A second petition drive began, this time to reinstate Wiggin as chief engineer, but management nipped the nascent movement in the bud, ordering it withdrawn from circulation. Unlike Cook's petition, this one specifically stated the safety office was to blame for the outbreak. The union representing the Plum Island workforce wrote Dr. Callis asking why the safety office was not held at least partially responsible for the outbreak. There was no reply. An investigation committee member then came forward, anonymously, to a local newspaper, and condemned the singling out of Merlon Wiggin. "You can't really put the blame on one person. To say one or two people are responsible is ridiculous. In fact, our report strongly implies involvement by the safety office." Against Dr. Callis's scientific appointee, Dr. Walker, Wiggin lost the wrestling match. Scientists, after all, were the reason Plum Island existed.
One former employee dispenses with the finger pointing and recriminations, and gives due credit to the policy of keeping animals outdoors on the Plum Island — animals that acted as dutiful sentinels. "Thank God we had those animals in the Old Cow Barn [Building 62]," says an employee. They were, after all, the canaries in the mine. Without them, the outbreak wouldn't have been discovered until it was too late.
On the same day that the suspension ax came down on Merlon Wiggin and Truman Cook, the USDA's Office of the Inspector General announced a federal investigation into the Lab 101 rehabilitation project. "We're concerned with the quality of the construction. Some things that happened…just don't add up," said a spokesman.
Since the groundbreaking two years earlier, the bulk of Merlon Wiggin's time was spent tending to an unusually large number of change orders, which were revisions to the design specifications. Over 240 change orders were issued. Original plans called for masonry, but concrete had to be used for proper biocontainment. Metal air-lock doors were coated with the wrong epoxy and severely blistered; it was so bad that 320 doors had to be removed and replaced. The roof was faulty and moisture seeped into the lining. The contractor, Joseph Morton Company, estimated an additional $5 million in cost overruns, 50 percent above the original budgeted cost of the project.
As Plum Island's house of cards came falling down, Wiggin fired off a lengthy missive detailing scores of design flaws and contractor blunders to the USDA's head contracting officer in Washington. It addressed the faulty construction project he said he had labored to rectify, and addressed what he saw coming:
[The rehabilitated laboratory building] will not be an agent safe, energy efficient, bio-containment facility that can be utilized without repair or changes.
Within the next few months, I expect there will be an attempt to discredit me and my reputation. There is possible evidence of criminal neglect in relation to the recent outbreak at Plum Island.
To preserve the record and protect himself, he sent copies to a friend in Texas for safekeeping.
The USDA owed Joseph Morton Company over $1.5 million for all the change orders. "If we are paid for the work we've already done," Morton told the department, "we can complete the renovation in four months." A dark cloud continued to swirl over Merlon Wiggin. "He's not free of responsibility on the design errors," a source told the Suffolk Times. "Some of them might have been caught by him ahead of time." Were his hands unclean because of the virus outbreak, the construction debacle, or now both?
On March 5, 1979, a letter of default went out from USDA headquarters addressed to Joseph Morton Company, canceling its $10.7 million rehabilitation contract. Just the week before, Morton had wired Washington, demanding back payment by the end of the week of at least $500,000 to continue. Morton laid off all of the construction workers except a few supervisors, and expected to cancel the contract themselves.
Then things got even uglier. April showers rained down on the construction site. No one in management thought to tell any of the 150 plus physical plant employees to secure the partially completed construction from the elements. Corrosive saltwater seeped into seams and in between beams, rusting and decaying the steel framing and construction materials. In June the USDA advertised for proposals from contractors to complete the project, and by the middle of July, it had fourteen bids. But the USDA sat on those bids.
Dr. Callis informed Wiggin that his suspension would continue. The Office of the Inspector General was now focusing on allegations that Wig-gin received kickbacks from the contractor on the construction project. And so, too, was a federal grand jury. The grand jury issued subpoenas to Joseph Battaglia, president of Joseph Morton Company, and Samuel Sem-ble, a Morton executive. The subpoenas called for documents, books, and records. The two men testified to the grand jury but provided no records. The records had been shredded.
Wiggin decided to swing back at Plum Island to get some leverage before the federal grand jury closed in on him, so he filed another employee grievance with the USDA. In a slap at Callis, USDA headquarters in Washington sided with Wiggin in a letter they wrote him: "We do not concur with [Plum Island's] conclusion that the outbreak was a direct result of performance deficiencies on your part since the file contains inconclusive and contradictory information." Washington admitted Wiggin alone had been hung for the collective negligence of the whole gang.
Wiggin and his wife then filed a $1 million defamation lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court, charging slander and defamation of character. The complaint laid out his side of the outbreak and stressed that for years he warned higher-ups that the buildings had cracks and leaks, and told them — Drs. Callis, Graves, and Walker — that the Lab 101 incinerator was ineffective in containing viruses. Plum Island administration officials "conspired to destroy [Wiggin's] reputation by not only falsely imputing blame to him for the outbreak, but in addition, to defame him of committing felonious crimes," including allegedly accepting $500,000 in bribe money by the Joseph Morton Company.
Dr. Graves refuted the charges by noting that Wiggin never sounded any specific alarms. "Any problems were in his sphere to remedy," he said. "He was not a third party standing on the sidelines — he was the one to do it."
With the tide turning in Wiggin's favor, his comeback came to a screeching halt.
MERLON WIGGIN CALLS IT QUITS AT PLUM ISLAND, announced the Suffolk Times. "I don't feel there's a future here," the forty-eight-year-old engineer said, announcing his departure at the end of August after eighteen years on Plum Island; twenty-five years of federal service now made him eligible for early retirement. Ten years ago, he had been tapped by NASA to design a containment lab at the Houston Space Flight Center to hold moon rocks. The Australians wanted him to help set up their own version of Plum Island. Now he was leaving under a dark cloud.
"They offered me an early out," says Wiggin. "Financially, it was almost too good an offer to refuse. But at first I didn't like the idea." He initially wanted to return and set the record straight and clean things up. USDA officials in Washington, who had absolved him of any personal wrongdoing, told him he wouldn't be returning to the most pleasant work environment, and that he should strongly consider retirement from federal service. He says he had also heard that there would soon be a move to privatize the Plum Island workforce, and he felt that privatization wouldn't go over well. Though Wiggin claimed he rode off into the sunset smiling, others said there was more to it. One administrative source says he retired "after we told him he would lose his retirement benefits if he was indicted by the grand jury." It seems Plum Island traded his freedom for his silence, a silence concerning problems so embarrassing, so potentially dangerous that, if disclosed, would have put Plum Island out of business.