For years, security on intruders was "like white on rice," as one veteran employee describes it. The once thirty-four-man-strong armed guard platoon — checking off ID numbers at the ferry dock, manning the lab compound gatehouses — was dispensed with. One "safety technician" now stood in place of all the guards. He wore an empty gun holster to scare away intruders. One of the fired security guards, Phillip Zerillo, told a reporter there was "a total disregard for security….The place is just going crazy.
It's running by luck now." Today it's no different. "You could walk onto that island right now," says an employee. "Two Eskimos in a kayak could invade and take Plum Island."[43] There are two private security firm guards, one at Orient Point and one protecting all of Plum Island. The U.S. Coast Guard patrolled the island's surrounding waters until 1977, when it decommissioned the Plum Island Lighthouse. After a brief Plum Island detail following September 11, 2001, Coast Guard cutters again retreated, leaving Plum Island without any marine patrol.
An internal memorandum dispensing with and erasing away decades of safety closed on an bizarre note: "We welcome any and all suggestions, recommendations, criticisms, and attaboys…as well as fishing tips, a good joke, and restaurant recommendations."
In perhaps the most egregious of the safety lapses, the sentinel animals, Plum Island's "canaries in the mine," were eliminated. These test animals were kept outdoors and tested periodically to ensure no germs had escaped the lab. Said a USDA safety director of the move, "From a biological safety perspective, the best thing that ever happened to Plum was the discontinuation of Animal Supply," because he believed it eliminated the threat of disease transmission. But it also eliminated the island's last line of defense. After all, they had successfully alerted the Plum Island scientists to the virus outbreak. Having the control animals outside "keeps you honest," says Plum Island scientist Dr. Doug Gregg. It was akin to a mother removing the smoke detector from her baby's bedroom. The laboratories, now more than ever, became ticking time bombs and the public, unknowing sitting ducks.
But one thing remained clear: the new way was certainly cheaper. And the cost-conscious attack on safety soon became literal — the Plum Island biological safety office itself suffered. First it was divided into contractor safety and government safety. Then contractor safety was eliminated, and the government safety department was slashed down to three staffers. The money saved went toward recruits' salaries and their new scientific equipment, and amenities like touring bicycles and a high-tech exercise gym.
Veteran scientists became concerned over the hacking away of four decades of carefully thought-out biological safety procedures. Former Plum Islander Dr. Ronald Yedoutschnig told a reporter, "When I was there, every person on the island was the same. But today, there are fewer permanent employees. I would be more safety conscious because the [new] people are less safety conscious. The agents we are working with are highly infectious." Says Dr. Richard Endris: "When I was there, the safety was good. Now when it went from a system that is based on employee loyalty and integrity to one of the lowest bidder, I was very concerned that safety would be compromised. Little things, like the backup power generator going out during a storm. The redundant systems are the absolute key. You have to maintain air pressure, the airflow, the freezers…."
Dr. Gregg ponders what privatization has wrought upon the island's morale. "Morale is not as good," he says. High turnover in the workforce contributes further to the problem. "The contracting out was a major blow to the unity of the island," says Dr. Jim House, "and it's still a problem today. A lot of the esprit de corps with the people is gone — they're not there for more than a year and there's a turnover. The turnover after two, three years had 90 percent of the people gone — people that had been there for years." Unfortunately, low morale often translates into poor performance on the job.
The USDA should best be able to assess Plum Island's safety. Out of a possible 100 points under rating system, the USDA scored Burns & Roe, the contractor they chose to run Plum Island, 54.3, 43.9, and 60. The score of 60 was the minimum acceptable performance number.
Sometimes poetry captures the human condition better than prose. Plum Island Lighthouse keeper Captain William Wetmore penned "Plum Island" in the mid-1800s:
One hundred and fifty years later, this line and verse was pulled from a file in Lab 101:
One employee summed it up more succinctly: "Breeze? "Breeze was a fucking doomsday machine."
11
Boomerang
You have to understand. If somebody took all this away from you… you wouldn't take a little revenge?
he sprightly librarian Frances Demorest was now the longest-serving employee on Plum Island, and her seniority carried a lot of weight among the Plum Island family. When the sky started falling, many of them ran to her, shared their problems, even cried away their woes on her shoulder.
Well spoken and outspoken, Fran resolved to do something, and in 1990 she wrote Congressman Hochbrueckner a six-page single-spaced letter carefully detailing everything she heard. "If I should be harassed and then forced to take my retirement," Fran wrote, "I shall do so. But I feel that someone has to attempt to stop what is being done to and at Plum Island. I started employment on March 15th, 1954, and am still very active, in good health, maintain an impeccable leave record, and desire to continue working at PIADC." She proceeded to describe the firing of the four scientists, the ferryboat escapade, the inequitable perks afforded to new scientists, and now the privatization debacle. "This is a lengthy letter," she closed, "and I hope it has provided fuel, facts, and additional information…looking forward to you taking the 'bull by the horns.' " Following Fran Demorest from that point, one had to wonder if Dr. Roger Breeze had somehow come upon a copy of her courageous letter.
Breeze was enamored with The Silence of the Lambs, the thriller that mentions Plum Island as a summer getaway for the evil Dr. Hannibal Lecter. He actually decorated his office with a life-sized cutout of the cannibalistic Dr. Lecter. Breeze's next move seemed like a page right out of Thomas Harris's novel. Soon after she wrote the letter, he ordered Fran to take a new assignment: the sixty-seven-year-old grandmother was relegated to the murky basement of Building 14 for a special project in Central Files — the obliteration of Central Files. In a cruel twist, the longtime assistant librarian was forced to discard Plum Island's entire library of records. "I was ordered to destroy everything— everything! I was to clean out all of it, because he said there was no more need for it." Exiled to the musty catacombs of the hundred-year-old Army hospital, Fran destroyed forty years of historical records — they were shredded, bagged, and lined up in the dank hallway awaiting the incinerator. What about the preservation of Plum Island's past? "Breeze didn't give a damn about the island's history," says Dr. Gregg. "He wanted everything thrown out."
43
Indeed, on August 1, 1997, vandals from Connecticut came over to Plum Island by boat and vandalized the Plum Island Lighthouse. By chance, the Plum Island marine crew at Orient Point noticed them and shooed them away. On several occasions I was offered the opportunity to be smuggled onto Plum Island: "We could get on my boat, put you in a lab coat, put you ashore, and you can walk right into the laboratory. You can go in and walk out with whatever you want." Though the offers seemed both convincing and tantalizing, I declined.