At the 1978 annual summer retreat on Plum Island, Drs. Callis and Walker took turns briefing the Plum Island outside advisory board on their plans for Rift Valley fever — not only with the mild Entebbe strain, but on the dangerous Zagazig 501 strain. Plum Island wanted to begin right away.
Dr. William Scherer headed up Plum Island's board of consultants, outside scientific experts who met once a year on the island to offer collegial advice and encouragement—"a dog and pony show," as one member put it. As chairman of Cornell University's microbiology department and a member of the National Research Council, Dr. Scherer was the type of scientific heavyweight Plum Island needed. He understood the meaning of viral reservoirs, hosts, and vectors like few others.
"Jerry," Dr. Bill Scherer began, brows furrowed. "You know there are some important things to consider with Rift Valley. Look at this place," he said, extending his arm in a wide gesture. "You have swarms of insects flying around on this island. There's a lot of water and marshy land here." Scherer pointed out it would be much safer to wait until after mosquito season, and study the virus in the dead of winter. He offered to send entomologists, insect experts, to catalogue Plum Island's pest population and determine the precise level of protection required.
Callis listened quietly and politely nodded. The research was scheduled to start in early October, past the normal insect season, but hardly in the middle of winter. As for the insect study, there just wasn't enough time this year — they were too busy readying the virus experiments. Maybe next year. The consultants' prescient advice unfortunately was just that: advice. It wasn't binding. While the advisory group was "always concerned something would get loose from the laboratory," recalls member Dr. Robert Shope, its counsel remained "mostly reactive."
Soon thereafter, the Suffolk County Department of Health got a call from an anonymous Plum Island employee, Newsday got a hot tip from an anonymous source in the Department of Health, and a story ran on September 9, 1978. "You can't keep anything secret today," Dr. Callis complained grudgingly. After receiving word, Suffolk County's health commissioner, Dr. David Harris, placed a concerned phone call to Plum Island. Harris wanted to know what the Rift Valley fever was and how it related to some illness going on in Egypt. Dr. Walker assured Harris that the disease caused only mild flu symptoms in people, and in Egypt some "complications" had resulted in a few deaths. Mosquitoes apparently had something to do with the disease. Walker said the virus study would begin the following month and wrap up by the end of March, well before the 1979 mosquito season. No mention was made of other insects known to transmit Rift Valley fever, such as flies and ticks.
As for the workers, Walker assured, everyone on Plum Island would be vaccinated, the virus be kept in the high-containment lab, and employees wear face respirators. If by some remote chance anyone should become infected, they will be airlifted by military plane to "The Slammer," Fort De-trick's human isolation ward. Employees suspected of infection would be locked down in an insect-proof building on Plum Island until a firm diagnosis. There was, of course, the possibility the work may go over schedule, Walker said. Harris graciously agreed to "institute extensive mosquito control measures" by spraying chemicals with crop-dusting airplanes should the research continue past the first of May.
Plum Island refused to acknowledge they had been given up by frightened employees. "As a professional courtesy," Walker said, "if some new disease comes on [Plum Island] that is infectious to both animals and man, of course we would notify the health department." But contacting local officials was far from standard policy for the federal enclave. In fact, Plum Island officials never before informed the county about its zoonotic disease research — on multiple strains of at least five different germs — or about what germs were stored in its cavernous freezers.
In a feature editorial on September 11, 1978, four days before the Plum Island virus outbreak, Newsday declared, "We consider [the new openness] a welcome innovation," but "[u]nder no conditions do we think the lab should continue its Rift Valley fever research into a Long Island mosquito season." Falsely soothing the public, Newsday told its readers "[T]he disease itself is not fatal, but it's often accompanied by complications… " In fact, the seven hundred people who died in Egypt didn't fall prey to complications. In each case, it was the Rift Valley fever virus disease that either putrefied the victims' organs or swelled their brains into lethal shock. Worse, reporting only fifty deaths in Egypt caused by the virus, the New York Times was off by a factor of fourteen.
Then the Plum Island virus outbreak occurred. Callis and Walker realized there was no way they could clean up the island in two weeks' time, vaccinate one hundred employees, and begin the Rift Valley fever project with Fort Detrick. "We really can't think about it until we get the island back together," said Walker. But, he added, "We intend to go on with the project" as soon as test animals arrived. Apparently, many of those animals were already there.
One man who refused to be played by Plum Island or misled by media reports was Suffolk county executive John V. N. Klein. Hailed as an "honest country gentlemen," the young public servant had a promising political future, and the charge of a county of over 1.3 million people. A week after the outbreak, Klein resolved to take matters into his own hands. Going over Callis's head with a two-page appeal to Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland, he spoke of a "grave concern" and "apprehension" over "the potential spread of disease once exposure has taken place." Exercising strict protocol, Secretary Bergland didn't respond to the county executive's dispatch, but instead referred it to a USDA research office underling. The acting associate deputy director of the Federal Research, Science, and Education Administration, United States Department of Agriculture, T. B. Kinney, a name of unknown gender, wrote a three-page letter accompanied by glossy Plum Island brochures, all extolling the virtues of animal research, while addressing none of Klein's worries. His letter made no mention of Fort Detrick's, Colonel Eddy's, or Major Peters's involvement, or that the study was in reality Army biological warfare research.
John Klein nearly hit the roof as he read Kinney's letter. The feds were stonewalling him. Plum Island and the USDA had no regard for state or local government, or for the public. The facts were almost too fantastic to be true: a biological research laboratory flatly pronounced it was going to fiddle with a deadly virus on a ranch full of animals, days after germs were proven and acknowledged to have escaped their lab! This time, Klein would not mince words. The experiments raised "a basic and profound issue with respect to the relationship between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the people of Suffolk County," he wrote Secretary Bergland. "I cannot any longer permit this administration of county government and the people it represents to remain unaware of the total spectrum of activities carried on onPlumIsland…."Kleinrequested a personal meeting with Bergland.
"The People," Klein exclaimed, "can no longer exist 'in the dark' on this issue and must have the right of being fully informed with the opportu-nitytoobject…to any activity deemed inconsistent with the interests of the people of Suffolk…. " Without an opportunity to be heard, to be recognized, to be adequately represented with such base interests at stake, Klein all but promised that a Boston Tea Party would ensue in the local waters off Plum Island. Indeed, the public began to foment, pelting Plum Island with scores of phone calls and letters objecting to the precarious research; and the editorial boards of newspapers weighed in as well. Local groups organized town meetings, hailed Klein's decisive actions, and blasted the feds' proposed research. "How tragic would be the irony," proclaimed one resident, "if an agency established to control and find cures for diseases caused instead their proliferation?"