to have gone to

Brentwood after the 21st is being diverted elsewhere?

Mr. WEAVER. Yes, that’s correct.

Mrs. MINK. With the exception of the Government mail and by

that I mean the Congress, the White House, State Department,

etc.?

Mr. WEAVER. That’s correct.

Mrs. MINK. So the contamination of the Supreme Court, the

State Department, CIA and the Longworth and Ford, all occurred

as a result of mail that was distributed prior to October 21st, is

that correct?

Mr. WEAVER. We don’t know. And I don’t think we can speculate.

Mrs. MINK. Well, the mail facility was closed after the 21st. So

nothing went out.

Mr. WEAVER. Well, the options there are that there was crosscontamination because of that. Again, I’d ask Dr. Cohen to comment on the possibility of that. Or there may be another piece of

mail somewhere.

Mrs. MINK. No, my question is mail that would have gone

through the Brentwood facility but did not because that facility

was closed on the 21st, and it was diverted elsewhere. Are you saying now that mail might also be contaminated?

Mr. WEAVER. Well, I don’t know at this point. And I’m not speculating on that. I don’t know if I’m missing something here.

Mrs. MINK. Well, I just wanted to know what’s happening to the

mail that would have gone to Brentwood but did not, because it’s

now closed.

Mr. WEAVER. I would suggest maybe the next panel may enlighten you a little further.

Mrs. MINK. Is that not part of your Inspector General’s inquiry

right now?

Mr. WEAVER. Well, I’m not the Inspector General. I’m the law enforcement side of the Postal Service.

Mrs. MINK. That law enforcement side of the Postal Service is

not making an inquiry as to what is happening?

Mr. WEAVER. Yes, we are. We’re working with the FBI on the investigation and pursuing all those leads.

Mrs. MINK. My question to Dr. Cohen has to do with the anthrax

vaccine and its use for the Persian Gulf incident. Do you have any

statistics with respect to the number of individuals given the vaccine at that time who became ill and had serious side effects?

Dr. COHEN. No, I have none with that information.

Mrs. MINK. There’s no one that has that information?

Dr. COHEN. I would assume that the Department of Defense

would have some information about adverse events.

Mrs. MINK. What would be the efficacy of the use of the anthrax

vaccine now, given the circumstances of the threat on the health

of the postal workers?

Dr. COHEN. The vaccine was most extensively studied in people

who worked in the fiber industries back in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

That’s where the efficacy was shown. I believe there would still be

a comparable level of efficacy. But with any vaccine, the size of the

infectious dose may impact how effective the vaccine is.

Mr. BURTON. The gentlelady’s time has expired.

82

The one thing I’d like to have you address before you conclude,

though, is, I’ve been told there are 28 strains of anthrax. Would

that vaccine be effective against all those strains?

Dr. COHEN. I don’t know to what extent there have been studies

examining each of the strains. The vaccine is prepared to protect

against a particular antigen that’s present in these strains. So all

the strains that cause disease that have this antigen would be protected against. I would assume that would be most of those that

you describe.

Mr. BURTON. Ms. Watson, do you have any questions?

Ms. WATSON. We had a hearing in Los Angeles and we had all

of your counterparts there. The question that has been on my

mind, and I’m sure on the minds of lots of others, is how do we

identify the powder? We have gotten calls into our offices about

people who thought that the white powder on the floor of the restroom might have been anthrax.

They have called and it appears that it’s the color of cinnamon,

maybe, amber to brown. I raised this question yesterday and they

said they really didn’t want to describe the way it looked, they’d

rather investigate to see. Can you clarify, Dr. Cohen, for me, what

it is we would look for in the bins at the Postal Service, what it

is we would look for in our own offices when the mail would come?

Dr. COHEN. Well, I’m not certain that you could feel with a high

degree of comfort that a particular material did not represent anthrax unless it was appropriately examined by the laboratory.

Again, we deal with the potential here that this is something that’s

being done with intent. So I think that again, although people are

concerned, that they must be alert and cautious.

Ms. WATSON. What we’re trying to do is cut down on the anxiety

and the calls and of course, fire services, police services, the FBI

and so on, are out there investigating. Is there any information

that we can give the public in terms of what it is they suspect, and

what a description might be so it would reduce the number of false

alerts and calls and so on? Is there anything to look for, or should

we just call when we see a suspicious looking powder?

Dr. COHEN. I think the issue is primarily the recommendations

that have been provided about what is a suspicious letter. I think

we have information there.

Ms. WATSON. I think they’ve gotten that down pretty well.

Dr. COHEN. OK. When you talk about a powder, I think it’s very

hard to provide any information that would be that helpful. The

various law enforcement groups have ways of responding to the different calls.

Ms. WATSON. So they should continue to call the police?

Dr. COHEN. I think that would be most prudent.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Ms. Schakowsky.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Weaver, I want to thank you on behalf of myself and my

staff, because in the last 2 weeks, two letters that were destined

for my district office were flagged by the Postal Service because

they were suspicious. And in each case, the Postal Service called

my office to make us aware of the situation and confirmed whether

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or not we were expecting the correspondence and then took extra

steps to guarantee the safety of those parcels and ourselves.

But what it made me think was, both of those letters came from

overseas. If we track the mail from its origin to wherever it finally

ends up, some of that is on airplanes. And I’m wondering if any of

the mail thus far that was contaminated or if other mail has spearheaded any kind of an investigation of those cases where the mail

may be, if we’re going back further?

Mr. WEAVER. We’re not ruling anything out. But bear in mind,

we’ve got three pieces of mail right now.

Mr. Chairman, if I could, I’d like to correct a statement I made

earlier. I believe the Congresslady asked me the date on the

Daschle mailing, and it was October 9th, not September 18th. But

as far as whether, in all presumption, this mail entered the mail

stream in the Trenton area and was processed in that facility and

would have traveled to Washington via highway. So right now, although we’re not ruling out any possibility of the substances flying

or that may be in the air, I don’t think that was the case here.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I guess what I’m concerned about is, if we’re

trying to be proactive and prevent a problem, if we have taken

under consideration the possibility that some of this may travel in

different ways, and tracking those places in a more careful way.

Mr. WEAVER. I think what we are going to try to do is get ahead

of the curve a little bit through technology and make sure that

mail that we are not comfortable with, that we do screen that, even

through technology, and make sure that if there is any bacteria in

that mail, it’s killed.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. The mail of ordinary citizens, are ordinary

citizens as safe from their mail, potential hazards, as Members of

Congress? Are other people in my district being called that a letter

was flagged? Or is that a special consideration for Members?

Mr. WEAVER. Not necessarily. We’re screening at different locations, we are taking a hard look at it piece by piece. And I won’t

divulge exactly what we look for or where it’s at. But we are doing

some of that.

But as far as the American people, I would like to say that I

know this has been a tragic time and there is a lot of fear out there

by the American people. It’s understandable. We’ve had three letters go through our system, and I think even the chairman commented on the number of pieces that we’ve processed, and it’s probably up to about 25 billion pieces. So the chances of the average

customer receiving any of this are very remote. But one’s too many.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you.

Dr. Cohen, what do we know about the source of the anthrax?

It seems like there’s been some conflicting reports on whether or

not it contained an additive that was only made in Iraq, and first

it didn’t and then it does. Have we been able to determine anything

to narrow the source?

Dr. COHEN. In our laboratories, what we have primarily done is

looked at the organisms. The tests we have done really tell us that

the organisms are indistinguishable. It’s unfortunate that the FBI

couldn’t comment more on the characteristics of the material. So

the information that we have primarily deals with the organisms

themselves rather than the powder.

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Let me ask one final question. An epidemiologist who is familiar with a good deal of what we’re trying to handle

right now called and was concerned. Is the American public being

told everything by the CDC? I certainly don’t think we want to terrify people, but is there information being withheld, or as suspicions are aroused or as cases are being identified, do we know everything?

Dr. COHEN. We’re trying to share information as rapidly as possible that is important for the public health and the public to know

and be educated. I think that early on, that there was a number

of opportunities for us to perhaps talk more. But we were involved

in the investigations, and I think now we’re trying to use as much

opportunity as possible to educate people and to let them know

what we’re doing.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. What he said was, in war there are times

when you want to keep information from the public, because we

have strategic reasons. But when public health is involved, the

more people know, the better.

Dr. COHEN. I would agree.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. The gentlelady’s time has expired. Mr. Turner.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Weaver, you mentioned there are three letters now that

we’re dealing with that we know of, the Daschle letter, the Brokaw

letter, and—— Mr. WEAVER. The New York Post.

Mr. TURNER [continuing]. The New York Post. We have other instances of contamination that may or may not be related to a specific letter. Name those for me.

Mr. WEAVER. I don’t think I can, Congressman. I don’t know.

We’ve got other cases where people have contracted cutaneous anthrax, and again, I think it’s speculation where they got that and

whether it was off a cross-contamination or not. But I don’t have

the exact number.

Mr. TURNER. So the media company in Florida, you’re not ready

to say that’s related to a letter?

Mr. WEAVER. We suspect it was, but we do not have the actual

document or the letter.

Mr. TURNER. And I guess you’d say the same about the situation

in Dan Rather’s office in New York?

Mr. WEAVER. That’s correct. We do not have a physical document.

Mr. TURNER. And also the incident of the lady in New York at

the hospital who was just discovered to be infected just yesterday?

Mr. WEAVER. Yes. That’s under investigation and we’re trying to

get to the bottom of that right now.

Mr. TURNER. Are there others that I have not mentioned that

might be possible?

Mr. WEAVER. Yes. The one that comes to mind is the State Department. There was an employee working the State Department

mail room that is suspected of contracting anthrax. So that would

be another case that I’m aware of.

Mr. TURNER. The letter that was postmarked, that came into

Senator Daschle’s office was postmarked October 9th?

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Mr. WEAVER. That’s correct.

Mr. TURNER. What was the postmark on the other letters that

we’re aware of?

Mr. WEAVER. They were both September 18th.

Mr. TURNER. September 18th. I want to ask Dr. Cohen, I want

us to gain a little bit of fundamental education here, while we have

the opportunity, about this disease. For example, the Daschle letter

postmarked October 9th came through the Brentwood post office,

and we find a postal worker contracted inhalation anthrax and was

hospitalized on October 21st. Are those dates consistent with the

evolution of that disease, and the infection that would come?

Dr. COHEN. Actually, I believe the patient started reporting

symptoms earlier in that time period, and that there was a consistent period of exposure to when the person actually became ill. So

that would be consistent with what we know about anthrax.

Mr. TURNER. So give me just the time table of the initial exposure, the first sign of symptoms would occur how many days later?

Dr. COHEN. Well, it could be, what’s been reported is 1 to 7 days,

is generally the timeframe from when exposure to illness occurs.

Some of the cases may have been shorter time period. So I think

that’s actually a fairly good range. Often the early symptoms are

relatively non-specific. You could have fever muscle aches and

pains. What poses one of the diagnostic dilemmas is that when patients are seen by a physician, it’s difficult to recognize that this

represents something other than a common infection.

Mr. TURNER. At what point do you have clear symptoms? What

are those symptoms that would be identifiable?

Dr. COHEN. Traditionally, it’s been described that the illness

may, the non-specific illness may somewhat improve and then dramatically worsen, where the person becomes very ill, appear to

have a serious illness that would be consistent with having bacteria circulating in your bloodstream and the toxins that are produced by those bacteria making you ill. So that can occur fairly

rapid. Historically, the death rates from inhalational anthrax were

very, very high. It was thought to be almost uniformly fatal.

Mr. TURNER. So you would say that if an individual has these

preliminary symptoms, fever, flu-like symptoms, that they could go

away for a few days then come back even more severely, and then

result in respiratory problems?

Dr. COHEN. Well, it could be. There were just, they may have respiratory problems, they could have shock. They could have a variety of clinical findings and signs that we see, such as the swollen

lymph nodes that are present in the chest that are referred to as

a widened mediastinum that you see in the chest x-ray.

Whereas in the first patient’s case, the organism can get into the

central nervous system and cause meningitis. So the person could

have that kind of a presentation. So there’s various possible ways

that people can present.

Mr. BURTON. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Tierney.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Chairman, I’m satisfied to let these witnesses

go as soon as we can and bring on the others.

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Tierney. Well, we want to thank

you very much. Excuse me, did you have any questions? Thank you

very much gentlemen.

We’ll now go to our next panel. We want to thank the Postmaster

General for his patience as well as David Fineman, the vice chairman of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors, and Thomas

Day, the vice president of Engineering for the U.S. Postal Service,

and the Chief Operating Officer, Pat Donohoe.

I know you’ve had a busy day, gentlemen, because you’ve been

over at the Senate side. So we appreciate your being here.

It’s our custom to swear in all the witnesses, so would you please

stand and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. BURTON. Thank you. Be seated.

Mr. Postmaster General, I think what we’ll do is start with you.

If any of you have opening statements, we’ll be happy to hear

them. We’ll start with you. And if not, we’ll get to questions just

as soon as possible.

Mr. POTTER. We have one opening statement. I’ll read the opening statement.

STATEMENTS OF JOHN E. POTTER, POSTMASTER GENERAL OF

THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE, ACCOMPANIED BY PATRICK

DONOHOE; S. DAVID FINEMAN, VICE CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF

GOVERNORS, U.S. POSTAL SERVICE; AND THOMAS G. DAY,

VICE PRESIDENT, ENGINEERING

Mr. POTTER. Good afternoon, Chairman Burton and members of

the committee. I’ve submitted a detailed written statement which

I would ask be entered into the record.

Mr. BURTON. Without objection.

Mr. POTTER. Under normal circumstances, I would be here by

myself. But with the situation changing daily, I’ve asked Patrick

Donohoe, our chief operating officer, to my left, and on my right,

vice chairman of the Board of Governors, David Fineman. Governor

Fineman, who is from Philadelphia, is one of the nine Presidentially appointed Governors of the Postal Service. To Governor

Fineman’s right is Tom Day, our vice president for Engineering.

Each is part of the team that’s focusing on this crisis, and they

will be able to add value to our discussion.

Mr. Chairman, this is a sad time for us. The Postal Service has

lost two members of its family, two of our employees, Joseph

Curseen and Thomas Morris, to the anthrax attacks. Three others

remain hospitalized, and four have been sickened and are recovering. None of them thought when they came to work in the post office that they would be on the front line of a war.

But they were, and thousands of other employees are as well. In

fact, this is a war against all of our citizens. From the very outset,

my overriding concern was for the safety of our employees and the

public. We sought out the best information and the best experts to

help us understand exactly what we were dealing with.

Early on, when there was confusion about how and when anthrax got to American Media in Boca Raton, we saw no direct connection to the Postal Service and the system that delivers the mail.

Nevertheless, on Tuesday, October 9th, as a precaution, we proVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:09 May 29, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00090 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77387.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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vided supervisors and employees with updated information on what

to do if they suspected biohazards in the mail.

Then on Friday, October 12th, the postal landscape changed dramatically. An NBC news employee in New York City was diagnosed

with cutaneous anthrax. It became clear that the bioagent had arrived through the mail. Looking back, it’s hard to believe all that

has transpired in the last 18 days. We took a proactive stance in

terms of educating our employees and the public.

I cautioned employees, the public and companies and organizations, that they needed to handle their mail carefully. If they found

something out of the ordinary, they needed to respond appropriately to law enforcement agencies.

Based on the information we had, I stressed that this was a time

when common sense and caution was needed, and that the incidence of anthrax-laden letters appeared very targeted and few in

number. On Monday October 15th, the Chief Postal Inspector was

already working with the FBI. I asked Chief Inspector Weaver to

put together a Washington based task force that included our

union and management association leaders. On a daily basis, we

shared and discussed the latest information, what steps we should

take, what were the right things to do.

Our labor leaders comments were valuable and carried equal

weight with everyone else around that table. But the facts were

sketchy. To that point, the only confirmed anthrax had been in

Florida and at NBC in New York. On that day, Monday the 15th,

employees in Senator Daschle’s office opened a letter that had been

laced with anthrax.

Then things began to accelerate almost by the hour. It was clear

that the Daschle letter went through our Brentwood facility in

Washington. On Wednesday, testing of 28 Capitol Hill employees

came back positive. We were consulting and seeking the best experts we could find. But it was also clear that the mail and the Nation were facing a threat that it had never encountered before.

We continued to operate under the theory that what had been

sent was transiting our system in well sealed envelopes. All along,

the Postal Service operated on the principle of open disclosure. I

knew that would be critical in protecting our employees and the

public and in developing solutions.

Knowing that the Daschle letter came through our Brentwood facility, and after consulting with our unions, we decided to test the

Brentwood facility as a precaution. The preliminary test on Thursday, October 18th, came back negative. We felt good about that, although a secondary, more comprehensive laboratory examination

would take another 48 to 72 hours. To that time, we had no indication that Brentwood was contaminated.

Also on Thursday, October 18th, we joined with the Justice Department to ask the American people for help by offering a $1 million reward. It was on the 18th that one of our letter carriers in

Trenton was diagnosed with cutaneous anthrax. The Trenton and

West Trenton facilities were closed for testing, and CDC and the

FBI moved in.

We had discussed with CDC whether or not our employees

should be tested in Brentwood. But all indications and the best experts said, no need. Unfortunately, and how I and others wish we

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had known, it was Friday, October 19th, when our first Washington employee would be hospitalized with flu-like symptoms. Two

days later, on Sunday afternoon, the 21st, we learned of the first

case of an employee with inhalation anthrax. Brentwood was immediately closed. As a precaution, we also closed the BWI processing facilities.

We were operating in good faith, trying to make the right decisions, based on the facts at hand and the advice we were receiving

from experts. In fact, out of those discussions, local health authorities began screening employees and providing them with antibiotics

that weekend. By Monday, we were making every effort to track

down all our Brentwood employees, even those on vacation.

Last week I said, this is not a time for finger pointing. I underscore that again. The mail and the Nation have never experienced

anything like this.

Where are we today? First of all, the situation remains fluid.

Late yesterday afternoon we learned that two additional facilities

in Washington, DC, were contaminated. And we closed them, pending remediation.

In addition, trace amounts of anthrax have been found in our

plant in West Palm Beach. The remediation is occurring right now.

For 18 days we have been working to enhance the safety of our

employees and their workplaces. At the same time, we want to

keep mail moving to the Nation’s businesses and households. Let

me share some of the actions that we have taken. We have scheduled 200 facilities nationwide to be tested. That’s in addition to

those facilities in the immediate area of the anthrax attacks where

we’ve had testing underway already. We purchased 4.8 million

masks, 88 million gloves for our employees. We changed operational maintenance practices to reduce the chance of bio-agents

being blown around the workplace. We are using new cleaning

products that kill anthrax bacteria.

We have redoubled efforts to communicate to employees through

stand-up talks, videos and postcards directed to their homes to reinforce their awareness of our message. We also had medical doctors speak to our employees at the work site on the precautions

they need to take concerning anthrax, and offered employees nationwide counseling services.

During the last week, we mobilized every resource to get employees screened, tested, and antibiotics distributed. We are purchasing

machines and technology to sanitize mail. Unfortunately, we cannot deploy all the machines tomorrow. In the interim, we are using

existing machines and private sector companies to sanitize targeted

mail. The anthrax attacks were targeted, and we are responding in

a targeted way.

We are increasing our education efforts with the public. Postcards alerting every address in America were delivered last week.

In all our dealings with our customers, we stress the need for vigilance. We modified our Web site to provide the latest information

on anthrax. In sum, we are focused on getting the message out.

I might also add that the cooperation and coordination between

and among the Federal agencies involved has gotten increasingly

stronger as each day goes by. Governor Ridge has been instrumental in building bridges and making this happen. He also has been

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working to assure that all Federal agencies work in a focused way

to ensure that the equipment and technology we plan to use is effective. These attacks on our employees, the Nation and the mail

are unprecedented. They have hurt us financially. The economic

slowdown in 2001 already had an impact. Then the tragedy of the

attack on September 11th again stunned the economy. The results

have been reflected in reduced revenue and mail volumes.

Although we are still assessing the economic impact of the anthrax attack, I can tell you, it is sizable. We will provide information to the committee when we have a tally.

As I am sure you will agree, protecting America’s freedom by ensuring the safety and integrity of the mail is at the core of the

Postal Service’s mission. Our 800,000 postal employees are using

everything they’ve learned and doing everything humanly possible

to keep the mail safe and moving. I cannot say enough how proud

I am of the cooperation and spirit I have seen in our employees and

in postal customers. They recognize that terrorist have launched an

attack on one of America’s fundamental institutions, the Nation’s

post offices. We are determined not to let the terrorists stop us.

This concludes my prepared statement, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Potter follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Postmaster General.

I was watching television the other night, and one of the postal

employees in New York said that a couple of the machines that

were being used to process the mail, where the anthrax had gone

through, were just ringed with some kind of yellow tape and that

the employees were working in close proximity to that. Can you

clarify that for us?

Mr. POTTER. It’s my understanding, Mr. Chairman, that we had

four machines where we found traces of anthrax. We sealed that

area off. The area that was sealed off was some 150,000 square feet

of space. We brought in clean-up crews to remediate that area.

One thing has to be understand about the Morgan Station, it’s

a 1.8 million square foot facility. It’s multi-story, we brought in

CDC, NIOSH, the city health department and we showed them

what we had. They were aware of what we had. They advised that

we could seal off that area, and remediate that area without doing

any harm to anyone else in the building. We were assured that the

ventilation system in that building had no anthrax spore contamination.

So the decision was made to seal off an area and remediate that

area again, working closely with the medical authorities to determine a safe and proper procedure for handling the contamination

in that building.

Mr. BURTON. So you’re pretty confident that’s a safe working

area right now?

Mr. POTTER. As confident as one can be getting advice from all

the experts, yes.

Mr. BURTON. The Controller General, 6 months ago, told us that

the Postal Service was operating in a very—it was one of the financial crisis areas. I’ve talked to you and met with the Board of Governors on a number of occasions. I think Mr. Waxman has as well.

You’re up against your $15 billion ceiling. And you were going to

run, I think, somewhere around a $2 billion to $3 billion shortfall

this year before all this stuff started to happen, these tragedies.

Can you give us a rough idea, and you said you would get us figures as quickly as possible, but can you give us a rough idea of

what needs to be done to help the post office through this crisis

without them going bankrupt?

Do you need additional revenues for these irradiation machines

from the Federal Government? If so, how much? How much will it

take total? And also, we’ve talked about postal reform for some

time. Is it something that we ought to be looking at right now that

would help you through this crisis as well.

Mr. POTTER. Well, first let me deal with the financial situation.

We had anticipated that in fiscal year 2002, we would lose somewhere on the order of $1.4 billion. That’s after us taking a lot of

aggressive steps to consolidate operations and to reduce overhead

in some of our staffing.

What’s occurred now is that as a result of September 11th, for

our first accounting period in the first month of this fiscal year, our

revenues were some $300 million short of expectations. Our volumes were down 6 percent. And that was a result of the September

11th attack.

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Now we have this anthrax attack which is compounding the situation. We hope that Americans continue to mail, we hope that

Americans continue to have confidence in the mail. The best thing

that people can do around America, of course, is to put a stamp on

an envelope and get it in the mail, continue to use their catalogs.

We have not and cannot accurately predict what might happen as

a result of the anthrax attacks. And we’re going to continue to

monitor that situation.

However, it’s not farfetched to imagine that this situation could

end up hurting us to the tune of several billion dollars. But again,

it will be a function of consumer behavior, business behavior in

terms of how they use the mail.

In addition to that, we’re looking to put in processes and equipment that would sanitize the mail. We have worked with the Defense Department and others to identify equipment that would

sanitize mail and eliminate any bacteria that might be found in

mail. The mail that we’re looking to sanitize is that mail where

people have open access to, to place mail into the system. So it’s

from collection boxes, lobby drops that we might have in post offices, or lobby drops in major buildings.

Our initial estimate on the costs associated with putting that

type of equipment into our centers is on the order of $2.5 billion.

So there we have several billion in costs.

In addition to that, we have costs that we didn’t anticipate for

masks, gloves, and we’re going to change our operational procedures such that we protect our employees. Initially, I think you’re

aware that the administration made $175 million available to the

Postal Service. It was for the initial buy of sanitizing equipment.

And the initial buys of gloves and masks, and costs associated with

medical treatment for our employees.

So beyond that initial $175 million, we anticipate that costs continue on. Our hope is that we catch the people who perpetrated

this act. But until that time, we have to do what we can to shore

up our vulnerabilities, either vulnerabilities to entering mail into

the mail stream or vulnerabilities of our employees.

Mr. BURTON. Let me just ask one more question. You didn’t address how these costs will be paid for. Will you need a direct appropriation from the Federal Government in addition to possible

stamp price increases to meet the costs of these irradiation machines, these cleansing machines? And will that be in conjunction

with a postal rate increase, or will that necessitate that? And also

the postal reform issue.

Mr. POTTER. OK, I’ll answer the first part and I’ll ask Governor

Fineman to followup with my response on the reform issue.

We definitely are going to ask for an appropriation, particularly

for the economic costs associated with this. We view a lot of the

costs that we’re going to bear as part of homeland security. We

don’t feel that the ratepayers should bear the burden of these costs.

We had filed in late September for a rate increase. We anticipated that rate increase may impact the volumes of mail that we

have. We don’t think that the ratepayers can bear an additional

burden. So we are going to seek an appropriation to help us with

that.

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We’re delighted that you’ve taken on postal reform as one of your

key issues. We are working and will work closely with you on postal reform. We believe that there is a need to change to allow us

to operate in a more businesslike manner. An area that I’m excited

to get into is the area of negotiated service agreements, so we can

work with big, volume mailers, such that we can offer them price

packages that would allow them to increase the volume of mail

moving through the system and help to finance, in the long run,

the Nation’s mail.

I’ll turn it over to Governor Fineman to add to that.

Mr. FINEMAN. Mr. Chairman, as you know, and Ranking Member

Waxman, I’ve met with both of you and met with other members

of this committee who have been working on postal reform. I’ve

spoken passionately about it, the absolute necessity to have postal

reform, prior to the incidents with anthrax.

I can only tell you the frustration that I feel today as a member

of the Board of Governors. Both myself and my colleagues, sit on

boards of privately held companies. And if you had a major catastrophe, the management would come to the board of directors with

a whole bunch of things that you might do.

In today’s world, the way the Postal Service law was written in

1970, we don’t have the luxury of doing much. That is particularly

true in the area of pricing. Assume today that we wanted to get

our volumes up. Assume that we could go to some of our major suppliers, that is some of our major customers. We could say to them,

it’s absolutely necessary to keep people having confidence in the

mail. What we’d like to do is lower the price for you, right now,

for the next month. We’d like to maybe lower the price a little bit

and see if we can increase volumes.

We can’t do that. There’s a law that prohibits it. What we have

to do is file a rate case, and I’ve testified here before, as you know,

that it will take 16, sometimes 20 months from the time when we

start preparing a rate case to get it finally finished. It doesn’t work

in a modern society. The law just doesn’t work. And I would say

to you that the situation with anthrax is a frustrating situation for

us on the board, because we feel like our hands are tied, that there

aren’t that many things we can do in regard to the financial viability of the Postal Service.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you. Mr. Waxman.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, I appreciate your testimony. Mr. Potter, as I understand, the cornerstone of the approach that the Postal Service is

planning in response to this anthrax possibility in the mail is to

try to sanitize the mail, so consumers will know when they receive

mail that it won’t have anthrax and it won’t have any other harmful biological agent in it, isn’t that correct?

Mr. POTTER. Yes.

Mr. WAXMAN. And you’re looking at asking the taxpayers to come

up with $2.5 billion to help pay for this new technological innovation. I support helping the Postal Service. But I want to be sure

that we’re doing it in the right possible way.

As I understand it, there are two types of technology. One is

what’s called e-beams and the other is x-rays. These technologies

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ample, they both use radiation to kill bacteria and viruses, and

they’ve both been proven to be safe for use on food and medical

equipment.

But if you look at the e-beam technology, my understanding is

that the Postal Service wants to use this to sanitize letters by directing a stream of electrons at mail that passes on a conveyor belt.

My staff contacted private sector experts in e-beam technology and

were told that e-beam has promise in sanitizing large amounts of

mail. According to these experts, the advantages of this approach

are that sterilization can occur quickly and efficiently.

But they also told us that using e-beam technology to sanitize

the mail poses large engineering problems. E-beam technology has

been used for homogenous kinds of products, like sterilizing medical syringes or whatever, that are basically the same thing. Therefore, the engineers can adjust the technology to assure that the

right dose is administered.

But in the mail, it’s very different. We have different size packages, we could have not only the variations in weight, but the composition can be different. And I want you to answer this question,

but I’m limited in time. One of the things I want you to answer

for the record is the assurances about being able to overcome these

engineering problems and adapting e-beam technology to something as complex as the mail stream. So that’s one thing we’re

going to need an answer for.

But I want to get to the second point. The other is to look at xray technology. The problem with e-beam technology is it won’t

penetrate solid matter very far. But even dense letters may not be

sanitized, as I understand it, with e-beams. But x-ray can sterilize

far deeper than e-beams, can be used for sterilization of large packages. However, according to experts I’ve consulted, x-rays are far

less efficient, far more time consuming, potentially far more costly

than e-beams. So I have a lot of questions about this technology.

But I also want to ask you, why aren’t we doing something common sense, like, obviously you’re not going to put everything

through a screening. You indicated if it were in a mailing house,

there’s no need to screen it. So what we’re looking at is mail that

goes into a collection box or a lobby drop. That’s mail that terrorists can use in a way that keeps then anonymous. Isn’t that maybe

the problem we’re looking at?

Mr. POTTER. That is the problem we’re looking at. And again, we

don’t want to take away a freedom that we have in America to

have open access to the mail stream. So we’re trying to balance

that with technology.

Now, regarding the technology, I’m obviously not an expert. My

expertise is moving mail around the country. But we are going to

use e-beam x-ray technology. Anticipating that I might get a question on that, I brought our vice president of Engineering, Tom Day,

who is working with the best people in the field on this. Let me

turn it over to him.

Mr. WAXMAN. Before you do, e-beam technology and x-ray technology can be different. They can be referred to as the same, but

they are different technologies, as I understand it. But let’s look at,

before you even use the high tech, high priced technology that has

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pluses and minuses, why not take away some of the freedom that

people have to go in anonymously and send packages?

Why not have people be required to come in personally and have

some identification before they start mailing some kinds of letters

or packages that might be harmful? Why can’t there be some kind

of analysis, the way you do with airline screening, where you make

an assessment of somebody face to face, whether they are possibly

someone you want to watch carefully because of the demeanor they

have or the way they approach the mail?

Why not some of that less expensive way to deal with narrowing

the amount of mail that we have to go through, either e-beam or

x-ray technology?

Mr. POTTER. I have a couple of responses to that. One is that,

in my opinion, it would be more expensive to do that. We have

some 50 billion pieces of mail that come in through collection boxes

over the course of the year. So it would be a recurring expense as

well. It would be an inconvenience to the American public. And so

the introduction of technology is something that we feel would be

the most cost effective means of dealing with this problem for the

American public as a whole.

Mr. WAXMAN. Of course, packages, they still have to come in face

to face and take it to a post office.

Mr. POTTER. Packages beyond a certain size, yes, Congressman.

Mr. WAXMAN. Do you think that’s kept people from using the

Postal Service for their packages?

Mr. POTTER. No, I don’t. But I do believe that if we had everybody come into the Postal Service with their letters that would be

inconvenient to many Americans. They may look to use other technologies to get their bills and payments done.

Mr. WAXMAN. That may happen anyway.

My time is up. I just want to conclude this round or this opportunity, because I’m going to further request answers to some questions in writing for the record. I would hope you would consider

trying to figure out low-tech, low-cost ways to narrow the amount

of mail that has to go through the high tech, high priced screening,

especially since there are pluses and minuses in the technology, the

technologies you’re considering. I would just hate to see us spend

billions of dollars on high priced technology that may not work and

probably won’t be available for a very long period of time. Isn’t that

correct? We’re looking at years, or at least a year or two before you

can sanitize the mail and assure everybody that every piece of mail

is secure.

Mr. POTTER. We’re looking today at manual screening of mail in

targeted areas to try and identify pieces of mail that may be tainted and moving through the mail stream. Again, expensive to do, it

will be a recurring cost. And I’m not sure, should we have Mr. Day

respond or would you like that done for the record, Congressman?

Mr. WAXMAN. If the gentleman would just give it for the

record——

Dr. WELDON [assuming Chair]. Go ahead and respond.

Mr. WAXMAN. It’s OK for him to respond?

Dr. WELDON. Yes, I want to hear the response to the question.

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, then, Mr. Chairman, I hope I’ll have a

chance at a followup question.

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Mr. DAY. Congressman, you’ve pretty well summarized the

pluses and minuses on the two technologies. We have not done this

on our own. I’ve worked with the President’s Office of Science and

Technology. Dr. Marburger has been very gracious to help us coordinate with the various Federal agencies to get the right specifications for the equipment we need.

I can tell you in discussions we’ve had on two separate occasions

with various other Federal agencies that the belief was that our

long term solution with technology should be the x-ray. Because as

you correctly pointed out, the issue of penetration.

E-beam is our interim solution. We’re limiting the product we

send through there in a way that ensures that it’s properly irradiated and any biohazard could be eliminated. That took a bit of discussion amongst the agencies, and it’s interesting, because no one

ever thought of this technology for the mail. But it involved both

the FDA as well as some work by the Department of Defense to

come up with some agreement about what, and the term used is

dosing levels, to ensure that you’ve achieved the kill rate on the

biohazard. And we’ve set it exceptionally high, with very stringent

quality controls, to make sure that it works.

But you’re correct, the long term, to ensure you’ve got penetration, is the x-ray solution.

Mr. WAXMAN. Just so we understand, that’s the direction you’re

taking. We’re going to need to know the cost of x-raying a single

piece of mail, how long it will take to sterilize a typical package

with x-ray, how much energy we’re going to have to use for these

x-rays to sanitize the mail, and how much radiation needs to be

used to kill a collection of anthrax spores.

I know other members have questions, but we’re going to need

to get those answers at some point in the legislative process before

we appropriate the money.

Dr. WELDON. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Mr. WAXMAN. I’d ask unanimous consent to put in the record

congressional testimony of the U.S. Postal Service Safety and Security, Charles Moser, president of the National Association of Postmasters.

Dr. WELDON. Without objection.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Moser follows:]

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105

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Dr. WELDON. I also ask unanimous consent to include in the

record an article by Alan Robinson, Direct Communications Group,

Could the USPS be the first major business casualty of the war on

terrorism. Without objection, so ordered.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Dr. WELDON. The Chair now yields himself 5 minutes for questioning. I want to thank you, Mr. Potter, for coming and testifying,

and all the people you brought with you. The eyes of the Nation

are really focused very intensely on this. Let me just start out by

asking you, what would you say to the average American who goes

down to his mailbox in the afternoon to get his mail?

Mr. POTTER. My message to the average American is that the

mail is safe, that they need to take the proper precautions and

have awareness about what’s in their mailbox, to assure that it’s

safe. I would suggest to them that they read the postcard we sent

them. That would make them aware of things that might be out

of the ordinary in their mailbox and advise them on what to do in

the event they come across something that’s out of the ordinary.

But we deliver to 137 million addresses every day. And we’ve had

a handful of letters that have moved through the system and have

caused obviously death and have caused disease. But in terms of

the average mailbox, the knowledge that people have of what’s in

their mailbox, greeting cards, packages they might have ordered

from a catalog, or their bills, or letters from loved ones, that mail

is safe.

Dr. WELDON. Would you say that those items you were just mentioning, catalogs and mail say from a utility company, a bill, those

items are to be viewed as safe, that it’s other pieces of mail that

perhaps meet the description as has been outlined in the press that

is more of a concern?

Mr. POTTER. Yes, Congressman.

Dr. WELDON. OK. Now, this may be a question for Mr. Day. I

just want to followup a little bit on the line of questioning the

ranking member was pursuing. There are very few companies that

make this radiation equipment. So even if we gave you an appropriation, it’s going to take, I understand, months to years to get all

this equipment in place, is that correct?

Mr. DAY. Congressman, in a general sense you’re correct. One of

the things we quickly realized is that it is a very limited industry.

Previous uses were generally food processing, as well as medical

equipment sterilization, a few industrial uses as well. So a very

limited industry.

We’ve already begun discussions, one of the things quickly determined is that the industry depends upon a couple of key suppliers

for key components to make the system. We’ve already begun the

discussion to see what it would take to ramp up those key suppliers as well as try to get some of the bigger companies that we deal

with for postal technology potentially to help with the manufacturing, to ramp up the manufacturing of this product as well.

You’re correct, it is very limited source currently. But we have

begun the discussion to see what it would take to speed up the production of the equipment.

Dr. WELDON. I’ve heard the discussion of how you will make

some sort of distinction between high risk and low risk mail. I can

understand if you’re taking a bulk delivery from, say, Sears Roebuck or Land’s End, catalogs from a printing company, that constitutes a lower risk mail product for you. But how are you going

to protect the postal workers that are collecting the mail from the

drop boxes? It’s fine if you have an irradiation machine and you’re

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taking it to the irradiation machine and it gets irradiated and then

it comes to my house and I know it’s been sanitized and I’m safe.

But what about the postal worker who is going to those drop boxes

and collecting the mail?

Mr. POTTER. We have a separate group from the engineering

group working on the process, the collection box process, to assure

that those employees that might remove mail from a collection box

are not put in harm’s way. Today they’re doing that via mask and

gloves. But we believe that there are processes that we can put in

place to prevent them from coming into harmful contact with that

mail. We’re working on those as we speak.

Dr. WELDON. Is there any discussion of vaccinating the work

force for anthrax and/or other biological agents?

Mr. POTTER. The Surgeon General did make that statement, and

we’re going to rely on the medical community to give us that advice. We’re not medical experts.

Dr. WELDON. Just a couple of additional questions—well, I see

my time has expired. Let me just ask one quick one. I understand

the FAA is not allowing USPS parcels on passenger flights any

more. Is that true?

Mr. POTTER. The FAA has restrictions regarding the transport of

packages above a certain weight on domestic passenger airlines.

Dr. WELDON. Has that impacted your operations at all, the restrictions on mail that’s traveling on passenger airlines?

Mr. POTTER. Yes, it has. We’ve had to expand the surface reach

for packages, as well as move those packages onto cargo carriers

as opposed to passenger carrier planes.

Dr. WELDON. My time has expired. I thank you. And the Chair

now yields to the gentlelady from the District of Columbia, Ms.

Norton, for 5 minutes.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Potter and all of your colleagues, for your testimony today. You may know that I was a town meeting last night,

among many, over 500 residents came. There were a fair number

of postal workers. Not surprisingly, there is still some disconcerted

response there. Many of them are still dislocated, because you’re

decontaminating the Brentwood facility. You had something of a

labor relations problem before anthrax. Obviously you’re going to

have a problem afterwards.

This is a tough workplace. It is a tough workplace without disease. It’s become a much tougher one. But frankly, I’m not interested in recrimination. I am interested in whether or not the Postal

Service is prepared to save lives and to give the appropriate assurances going forward. Apparently, the only contingency plan the

Postal Service had was one that would allow the mail to be delivered in the case of interruption, such as planes not going up and

the rest, but nothing related to hazardous substances.

I’d like to ask you a question about Brentwood in particular.

These workers have been out of the workplace at Brentwood now,

I don’t know, what is it, a week? Some contamination job must

really be going on. They’ve been out for a long time. I assume now

that a great deal of planning is going on in the Postal Service to

stay ahead of the crisis and of disease. Can you assure us that

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after the facility is decontaminated that only sanitized mail will be

processed through the Brentwood postal station?

Mr. POTTER. We will be able to assure that once we have the

equipment in place to sanitize mail.

Ms. NORTON. Well, the reason I ask is, the workers are out of

there a week or more, and if in fact anything other than sanitized

mail goes in, how is anyone to know that the process of contamination is not going to be repeated?

Mr. POTTER. That is a dilemma that we all are facing right now.

Ms. NORTON. It’s a terrible dilemma, given the deaths at Brentwood. Is there a planning group trying to look ahead in ways like

this? What good will it do to tell people to come back if they don’t

know if the next letter coming in has anthrax in it, and everybody

might be out of Brentwood all over again?

Mr. POTTER. We are working as diligently as we can to identify

targeted mail and screen it early in the process to keep it out of

our mail systems.

Ms. NORTON. I would just ask, and I understand the dilemma

you’re under, this is a brand new situation. Nobody’s ever had to

think this through before. But I do believe that it would be important for your work force, important for the people who live here

and important for the Federal presence if the mail going through

Brentwood in particular, even if not sanitized by the new technology, could go through some process that would give everybody

some assurance, even if it was low tech, even if it was something

like the ranking member was discussing, that would say to people,

this mail has not come in blind. Something has happened that

makes it different from before. There is a before and after here for

all mail, or else I think you’re going to have a crisis of confidence

that continues.

Mr. POTTER. We are looking at a number of things in the Brentwood facility. Obviously, the mail that was targeted initially in this

case was Government mail. We’re considering not moving Government mail back into that facility, keep that isolated and make sure

that’s appropriately sanitized before our employees there touch it.

Until we have sanitizing equipment in place, the best thing we

can do for our employees is offer them protection, protection in the

form of gloves, protection in the form of masks. It’s not the ultimate solution. We don’t want our employees walking around feeling that they’re in an unsafe environment. But in the interim, that

is the short term solution that we can find, in addition to targeted

screening of mail as it’s collected in places of concern.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Potter, on page 2 of your testimony you describe how the—and the Postal Inspector was here earlier—how

your Postal Inspection Services is ‘‘actively involved with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.’’ I’d like to know exactly how they operate. There’s the FBI on the one hand, there’s a Postal Inspector

on the other. Let me give you the model that often is used in D.C.

In D.C., the FBI sits in D.C. police headquarters, so that if a matter local or Federal rises to a certain level, you can’t tell the difference between the FBI and the D.C. police because they work like

that.

I want to know how the Postal Inspector operates, operationally,

how is he related or she related to the FBI?

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Mr. POTTER. On individual cases, and obviously we have an investigation going on here, they work as a joint team working on all

of these matters. Today, they’re not only investigating to try and

determine who the perpetrator of the crime of putting anthrax in

the mail was, but they’re working closely together with the FBI

and local law enforcement to track down all of the hoaxes that we

have. Because the hoaxes are as big a problem in terms of the psyche of the American public as the actual anthrax. Because we don’t

have anthrax in California, but we do have a number of hoaxes

that have been perpetrated out there.

So there’s an entire law enforcement effort working very diligently on this whole matter. And in each of these cases, it’s a matter of a team working together. I think it’s transparent, as you described, in D.C., as to who is who. It’s just a matter of working as

a team, putting our resources against it, and following up to find

the terrorists, because this is a terrorist who is putting anthrax in

the mail, and to get after those folks that are committing hoaxes.

We’re happy that there have been 18 arrests around the country

regarding hoaxes, and we anticipate more.

Dr. WELDON. The gentlelady’s time has expired.

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr.

Horn, for 5 minutes.

Mr. HORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I was very interested in some of the dialog and the policies on

this. I want to say, Mr. Postmaster General, in my town, and in

this building, I’ve never seen a clerk that did not have a smile on

his face, and I’ve never seen a letter carrier in Long Beach, CA,

that I’ve seen anything but a smile on their face. They’re out in the

sun and it’s a tough job. I took one time a big cake with the seal

of the Post Office to each of the post offices. One person broke

down. He said, you’re the first person that’s ever thanked me. It’s

a tough job.

But I’ve got some concerns about your predecessors, Mr. Runyan,

in particular, if he put this policy in. One day I had 100 individuals, Federal workers, that were eligible for Federal worker compensation. About 60 of the 100 were postal. I said, I want you to

tell me, how does this system work. One said, well, you know, the

vice president in the region and the manager, they wouldn’t even

let him give me the form.

Now, that’s a real problem, and I realize when you’re at the top

of the heap, you can’t be everywhere. But I would hope, now that

you’re in office, that you could turn some of those attitudes around.

Because there’s a real feeling out there, and I have read several

hundred of these before they’ve gone to the Department of Labor.

I’ve got real bones with them. They aren’t doing much, and they

aren’t treating people as human beings.

I said earlier, before you came here, you put two human beings

in your speech and I put one in my question. And nobody else really went for it. So it looks like you’re a pretty humane guy, and I

would hope that you would look at that whole operation, where

there the executives get money for not having health forms out, it

seems to me. That bothers me. And I’m told your predecessor once

removed, Mr. Runyan, had a $100,000 retirement party. I don’t

know if that’s true or not, but if it is, it’s stupid, especially when

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everybody else gets a new penny on their stamp. I think you’d

agree with that.

Mr. POTTER. I’m not planning one. But I’d like to say that—and

that wasn’t meant to be a joke. But I’d like to say that this effort,

when we were faced with this challenge of anthrax, the first thing

we did, and it was part of my statement, was put together a task

force. On that task force we have our four largest unions, the presidents are there, we have three management associations there.

Part of the reason that they’re there is because yes, I’m at the top

and it’s a very large organization, and I can get feedback through

my managers, but I also need to get feedback from those who represent the employee groups.

So if we find out that a stand-up talk wasn’t given in an appropriate manner, we’re able to direct that. We also have an opportunity by working closely with the unions to get their input up

front. So we can understand and they can understand why we’re

doing things, and why we’re making changes, get input from them

on changes that they would recommend. And working collaboratively, we’re going to have to attack the terrorists in the same

manner that they’re attacking us. We’re going to have to get after

this problem. I know that we cannot do that independently. It’s

going to take all 800,000 employees, and we need to mobilize all

800,000 employees. The best way to do that is to work with the

leadership of those employee groups.

Mr. HORN. Thank you.

Dr. WELDON. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from New York, Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Chairman, I am reading this article in the

Economist. It begins by saying, few Americans want to be postal

workers at this moment, fewer would like to be John Potter. I’d

just like to say, it goes on and it describes all the challenges that

you confront and the dangers in the post office. When you come forward with your list of concerns, I certainly want to be part of the

team working to help the postal workers and the post office.

The last thing that we want to do during this economic downturn

is to put these costs on the backs of postal customers. High mailing

costs have contributed to the demise of several high profile magazines in the district that I represent recently. And five have closed

in my district, Mademoiselle, and Industry Standard, to name a

few. We can’t just keep passing along costs to customers, because

then they can’t compete and then they go out of business.

I am really supportive that the administration has already come

forward with $173 million to help the Postal Service. I know that

I’ll be one supporting other efforts to help the Postal Service. But

don’t you think the Postal Service should likewise help the mailing

community out as well during this very tough economic time? And

shouldn’t you or the postal office delay implementation of any rate

increase until January 2003 or even later? Magazines tell me that

the rate increases that they confront are over 24 percent in the

past 2 years. I’d like to know where you stand on rate increases.

Will they put off, as other things have been put off?

Mr. POTTER. The decision about what we do with the rate increase will certainly be determined by what transpires in the next

several months. We entered into a rates process in September.

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That would take 10 months, normally take 10 months. We’re very

grateful that the Rate Commission has decided to try to expedite

that case, not expedite the rate increase, but just expedite the

whole process to negotiate rates.

We will be better postured, and we’ve told our mailers that we

will be better postured to make a decision about when we can implement rates or when we should implement rates next summer.

And it’s still our intent to do that. We, like you, agree that mailers

should not bear the full burden of these terrorist attacks. This is

a homeland security issue. This is a service that’s provided by the

Federal Government that’s paid for by the ratepayers. But we have

a very, very unusual circumstance here, and that’s why we would

move ahead to seek appropriation, to avoid the type of economic

impact on our magazine publishers and others who use the mail.

Mrs. MALONEY. I represent New York City and I’ve received numerous phone calls from postal workers who cannot understand

why New York’s Morgan Station facility is opened while New Jersey, the postal areas in Washington were closed, along with four

congressional office buildings. Some of the office buildings closed

for Congress did not even find anthrax, there wasn’t even—there

was just a suspicion.

So I’d like to know, who is making the decisions to close or keep

open postal facilities? Who makes that decision? Does a different

person make a decision in different areas, or in different States?

Mr. POTTER. The decision is made initially on the local level,

with input from the medical officials that we have on board, the

CDC. In the case of New York City, CDC, NIOSH, and the city

health department were in Morgan. They analyzed the data that

they had. And they made a decision that we could seal off the area

on that working floor and that we could successfully remediate the

area. Again, it was traces of anthrax found on four machines.

Now, Bill Burrus, who is in the front row, who’s the president

elect of the American Postal Workers Union, he and I met at a funeral on Friday. He expressed concerns and we discussed what options we have. What we did in the case of Morgan in response to

the concerns of the employees there was, we had those medical officials go in and give talks to all the employees to explain to them

exactly what it was that was found, explain to them how we were

remediating it, explain to them what threat if any there was to

them. And we gave those employees the option of staying at the facility or moving to another location right across the street in our

general post office.

So we took the advice of the local medical officials. However,

throughout this process, people had the ability to raise their concerns. That’s one of the benefits of having this task force. The employees raised their concerns through the American Postal Workers

Union. We were able to get together, discuss the issue and come

up with options that we believe were fair to the employees, or I believe were fair to the employees. I don’t want to speak for Bill.

Mrs. MALONEY. Do you think these decisions should be centralized? Now they’re basically local decisions, and different people

making decisions, as I understand it, at different facilities. So it appears to me that possibly it should be centralized with centralized

standards and criteria, to determine, so that there is a consistent,

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clear method that all of us can understand and all the workers can

understand.

I know my time is up, but very briefly, why has this decision not

been centralized? Are you going to move to centralized standards

and procedures?

Mr. POTTER. Let me say briefly that all these situations have individual circumstances. We’re finding different things in Florida

than we found in New York than we found in Brentwood than

we’re finding in Trenton, NJ. We are working to establish a consistent protocol.

However, we’re not getting consistent advice in each of these locations. It’s kind of comparable to what medications is somebody

on. At one point, it’s Cipro, the next point it’s Doxycycline. So we’re

in a very fluid situation and want to respond to the people locally.

We do seek the advice of people at a national level, beyond the

Postal Service, the CDC and others. So it’s an evolving situation

and we are looking to develop a clear set of protocols. But again,

the situation is so dynamic and so fluid we haven’t been able to get

to that yet.

Mrs. MALONEY. Well, thank you very much. I sent you a letter

earlier on this, what we’ve been talking about, clear standards and

protocols. Thank you very much.

Mr. POTTER. Thank you.

Mr. BURTON [resuming Chair]. The gentlelady’s time has expired.

Mr. LaTourette.

Mr. LATOURETTE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Postmaster General, just an introductory comment. As with

your predecessor in the previous administration, I want you to

know that when I watch television, when Deputy Postmaster

Wilhite gets on the television screen, she’s very reassuring to the

American public. I think she’s a good presence for the Service, as

are you.

You created a little bit of a stir this week in Ohio, as trucks

rolled through Ohio, to Lima, OH. That is, my understanding, the

plant that you have two contracts with for 6 months to use their

facilities. I want to followup from where Mr. Waxman was, because

I saw interviews with the gentleman that owns the facility and listened to what he had to say relative to his technology.

I don’t have the same understanding that Mr. Waxman did.

What this gentleman is explaining, and maybe you can tell us, is

that the mail is taken from the Brentwood facility and other places

in Washington, DC, put in a sanitized bag, put in another sanitized

bag, put in a box. The box is then carried on a FedEx hazmat

truck, delivered to the facility, put on conveyor belts and then goes

under this conveyor belt with the electronic beams.

The gentleman did not express any concern that, I heard Mr.

Waxman talking about thicknesses and maybe you can’t do a fat

package or a dense package. He was pretty much, I know it’s his

business and he’s proud of his business, but he was pretty sure

that what they were doing in Lima, OH, was going to sanitize this

mail to everybody’s satisfaction. Is that your understanding as

well?

Mr. POTTER. Congressman, what you described is very accurate.

The discussion that my staff has had, again, with Dr. Marburger’s

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assistance, is talking to both the Department of Defense. The base

that we’re comparing this to is research done by the Armed Forces

Radio Biology Research Institute that assessed this technology on

a variety of biohazards and established dosing levels that would

safely achieve kill rates to ensure that you have a safe product.

The other source of information is the Federal Drug Administration, who is regulating this process for food processing. What we

came to a conclusion is from a study done by the Department of

Defense that there was a safe level. However, as was described by

Congressman Waxman, there’s a level of homogeneity, same product, being run through. So the question became as with mail, which

can be very different from one mail piece to the next, how do you

determine the dose level that’s appropriate.

Well, the dose level that we’ve established is twice what the research would have indicated and beyond. To further evaluate that

it’s being done properly, there’s a device called the dosimeter that

actually measures, did you get the dose you thought. That’s placed

inside the product. So we’re running that quality assurance.

And to assure that the product truly gets scanned properly, it’s

run through, does 180 degree turn, and then run through in the

opposite direction. We’re just trying to apply every measure of certainty that what we’re doing here is applying the correct dose and

sanitizing the mail.

I would finally comment that we’re also limiting the product that

we’re making that claim on. When you start dealing with packages,

you really can’t assure that somebody could have screened so that

the dose couldn’t be applied. We will have a separate process, and

there are some packages that are making their way into Ohio.

That’s fine, it doesn’t do any damage. But what we’re saying should

be safe is the letters and what we call flats, the larger business

size envelopes, will be properly dosed. So we’re working closely

with the other Federal agencies that have normally dealt with this

kind of technology.

Mr. LATOURETTE. The other observation is, and you don’t have

to comment on this, but also there’s been some published reports

that this process damages credit cards. I understand that it does

not damage credit cards, is that correct?

Mr. POTTER. There are some very preliminary tests done by the

company we’re using in Ohio, whose parent company is Titan Industries, they specifically tested credit cards and it does not damage the card. I also very specifically asked Dr. Marburger, who has

some expertise in this field. He did not believe that the type of dose

we’re talking here, the electronic beam and the magnetic medium

that would be on the back of a credit card, that there should be

a problem.

Same question has been asked about checks that go through the

mail. Because that industry also uses a magnetic ink to sort. We

also believe that there will be no harm to that product as well.

Mr. LATOURETTE. Thank you. And in general, just before my

time expires, there have been some observations made, and you

talked about them, the Governor has talked about them, about

postal reform, negotiated settlement agreements and so forth and

so on. Just speaking as one member of this panel who has worked

with postal reform in the past, I think most realize that the disasVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:09 May 29, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00122 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77387.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ter that struck the Postal Service on September 11th, it’s continued

to strike with the anthrax scare.

But to tie in some issues that have been rather contentious relative to negotiated service agreements and an attempt to solve the

anthrax problem would be, in my opinion, I say this, a mistake. I

hope we don’t use the events that have occurred as a result of terrorist activity to put newspapers, magazines and other mailers out

of business.

I would just indicate that some of us are still scratching our

heads about the contract that your predecessor had entered into

with Federal Express, which left a lot of questions. So I hope we

solve your anthrax problems, give you plenty of money to make the

mail safe. But I hope we don’t go down the path, let’s tag that on

too, because I think that would be a mistake.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. The sentiments that the gentleman just expressed

are not consistent with the chairman’s.

Who is next? Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much.

Mr. Postmaster General, thank you for your service to this country. I know this has been a tough time for you and your staff. I

know our committee is very concerned about people who are making the decisions, that they get support in trying to do their job.

I think this committee has been very supportive.

I have some questions about this plan to use irradiation equipment. Have there been any studies done on the impact it could

have on the workers who are using the equipment, to make sure

we’re not creating more of a problem here?

Mr. POTTER. Again, I’ll defer to Thomas Day.

Mr. DAY. Congressman, this is a proven technology, again, that

has been used in food processing.

Mr. KUCINICH. Has it ever been used for mail before?

Mr. DAY. It has not been used for mail. The technology is such,

there is substantial shielding that is built around the actual equipment. That’s where the irradiation actually takes place. There is no

radiated byproduct that comes out with it. We are confident that

again, and I’m going to rely on the experts in the field, I do not

claim to be a physicist, that the guidance they have given us on

how to send mail through this type of technology will not cause

harm.

The only harm that can occur is if you’re physically in the room

where this takes place. That is a very secure, controlled environment with shielding. Again, an industry that has been around for

a while, tightly regulated and tightly controlled, to ensure the safety of the workers who are around it.

Mr. KUCINICH. I think that’s going to be essential. We’re here in

part because of workplace safety issues that were not addressed in

a timely manner. And I think that the American people ought to

make sure that anyone using this equipment is not going to be adversely affected, because if the equipment is powerful enough to

kill anthrax spores, I would imagine at the doses that are being

recommended for this process, there might be some question about

it posing any hazard to other, to humans and other living organisms.

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I wanted to ask Mr. Potter, how many letters, communication to

the Government, all these letters that you have that are being

boxed up and shipped out to Lima, OH, about how many pieces of

mail are there?

Mr. POTTER. Congressman, right now we’re looking, it’s probably

around a million pieces of mail.

Mr. KUCINICH. And that’s for——

Mr. POTTER. That’s for the—I’m sorry?

Mr. KUCINICH. What are the dates involved?

Mr. POTTER. Some of that mail goes back to whenever the House

and the Senate shut down their post offices, back when the original

Daschle letter came through.

Mr. KUCINICH. Members of Congress understand that the ability

of our constituents to communicate with us through the mail is an

essential part of our job.

Mr. POTTER. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. The phrase, ‘‘write your Congressman or Congresswoman,’’ has an entire law about it in terms of its importance

to Government, that we can keep this Government of the people

functioning. So how long would you say it might be before we’ll be

able to get this information, these letters, back into our offices?

Mr. POTTER. Let me tell you exactly what we’ve done. On Friday

of last week, we asked all of the Government mail managers, all

the offices, the Congress, through the White House, all the agencies

came in. Tom Day and a number of people went through a number

of safety procedures around what to look for, with the Inspection

Service, Tom explained the irradiation. We also provided these

managers some of the tips that we were using in the entire Postal

Service as well as masks and gloves.

We really tried to bring up to speed exactly what each of the

Government agencies should be doing in their mail room. We have

started delivering mail. On Monday we began delivering mail. We

will continue this process as we get the irradiated mail back from

Ohio. It has started to come back and by Thursday, some of the

personal correspondence will be back in your system.

Mr. KUCINICH. So people will be able to communicate with their

representatives through the mail now. Do you have a system set

up so it’s not going through this equipment, but it is coming into

the House and Senate?

Mr. POTTER. It will come, but it’s still going to go through the

equipment. It will be a little bit slower, but we’re looking, again,

for safety first. There will be some delays at this point.

Mr. KUCINICH. And the mail that’s being irradiated, if, let’s say,

we’re in the Longworth building, which isn’t open yet, is that mail

then going to be set aside and then given to us when the Longworth building is open? What are you doing in the Senate?

Mr. POTTER. We deliver all the mail to the House post office.

They would sort and then hold mail for any buildings that would

be closed. We deliver all the mail——

Mr. KUCINICH. Any individuals that would have a chance to go

get their own mail? I mean, how can we do this?

Mr. POTTER. Let me back up a second. We deliver the mail to the

Congress in bulk. The Congress hires folks who work the mail

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room. So we’re going to continue to deliver to wherever you tell us.

Your contractor will sort the mail and make it available to you.

Mr. KUCINICH. So you’ll be delivering that—you’re saying that

the irradiated mail, all of it will be back in Washington by?

Mr. POTTER. It’s an ongoing process. As you heard Mr. Day explain, we’re taking the mail out, it gets irradiated, comes back, is

sorted in our Government mail facility and then we distribute it to

the Government offices, including the Congress.

Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Chairman, I think it would be, I think all of

us would like to know, and I think our constituents would want to

know, how much more the letters they’re sending us are going to

be delayed. If we have another internal step here that we have to

look at, I think it would be interesting for the Chair and the ranking member to inquire about it.

Mr. POTTER. Congressman, we just began this process. We are

learning as we speak in terms of the throughput and the capability

of this facility. We’re also looking to move mail into other private

facilities. We are quickly moving ahead with, and we signed a contract last Friday, to purchase our own electron beam technology.

We anticipate deployment of that shortly. So we will provide that

for the record.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. The gentleman’s time has expired. Let me just say

that I’m sure that the Postmaster General will keep the Congress

informed on all of this so that we can disseminate it to all the

Members of Congress as quickly as possible.

In the interim, I’ll tell you, one thing that we have done is, any

correspondence we’re sending out to constituents, we say that if

you sent a letter and you haven’t had a response yet, write us

again because it may or may not get to us for a while.

Mr. Souder.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First, I want to apologize that I missed the first part of the hearing. I was actually chairing two hearings up on the Canadian border looking at border security. I did hear Mr. Potter’s testimony on

the radio, in addition to having read all the testimony that’s been

given.

Let me first comment along the lines of Mr. LaTourette. This is

not an opportunity to use the current crisis to fix things that we’ve

been debating where we have something in policy. I’ve read the

next panel’s testimony as well and I know it’s going to come up

again. But let me assure you that we understand that there is a

crisis in the mail system, we’re gridlocked and somehow we have

to resolve this. We have to have real resolution and we’re not going

to be steamrollered by a crisis that may not directly relate to that.

That said, there are going to be additional costs to the post office

because of the crisis that regardless of our opinion on the broader

postal reform that we understand we are dependent on the mail in

this country for all forms of communication. It is a central American principle that we want to try to protect, not on that you’re

likely to get more conflict if you push too hard in this period, because we’re having all sorts of industries come into Washington

saying, often with problems they had before they came, before September 11th, to come to us. It’s going to get old real fast.

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Also, there is a difference, quite frankly, in the post office from

a pure private sector. We regulate prices in the energy sector, anybody who has a Government monopoly is subject, even if you’re

quasi-independent, to more regulations. And you always will be, as

long as you have assets that were invested by the general taxpayers, and as long as, quite frankly, some of the management reforms that you might undertake as a business, such as Saturday

delivery, closing certain regional post offices, having different rates

in first class, probably Congress would react if you started doing

certain of those types of things.

So you’re always going to be kind of a quasi-independent agency

that we have to work together, even though the goal has been more

for independence.

I also wanted to make a brief comment. I know one of my colleagues asked about vaccinations. This committee has had numerous hearings on anthrax vaccinations, and problems therein, regarding the Guard and others. It is not a slam dunk. What we do

know is, we know that there is a minimal but small risk to people

who take the vaccination. We know that the company shut down.

We know that their supplies have never been FDA cleared.

But what we also know is that it doesn’t treat most strains of

anthrax. And there’s a lot of publicity in this country about how

the vaccination, even if we had the supply, even if it was untainted, and even if it was FDA cleared, does not appear to work

for the strains that are common in Iraq and some that we’re looking at. So it isn’t a silver bullet for the post office or for the armed

services or for American citizens. It’s kind of gotten lost in this national concern about anthrax.

I also, just being in general contrary, want to raise one other

point and would like you to particularly comment on this point,

and if you’d like to comment on any of the others. Unlike many

there’s a general concern in the public that we in Washington

aren’t being treated the same and our offices and staff aren’t being

treated the same as the average postal worker who is clearly more

at risk than any of us. That whether it comes to our offices here,

whether it comes to our district offices, or whether it comes to our

home, the first exposure is going to be to the people who are bringing it to us.

We’ve seen that, because they’ve died, and we don’t even have

anybody sick. Part of our concern here, and this isn’t just a House

question, it’s a Senate question, when it occurred immediately in

the Senate building, floors have been shut down for weeks where

there wasn’t even a trace of anthrax in the Senate Hart building.

In the Longworth building, floors are shut down where there’s not

even a trace of anthrax, and there’s a question whether they’re

going to fumigate the whole building before anybody even comes

into any of those floors.

Now, I know that they’re being prudent and that you can have

disagreements over the health policies that you’ve suggested about

prudence. But it is bothering Americans that there seems to be a

higher level of prudence for people in power than there seems to

be prudence for people who don’t have power. Even though it puts

the mail at tremendous risk. I’d like you to comment on that quesVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:09 May 29, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00126 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77387.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tion without criticizing anybody in particular, because it can go

both ways. But this inconsistency is bothering the American public.

Mr. POTTER. When I reflect back on the situation and what happened, it’s obvious to me that people acted based on the science

that was available at the time. At the time that action was taken

in that Senate building, there was an envelope, there was confirmed anthrax in that envelope.

Regarding the postal facility at Brentwood, there was a linkage

there, because we knew that the envelope had passed through

Brentwood. But the assumption was that these envelopes were

sealed, heavily taped, that whoever sent them was trying to do

harm to the recipient of the mail and protect those along the way

by heavily sealing them.

What we found out later, a week later, was that the size of the

anthrax spore was so small that it could actually penetrate the

paper. Now, that was something that we were not aware of. That’s

something that we learned by working backward from the opening

of the letter in Senator Daschle’s office. So we began a process of

working back.

Once it became clear that we had a case of anthrax, although we

did not have any confirmation, as I said, we did a quick test on

that Thursday that said there was no anthrax found in Brentwood,

once it was clear that we had an employee with anthrax, we took

immediate action, shut that facility, had people tested, had people

treated. And so again, it was what was the information we were

working with at the time.

Mr. SOUDER. I wasn’t even necessarily, although in retrospect

you can do all sorts of management. Right now, a New York building is open, whereas the Senate Hart, where they didn’t find traces

on those floors, and the Longworth House and the Ford building

where they didn’t find traces, are closed. And it’s not just a historical question, it’s a question that we’re looking at right now. The

general public would like to see some consistency. Because on the

one hand, you say your postal employees are safe. But if the political leaders and the State Department shut all their floors, or HHS

does, or Congress does, it’s not surprising that you’re going to have

dissension.

Or it may be that we’re over-reacting. But the American public

is disturbed and can’t get a consistent health message when we’re

not behaving the same way on floors in the same buildings that do

not have traces.

Mr. BURTON. The gentleman’s time has expired. Do you want to

respond?

Mr. POTTER. We believe we’re reacting with the information that

we have at hand, with the best advice that we can get in the world,

so that we can safely remediate our buildings and not put our people in harm’s way.

Mr. BURTON. Mrs. Mink.

Mrs. MINK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I had asked the first panel a question that they declined to answer and they passed it over to you, Mr. Potter.

Mr. POTTER. Who did that? [Laughter.]

Mrs. MINK. I won’t name the individual. But the question that

still persists in my mind is the tracking of the mail from Daschle’s

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office to the Brentwood facility and then the stopping of the mail

deliveries to the House of Representatives on October 12th.

From October 12th until the Brentwood facility was closed on the

21st, we assumed that the mail was held there and embargoed because of the possible presence of anthrax on the outside of the envelopes. From your testimony, I understand now that the mail that

had been held in Brentwood from the 12th to the 21st is being sent

to Ohio to be sanitized by this e-ray machine that irradiates.

My question is, once Brentwood was closed on the 21st, what

happened to our mail, and is that also going to the Ohio facility?

Mr. POTTER. The answer to that question is that the mail that

originates in Washington, DC, is moved to facilities in suburban

Maryland and northern Virginia to be processed and dispatched

throughout the country. In addition to that, mail coming from

around the country was moved to these facilities. And mail is being

sorted there on a daily basis and prepared for delivery in Washington, DC. The mail where we have an assumption that there’s a

threat, that mail is being isolated and will be sanitized.

Mrs. MINK. So the reason we haven’t gotten any mail since October 12th is that we still constitute a target group and the mail is

not being delivered to us, but is being delivered to other people in

the city. Is that correct?

Mr. POTTER. Correct.

Mrs. MINK. And so we can expect that all of the mail that has

been sent to us from October 12th will go to this Ohio facility and

eventually come back to us, is that correct?

Mr. POTTER. Yes, that’s correct.

Mrs. MINK. That’s very comforting, because we get asked this

question all the time, what happens to our mail, are we eventually

going to get it. And we have been responding thus far that ultimately we will see the mail.

But there’s some question of what happened to the mail after

Brentwood was closed, why weren’t we getting that. And the answer is, that too is being sanitized in Ohio, is that correct?

Mr. POTTER. Correct.

Mrs. MINK. So then the constituencies that are waiting for responses can be told roughly what, another week?

Mr. POTTER. It may be several weeks.

Mrs. MINK. Several weeks. Are you taking it in the sequence in

which they arrived at Brentwood, or are you taking it wherever it

happens to be?

Mr. POTTER. We’re trying to move the oldest mail that we have

through the system to direct it back to your offices, and to other

Federal agencies.

Mrs. MINK. I see. Thank you very much.

Mr. WAXMAN. Would the gentlelady yield?

Mrs. MINK. I yield to the ranking member.

Mr. WAXMAN. What concerns me is that, we’re taking all this

mail that might have anthrax in it, and isolating it. But we’ve seen

a couple of people get sick, and it’s not from this mail, because it’s

isolated. So the question is how these people got sick, and it could

well be, one possibility is that they had a cross-contamination from

some letter or mail that had anthrax on it.

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When the previous panel testified, we asked whether they had

done any of the investigation to see whether there is this cross-contamination in the mail. We were told they haven’t even begun to

evaluate where the cross-contamination can take place. The chairman and I have prepared a letter, we’re sending it to Mr. Mueller

and to Dr. Copeland, and to you, expressing our concern about the

fact that one proactive thing we could do would be to take the mail

that was at the same time delivered to Senator Daschle’s office and

see if that mail was cross-contaminated. That would give us some

indication if cross-contamination actually takes place. We were told

that process hasn’t even started.

So we want to urge you, in our letter to you, which we’ll make

available to you, rather than mail to you, we’ll hand it to you.

Mr. POTTER. I’d like one in the mail, too. I need the revenue.

[Laughter.]

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, if it comes in the mail, you can sanitize it

or check for cross-contamination and make sure you don’t have any

anthrax. But we think that study ought to go on immediately so

we can test this hypothesis as a possibility for those two people

who did unfortunately get sick.

Mr. POTTER. We are doing an analysis and we’re theorizing. We

have a model of that facility, we’re looking at mail. We have the

ability to track individual pieces of mail across multiple pieces of

equipment. I don’t want to go into a lot of detail on it. But we are

building a model that would track that piece of mail and also enable us to do the type of analysis that the Congressman is suggesting.

Mr. WAXMAN. That’s theorizing. Here you can do a real world

test, if you just simply get some of the mail that was part of the

package of mail delivered to Senator Daschle.

Mr. POTTER. Right. And we’re going to be able to identify the letters to be tested, using the systems that we have.

Mr. BURTON. Mrs. Morella.

Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much

for scheduling this very important hearing. And I thank the ranking member also.

Congratulations, Mr. Postmaster General. Little did you know

the kinds of challenges you would be facing as you took on the new

responsibility.

Mr. POTTER. It’s been a long 4 months.

Mr. BURTON. Excuse me, the gentlelady, he had black hair when

he started. [Laughter.]

Mr. POTTER. Yes. And I was skinny, too. [Laughter.]

Mrs. MORELLA. I believe it.

Just before I arrived at this meeting, I was in my county, in

Montgomery County with the President at a high school, looking at

Veterans Day, Wooten High School. It’s appropriate that their logo

has to do with the patriots, they’re called the Patriots. I say that

because I really believe the U.S. postal system, they have been patriots. The letter carriers, the administration, the postmasters. I

truly mean that.

And indeed, at this time, some of them feel like they’re real veterans of a war. And they have all been very patriotic, and I just

126

think you need to know that from the top all the way out. So I salute them.

I have also been very much aware of the kind of tension that

they have felt. And I have particularly felt badly thinking that they

perceived that Members of Congress are being treated better than

they are with regard to education, communication, remediation. I

know that you’ve been trying to get communication together. I wondered if, well, first of all, let me be provincial. What is the status

of the suburban distribution facility in Shady Grove, MD, after

your scheduled inspection last weekend?

Mr. POTTER. We did not get the test results back, but we did

schedule the suburban Maryland and northern Virginia facilities

and some of the surrounding facilities here in the metropolitan

area, the surrounding facilities in Trenton, New York and Florida.

We hope to be getting those results back shortly.

Mrs. MORELLA. What are you doing to bring everybody together

to communicate?

Mr. POTTER. On a daily basis at 10 o’clock, since October 15th

on a daily basis at 10 o’clock, we meet with the presidents of the

labor unions, the heads of the management associations and we

discuss the topics of the day, the issues surrounding this anthrax

situation. We hear back from them on whether or not the standup talks we have asked to be given to our employees actually have

been given. We’ve been out there and communicating as aggressively as we possibly can.

We have videos out, we have masks out, we have stand-up talks.

We are trying to message to our employees, it’s not a perfect system. We have 800,000 people. This is like an aircraft carrier, trying

to get everybody moving in the right direction does take time. But

we’re mobilizing, not only our internal resources through management channels, but we’re also working with the unions and management associations to use those channels to get messages to our

employees.

Mrs. MORELLA. I commend you on that, and I know that you will

continue it. I feel that this terrible tragedy may well have brought

us together in a closer partnership than there has been before. So

I commend you on meeting with the unions, meeting with the postmasters, bringing everybody together, because we are all in it together.

It would also be good if you assess how the employees, feel, too.

In other words, listen to what they’re saying in terms of the scuttlebutt, the concerns they may have. Are they assigned, like at the

Shady Grove distribution center, are they assigned gloves and

masks?

Mr. POTTER. Yes.

Mrs. MORELLA. Do they do it voluntarily?

Mr. POTTER. Yes. We’ve purchased over 4 million masks for our

800,000 employees. We’ve bought some 88 million pairs of gloves.

And they’re being messaged, there are videos out there and they’re

being trained on how to appropriately use this equipment. So

again, we’re doing everything that we can to help them feel safe

in the work environment.

We also have counseling available to all our employees. We’ve

also contracted for doctors to come onsite and talk to our employees

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around the clock and explain to them what anthrax is, what they

should be looking for on their personal bodies, in the form of lesions, what they should be concerned about concerning their health

and what appropriate precautions that they should take.

Now, again, you’re going to find somebody in America who might

have been off on that day or where it wasn’t done properly, and

we’re trying to shore that up and make sure everybody’s getting a

common message.

Mrs. MORELLA. With regard to the irradiation or the electronic

beam technology, are you prioritizing what centers are going to get

it before others? Do you have kind a level of——

Mr. POTTER. Well, certainly we’ll listen to the law enforcement

authorities and allow them to help us in terms of prioritization. It’s

not something that we would tell the world, obviously. Because

people then could circumvent what measures we put in place.

Mrs. MORELLA. But you will have, priority will be established

and it will be done on the basis of the greatest need as perceived?

Mr. POTTER. Greatest threat, yes.

Mrs. MORELLA. By those people who are experts. Well, I just

want to thank you for the kind of work you all have been doing

and tell you that I look forward to continuing to hearing from you

about what needs to be done, particularly with regard to dispensing

Cipro and antibiotics and whatever other situation is absolutely

necessary. I thank you, as I say, for what you’re doing. And I hope

that you will continue to be a partnership with all the other elements, including the unions, postmasters, etc.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. The gentlelady’s time has expired. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Potter.

Let me apologize for missing part of the testimony. I was engaged

in something else at the time.

But it sounds to me like you’re expressing a level of confidence

and comfortability in terms of having policies that are either in

place or that can be immediately put into place to not necessarily

guarantee but to feel that the health and safety issues of employees

are being addressed adequately.

Mr. POTTER. Yes, sir, we are, Congressman. We are working very

closely with everybody, as I said, the unions, management associations, health experts, to determine what are the best measures that

we could take to create a safe and secure workplace and with the

law enforcement authorities to make the mail secure.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. As we do that, and as we know that the

Service was being taxed in some way already, relative to its financial condition, or at least that’s information that had been brought

back and forth, how much additional pressure is this putting on

the Postal Service in terms of its ability to be financially secure

and able to continue with its work and meet the challenge of the

bioterrorism?

Mr. POTTER. It’s putting a tremendous burden on the Postal

Service. The measures that we’re taking to screen mail are costly.

The measures that we are taking to assure that we have a safe

work environment, whether that’s masks, gloves, all of the medical

costs associated with this situation, we have some 15,000 employVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:09 May 29, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00131 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77387.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ees who are on medication. All of those situations are costing us

money. We were very happy that the administration allocated some $175

million for the Postal Service to help us with a 30 day period worth

of cost. However, beyond that, the cost of modifying our operations,

such that we can sanitize mail or do some other type of intervention, are going to cost several billions of dollars.

In addition to that, the September 11th attack caused our reve- nues to be approximately $300 million below expectations, and we

went into the year with a very conservative estimate of what our

revenues would be. This anthrax attack could further compound

that, depending on the confidence that the American public has in

the mail.

So we could be looking at several billion dollars worth of impact

from a revenue standpoint. Obviously, as time goes on, we’ll be better able to quantify that. And we are working feverishly to try and

provide what is an accurate estimate of what those costs would be.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. So you’re saying that any way you cut it,

but no matter how you look at it you’re going to need to be able

to generate either some additional revenue or find some way to reduce the cost of operating, and certainly it doesn’t look as though

that would be possible in this climate. There were conversations

earlier already about certain reform elements and movement. Does

this heighten the need for reform that was already being discussed

and on the table?

Mr. POTTER. It certainly illustrates the tools that the Postal

Service has to address these types of situations. One tool that we

have not used in years was to seek an appropriation. And we’re

going to seek an appropriation, because we are going to have one

time costs associated with the modification of our facilities, one

time costs associated with this loss in revenue. And we view this

as a homeland security issue. These terrorists have done harm to

the postal system.

There have been comments before you came into the room regarding whether or not this was an appropriate time to discuss reform. We at the Postal Service have been discussing that for the

last 5 years, and discussing the types of tools that we have as managers and that the board has available to them to react to situations such as this. And I would ask that Governor Fineman perhaps would want to make a comment.

Mr. FINEMAN. I feel somewhat reluctant, Congressman. I would

say there’s no part of me that wants to limit, that can in any way

limit the debate that this committee is going to have about postal

reform. But on the other hand, it’s clear to me that this crisis just

heightens the awareness of postal reform. And maybe we do have

to separate the issues.

But it is an issue for us, the Governors, probably two of the most

important things we do, one of which is to hire the Postmaster

General. In this case, we hired the right man. We hired somebody

who understands how the Postal Service operates, and he’s guiding

us through what is clearly a crisis in operation and a crisis in management.

On the other hand, we do set rates in conjunction with the Postal

Rate Commission. What we don’t want to do, and we’ve spoken to

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the chairman, to Congressman Davis, to others, and I heard the

Congresswoman talk about the magazines in New York, we don’t

want to in essence limit the amount of mail that’s going to come

through the postal system by raising rates so high that we’re going

to find other means of communication. And as the Postmaster General indicated, for this one time, we’re probably going to come back

to Congress, and we’re going to say, we need some help here, because this is a homeland security problem.

On the other hand, at the same time that we’re going to be asking for funds, it looks pretty clear to me that the volume of mail

is going to decrease for some period of time. And I just say to you,

we can talk about how to do it. But right now, we have very, very

limited tools.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. I know that my time is up, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate the indulgence. Could I just ask if they’d answer, are you saying that you really feel that you don’t have any

choice except to come and ask for an appropriation?

Mr. POTTER. Given the economic circumstances of the Postal

Service, the answer is a resounding yes.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. The Postal Service, as you know, and Danny Davis

and I worked on this, they’ve been right up against that debt ceiling for some time. I’m sure with this tragedy they’re probably going

to surpass it. That means Congress is going to probably have to do

something else to get them over the hump.

Mr. Turner.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General Potter, I was looking at your prepared statement. I know

we have over 800,000 postal employees. You stated that over the

last 2 weeks more than 15,000 employees have begun receiving antibiotic treatment and that some 9,000 have been tested to date.

When I looked at those numbers, I realized that in many ways,

you attempted to do the best that you can, even though I do agree

with I think many who think that it would have been better had

those antibiotics been administered immediately upon discovery of

contamination in the postal facility. But it does seem to me that

a number have been tested. Have any of those who have been tested have tested positive?

Mr. POTTER. We don’t have any results from the bulk of those

tests. We have 30 tests in Florida, they were all negative. Beyond

those, we have not received the results of those tests.

Mr. TURNER. If today you were to discover additional contamination in any postal facility in this country, or if you discovered that

mail was contaminated, that had gone through any postal facility

in this country, would you immediately suggest to those postal

workers that they take antibiotics if they were in those facilities?

Mr. POTTER. I would immediately consult with the medical experts and being a layman, I would suggest and urgently suggest

that they consider putting people on antibiotics. But I’m not a medical person, I can’t prescribe them myself.

Mr. TURNER. Well, I recognize there’s always medical uncertainty

here. But because of the criticism that you’ve been previously met

with, it perhaps would be a good policy to simply say that if in the

future any postal facility is discovered to be contaminated, or if a

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piece of mail is discovered that is contaminated, then the postal facility through which that mail traveled, those workers should be

given the immediate option for antibiotics.

I’m wondering, the mail that you have sent away to be sanitized,

is that Government mail that we’re talking about that’s being sanitized?

Mr. POTTER. It’s Government mail and any mail that was in that

Brentwood facility when we discovered that the facility was contaminated.

Mr. TURNER. The Daschle letter was postmarked October 9th,

Trenton, NJ. I assume it takes a couple of days for it to reach the

Brentwood facility, would that be roughly correct?

Mr. POTTER. Yes. It was scheduled for delivery on Monday and

it was delivered on Monday.

Mr. TURNER. So if we believe there is the possibility of cross-contamination, it certainly appears to be possible, we have three offices in the Longworth building that have been shown to have presence of anthrax, and there’s no letter to which that could relate,

is it then not possible that cross-contamination occurred in some of

the mail that was delivered after approximately October 11th until

the mail ceased to be delivered from Brentwood that contamination

could have occurred in other locations in the district that is served

by the Brentwood facility, other than the Government offices?

Mr. POTTER. Yes, that’s certainly possible.

Mr. TURNER. And has there been any effort to publicize which

areas of the district that would be?

Mr. POTTER. There’s been an effort to identify mail that was

processed on machines with the Daschle mail. The vast majority of

that mail, I’m talking about over 95 percent of that mail, was Government mail. So that’s the mail that, again, we embargoed, held

onto and are seeking to sanitize.

Mr. TURNER. This Government has just been, it’s been suggested

that our Government and our agencies have perhaps had a double

standard with regard to the treatment of postal workers. It would

seem to me prudent not to find ourselves in the position where we

also are accused of a double standard with respect to recipients of

mail who may be non-Government recipients. Perhaps it would be

wise to at least advise the public as to which portions of the District may possibly have received other contaminated, cross-contaminated mail.

Mr. POTTER. We’re thoroughly looking through our systems to try

to identify not only what pieces there might have been and what

sections, but actual addresses.

Mr. TURNER. I wanted to ask Mr. Day if he would comment.

You’ve suggested that you need $2.5 billion to install the necessary

equipment to begin sanitizing the mail on a routine basis. I’d like

to have some feel for what that $2.5 billion will purchase. Because

I have a sense that the Congress and the American public may not

have fully yet appreciated the tremendous cost that will be associated with protecting the public health and safety, not only within

the Postal Service but the myriad of other activities that are now

threatened by terrorist acts.

So could you give us a feel for how many machines, what kind of coverage you will have if you are able to secure that $2.5 billion?

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Mr. DAY. Congressman, if I could, in terms of the full deployment, and how we plan to do that and the costs associated with

it, quite honestly, if we could do that off line, because there’s some

security information as part of that. I’m actually doing a briefing

on Friday for both some House and Senate staff members. I’d gladly do that if you’d like me to.

Mr. TURNER. Well, would you describe that $2.5 billion is total

comprehensive coverage of the U.S. mail, or is this an effort to secure certain or sanitize certain mail facilities to the exclusion of

perhaps a whole lot of others?

Mr. DAY. Without getting specific, and I can do that off line, in

the broadest sense, we’re trying to provide for the security of the

mail for the entire public.

Mr. BURTON. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Day.

Mr. BURTON. We may have some more information for you that

we can get to you, Mr. Turner.

Mr. Kanjorski.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Potter, I have a few questions. I’m trying to speak for the

average citizen and the average postal worker. I don’t want to say

this to embarrass you or attack you, but there’s an attitude starting to build in the country, it hasn’t come to a crisis stage, but that

we seem to be an hour late and a dollar short. Our logic and our

reasoning are always behind the cycle.

Something that struck me that as soon as Mr. Stevens was infected with inhalation anthrax, it is axiomatic that the spores had

to be 1 to 5 microns in order to penetrate the depths of the lungs

that caused that disease. Then logic must have followed after that

somebody should have had the question, ‘‘What is the pore size of

paper?’’ As I understand it, the average envelope can be penetrated

by 30 micron material. So it would have been very conclusive that

what had infected Mr. Stevens could pass through paper and envelopes.

Yet there was a period of 14 or 18 days that there was no backup

study of the exposure of the post offices and the processing of the

mail. That’s not to blame anyone. What bothers me is that there

doesn’t seem to be logical thinking, analysis, time when people are

stepping back and analyzing what can happen.

I pose another question, and I’m sure you don’t have the answer

to this. I did ask it of the homeland security director’s office the

other day. We’ve now had four deaths from inhalation anthrax, the

first time since 1978, to my knowledge, that anyone in this country

has died that way. My question was, as I understand from microbiologists, in every drop of blood, when a person expires from anthrax, inhalation anthrax, there are 2 billion bacterium. Bodies

have to be processed after death.

I wanted to find out what is being done with these four bodies.

Are they properly being processed to make sure that we’re not

turning over an inventory or a factory of anthrax, either in a grave

or in a funeral home or its location? The answer was, well, no one

had thought of that. I haven’t received a full answer yet, but that

shakes my confidence in the system.

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You had mentioned earlier that you were buying 400,000 masks.

Do those masks withhold particles of 1 to 5 microns? Most masks

that I know of that you can buy only withhold 30 micron material.

Other than that, you have to have a closed system of oxygen. I

could be wrong. I’m not an expert in the area. But are you certain

that these masks you’re buying are able to filter out material lower

than 30 microns?

Mr. POTTER. They’re able to filter out down to three-tenths microns.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Excellent. I’m glad somebody asked the question.

Now, the final question I come up with, I know your department

has done a study recently on consolidation of postal centers and

postal handling material. That was done pre-September 11th. It

seems to me that this should point up to the Postal Service the concentration of mail out of single bulk houses covering regions,

maybe a State in size, or multi-States, may not be the best psychology in the world. Decentralization may be much better.

I’ll give you a perfect example. In Pennsylvania, we’re going to

be merging two centers. That means rather than a million people

that have their mail, if they’re merged in with another million or

2 million, if there is a biological attack, it affects the mail to 3 million people rather than 1 million people. It could have a tremendous economic impact, your theory of concentration and centralization.

Now, I understand in pre-bioterrorism that may have been good

business. I’m not certain that total centralization is not something

that should be re-examined, restudied and perhaps doesn’t lend

itself to the best judgment at this time, not only considering anthrax, but any other biological problem or any problem that we

may have in the future.

I would hope that you, as the leader of the Postal Service, would

re-examine that study. I wish I could give you the name, maybe

you’re aware of it. It is contemplating the consolidation of 25 centers in the country.

Mr. POTTER. The area mail processing studies that are underway, I’m very much aware of that.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Well, that’s right on track to be implemented,

and it may be contradictory to the decentralization theory of being

able to contain the exposure and contain the effect of something

like this.

Mr. POTTER. We’re also looking at it as being consistent with the

concept of sanitizing mail because of the expense of the equipment

and the type of shielding that this equipment requires. You want

to limit the amount of sites that you have that type of equipment

in.

Mr. KANJORSKI. I would assume, aren’t you going to sanitize the

mail upon receipt as opposed to pre-delivery?

Mr. POTTER. We’re going to sanitize the mail, we’re going to develop procedures for handling of mail out of collection boxes, and

moving the mail to——

Mr. KANJORSKI. At the collection site, not necessarily the distribution site?

Mr. POTTER. The sanitizing will occur at a distribution center.

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Mr. KANJORSKI. Then you’re going to expose all the postal workers to anthrax.

Mr. POTTER. No, we’re not. We’re developing procedures to assure

that mail is handled safely.

Mr. KANJORSKI. I just want to leave you with the idea, something

that’s disturbed me over these last several weeks, and I haven’t

publicly spoken up, but I’m going to say it today. I’ve heard this

expression, ‘‘we were totally surprised, we were shocked.’’ That was

the fact that two airplanes could be used as missiles to hit the

World Trade Center. And I wasn’t. I read it in a book by Mr.

Clancy several years ago where a plane struck the Capitol.

So it sort of shakes me up that some of the people in Government

that are thinking of what can happen, may happen or will happen

did not, they don’t seem to be thinking out of the box. That was

the example of what I gave you when I talked about Mr. Stevens

all the way to Senator Daschle’s office, the fact that you almost

wait until there’s a diagnosed case. You get the idea it may have

something to do with that letter, as opposed to—not being an expert myself, but I know these spores can only penetrate the lungs

if they’re 1 to 5 microns. All the microbiologists have said that.

I know that paper allows 30 micron material to go through. So

I wouldn’t be shocked if 1 to 5 micron material were put in 30 micron hole paper and it escapes. And yet it took CDC and whoever

was working on this 2 or 3 weeks to come to that conclusion, instead of going back very quickly and anticipating that we have to

look at the sorting systems, the delivery systems, etc.

I’m just worried that—these are all new things that are happening to us. But I think what the American people expect us to do

is think out of the box and not just think in numbers. $3 billion

is a pretty big bill, but I’m sure the American people will pay for

that bill. But they will only pay for that bill if they have a high

degree of certainty that they are going to be less at risk, and certainly that the 800,000 workers in the post offices are less at risk.

These people aren’t guinea pigs. I don’t want to think that we use

them that way, and I don’t think that we did. I think it was legitimate not thinking of what the ramifications of this could be. But

now we’ve thought of it.

I hope also you will take your good offices to find out these people that have died from anthrax, what was the control of those bodies and the material in them? And have we thought of the potential

of using the material that was produced in those bodies that could

be remanufactured or re-milled into much more greater supply of

this material than we have yet faced? Someone in the administration has to ask that question.

Mr. POTTER. I personally know that the CDC contacted the widows regarding that, because I discussed it with one of the widows.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Can you say with some certainty that actions

were taken that no one has to worry about it?

Mr. POTTER. Again, I think that’s a private matter for the families, not for me to discuss. But I know that those families were contacted on that issue.

Mr. BURTON. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Let me just say to the panel, and in particular to you, General

Potter, I appreciate your sticking with us as long as you have. I

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know you were going to try to be out of here at 3 o’clock and I

apologize for the delay. But it’s very important for the American

people and in particular, the Congress, to have answers to these

questions. So we really appreciate your being here and staying

with us. We have some other questions we’d like to submit for the

record, and we’ll get those to you.

Mr. POTTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Excuse me, Mr. Shays, real quickly.

Mr. SHAYS. I just want the record to show that I had an opportunity to speak to Mr. Potter beforehand. I’m sorry I wasn’t here

for the hearing part, but I appreciated his response to my questions.

Mr. BURTON. Did you have further questions?

Mr. SHAYS. No, I don’t.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

We will now have our next panel come up, Mr. William Burrus,

president-elect of the American Postal Workers Union; William

Young, the vice president of the National Association of Letter Carriers; Gus Baffa, president of the National Rural Letters Carriers

Association; and William Quinn, president of the National Postal

Mail Handlers Union.

George, it’s good seeing you here today, too.

Before you sit down, we’ll just ask all of you to stand and raise

your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. BURTON. Be seated. I guess if you have opening statements,

we’ll be glad to receive them at this time. I think we’ll start with

Mr. Burrus.

STATEMENTS OF WILLIAM BURRUS, PRESIDENT-ELECT,

AMERICAN POSTAL WORKERS UNION, AFL–CIO; MO BILLER;

WILLIAM YOUNG, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL

ASSOCIATION OF LETTER CARRIERS; GUS BAFFA, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL RURAL LETTER CARRIERS’ ASSOCIATION;

AND WILLIAM H. QUINN, NATIONAL PRESIDENT, NATIONAL

POSTAL MAIL HANDLERS UNION

Mr. BURRUS. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the

committee. And thank you for providing me the opportunity to testify today.

Accompanying me today is Mo Biller, the president of the American Postal Workers Union. I’ve been elected as the next president

of the American Postal Workers Union, but today and forever, Mo

Biller will hold the title of president of our union. He has served

an illustrious career, having served humankind as well as all postal employees for an extended period of time. We in the labor movement honor all of his contributions to our country and certainly to

our union. We will be ever grateful for his contribution to us.

I have had the opportunity over the past 21 years of serving as

the vice president under Mo’s leadership. I’ve asked him over the

past several weeks, I would certainly be pleased if he would extend

his term by at least another 6 to 8 months so we can get through

this anthrax scare. He has an illustrious career and never had a

challenge as I’m facing as I assume office.

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The American Postal Workers Union represents approximately

380,000 employees of the U.S. Postal Service. Our members work

in every State and territory of the United States. The fact that

these men and women have continued to work in the post office

since anthrax was first discovered in the mail has been nothing

short of heroic. I am proud and humbled to be representing them

before you today. In the face of unknown and potentially deadly

danger, they have been determined and steadfast in the performance of their duties.

I have submitted written testimony for the record and have an

additional statement to make to you this afternoon. I’ve heard several questions from the panel comparing the discovery of anthrax

in the House, the Senate and some of the other mailrooms throughout the country. I think it’s extremely dangerous to compare the

U.S. Postal Service to any other organization. We processed and delivered 680 million pieces of mail today. While one can close the

House, the Senate or one of the smaller mail rooms, and have an

impact upon whoever they serve, you close the U.S. Postal Service,

you have an impact upon the entire country and perhaps other

parts of the world as well.

It’s really no real comparison to say, why don’t we apply the

same standards that they apply in some other units to the U.S.

Postal Service. Because the result and impact is drastically different.

There have been a number of questions raised about the decisions made in New York, Morgan Station. As Postmaster General

Potter explained, he and I did have a discussion about New York.

And our policy is strict. We have agreed to a policy that if anthrax

is discovered in any postal facility, it shall be closed. That’s our

strict policy. When Morgan was discovered to be contaminated, M.

Potter discussed that with me. And we agreed that Morgan, representing one of the key points, the busiest city in our country, perhaps it was not in the interest of the American public to completely

close that facility.

We were in Washington, DC, and CDC and health authorities

were in New York City. They were advising us by phone that it did

not represent a clear danger to the employees on other floors. And

CDC recommended that they close off the floor where contamination was found, but it would be safe for the employees to continue

working on other floors.

Notwithstanding the fact that our clear policy was that if anthrax was discovered, we would close the building, not a floor. Mr.

Potter and I discussed it, and I agreed, as representative of the employees, to let CDC and the medical authorities in New York explain that to the employees and the local union. Convince them

that it’s safe and leave it to the individuals on those floors whether

or not they wish to work on the other floors in Morgan or leave the

facility.

They did that. Obviously some of the employees in Morgan Station elected to continue working in the building. But what I’ve

since learned is, having traveled to Capitol Heights here in the District yesterday to visit with my constituents, there is a lot of animosity when employees come from a tainted facility into what is

perceived to be a clean facility. The average employee believes that

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they can contract anthrax by mere contact with another person

who possibly could have been exposed to anthrax. So taking the

employees in Morgan and dispersing them to other facilities in

New York would have set up that type of situation. You would

have had other employees in the other facility resenting the fact

and afraid of those employees’ presence in their facilities.

So I thought at the time, and I don’t want to extend this, and

I’ve talked to Mr. Potter, in between our testimony, that we’re not

going to make the exception the rule. While we agreed to make an

exception in Morgan Station and today in Palm Beach, FL, it too

is an exception, CDC made the same recommendation, but I informed him and Mr. Donohoe that these are exceptions and will not

become the rule. That if we have agreed to close any facility that

is tainted by anthrax, we must follow through with that commitment.

So if there is a future site identified as having been contaminated, I do expect that our agreement to close the facility will

apply, and we will in fact close those facilities.

I want to emphasize that despite the deaths and injuries that

have occurred, the American Postal Workers Union and the U.S.

Postal Service have approached these challenges and tragedies together. Even though we have had a historic adversarial relationship, we find that this is common cause, and there are no differences between us as we address the real dangers of the anthrax

scare.

In fact, just prior to the earlier discovery of anthrax in Florida,

postal management had issued instructions to employees to recognizing dangerous material. It initiated what we refer to as the

shake test, that if an employee found a parcel or a letter that appeared to be dangerous or contain some hazmat related material,

the employee was to raise it to eye level and shake it.

This was before we knew anything about anthrax. My union initially objected very strenuously to the shake test. We thought that

it just didn’t make common sense to take something potentially explosive, take it up to eye level and shake it, perhaps combining two

chemicals that when combined create an explosion and perhaps seriously injure a postal worker or a customer.

But just as we entered the anthrax situation, after meeting with

management, they agreed to eliminate the shake test. That was

our first agenda item. We had to eliminate the shake test. Since

then, we’ve gone on together in trying to address anthrax situations.

The APWU sees this as a situation where we and the Postal

Service must confront a common enemy for the good of the Service

and the good of the country. I’ve tried to focus our members on the

real culprit in this situation. It’s not the CDC, it’s not the U.S.

Postal Service or the local health authorities, although perhaps

looking backward with perfect vision, perhaps some mistakes were

made, retroactive mistakes, mistakes knowing what we know today

applying to the knowledge they had at the time decisions were

made.

But I find it serves little purpose for me to impress upon my

membership that their national union is in major disagreement

with their employer because those employees go to work every day

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being psychologically challenged, wondering, is this the day, do I

contract anthrax today. And I believe that anything that moves

them off that fine line perhaps may lead to the closing of the U.S.

Postal Service. Because some day, if they find any fuel for that uncertainty, employees will not voluntarily work in fear for the balance of their lives.

The employer has a moral and legal obligation to provide a safe

and secure workplace. In this crisis, we have sought always to do

the best that could be done to safeguard the lives of postal workers.

We have set aside our labor management differences and worked

together to protect lives, both postal and the American communities that we serve.

We cannot bring life back to our brothers who are now deceased.

All we can do, and we are doing all that we can, is to work with

postal management and other postal labor unions and management

associations to try to make sure that we will never again be required to attend the funeral of a postal employee whose life has

been taken through a terrorist act.

This has been our approach and we will continue to work with

management to safeguard lives.

Let me be clear to the committee, Mr. Chairman. You’ve heard

the testimony of CDC, U.S. Postal Service and the high level officials working for the Postmaster General. From day to day, we

don’t know if postal employees are safe. Much of what we’re acting

upon is speculation. A clear indication of that was yesterday, as I

attended the 10 o’clock meeting. I asked the representative from

CDC who attends our meetings that I intended to go into the Capitol Heights facility. I have members of my union that work in that

facility. In addition, some of the employees from Brentwood had

been reassigned to that facility.

These are men and women that are working there every day,

going to work, not sure of the product in which they earn their living. Every letter has the potential to be deadly dangerous. Every

parcel has the possibility of killing them.

I had to bring the presence of our national union in their midst

to give them the confidence that if they can work in that facility

81⁄2 hours every day, certainly their union leadership can show a

presence in the facility where they work. So at our 10 o’clock meeting I asked the representative from CDC, Postal Service officials,

all of the top level officials that testified before you today, I’m going

into the Capitol Heights facility, I’m not going to wear a mask, I’m

not going to don gloves, what are my risks? What would you say

to me? I’m a member of you, I live in an ivory tower, what are my

risks in that facility, knowing that my risks are no greater or no

worse than the employees that work in that facility.

After 20 minutes of heeing and hawing, nobody gave me an answer. It’s because nobody knows. We provide masks and gloves to

those hundreds of thousands of employees to serve perhaps some

psychological needs as much as it does their physical needs. When

they discover anthrax contamination, those who come into the facility that time do not have on masks and gloves. They are covered

from head to foot, breathing pure air, not air through an M–100

mask that may be compromised by one who wears facial hair or

perhaps some other reason it does not have the perfect fit. They

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don’t come in with the gloves that we’re distributing to those employees. They have hazmat equipment to clean up that spill.

And you can imagine the consternation of the employees I represent to be working in that facility with normal attire, gloves and

a small mask on their face, looking up to see these individuals coming in with these moon suits on. Knowing that they’re protected

and they have all this material on them, how can the employee be

protected?

So despite our assurances to you, the assurances to our employees, the assurances to the public, we’re learning every day. We

don’t know how the mail is being contaminated. We don’t know if

the Daschle and other letters are the only ones that are transmitted through U.S. Postal Service. We don’t know whether or not one

is being put in the mail as we speak. And the employees I represent are working in those facilities with that uncertainty on their

mind.

And as postal management publicly expresses its sorrow and concern for deceased postal workers and their families, they are simultaneously attempting to cut the wages and health benefits of these

very employees, using the impact of anthrax as justification for

these reductions. Now, nothing could be more cynical than that.

This is institutional hypocrisy. Postal workers have been without

a contract since November 2000. Management has refused to negotiate a new labor agreement and now are seeking to impose cuts

in wages and health benefits. And not just a simple cut, cuts every

year for 4 years, successive cuts every year for a 4-year period for

individuals that are putting their life on the line every day to serve

the American public.

These are proposals management has advanced in bargaining before. But this time they seem to hope that the anthrax crisis will

give them an opportunity to achieve them.

Mr. BURTON. Excuse me, Mr. Burrus. Let me say that your statement is very powerful and we do appreciate it. Would it be possible

for you to summarize it?

Mr. BURRUS. I am. I’m just about finished.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, sir.

Mr. BURRUS. The APWU will not tolerate or accept this attempt

to exploit this tragic situation to achieve this long sought goal. This

is not the time or place for me to go into these issues in any detail.

I have called an emergency meeting of our executive board to prepare a response and have scheduled a press conference. The focus

of today’s hearing should be and is safety of postal employees. This

is our first and primary concern.

Thank you for your attention.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Burrus follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Burrus. And as I said, that was a

very, very powerful statement.

Mr. Young. And if we could, gentlemen, I’m going to allow you

extra time, because I understand you’ve got an awful lot that you

want to get off your chest. But if we could stay close to the 5-

minute limit, we’d appreciate it.

Mr. YOUNG. Thank you, sir. My name is William Young. I’m the

executive vice president of the National Association of Letter carriers. I’d like to thank you for holding this important hearing

today. I know that you and the members of the committee will understand if I say that I really wish this hearing was not taking

place. But given the current situation, we at the NALC appreciate

your concern.

The expressions of support that we have received over the last

week and a half have been heartening. To every American, the site

of their letter carrier is a symbol for national community. It is as

familiar as virtually any image of our country. When the perpetrators embarked on this heinous attack, they could not have possibly

imagined the strength and compassion of the American public.

I brought with me today and I’d like to ask that it be entered

into the record, Mr. Chairman, something that was hung on the

board in the lobby of the Brooklyn post office just this week. It’s

very short and I’ll read it. ‘‘To our postal workers, we salute your

courage, we salute your services. You are the newest soldiers in the

war against terror. We sympathize with and pray for your stricken

and fallen colleagues. Stay the course.’’ A Brooklyn family.

It’s those kinds of expressions, sir, that make it so easy for the

members that I represent to be out on the street every day.

Mr. BURTON. We will put that in the record.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. YOUNG. Thank you very much.

Congress has expressed, and I won’t get into any detail with this,

but several of the members of the committee today, while I was sitting back listening, have expressed the importance of their mail because it keeps you in touch with the constituents that you represent. We understand that, sir, and that’s why the members of my

union and the members of Bill’s union and the other brothers represented here are working so hard to try to keep the mail flow up

and running, even in these very challenging times.

But when we’re confronted with the challenge of this magnitude,

that is wholly removed from anything we’ve seen before, the learning curve is pretty steep. The Postal Service and all the employee

organizations have been able to disseminate timely information as

it becomes available to us. It is no secret that our union has not

always seen eye to eye with the Postal Service, but this unprecedented attack has been met with equally unprecedented levels of

cooperation.

Our national agreement, article 14, section 1, says it is the responsibility of management to provide safe working conditions in

all present and future installations, and to develop a safe working

force. From my point of view, sir, and from the point of view of the

leadership of our union, the U.S. Postal Service is doing everything

they can to meet that commitment.

We have been forced to rethink the way we move mail. Serving

more than 130 million delivery points 6 days a week requires a

massive and extensive infrastructure, an infrastructure that will

largely have to be revamped in the coming months. Our members

have learned the hard way that they have to look for these new

threats, and that the country is relying on them for protection.

I have great admiration for all of our members, especially those

at the Brentwood facility here in Washington and in west Trenton.

I’m extremely proud of the letter carriers there for the way that

they have responded during this crisis. The New Jersey carriers

are casing their mail in tents next to the building where they normally work, and I have another thing that I’d like to ask to be entered into the record. It’s a picture of those tents with our letter

carriers in them, performing that work. It was taken very recently.

Mr. BURTON. Without objection.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. YOUNG. Every day for the last 2 weeks, we have gathered

with other postal employee organizations and the Postmaster General at Postal Service headquarters here to obtain and share the

latest developments. We’ve heard from the CDC, law enforcement

and executive branch agencies in our efforts to understand the full

magnitude of this situation. In addition to the video tape and other

materials that have been distributed from postal headquarters, we

at Letter Carriers have been working diligently to disseminate information to our membership. We’ve been regularly updating our

Web site with the latest information, our NALC bulletin is posted

and distributed in 13,000 postal facilities, and we have been communicating almost on a daily basis with our 15 national business

agents through our intranet system of computers.

Last week our national president, Vince Sombrotto, had the high

privilege to meet in the Oval Office with President Bush, Governor

Ridge and Postmaster General Potter. The White House committed

$175 million to deal with the immediate response, such as testing

and distribution of antibiotics, the masks and the gloves. The Postal Service is also using $200 million from its own security fund.

However, there are still enormous expenses to be met, and the

Postal Service will be seeking billions of dollars necessary to obtain

and install equipment to sanitize the mail. These are funds that

would otherwise go toward the purchase of machines through

which mail at all processing facilities would be passed and would

be cleansed of all biological agents. This would prevent the transmission of anthrax, smallpox or other infections through the mail.

In addition to the actual expense of the purchase of these machines, each facility will need to be retrofitted to accommodate the

new equipment and to ensure that employees are trained to operate them safely.

It is important to note that the Postal Service is a self-funded entity and does not receive an appropriation. However, remember,

Congress does owe the Postal Service $957 million under the Revenue Foregone Act of 1993. Rather than being paid $29 million a

year over the next 42 years, as it is currently written in the act,

the Postal Service needs that full amount now.

Even that amount represents only a portion of the revenue lost

as a result of recent events. These last couple of weeks have extracted a toll on our members and the Postal Service itself. Restoring the confidence of postal employees and the American people is

of the utmost importance, not just for our national psyche, but because the Postal Service is an integral part of this country’s economic infrastructure.

Individuals and businesses rely on the Postal Service to receive

and pay bills, and securely send original documents. Keeping that

system up and running is absolutely essential. Going days without

mail extracts an extraordinary price. For example, one utility company in the D.C. area has reported they normally receive 30,000

payments through the mail each day. Just one isolated example of

what mail means to our economy.

It is incumbent upon us to do whatever extent possible to make

sure that such economic disruption is not visited upon other areas

of the country.

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We also need some level of perspective on the situation. Thus far,

we have been relatively fortunate that the tragic events of the last

few weeks seem to have been limited to a relatively small geographic area. We also need to be vigilant, because if the evil doers

spread their poison elsewhere in the country, the result could be

worse than it’s been to this point.

I would also like to note, Mr. Chairman, that this disaster has

further highlighted the shortcomings in the 30 year old law governing the Postal Service. Simply put, Postal Service needs greater

flexibility not just when disaster strikes, but on a daily basis. I

commend you, sir, because I know you’ve been studying this issue

and I know you’re right on top of the needs here.

Each year the NALC honors our heroes of the year. The letter

carriers never cease to amaze me by demonstrating what they’re

capable of doing when confronted with adverse situations. Now

every letter carrier must display that same type of heroism. They

are the first line of protection for a large segment of the American

population. I know they’re up to the task, but they also have to

know that they have the tools to take on this new challenge.

Mr. Chairman, I wish to thank you and the members of this committee for your concern during this difficult time. Too often the

work that we do goes unnoticed. In many ways, that serves as a

silent tribute to the members of the NALC. Now that times have

called for a more vocal expression of support, I’m glad that we’re

all speaking up. Thank you, sir.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Sombrotto follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, and I can assure you that we’re going

to do everything we can to give the Postal Service and the postal

workers every bit of help they need, in equipment and everything

else.

Mr. Baffa.

Mr. BAFFA. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name

is Gus Baffa. I am the newly elected president of the 100,000 plus

National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association. I have submitted my

statement and request that it become part of the record.

I also would like to make a brief oral statement. There aren’t any

rural carriers in New York City. There are approximately 30 to 40

rural carriers in the Trenton facilities, and many rural carriers are

served through the Brentwood facility. On September 11th, this

country was attacked by terrorists in New York, Pennsylvania and

right here at the Pentagon. What happened as a result of that is

this country became united.

Recently, a person or persons unknown have utilized the Postal

Service as a vehicle to send their weapon of anthrax through the

mail. That is an attack on the Postal Service and the postal family.

And we are now united.

The Postal Service has attempted to do its very best during this

crisis. There is no play book to follow. This is a road none of us

have been down before. It doesn’t matter if we are referring to a

rural carrier, a city carrier, a mail handler, a clerk, the PMG, the

FBI, or the Centers for Disease Control, it’s new to all of us. Postal

workers are part of the army of foot soldiers in this war against

terrorism and getting back to normalcy.

As our President said, we must continue life as normal. Our

members are doing that every day. We are reporting to work, we

are casing the mail, we are putting it in our vehicles and we are

delivering it. Sure, some are very worried. As a Kentucky rural carrier said on a National Public Radio interview when asked if anything had changed, he replied, ‘‘Definitely. Now when I come home

each day, instead of picking up my 3 year old daughter, who is

waiting to give me a welcome kiss with her arms outstretched, I

need to take a shower first.’’

At this time of extreme anxiety, Postmaster General Potter and

postal employees across the country have stepped up to the plate

to ensure continued delivery of our Nation’s mail. It is now time

for Congress to step up to the plate by appropriating the sums necessary to ensure safe and ongoing mail delivery and by passing

postal reform legislation to ensure that the Postal Service can function safely and effectively in the 21st century.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Baffa follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Baffa.

Mr. Quinn.

Mr. QUINN. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the

committee, my name is Billy Quinn. I’m the national president of

the National Postal Mail Handlers Union.

On behalf of the over 50,000 union mail handlers employed by

the U.S. Postal Service, I appreciate the opportunity to testify

about the challenges of safety and security that currently are being

faced by the U.S. Postal Service and our postal employees. The

mail handlers we represent are an essential part of the mail processing and distribution network utilized by the Postal Service to

move more than 200 billion pieces of mail each year.

Mail handlers work in all of the Nation’s large postal plants and

are responsible for loading and unloading trucks, transporting mail

within a facility, preparing the mail for distribution and delivery,

operating a host of machinery and automated equipment and containerizing mail for subsequent delivery.

Our members generally are the first and last employees to handle the mail as it comes to, goes through and leaves most postal

plants. Our paramount concern is the safety of postal employees,

including all mail handlers. To this end, we have been active participants in the mail security task force that has been established

by postal management and includes representatives of our unions

and employee associations.

That task force is implementing plans to prevent infection by anthrax or other biological agents that may be sent through the

mails. Among other issues, the task force is addressing the need to

close affected facilities until they can be certified as safe for all employees. The distribution of necessary antibiotics to postal employees, the distribution and use of masks and gloves that may be helpful in preventing anthrax infections, the development and delivery

of safety training programs, and the development of revised cleaning methods for mail processing equipment.

The task force also is looking to the future and is considering a

host of issues such as anthrax vaccines and irradiation of the mail.

I must say, however, the task force is having great difficulty keeping up with the news and information cycle that has developed

around the anthrax issue. Even when the task force has current

and accurate information, the timely dissemination of that information to more than 800,000 postal employees and thousands of postal facilities is extremely difficult. This problem is exacerbated by

the confusing and often contradictory information that is coming

out of postal headquarters, the Centers for Disease Control and

State and local health authorities.

I just returned from a meeting of all our local union officers and

representatives. After a lengthy discussion of the various safety

and medical issues facing mail handlers, our local leadership was

fully informed with as much accurate information as possible. Even

with this information, however, these representatives remain anxious. Certainly they know that mail handlers must exercise caution

while processing the mail. But they are less certain about precisely

what to tell their members about the specific steps mail handlers

should take to ensure their own safety.

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On the workroom floor, there is even more anxiety, because

members have even less access to accurate information. The key

therefore is the timely dissemination of accurate safety and medical

information. That should be the focus of the task force, and that

must be the focus of postal management, the CDC, and State and

local health officials. What is needed now is the constant dissemination of accurate and to the maximum extent possible consistent

safety and medical information to all postal employees. Mail handlers and other postal employees deserve the best available scientific protection against this bioterrorism.

Through science and reason we can overcome rumor and fear. In

that regard the most important action Congress can take is to appropriate all of the funds necessary for the Postal Service to process mail safely without harm to employees. It is unfortunate that

it takes an incident such as this to make people aware of the hazards of working in postal facilities. Ten years ago, it was the threat

of AIDS from needles and blood spills coming from medical waste

and poorly constructed packaging in the postal system. With the

help of congressional oversight, that problem has largely been

eliminated.

Yet our members still face hazardous working conditions. All of

the postal unions have written to Congress or testified about the

need for protection from dangerous equipment and terrible ergonomic injuries. We therefore need to take this tragedy and turn it

into a positive movement for worker safety. This is a unique moment when American citizens have again been made aware of the

great importance that the Postal Service serves in our Nation’s

communications network. They will rally behind a sustained movement to make the postal workplace safer to employees and a source

of confidence for its customers.

To do any less would be to fail on our commitment to the future

integrity of the U.S. postal system.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll be glad to answer any questions

that you may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Quinn follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you very much.

I think we’ll start the questioning with Mr. Waxman, because I

have to leave for just a few minutes. So Mr. Waxman, we’ll yield

to you.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank each of you for your testimony. I think it’s been

an excellent presentation and I hope, Mr. Quinn, that your words

will be taken very seriously by everybody involved, that we turn

this tragedy into a very positive development to make the workplace safer for postal employees and give greater confidence to the

American people about their mail.

And also that we remind everybody how hard our postal employees work for us. Whether it’s at the post office or delivering the

mail in the urban areas, and rural areas, they’re on the front lines.

Given this war on terrorism, they are genuinely on the front lines.

The terrorists are using the mail just as they used the airplanes

to serve as a vehicle for their attempt to instill great fear in all of

our people.

I want to ask you about how you feel the Postal Service is dealing with this whole threat of anthrax and whether they are coordinating with you and partnering with you, the employee unions, to

keep employees informed of the rapidly evolving anthrax threat. Do

you think the Postal Service has kept your members adequately informed and protected?

Mr. YOUNG. Congressman Waxman, I would say yes. I’ll just use

last night as an example. At 7:30 p.m., I’m home with my family.

My phone rings, it’s Doug Tollino from the Postal Service. He’s

under the vice president of labor relations. He’s calling me to tell

me that the tests are now back on 19 post offices here in the D.C.

area, and that one of them, the Friendship Station, has in fact,

they found a very small, he called it a minuscule trace of anthrax,

and that they were going to have the EPA try to clean the building

up last night. And if in fact they were not able to do that, that the

employees would all be moved out of the building into a garage

right next door, where they could work until the building was declared safe by the proper authorities.

This is just a common, everyday occurrence at my house. My

daughter’s 15 years old, she knows who Doug Tollino is as soon as

he calls, it’s more bad news about this terrible anthrax that’s running around. I think from my perspective, they went out of their

way to keep us informed.

Mr. WAXMAN. That’s good to hear. Mr. Burrus.

Mr. BURRUS. Yes, from the national’s perspective, my experience

is the same as the NALC. So we have been communicating very,

very well. We meet every day at 10 o’clock, review past events, get

a report on the number of hospitalizations, the number of suspected sites, the results of testing.

However, the U.S. Postal Service is a very large institution,

38,000 facilities across the country. And the communications that

we’re enjoying here in Washington is not enjoyed in every one of

those facilities. Very bureaucratic, the U.S. Postal Service. And it’s

not unusual for the agreements that we reach at this level not to

be enjoyed by the parties at the local level.

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So we’re working through that. We have put in place a system

where, if the supervisors or managers at the local level do not comply with those things we agree to here, we have a system in place

that we can bring it to postal management’s attention at various

levels, and resolve them as quickly as we can.

However, they’re not sharing the same information at the local

level that we receive at this level. I try to keep in touch with my

members in a variety of ways. I have a teleconference once a week

where I make it open to all of our members throughout the country. Last week, I had over 500 sites that were tapped into the teleconference. I gave Mr. Donohoe, Deputy PMG, the opportunity for

the last 15 minutes of that conference to speak to our members, to

give them the assurance from the headquarters level that postal

management really cared about their safety.

But we’ve had a variety of ways of communicating with our

members, and the relationship at this level has been a positive one,

in this matter. Let me not expand it beyond this matter.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Baffa or Mr. Quinn, do

you want to add anything to that?

Mr. BAFFA. The task force meetings in the morning are a two

way communication. The CDC is there every morning, so we also

get to ask them any questions, as Bill Burrus mentioned earlier he

had asked the gentleman from CDC some questions. So it gives us

a perfect opportunity. Each organization also has a responsibility,

and we’ve all assumed that responsibility and have taken it seriously by utilizing our Web sites or newsletters, our national magazines to get the information out to our people.

The two way communication is vital to unions and management.

One morning I had gotten two calls on something in two different

areas. And literally, when I mentioned it at the meeting, the vice

president of labor relations literally got up, went to the phone,

called the area VP, and it was taken care of in less than literally

2 minutes. So the cooperation right now is unprecedented.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you.

Dr. WELDON [assuming Chair.] The time is expired. Mr. Quinn,

do you want to answer?

Mr. QUINN. Since I concur with my colleagues, there’s no need

for me to waste your valuable time. [Laughter.]

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank all of

you for your testimony. You care about your workers, and we do,

too. Thank you.

Dr. WELDON. The Chair now yields to himself for 5 minutes. But

I’m not going to consume the whole 5 minutes.

I just want to say a couple of things. My father was more than

30 years a clerk with the Levittown post office. From this Member

of Congress, I just want to say to all of you how much we appreciate the rank and file and their willingness to go to work.

Several of you have mentioned the word anxiety. I just want you

all to know you’re not alone in that area of anxiety. We have staff

that are anxious, we have meetings of just members and the members are anxious. We’ve been targeted, too. So we’re all in this boat

together. And it’s OK to be anxious. But I want you to know how

pleased I am a the attitude of the postal workers. And I’ve talked

to some of them myself in my district and in this area, the WashVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:09 May 29, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00177 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77387.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ington, DC, area. And I’m impressed, people want to carry on. They

know that the risks are there, but the risks are low, and the intention is to put fear in our hearts. This is a psychological game.

It’s a great tragedy to lose one postal worker, and as we all

know, we’ve lost two. But most of the postal workers are quite safe,

and we know that. But the real victory for these terrorists is if they

can put so much fear in the hearts of the American people and the

postal workers that they’ll stop working.

I think very clearly there’s more we can do and I’ve heard the

message loud and clear. The Postal Service is going to need some

help in dealing with this crisis. And the ranking member and the

chairman are ready to work with all the members of the committee

and your unions to make sure that we’re able to keep the mail

moving. It is critical to the economy. Mr. Young, I’m glad you focused on that. Because this is a huge, huge issue for our economy.

So I want to thank you all for your testimony and for the work

you’re doing. I now yield to the gentlelady from the District of Columbia, Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

If I could just thank the four leaders, the postal union leaders

who have given such important testimony today. I don’t think it is

hyperbole to say that you and your workers are regarded as heroic

in this country. And I can certainly say that, from the town meeting I had last night where over 500 people came, most of them of

course, not postal workers or letter carriers, but a fair number of

them were. I got to speak with the experts from the CDC and the

post office who were there to be questioned.

Just let me say that I think it should go without being said that

at the very least, the post office, which faced a fairly substantial

deficit, should be made whole. That is to say, no worse off than you

would have been had this tragedy not occurred. You are no different from the airlines. That is to say, they had nothing to do with

the fact that those planes were made missiles and murderous

weapons. You had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the

mails have been made missiles of killing.

Just as people had to get medicine without cost to them, it seems

clear to me that you should be put back at least where you were.

And I certainly hope that does not become a controversial matter

in this Congress. And frankly, I think it cannot and will not.

I want to ask your advice. At the town meeting last night, there

was not a lot of solidarity, as you might imagine, with the postal

management, you know, people don’t readily identify with whoever

managers are. There was a hell of a lot of solidarity with the postal

workers. Tonight, I am sending staff to the Friendship Heights

community. Now, not a single person in that community will be in

that meeting, I bet you, that works for the postal service.

But we need your help on how to transfer some of your courage

to the average citizen. Because they think that what the postal

workers are doing is absolutely unbelievable. They see you going to

work in tents, they see the pictures of the masks, they see their

letter carrier every day. When they don’t get their mail, they know

why they’re not getting it. They miss their letter carrier. Some of

them have only a letter carrier in their lives. They identify with

the mail handlers and the postal workers.

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What would you say to members of the general public, like the

people in Friendship Heights who are nervous today because their

post office has been closed down, about whether they should regard

themselves as in danger or their mail because of what has happened in the Friendship Heights postal office? You have more

credibility, based on what I saw last night, to speak to them than

anybody in this Congress or bless their hearts, anybody in management. What should my staff say? What can my staff say that union

leaders would say to the general public about how to deal with

their mail and how to regard this controversy and their own personal safety with respect to the mail?

Mr. YOUNG. Congresswoman Norton, I would suggest that you

tell the people of Friendship Heights that they’re lucky. Because

they’re down the road and we know how to deal with this situation.

It’s only a trace that was found in their station, not even, we’re not

even sure it’s enough to do any harm.

But the right thing is happening there. The station is being

closed down, it’s being sanitized. That will remove the risk. So if

I was to go out there with you, what I’d be telling the letter carriers out there is that they were fortunate, that they had learned

from the other mistakes that had been made, the fatal mistakes,

to be honest with you, in Brentwood, and that now the Postal Service was doing the right thing and that risk was greatly diminished

because the right thing was being done.

Dr. WELDON. The gentlelady’s time has expired. Would you like

to let them proceed with an answer?

Ms. NORTON. I would appreciate one more, yes.

Dr. WELDON. Go ahead.

Mr. BURRUS. I would tell them that we will be at a point some

time in the future where we can guarantee absolutely that all the

mail is safe. In the interim, we must tell them that we cannot let

the terrorists win. I am afraid of colon cancer, I am afraid of being

hit by a truck, being in an automobile accident, I’m afraid of anthrax. We can’t be controlled by fear. That is the weapon of the terrorists.

So while there is some minor level of risk, until we guarantee absolutely, we have to tell the American public that we cannot be

controlled by fear. We have to understand it, but control it.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you for all you are doing. Thank you for the

example you are setting.

Mr. BAFFA. You may want to use some numbers. May I?

Dr. WELDON. Sure, go ahead.

Mr. BAFFA. Since September 11th, we’ve delivered over 20 billion

pieces of mail. Only three have been found to be contaminated.

Only three deaths have been attributed to anthrax. The prediction

from the CDC, I believe, is 20,000 people will die from the flu this

coming flu season.

Now, I don’t know if that’s going to put their mind at ease when

they go to the mailbox. But those numbers are hard facts.

Ms. NORTON. I think it helps, actually.

Dr. WELDON. Those are very well taken points.

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Indiana, Mr.

Souder.

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Mr. SOUDER. Now everybody in my district’s going to be asking

if their postal carrier had the flu when they dropped off the mail.

But I really appreciate your willingness to speak out on what is

going to be not a couple of month question, but probably at least

a decade or for the rest of our lives, and that’s how you do risk assessment. We appreciate your bravery with that. This is not new.

It’s new to us in the sense of direct deaths in the United States.

But the book Germs right now is either No. 1 or No. 2 on most best

seller lists, and it’s clearly documenting that we’ve had variations

of this in the United States.

When I was in Iraq in 1998, we had the opportunity to meet with

some of the inspectors who had been kicked out, who were looking

for the very things that are coming. We’ve been talking about this,

we’ve been having drills in the military as they’ve been sent overseas on to handle chemical and biological weapons that could be

weaponized in the United States. Now we’re here, and we’re just

at the very, I think what the public is concerned about is not what

they necessarily just see in front of them, but what may be coming.

And this isn’t likely to be some kind of a big hit. We’re not sure

whether this is a domestic nut or whether it’s Iraq or where it is

right now.

But clearly, in the scheme of the type of terrorism we see in al

Qaeda and elsewhere in the world, this is a kind of a warning to

us as to how we’re going to deal with this. One thing I want to

strongly encourage in risk assessment that you push management

to act rapidly to stop things, even if it’s only briefly. For example,

anybody who is been watching saw that they couldn’t penetrate to

Capitol Hill or to a lot of the agencies, and they hit the people who

were carrying. And if they would have gotten into our offices, they

were going to hit a front person.

Probably at some point, maybe a decade or 20 years, maybe next

month or tomorrow, they’re going to try penetrating at a district

level or at a local justice department. I would encourage that whenever you see a new pattern that the unions and the management

say, if they see one district anywhere in the country where this

happened, that the entire system stop to check it. Because we may

in fact have prevented some in the agencies because of holding the

mail for a little bit.

Now, I believe we’ve gone on too long, and that we quite frankly

need to lead by example here in Washington, like you’ve led in the

post office. But look for those patterns and let’s don’t do what Congressman Kanjorski was saying, it always seems like we’re behind.

For a baby boomer, it seems like we’re in an endless Vietnam,

where we’re always just a little bit behind.

And I wanted to ask you whether you know, is there any unit

inside the post office or pushing CDC? Because the mail, we clearly

have a vulnerability, we hadn’t thought a lot about the mail, but

it’s extremely logical. It’s been out there as a method just like other

things. Is there a unit that is currently testing to see what other

chemical or biological, just like we were talking earlier, about the

anthrax in the envelopes, and, oh, what a whopper of a whoops. We

didn’t know it could penetrate the envelope. That’s a whopper of a

whoops. The question is, we don’t want more of that type of thing.

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Is there a unit that is looking at other chemical and biological

as to how they could work through the mail system? OK, we have

masks now that can treat this one type of thing. What other things

may be coming? Because not looking at this in terms of tomorrow,

but a longer sense of tomorrow. Do you know anything? Have you

been told about anything? And if not, we ought to be looking at

that, trying to figure out what other ways to research to make

every letter carrier as safe as possible, knowing that perfection is

impossible.

Mr. BURRUS. I’m informed that Postal Service doctors, and they

have a number under contract, the Inspection Service and others

in the Postal Service are taking a fresh look at our exposure, not

just to anthrax, but to a number of other attacks. I understand, I

don’t know if they had undertaken those types of activities before

anthrax or not, but I am assured that presently they have.

So yes, they are. We are not involved in those activities. We’re

just reacting to anthrax, the labor unions. But the Postal Service

is embarking on some studies on other issues.

Mr. SOUDER. In your committees, for example, if we buy $2.5 billion in new equipment, is that equipment all geared to anthrax, or

is it——

Mr. BURRUS. No, that would be geared to all bacteria, all organisms, anything that comes, smallpox, anthrax, dyptheria, anything that comes through will be killed.

Mr. SOUDER. Anybody else have any comments on this?

I encourage you to stay aggressive with it, because you’re the

front line of defense representing your workers. I thank you.

Dr. WELDON. The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from New

York, Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for your testimony and for your leadership. As a New

Yorker, I can tell you that since September 11th, there have been

many heroes, certainly New York’s finest and New York’s bravest.

But now everyone’s talking about the postal workers who are going

about their business under very challenging and difficult times.

I appreciate very much the efforts that those of you in the mailing industry have taken to restore confidence. This is an enormous

industry and its stability is of the utmost importance to our country. As Mr. Baffa pointed out earlier, we really have to keep this

in perspective. We really can’t blame people for being concerned

about the mail today. But he noted that 20 billion pieces of mail

have been moving since the anthrax, and only three infections.

That’s roughly 680 million pieces of mail each day. So the risk to

the general public is truly not very large when you put that in perspective.

I would like to ask you or any of you to comment. What else

could we be doing to make your workers safe and to ease their

fears?

Mr. BURRUS. Do you mean Congress, the Postal Service or the

unions?

Mrs. MALONEY. What could we in Congress be doing to help the

workers, to ease their fears, to make it safer for them?

Mr. BURRUS. Well, you could advance the funds that the Postal

Service will be so desperately in need of. As long as money is at

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issue, then the Postal Service is going to be stretched in terms of

how much protection they can provide to the employees. The $175

million that has been advanced to date has been very helpful in

terms of purchasing some of the protective equipment that postal

employees need. But before we’re through with this, they’re going to need a whole lot more than $175 million.

So I believe that Congress could be directly involved in appropriating sufficient moneys. You new demand of us universal service. And we have to deliver to every American, no matter where

they live, provide forwarding services, a number of other services

that a good business would not perform at a universal rate. So recognizing that, we perform services as an arm of the U.S. Government, in these times they will need additional financing, funding.

And I would request that Congress keep an open ear in regards to

requests that will be coming to the Hill.

Mr. YOUNG. There’s something else you can do that’s a lot simpler than giving us money. And we do need the money. I bumped

into a Senator here in town earlier in the week. It was just at the

time when the Senate was starting to reopen most of their facilities. I just mentioned to the Senator in passing how encouraging

that is to our members, to see you all back in business.

Now, look, I don’t want anybody here to take any unnecessary

risks, and I want to make that clear. But that double standard

thing that was talked about earlier, it’s out there. And our members look at that, and they do feel like they’re being treated in a

lesser manner than you all are being treated. And I just think to

the extent that you can safely get back to your business, that’s a

pretty simple thing for you to do. I know it takes cleaning up and

everything.

But I want you to all appreciate how much that says to our members who are out there every day and have been out there every

day, to see you all back in business and functioning in your capacity here. So as soon as it’s safe to do that, I’d encourage you all

to do exactly that.

Mrs. MALONEY. Any other comments?

Mr. QUINN. Some of the members of the committee have expressed some concerns about the costs that might possibly be as

much as a $3 billion expenditure, and why is the Postal Service behind the curve on this issue. I’d like you to envision the scenario,

if Postmaster General Potter appeared before this august body 3

months ago and asked you for $3 billion, you’d be calling for strait

jackets.

The Postal Service has been put, obviously, in a horrible position,

and the safety not only of postal employees but of the American

public has been put in danger. I’m not treating the subject of the

money glibly. But by the same token, you can’t expect the Postal

Service to be able to do everything on its own. I think this is a perfect example of their quandary. Everybody wants to go to heaven,

nobody wants to die. Well, you can’t have it both ways.

Mrs. MALONEY. Well, as Mr. Burrus pointed out, by law, the

Postal Service is required to deliver mail to every urban apartment,

every rural farm, and I also would like to understand whether you

feel this should be supported through the general revenues

funds——

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Dr. WELDON. The gentlelady’s time has expired.

Mrs. MALONEY [continuing]. Or would you say, postal increase?

Personally I think it should be general revenue funds, but how do

you feel?

Mr. BURRUS. I think long term, I’ve been in the Postal Service

since 1954, and experienced that period of time when we were part

of the Federal Government. We were competing with education,

health care, roads, defense. It’s really dangerous to start moving us

back in that direction. I think it’s appropriate to reform the Postal

Service so it’s competitive in ways that it can really grow, recognizing that it does have monopoly so there will be some restrictions.

But long term ties between the Federal Government and the U.S.

Postal Service is a prescription for the destruction of the Postal

Service in the long run. I’ve watched around the world, those governments held onto their postal systems. And not one that I’m familiar with is surviving today. There has to be clear division between the two.

So I would say, yes, help the Postal Service in this time of need.

But don’t bring them back into the Federal Government as a

branch on budget and be subject to the rises and falls of the political tides that go with budget making.

Dr. WELDON. The gentlelady’s time has expired.

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr.

Shays, for 5 minutes.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Dr. Weldon, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, thank you for being here. I have been looking forward to having the opportunity to publicly thank each of you and

Mr. Young, your president, for being true statesmen and patriots.

You have to weigh a very difficult issue, when do you fight for your

union members and make sure that you know they are totally and

completely protected, and when do you say, you know, we need to

man the fort and take some risks. It’s a very tough, tough call.

And so one, I want to thank you, and I want to thank all your

workers, every one of your workers. I also want to acknowledge

that we lost approximately 6,000 people in an act of war, and

Thomas Morris and Joseph Curseen are casualties of that war, and

knowing what we know now, they wouldn’t have been casualties.

They wouldn’t have been, we wouldn’t have allowed it to happen,

knowing what we know now.

I never for an instant believed with all the hearings I’ve had on

anthrax, and we’ve had about eight, more in fact, I never believed

that you could actually see it seep or have it seep through a letter,

certainly a sealed letter, but actually the pores of the envelope. I

just didn’t think it could happen. And we’re going to learn a lot of

terrible things in the course of the next few years.

I want to say to you that we are at war, that we are in a race

with the terrorists, and to make sure that we shut them down before they have access to better chemical and biological delivery systems, before they have nuclear waste or heaven forbid, a nuclear

device. That is the reality. And if we all know that, we know why

we’re fighting this war.

I also want to say to you publicly that when I went to ground

zero, what touched me, as a member who represents probably the

wealthiest district in the country except maybe for Henry’s, I have

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a lot of white collar workers and obviously a number of blue collar.

I don’t have as many uniformed workers, so-called. But it was

touching for me to see my white collar workers manning the stations to hand out gloves and protective gear and medicine and food

to the blue collar workers, the uniformed workers. Because my constituents came to grips with the fact of how grateful we are for all

the service employees who serve our country. They just wanted to

be a part of what they were doing and knew they couldn’t, because

they didn’t have the skills. We needed the uniformed workers to do

that.

And I’m using my time to question to just say that, but in my

request for the chairman to have this meeting, I wanted to publicly

acknowledge the loss of two people, to tell you that I regret that

we didn’t see it happen, and to thank you for the tough call that

you have to make. You haven’t demagogued this issue, you haven’t

done all the things that you could have done. And then to just publicly say to you, if it’s an issue between $2 million or $3 billion, I

consider it a time of war. And your men and women are one of the

first line of defense. They are part of this army to fight terrorism.

And I believe that the question during time of war is, what does

it take to protect our army, your workers. I think that you will see

bipartisan and bicameral and bi-branch support for you all and

that you have earned a lot of credibility with all three branches of

Government, even the judicial branch, frankly, not that I can speak

for that branch.

So I apologize for not having a question. I’m happy to use my 5

seconds, if you want to make a comment, but God bless each and

every one of you and all your workers.

Dr. WELDON. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I know it’s been a long day and we’re about at the end of it. Let

me just join with all of those who have expressed a tremendous

amount of gratitude to not only each one of you, but each one of

you as well as the men and women that you represent, that make

up the membership of your unions.

I would agree with all of those who have suggested or indicated

that whether individuals intended or not, when they signed on or

signed up to become postal employees, they now find themselves as

soldiers on the front line in the war to preserve the democracy of

this country as we continue to provide communication links and its

people are able to continue to freely and openly converse with one

another from one part of the Nation to the other.

We’ve gone through the discussion in terms of whether or not

there may have been perceptions of different standards, whether or

not there has been reaction that was quick enough, and we’ve

looked at all of the other components of what has us in this grip.

But I want to commend you for putting the health and safety of

your members first and foremost above everything else. And the

fact that you have represented that position and that point of view

I think has in fact caused some reaction and caused all of America

to really understand what it is that you do.

The one point or the one question, and I think Mr. Quinn probably has said it as vividly as it can possibly be said, that we can

have all of the intentions, we can have all of the desires, we can

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have all of the hopes, we can have all of the intents. But unless

we’re prepared to bit the bullet in terms of generating what is

needed to protect the workers, it obviously will not be happening.

Unless we’re willing, and I don’t know how we find it, who knows

how it actually gets found. But it’s obvious that it has to be found.

It’s pretty clear to me that the Postal Service can’t find it all by

itself. I just don’t believe that it can.

So the one question I guess that I would raise, I mean, you made

the point about going to heaven and not dying, I like to phrase it

a little differently, ‘‘in terms of suggesting that you might not get

everything that you pay for, but you’ll pay for everything that you

get,’’ Frederick Douglass, that was one of his favorite sayings and

comments. And so my question just simply becomes, if we’re going

to provide the needed resources to assure the protection of the

workers and of the patrons, where does the resource come from?

Mr. YOUNG. Congressman Davis, I think that resource has to

come from Congress. I agree with the statements that Bill made

about not wanting to bring the Postal Service back under the Federal Government. But I also agree with the Postmaster General

when he says this is all about homeland security. And we are in

the front lines.

And I just want to leave you with this, sir, if I could. I just came

back from Chicago, where our national president, Vince Sombrotto,

addressed 800 of our local leaders from all over the country. He

said that we cannot function in this society if fear is going to be

our constant companion. And the members of our union jumped up

to their feet and started cheering.

If you folks want people in the front lines that want to be there,

that are prepared to be there, the Nation’s letter carriers will stand

right with you. We just ask that you give us the tools that we need

to do so.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you for holding this hearing, Mr.

Chairman.

Mr. BURTON [resuming Chair]. Well, thank you, Mr. Davis, for

all the hard work you put in on postal reform and everything else.

Mr. Clay.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I realize that the hour is

upon us, and I appreciate the opportunity to ask a few questions

of the panel. Let me first thank the panel for being here today and

showing your interest in this issue as well as representing those

38,000 postal employees that work hard every day throughout this

country.

Let me ask you about the Brentwood situation, because I’m really concerned about the safety and the health of those men and

women who go to the postal system every day. The Postmaster

General has stated that he relied on the advice of the CDC in determining whether to have postal workers from the Brentwood facility tested for exposure to anthrax. Postal workers were not encouraged to undergo testing until Sunday, October 21st, 6 days

after the letter to Senator Daschle was shown to contain anthrax.

Was the CDC on top of the Brentwood situation? Mr. Burrus,

perhaps you could answer that.

Mr. BURRUS. I would believe it unfair to evaluate the Postal

Service, CDC, local health authorities or anyone else, applying toVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:09 May 29, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00185 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77387.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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day’s knowledge to an evolving situation that occurred some 3

weeks ago. If I had known 3 weeks ago what I know today, I’d be

a very wealthy man. I would have played the right lottery number

and, I think that says it all. They didn’t know. They acted in good

faith.

If they had rejected the advice of CDC, if postal management had

not requested CDC, if they did not consult the medical and scientific community as to what they should do at that time, then I

think they would be deserving of blame. At the time they made the

decision, all of the medical community was telling them that was

what they should do.

Now, the Postal Service is a major bureaucracy. It doesn’t move

as nimbly as some of the smaller units, the smaller enterprises in

our society. But given its size, its bureaucracy, its complexity, I believe that they did act in good faith, based upon all the best information available to them.

Mr. CLAY. Just as a followup, how confident are you that the

postal facilities that have been contaminated will be safe for employees and customers?

Mr. BURRUS. I think the postmaster general, on the television appearance, responded to that question and he’s taking a lot of heat

for it. His response was, we’re not absolutely sure. The mailing

community jumped all over him, the major mailers, the Board of

Governors, some of his top staff. But he responded truthfully. We

aren’t certainly, we really don’t know what’s in the mail. We don’t

know what’s coming in the mail tomorrow. We cannot assure the

American public that the Daschle letter will not appear, and I

wake up—every time my phone rings, I’m afraid it’s a postal official telling that a Daschle or similar to Daschle letter was found

in Chicago or San Francisco or L.A.

Mr. CLAY. Do you know how many postal facilities have been

contaminated throughout the Nation?

Mr. BURRUS. Yes, we have a listing of them.

Mr. CLAY. You do have a listing?

Mr. BURRUS. Yes. They provide us that information at our 10

o’clock meeting every day. They bring us up to date on the status

of every employee that’s been contaminated, every office, what the

results of that testing has been. We get a full briefing on that.

Mr. CLAY. How many as of today?

Mr. BURRUS. I don’t have it with me. I think it’s something

like——

Mr. CLAY. Anyone on the panel?

Mr. YOUNG. No, sir, but you should understand, these are only

the ones they’ve tested. They’re in the process now of testing, I

think the Postmaster General said there’s 200 more delivery units

that are being tested. The call that I got last night told me that

there were 19 stations tested here in D.C., only one, the Friendship

station, had any. There were 12 stations tested at the Dulles Airport facility and one of them had a small trace of anthrax. So that

information pours in almost daily.

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Young, you are satisfied that the steps being

taken will provide adequate protection for our postal facilities?

Mr. YOUNG. I’m confident that the steps that are being taken are

those that are being directed by the so-called experts, the people

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that are supposed to be the CDC, the doctors, the health communities, the ones that specialize in this field.

I would say this, the Postal Service is not only taking their advice, they’ve gone further than these people. For instance, in New

York, it was the Postal Service that insisted to the CDC that they

get into this national pharmacy bank and get the Cipro up there

to medicate all the employees. The CDC didn’t want to do that.

Now, Bill was at that meeting, so was Gus, so was Bill. And they

can tell you, it was the Postal Service that insisted. The CDC was

saying they thought they were over-reacting. They said they’d rather err on the right side of this.

So everything I see, and I’m not trying to point fingers at anyone, but everything I see, everything I’m aware of leads me to the

conclusion that the Postal Service has followed the medical advice

from the so-called experts, each and every time, and where they

haven’t, they’ve exceeded what they were told to do.

Mr. CLAY. I thank you for that.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Clay. Well, let me just conclude by

saying first of all, you know, we’ve had such an open society for so

long. Two months ago nobody would have ever dreamed anything

like this would be discussed today, we’d be talking about postal reform alone and none of this other stuff.

But let me just say that I think I speak for most of the Members

of Congress in saying that we’re going to give you whatever tools

you need, the irradiation machines or whatever technology is needed to make sure that the spores or any living organism is killed

before it gets to the postal employees. We’ll have that on-line as

quickly as possible, and anything else that you need, I hope you’ll

contact us and we’ll try to carry that on to the House and Senate

leadership, to see if we can’t accommodate you.

Because we’re not only protecting you and the 800,000 postal employees, but we’re protecting everybody who gets mail. So we want

to work with you.

The last thing I’d like to say is that I personally believe that one

of the ingredients in this overall solution is postal reform. I know

that all of you are not in agreement on that, but I’d like to, for

those who still have reservations about it, I’d like to get together

with you, see if we can work out any differences and come to some

conclusions that will solve that problem as well.

And George back there, who is nodding, has been a real soldier

on that and we really appreciate your help.

And with that, let me just say, it’s been a long day. We appreciate your being with us and we are adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 5:58 p.m., the committee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]

[The prepared statements of Hon. Constance A. Morella and Hon.

Edolphus Towns follow:]

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