When David Malet arrived at his job on Capitol Hill on October 15, 2001, an intern in then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s office opened a letter purportedly from a fourth-grade class, sending white powder spilling out and triggering the deadly anthrax attacks.
“Capitol Police had already responded to a couple of false alarms already,” Malet said, recalling that it was hard to tell if the envelope was just “another practical joke.”
Five people were killed and at least 17 sickened in the attacks, which ultimately led to thousands of people across multiple states being offered antibiotics, according to Csis.
Daschle, a South Dakotan who led Senate Democrats for 10 years, had followed news about anthrax sent to NBC’s offices in New York and assumed “it wouldn’t take much for Congress to be another target.”
“But I was really surprised it was me,” Daschle said. “You’re never ready for something like that.”
Lines snaked into the congressional halls as individuals waited for nasal swabs, with more than two dozen testing positive for exposure. By October 17, the Hart Senate Office Building was shut down for decontamination, remaining closed until January.
A second anthrax-filled envelope was addressed to then-Senator Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., but never reached its destination, later discovered among 280 barrels of quarantined congressional mail after being intercepted at an off-site inspection facility. Two postal workers died after the letter to Daschle passed through a mail sorting facility in Washington, D.C.
The 2001 emergency spurred Congress to enact Project BioShield in 2004 to hasten work on medical countermeasures. In 2006, lawmakers enacted the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, creating the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response.
Congress updated and reauthorized PAHPA with bipartisan support in 2013 and 2019, but allowed those authorities to lapse in 2023.