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                                                        S. Hrg. 107-214
 
  TERRORISM THROUGH THE MAIL: PROTECTING POSTAL WORKERS AND THE PUBLIC
=======================================================================



                             JOINT HEARINGS

                               before the

                              COMMITTEE ON
                          GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                                and the

   SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, PROLIFERATION AND FEDERAL 
                                SERVICES

                      ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                        OCTOBER 30 AND 31, 2001
                               __________

      Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs





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                   COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

               JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan                 FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii              TED STEVENS, Alaska
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois          SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey     GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
MAX CLELAND, Georgia                 PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware           THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi
JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri              ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah
MARK DAYTON, Minnesota               JIM BUNNING, Kentucky
           Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Staff Director and Counsel
                       Susan E. Propper, Counsel
         Hannah S. Sistare, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
           William M. Outhier, Minority Investigative Counsel
                     Darla D. Cassell, Chief Clerk

                                 ------                                

   SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, PROLIFERATION AND FEDERAL 
                                SERVICES

                   DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan                 THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi
ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey     TED STEVENS, Alaska
MAX CLELAND, Georgia                 SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware           GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri              PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
MARK DAYTON, Minnesota               ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah
                   Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
                Nanci E. Langley, Deputy Staff Director
               Mitchel B. Kugler, Minority Staff Director
           Ann C. Fisher, Minority Professional Staff Member,
                      Brian D. Rubens, Chief Clerk













                            C O N T E N T S

                                 ------                                
Opening statements:
                                                                   Page
    Senator Lieberman............................................ 1, 63
    Senator Thompson............................................. 4, 64
    Senator Akaka................................................ 6, 66
    Senator Cochran..............................................     8
    Senator Carper.............................................  21, 97
    Senator Collins..............................................    23
    Senator Levin................................................    26
    Senator Bennett..............................................    29
    Senator Cleland............................................  30, 94
    Senator Voinovich..........................................  33, 91
    Senator Carnahan.............................................    36
    Senator Durbin...............................................    37
    Senator Dayton...............................................    72

Prepared statements submitted for October 30 hearing:
    Senator Durbin...............................................   121
    Senator Collins..............................................   122
Prepared statement submitted for October 31 hearing:
    Senator Bunning..............................................   122

                               WITNESSES
                       Tuesday, October 30, 2001

Hon. John E. Potter, Postmaster General/CEO, U.S. Postal Service, 
  accompanied by Thomas Day, Vice President of Engineering, U.S. 
  Postal Service; Patrick Donahoe, Chief Operating Officer and 
  Executive Vice President, U.S. Postal Service; and Ken Weaver, 
  Chief Postal Inspector, U.S. Postal Inspection Service.........     9
William Burrus, President-Elect, American Postal Workers Union, 
  AFL-CIO, accompanied by Denise Manley, Distribution Clerk, 
  Government Mail Section, Brentwood Mail Processing Facility....    43
Vincent R. Sombrotto, President, National Association of Letter 
  Carriers (NALC), accompanied by Tony DiStephano, Jr., 
  President, NALC Branch 380, Trenton, New Jersey................    46
William H. Quinn, National President, National Postal Mail 
  Handlers Union.................................................    49
Gus Baffa, President, National Rural Letter Carriers' Association 
  (NRLCA)........................................................    51

                      Wednesday, October 31, 2001

Hon. Paul D. Wellstone, a U.S. Senator from the State of 
  Minnesota......................................................    67
Hon. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a U.S. Senator from the State of New 
  York...........................................................    70
Mitchell L. Cohen, M.D., Director, Division of Bacterial and 
  Mycotic Diseases, National Center for Infectious Diseases, 
  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of 
  Health and Human Services......................................    73
Major General John S. Parker, Commanding General, U.S. Army 
  Medical Research and Materiel Command and Fort Detrick.........    74
Raymond J. Decker, Director, Defense Capabilities and Management, 
  U.S. General Accounting Office.................................    76
Ivan C.A. Walks, M.D., Chief Health Officer of the District of 
  Columbia and Director, District of Columbia Department of 
  Health (DOH), accompanied by Dr. Larry Siegel and Ted Gordon, 
  Senior Deputies, District of Columbia Department of Health 
  (DOH)..........................................................    78
Dan Hanfling, M.D., F.A.C.E.P., Chairman, Disaster Preparedness 
  Committee, Inova Fairfax Hospital..............................   101
Hon. Tara O'Toole, M.D., M.P.H., Director, Center for Civilian 
  Biodefense Studies, Johns Hopkins University...................   105

                     Alphabetical List of Witnesses

Baffa, Gus:
    Testimony....................................................    51
    Prepared statement...........................................   151
Burrus, William:
    Testimony....................................................    43
    Prepared statement...........................................   131
Clinton, Hon. Hillary Rodham:
    Testimony....................................................    70
Cohen, Mitchell L., M.D.:
    Testimony....................................................    73
    Prepared statement...........................................   160
Decker, Raymond J.:
    Testimony....................................................    76
    Prepared statement...........................................   178
Hanfling, Dan, M.D.:
    Testimony....................................................   101
    Prepared statement...........................................   209
O'Toole, Hon. Tara, M.D.:
    Testimony....................................................   105
    Prepared statement...........................................   214
Parker, Major General John S.:
    Testimony....................................................    74
    Prepared statement...........................................   174
Potter, Hon. John E.:
    Testimony....................................................     9
    Prepared statement...........................................   123
Quinn, William H.:
    Testimony....................................................    49
    Prepared statement...........................................   146
Sombrotto, Vincent R.:
    Testimony....................................................    46
    Prepared statement with an attachment........................   139
Walks, Ivan C.A., M.D.:
    Testimony....................................................    78
    Prepared statement...........................................   192
Wellstone, Hon. Paul D.:
    Testimony....................................................    67
    Prepared statement...........................................   157

                                Appendix

Article from the Washington Post, dated October 26, 2001, 
  entitled ``Two Men Who Were Just Doing Their Jobs--The Man Next 
  Door: Joseph Curseen, Jr. Pulled His Community Together,'' by 
  Phil McComb (submitted by Senator Akaka).......................   220
Article from the Washington Post, dated October 26, 2001, 
  entitled ``Two Men Were Just Doing Their Jobs--A Team Player: 
  Thomas Morris, Jr. Was a Model Worker and Avid Bowler,'' by 
  Lisa Allen-Agostini (submitted by Senator Akaka)...............   222
Article from the Washington Post, dated October 23, 2001, 
  entitled ``Anthrax Crisis Highlights the Quiet Heroics of 
  Postal Service,'' by Stephen Barr (submitted by Senator Akaka).   223
Charles Moser, President, National Association of Postmasters of 
  the United States, prepared statement..........................   224










  TERRORISM THROUGH THE MAIL: PROTECTING POSTAL WORKERS AND THE PUBLIC

                              ----------                              


                       TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2001

                                     U.S. Senate,  
                     Committee on Governmental Affairs,    
          and the Subcommittee on International Security,  
                       Proliferation, and Federal Services,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m., in 
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I. 
Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Lieberman, Akaka, Levin, Cleland, Carper, 
Carnahan, Durbin, Thompson, Collins, Cochran, Bunning, Stevens, 
Bennett, and Voinovich.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN

    Chairman Lieberman. The hearing will come to order. This 
morning, our Committee begins the first of two hearings on the 
question of ``Terrorism Through the Mail: Protecting Postal 
Workers and the Public.'' The full Committee is holding this 
hearing in conjunction with the Subcommittee on International 
Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services, chaired by 
Senator Daniel Akaka, and conducting the hearing pursuant to 
jurisdiction over the U.S. Postal Service, which the rules of 
the Senate give this Governmental Affairs Committee.
    Protecting the safety of the public and those working for 
the U.S. Postal System on what has become an unexpected front 
line of defense against terrorism is an urgent priority, so I 
would like to thank all of our witnesses this morning for 
rearranging their schedules to be at this hearing on short 
notice.
    On September 11, as we all know, terrorists wreaked sudden 
mass destruction upon the financial and military centers of the 
free world. Since then, a slower, more insidious attack has 
been launched against our Postal System and into government and 
media mail rooms in the form of anthrax contained within sealed 
letters and packages.
    This new terrorist attack has been difficult to detect and 
has emerged slowly over a period of weeks. So far, it has 
struck in Florida, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and 12 
separate places here in Washington, catching authorities off-
guard and surprising even those who have been preparing for a 
bio-terrorist attack. Three people are dead, two of them Postal 
workers, and at least 10 others have been diagnosed with either 
cutaneous or inhalation anthrax. Thirty-two people have tested 
positive for exposure to anthrax and thousands are taking 
powerful antibiotics as a precaution.
    In all, Americans are asking themselves a very basic 
question: Is it safe to open the mail? This morning, our 
Committee wants to find out what the answer to that question is 
and also whether adequate steps were being taken to protect 
Postal workers, and for that matter, anyone who opens their 
mail, once it was known that the mails were being used to 
further terrorize the American people. We want to take stock of 
what we have learned from this experience and assess what needs 
to be done to properly protect those who work for the Postal 
Service and those who depend on its services.
    The transmission of anthrax through the mail was first 
confirmed on Friday, October 12, when an NBC employee was 
diagnosed with cutaneous anthrax after opening a letter 
addressed to Tom Brokaw. Federal officials and the Postal 
Service apparently thought the risk of inhalation anthrax was 
negligible and two mail workers now being treated in Virginia 
and New Jersey were diagnosed with it over a week later.
    The disease transmission model everyone expected was 
through the skin, as had been the case with the NBC employee, 
and apparently no one anticipated that anthrax spores would 
leak out of mail envelopes in sufficient quantity to cause 
infection. So gloves and masks were not required, and, in fact, 
as I understand it and will ask today, are still not required 
for Postal employees.
    The question many are asking, and admittedly, this is with 
20/20 hindsight, is should someone have recognized what now 
seems like an obvious concern, not only about those receiving 
envelopes with anthrax but about the safety of the men and 
women who work in the mail system that delivered them?
    In Washington, the Postal Service began environmental 
testing for anthrax at its main facility at Brentwood on 
Thursday, October 18, 3 days after the letter sent to Majority 
Leader Daschle was opened in the Hart Building, exposing 28 
people. At the time, Postmaster General Potter said he was 
advised that there was only a minute chance that anthrax spores 
escaped into the air at the Brentwood facility, but 2 days 
later, contamination at Brentwood was verified. The facility 
was closed down and the testing of the Brentwood workers began 
the next day. Thomas L. Morris, a worker at Brentwood, died 
that day, while Joseph P. Curseen, Jr., another Brentwood 
worker, was sent home from the hospital with a flu diagnosis 
and died the next day.
    So questions are naturally being asked. Should not health 
workers have been on the lookout and more sensitive to possible 
anthrax infection? Should environmental and worker testing have 
begun sooner than it did? Did the Centers for Disease Control 
and the Postal Service take too passive an approach at first to 
protecting workers at the post offices and the public?
    These are important questions which the Committee will ask 
today on behalf of the American people and Postal workers. But 
I want to assure you that we ask them in a spirit of analysis, 
not accusation, a spirit of urgent analysis which is aimed at 
finding out in the midst of this unprecedented and unexpected 
challenge how we can better deal with it.
    It is particularly important, I think, that we end what has 
been described as a multi-voiced disharmony from government 
officials about the anthrax scares. As this scare has developed 
and continued, it became clear to all of us, both observing and 
experiencing as members of the Capitol Hill family that were 
also targets of anthrax attack, how much the experts do not 
know. There is, in fact, as we have learned now, no relevant 
clinical experience, no standard survey methodology, no 
comparable operational history, and no understanding of the 
full magnitude of the biological threat being perpetrated.
    As the New York Times said on October 28, inhalation 
anthrax is a disease that almost no doctor in the United States 
has ever seen. We were originally told, publicly and here on 
the Hill, that it takes 8,000 to 10,000 inhaled anthrax spores 
to become infected, but I recently read a quote from the head 
of an infectious disease program at a major medical center in 
the United States that that estimate of 8,000 to 10,000 spores 
necessary for infection was a textbook answer based on clinical 
studies done decades ago of workers who handled animal hides.
    So we ask ourselves, why were we not told that from the 
outset? Did the experts who advised us and you, Mr. Postmaster 
General, know this and decide not to panic us, or did they not 
know it?
    I must say that in recent days, one of the most encouraging 
developments to me has been that Governor Ridge has now been 
designated as clearly the lead governmental spokesperson on 
such matters, and I hope and believe that he and others, having 
gone through the experience we have all gone through in recent 
weeks, he and others in positions of authority will tell the 
facts as they know them to the American people when they know 
them, and if they do not know the truth, then they will tell us 
that, as well. Otherwise, in this time of crisis, the Federal 
Government risks losing the credibility and trust that it has 
gained from the American people in these early stages of the 
war against terrorism.
    In recent days, I am pleased to note, the Postal Service 
and public health officials have taken increasingly 
comprehensive, coordinated, and aggressive actions. Mail 
destined for Washington from unknown shippers will be 
irradiated in Ohio until the Postal Service can install 
irradiation devices more broadly. The Postal Service is also in 
the process of revising mail collection procedures to minimize 
handling prior to irradiation. Over 6,000 DC area Postal 
employees have been given antibiotics, while an equivalent 
number in New York have been tested or are receiving treatment, 
although it seems that conflicting advice is being given as to 
the recommended length of treatment.
    The bottom line here is that the Postal Service we have 
come to appreciate again, as a result of this crisis, is at the 
heart of the Nation's critical infrastructure and is one of the 
foundations of our daily quality of life. In another sense, 
businesses and individuals that depend on the Postal Service 
comprise a significant portion of our gross domestic product. 
So this is simply too important to too many people to allow 
these problems or anxieties with the mail system to fester.
    We are in this together. Our unity in this crisis has been 
perhaps the greatest source of our strength. And on this 
Committee, we hope that we will move forward together to find a 
way to better protect America's Postal workers and the people 
of this country who depend on their work just about every day 
of our lives.
    Senator Thompson.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR THOMPSON

    Senator Thompson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want 
to commend you on that statement. I think it sets exactly the 
right tone. I want to thank the Postmaster General, the union 
representatives, and the Postal workers for coming here today. 
I know this is a difficult time for all of you as you have 
recently lost two of your colleagues and others remain ill.
    It is my hope that we can use this time to explore 
procedures, protocols, and technology which can be used to make 
our Postal facilities safe and secure for you and your 
coworkers and the entire system will thereby be safer for the 
public in general.
    This is not just a Postal Service problem. We are here 
today because terrorists decided that we would come here to 
discuss this subject with this agency today because they chose 
this one this time. But it is a government-wide problem and 
there is no doubt that we have been, as a government, behind 
the curve in preparing for potential biological attacks. For 
example, it is remarkable that we know so little about some of 
the properties of anthrax itself, how the powder reacts in an 
envelope, for example, and what works against it.
    For several years, many organizations, including the GAO, 
the Hart-Rudman Commission, the Gilmore Commission, and others 
have recommended comprehensive threat and risk assessments for 
chemical and biological weapons attacks on our soil. As far 
back as 1997, GAO recommended that these assessments be 
conducted so that Federal and State Governments could properly 
prepare for such attacks. I understand the FBI finally began 
work on a domestic threat assessment in July 1999 and it should 
be completed soon.
    Clearly, these assessments should have been completed 
earlier. I do believe that the completion of such threat 
assessments in the future will help us be better prepared when 
the next shoe falls. In all fairness, though, even the experts 
who thought about mass casualty attacks, as far as my staff 
have found, these experts never focused on the use of anthrax 
through the mails and the potential threat that posed, even 
though we must say that the threat certainly was not beyond 
comprehension because there have been a number of hoaxes over 
the years where powder has been sent through the mail with 
letters claiming that anthrax was enclosed. One such letter, I 
remember, was received in Knoxville, Tennessee, back in 1998.
    But whatever our level of preparedness has been in the 
past, it is clear now that we have to do more to protect our 
workers and the American public. Congressional staff was 
briefed last Friday on new technologies and machinery being 
considered by the Postal Service, including ways to make 
collection boxes safer, to keep air in our facilities cleaner, 
and even to kill potentially dangerous biological agents being 
sent through the mail.
    I am glad to see the Postal Service is moving forward with 
these new technologies, Mr. Potter. I am glad to see that you 
are working so well together that you have included the labor 
representatives and the employee representatives and that you 
are working together under extremely difficult circumstances to 
address these problems. I think it has implications, really, 
for all of us, all Americans.
    Some have begun to inject doubts into our war on terrorism, 
both at home and abroad. The dangers we face now have our full 
attention, and frankly, I think we are doing a pretty good job 
of responding to them. As the Chairman pointed out, so many of 
our public officials have to rely upon expertise, and the 
experts, frankly, are not used to being experts with the 
particular problem that we have got right now. So the phrase 
``steep learning curve'' is being uttered about a thousand 
times a day in this town and it is true.
    But in less than 2 months, we have set up an Office of 
Homeland Security and appointed a director. We have engaged the 
entire medical community, including the CDC and all other 
public health officials. We passed a terrorism bill, we will 
shortly have an airport security bill, and we managed to keep 
to our legislative agenda.
    We need to understand that in this process, there will be 
problems, but we also need to understand that we will overcome 
those problems. I suppose I have to take a backseat to nobody 
in criticizing the wastefulness and inefficiencies and 
duplication of the government, but there comes a time when we 
need to circle the wagons and there comes a time when we need 
to see the positive and good that we can accomplish when we 
bring the forces of our government to bear on a national 
security problem, and I think that is what we are seeing.
    I also believe that this is the one side of the two-sided 
war that we see, home and abroad, and I believe that the 
implications of how we are handling this here are relevant to 
the hot war, if you want to call it that, in Afghanistan. You 
see headlines in the last few days, for example, announcing 
that the war will go on longer than expected. I do not know who 
that was news to, but apparently it was to a lot of people in 
this town that it was going to be a long war, despite the fact 
that the President, the Secretary of Defense, and all other 
relevant officials have been telling us that for some time.
    Now we are beginning to see demands from our new allies 
that the war be shorter or that we avoid bombing during certain 
times. We are now beginning to see the inevitable military and 
civilian casualties that come with such an operation. And 
although some opinion makers have decided to make this the 
focus, I think that the American people understand that we are 
in for a long and deliberate process, both at home and abroad, 
and it is important in the meantime that we pull together and 
work together to address these unprecedented problems.
    There has never been any doubt about America's military 
strength, but there is substantial doubt around the world about 
our determination and our stamina, and we are beginning to see 
the inevitable reaction from lack of a quick and decisive 
resolution of the problems that we are having at home and 
abroad. But I see the spirit that we need to address both of 
these problems evident with regard to what you gentlemen are 
doing and the members of the labor community.
    I must say, Congress, as we are looking to assess some 
responsibility, is going to have to take another look at 
itself. According to Paul Light of The Brookings Institute, who 
is the head of the Presidential Appointee Initiative, there are 
164 positions involved in the fight against the war on 
terrorism, including homeland defense and bioterrorism. These 
include positions in the agencies such as Defense, Treasury, 
State, FEMA, and some of Transportation, and others.
    Today, 50 percent of the 164 are vacant or have people only 
on the job since August 1. Today, 37 percent of the 164 are 
vacant or have people only on the job since September 11. Of 
those with responsibility for biological threats, only 45 of 71 
positions have been filled in this administration. Now, some of 
these positions that remain unconfirmed include Assistant to 
the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological 
Defense Programs at Defense; Director of the Office of Civilian 
Radioactive Waste Management at Energy; also at Energy, 
Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Safety and 
Health; also Special Representative for Nuclear Proliferation 
over at State; Assistant Secretary of State for Population, 
Refugees, and Migration at State; and two positions at FEMA, 
Deputy Director and Associate Director, Preparedness Training 
and Exercise Directorate.
    So it is important that the administration get these names 
up here and that Congress reacts to them promptly. It is a 
problem that we have seen government-wide, again, with regard 
to Presidential appointees and the longer that it is taking now 
for a new President to get his team together. I think President 
Clinton, it took 8 months. President Bush, it is going to take 
at least a year. He will have served 25 percent of his term 
without his team in place. Now, that may just be political fun 
and games until we get to the situation that we have here now, 
but we see it has national security implications and we all 
must do a better job.
    So thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Akaka, for holding 
these important hearings today and tomorrow. I believe much 
good will come from it. Thank you.
    Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Thompson, for your 
thoughtful statement.
    Senator Akaka is the Chair of the relevant Subcommittee and 
I would call on him now.

               OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA

    Senator Akaka. Thank you very much. I am delighted and 
pleased to join Chairman Lieberman in today's joint hearing. 
The Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and 
Federal Services, which I Chair, has been looking into the 
bioterrorism risk for some time now. In July, we held a hearing 
to review government efforts to prepare our communities to 
respond to acts of terrorism. Sadly, the bioterrorism risk has 
become a reality and three Americans have lost their lives in 
bioterrorism attacks on American soil.
    I want to thank the Postmaster General, the presidents and 
employees of the Postal employees' unions, and the Postal 
Service's officials for being with us this morning. In the 
interest of time, I will keep my remarks brief.
    The last line of defense in a homeland terrorist attack 
should not be the Congress, nor should the first line of 
defense be the men and women of the U.S. Postal Service. 
Sacrifices being made by our Nation's Postal employees demand 
our government's full support and available resources to ensure 
their safety.
    These dedicated people never expected to be on the front 
line of a war. They never expected their workplaces to become 
the front line in a biological weapons attack, and they never 
expected to lose members of the Postal family to terrorism.
    I know that every American is concerned about the safety of 
the mail and I hope our hearings will answer some of their 
questions. I also know that the safety of our Postal employees 
and the public cannot be compromised. I firmly believe that to 
better protect Americans and critical infrastructures like the 
U.S. Postal Service, there must be cooperation at all levels of 
government.
    Right now, we have a complex Federal interagency process 
that governs our preparedness and responses to terrorism. We 
cannot afford confusion or duplicity in program efforts. 
Rather, we must strengthen existing programs and add new ones 
where needed in order to prepare all communities, from the 
largest city to the smallest rural town, for biological 
incidents.
    Before I yield back my time, I wish to express my deepest 
sympathy to the families and friends of APWU members Joseph 
Curseen and Thomas Morris, who passed away last week. Like the 
police officers and fire fighters in New York and the military 
personnel and civilian employees at the Pentagon, these two 
public servants lost their lives in service to their country. I 
also extend my hopes for a speedy recovery to those Postal 
employees who are undergoing treatment for inhalation and 
cutaneous anthrax.
    I ask unanimous consent, Mr. Chairman, that my entire 
statement be included in the record as well as three articles 
from the Washington Post--two commemorating the lives of the 
fallen Postal employees, and one by Stephen Barr on our heroic 
Postal employees.\1\ I also ask that a written statement of the 
National Postmasters Association be included in the record. 
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Three articles from the Washington Post submitted for the 
record by Senator Akaka appear in the Appendix on pages 220-223.
    \2\ The prepared statement of Charles Moser, President, National 
Postmasters Association appears in the Appendix on page 224.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Akaka. Without 
objection, we will include all those documents in the record.
    [The prepared statement of Senator Akaka follows:]

                  PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
    I am delighted to be here and pleased to join our Chairman at 
today's joint hearing. The Subcommittee on International Security, 
Proliferation, and Federal Services, which I chair, has been looking 
into the bioterrorism risk for some time now. In July, we held a 
hearing to review government efforts to prepare our communities to 
respond to acts of bioterrorism. Sadly the bioterrorism risk has become 
a reality and three Americans have lost their lives in bioterrorism 
attacks on American soil. As the Chairman mentioned, we held a joint 
hearing on bioterrorism preparedness only two days after the anthrax 
event in Senator Daschle's office.
    I want to thank the Postmaster General for being with us, as well 
as the presidents and employees of our postal employee unions. In the 
interest of time, I will keep my remarks brief.
    The last line of defense in a homeland terrorist attack should not 
be the Congress, nor should the first line of defense be the men and 
women of the U.S. Postal Service. The sacrifices being made by our 
nation's postal employees demand our government's full support and 
available resources to ensure their safety.
    These dedicated people never expected to be on the front line of a 
war. They never expected their workplaces to become the front line in a 
biological weapons attack. And they never expected to lose members of 
the postal family to terrorism.
    I know that every American is concerned about the safety of the 
mail, and I hope our hearings will answer some of their questions. I 
also know that the safety of our postal employees and the public cannot 
be compromised.
    I firmly believe that to better protect Americans and critical 
infrastructures like the U.S. Postal Service, there must be cooperation 
at all levels of government. Right now we have a complex federal 
interagency process that governs our preparedness and responses to 
bioterrorism. We cannot afford confusion or duplicity in program 
efforts. Rather we must strengthen existing programs, and add new ones 
where needed in order to prepare all communities--from the largest city 
to the smallest rural town--for biological incidents.
    Before I yield back my time, I wish to express my deepest 
sympathies to the families and friends of APWU members Joseph Curseen 
and Thomas Morris, Jr., who passed away last week. Like the police 
officers and firefighters in New York and the military personnel and 
civilian employees at the Pentagon, these two public servants lost 
their lives in service to their country. I also extend my hopes for a 
speedy recovery to those postal employees who are undergoing treatment 
for inhalation and cutaneous anthrax.
    I ask unanimous consent that my entire statement be included in the 
record as well as three articles from The Washington Post, two 
commemorating the lives of the fallen postal employees, and one by 
Stephen Barr on our heroic postal employees. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Chairman Lieberman. Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi is 
the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee and I would call on him 
now for an opening statement.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COCHRAN

    Senator Cochran. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the tone 
set by Senator Thompson in his comments is the right one. I 
think we need to avoid creating a false sense of security, but 
we also need to avoid creating a state of panic about the 
threats that we face and the occurrences that we have all 
witnessed.
    In connection with the Postal workers and those who work 
for the U.S. Postal Service, I think we want to know from our 
witnesses today what we can do to help support you in your 
effort to deal with this crisis effectively and to make sure 
that the workplace for all of our Postal workers is safe, and 
that is my purpose in being here this morning.
    I wish you well. I commend you and all the Postal 
inspectors who are working around the clock to try to deal with 
this situation, and we wish you well and pledge to you our 
support in that effort.
    Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Cochran. I think you 
have set the right tone in your opening statement, as well.
    We are going to go now to the Postmaster General, John 
Potter, for his opening statement. Thank you very much for 
being here.

 TESTIMONY OF HON. JOHN E. POTTER,\1\ POSTMASTER GENERAL, U.S. 
 POSTAL SERVICE; ACCOMPANIED BY THOMAS DAY, VICE PRESIDENT OF 
   ENGINEERING, U.S. POSTAL SERVICE; PATRICK DONAHOE, CHIEF 
  OPERATING OFFICER AND EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, U.S. POSTAL 
 SERVICE; AND KEN WEAVER, CHIEF POSTAL INSPECTOR, U.S. POSTAL 
                       INSPECTION SERVICE

    Mr. Potter. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Lieberman, 
Senator Thompson, and Members of the Committee. I have 
submitted a detailed written statement, which I would ask be 
entered into the record.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Potter appears in the Appendix on 
page 123.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Under normal circumstances, I would be here by myself. But 
with the situation changing daily, I have brought Patrick 
Donahoe, Chief Operating Officer, and Thomas Day, Vice 
President for Engineering, with me. They are part of the total 
team that is focusing on this crisis and they will be able to 
add value to our discussion.
    Mr. Chairman, this is a sad time for us in the Postal 
Service. We have lost two of our family, two of our fine 
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 for the Post Office that they would be on the 
front line of a war, but they were, and thousands of 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 into 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 9, as a precaution, we provided supervisors and 
employees with updated information on what to do if they 
suspected biohazards in the mail.
    Then on Friday, October 12, 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 is 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 that employees, the public, 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 authorities. Based on 
the information I had, I stressed that this was a time when 
common sense and caution was needed and that the incidence of 
anthrax-laden letters appeared to be very targeted and very few 
in number.
    On Monday, October 15, with Postal inspectors 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, and what were the right things to do. We brought in 
advisors from the CDC and others to share information with the 
unions. Our labor leaders' comments were valuable and carried 
equal weight with everyone around the table, but the facts were 
sketchy. To that point, the only confirmed anthrax had been in 
Florida and NBC News in New York.
    On that day, Monday, October 15, 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 
happened--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 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 18, came back negative. We felt good about 
that, although a secondary, more comprehensive laboratory 
examination would take another 48 hours. To that time, we had 
no indication that Brentwood was contaminated.
    Also on Thursday, October 18, we joined with the Justice 
Department to ask the American public for help by offering a $1 
million reward. It was on October 18 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. Yes, we had discussed with CDC 
whether or not our employees should be tested, but all 
indications and the best experts said, no need.
    Unfortunately, and how I and others wish we had known, it 
was Friday, October 19, when our first Washington employee 
would be hospitalized with flu-like symptoms. Two days later, 
on Sunday afternoon, October 21, we learned of the first case 
of an employee with inhalation anthrax. Brentwood was 
immediately closed. As a precaution, we also closed the 
Baltimore-Washington processing facility.
    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 the 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 of 
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. That 
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 
scheduled 200 facilities nationwide to be tested. That is in 
addition to those facilities in the immediate area of the 
anthrax attacks. We purchased 4.8 million masks, 88 million 
gloves for our employees. We changed operational maintenance 
procedures to reduce the chance of any bioagents 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 our awareness message. We 
also had medical doctors speak to our employees at the worksite 
on the precautions they needed 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 the 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 website to provide the 
latest information on anthrax. In sum, we are focused on 
getting the message out.
    I might also add here that the cooperation and coordination 
between and among all Federal agencies involved has gotten 
increasingly stronger as each day has gone by. Governor Ridge 
has been instrumental in building bridges and making things 
happen. He also has been 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 11 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 sizeable. 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 the integrity of the mail is at the 
core of the Postal Service's mission. Our 800,000 Postal 
employees are using everything they have 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 
the spirit I have seen in our employees and Postal customers. 
They recognize that terrorists 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.
    Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Potter.
    We will begin questioning now. With the permission of my 
colleagues, we will do 6-minute rounds, but we will give a few 
extra minutes to, other than the four of us who had the chance 
to make opening statements, if other members wish to use that 
to make an opening statement.
    The dates here are, as you stated them, the sequence of 
events. On October 12, CDC confirmed that the letter sent to 
NBC had anthrax in it. A short while after that, we learned 
that anthrax from a letter sent to Senator Daschle had 
contaminated one of the Senate mail rooms and so was capable of 
contaminating other locations, yet the Brentwood facility 
continued to operate and now it appears that there is 
contamination throughout government mail rooms in the DC area.
    My question is: Given--and this is the question, obviously, 
that others are asking, including Postal workers--given the 
known anthrax exposure at Postal facilities, particularly in 
New Jersey and then in Florida, why did the Postal Service not 
take a more aggressive approach toward conducting testing for 
anthrax as a precautionary measure, both to protect its 
employees and the general public?
    Mr. Potter. Throughout the process, when we started with 
the earliest letters at NBC, the advice we were given 
throughout was that these envelopes were well sealed. They had 
been taped and it gave the appearance that the intent of the 
sender was that it was to affect the recipient, the person who 
the mail was addressed to.
    Chairman Lieberman. Right.
    Mr. Potter. It was not until later on that we found out 
that the size of the spores, the anthrax spores, were one 
micron in size and that they had the ability to penetrate 
paper. So we went from a situation where we had sealed 
containers and we had no known cases of anthrax either in 
Florida or in New York, that is the Postal Service did not, and 
so the theory that we were operating under seemed logical, made 
sense, and given the amount of protection, tape that was put on 
the envelopes, that they were contained and that they were not 
contaminating until they were opened at the destination.
    Chairman Lieberman. So the initial presumption was that to 
become ill, you would have to have opened a package or letter, 
as occurred at the NBC offices or, in fact, in Senator 
Daschle's office?
    Mr. Potter. Yes. That was the initial assumption and it was 
thought that by opening the envelope, and that was the theory 
behind what happened in Florida, that the gentlemen that were 
affected opened the envelope and that dust came out of the 
envelope and went into their sinuses.
    Chairman Lieberman. On what basis did you reach that 
conclusion? I understand it has a certain common sense to it 
based on normal experience, although as we have found out, as 
you indicated, as time went on, the anthrax was refined to such 
a small level that common sense did not make sense in the end. 
But was that a judgment that you made within the Postal Service 
based on the advice of your internal counsel or was it based on 
advice you got from others, and if so, who were they?
    Mr. Potter. It was based on the advice that we had gotten 
from those who had seen the envelopes. We did not have 
possession of the envelopes.
    Chairman Lieberman. In other words, those who had seen them 
at NBC or here at the Senate?
    Mr. Potter. Right. So it was the law enforcement 
authorities, the FBI, our Postal inspectors, as well as the 
health authorities, the CDC and others.
    Chairman Lieberman. Who did you call? Obviously, you are 
confronted with a problem you did not anticipate and it is a 
health problem and the Postal Service is obviously not a health 
service organization itself. Who do you turn to at a moment 
like that? Who did you turn to?
    Mr. Potter. At a moment like that, I turn to the Secretary, 
Tommy Thompson.
    Chairman Lieberman. Health and Human Services?
    Mr. Potter. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, to 
ask for his help because it was an unknown entity to us.
    Chairman Lieberman. Right.
    Mr. Potter. We sought out his assistance.
    Chairman Lieberman. What did he tell you?
    Mr. Potter. Basically, he put us in touch with all of the 
experts at his disposal.
    Chairman Lieberman. Who were they?
    Mr. Potter. The Surgeon General, the CDC, and many others 
who came to our aid to help us analyze this problem and give us 
advice.
    Chairman Lieberman. And they counseled you at that time 
explicitly that it was their best judgment that your employees 
would have to have opened a package to be exposed to anthrax?
    Mr. Potter. They had counseled me that there was a remote 
chance that as the envelopes transited our system, that they 
would have contaminated our system, again, based on the fact 
that they were well sealed. Early on, there were a couple of 
letters that later turned out to be hoaxes that had granular 
substances in them.
    Chairman Lieberman. Right.
    Mr. Potter. You recall at NBC, there was a focus on a 
letter of September 25 that was originally thought to be the 
letter that caused the contamination. That later on proved not 
to be the case and there was a granular substance in that 
letter. We subsequently found out it was a September 18 letter. 
So, again, it was based on the facts that were available to 
them and the facts that were available to me and we relied on 
the advice of everybody.
    I think, without a doubt in my mind, that there was truly a 
good faith effort on the part of all. As was stated earlier, 
people just did not know that much about anthrax.
    Chairman Lieberman. Let me ask you this question. To the 
best of your knowledge, I presume Mr. Morris and Mr. Curseen, 
the two Postal workers who died of inhalation anthrax, were not 
exposed to packages or letters with anthrax that were opened, 
is that correct?
    Mr. Potter. To the best of my knowledge, that is the case, 
yes.
    Chairman Lieberman. So is the presumption now that the 
terrorists who were sending the anthrax through the mail were 
operating at such a level of sophistication that they had not 
only refined the anthrax to the one micron, which is not 
visible to the eye, but that they had put openings in the 
envelopes or package coverings that were slightly larger than 
the one micron, but large enough when handled to let some of 
the anthrax spores out?
    Mr. Potter. Mr. Chairman, I think it was a matter of using 
different paper. I do not know that there was an attempt on the 
part of the terrorists, and we will never know until we find 
that person and find out what their motives were, but I think 
there was a different type of paper. That paper was more porous 
than the previous paper and allowed the anthrax to move through 
the paper. That is my assumption. I do not consider myself an 
expert, but that appears to be the case.
    Chairman Lieberman. OK. My time is up. Thank you. Senator 
Thompson.
    Senator Thompson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and 
thank you, Mr. Potter.
    I was looking at the time lines here. Of course, some of 
the criticism that everybody around here is rightfully 
sensitive to is whether or not there has been some kind of a 
double standard, and I was looking at the time lines for the 
Senate, in particular, and our reaction, and yours. According 
to my recollection and information, the Daschle letter was 
opened up on October 15. Twenty-eight employees tested positive 
for exposure on October 17 and we closed their offices on 
October 18.
    And what I found out, or just realized just recently, was 
that for 3 days, Governmental Affairs Committee staff employees 
were walking around that same area up there, some of these 
folks behind us here, on the same floor, on the sixth floor of 
the Hart Building where the Daschle letter was opened, for 3 
days before we closed the buildings.
    So obviously it goes to make the point that we were all 
thinking that it took some kind of--not only could something 
not seep out of an envelope, but you had to have some kind of, 
apparently, direct contact with it or be in the same room or 
something with it in order for it to cause you a problem. I 
mean, seemingly, that was the information that we were all 
operating on at the time.
    So we reacted, what, 3 days later, and then, only after 
several people turned up positive for exposure, and I was 
looking at your time line and you had a private company come 
in. Of course, you had the benefit, if you want to call it 
that, of the Daschle episode. We should say that. But on 
October 18, you had a private company come in and test 
Brentwood and they received no positive indications at that 
time, is that right?
    Mr. Potter. We had two separate tests done, Senator. We had 
comprehensive testing done by an outside company and then we 
had the Fairfax County Hazardous Material Group to come in 
Fairfax County right across the river, and test our facility on 
a quick test. That quick test proved negative. I have since 
come to learn that there are no false positives with the quick 
test but there are a lot of false negatives.
    Senator Thompson. And that happened on October 18?
    Mr. Potter. That happened on October 18. We had ordered 
those tests on October 17. Once we became aware that there 
might be--what we learned over this process was the science 
starts with where did the contamination occur, and if you think 
about what happened in Boca Raton, it appears that only the 
people who touched the envelope were affected because no other 
employee in AMI, to my knowledge, was tested positive for 
spores.
    So the science that we were following, again, working with 
the experts, was you have a case of anthrax. In the case of the 
Senate, you backed up and started to look at the mail room. 
When you made that move, we made the same move. We started to 
conduct the tests, although we were told that, again, there was 
a remote chance that anything happened in Brentwood. We 
scheduled those tests on October 17. We began the testing on 
the afternoon of October 18. We had a negative quick test--
granted, it is a quick test, but a negative quick test on 
October 18 to give us some reassurance that the theory was 
accurate.
    Senator Thompson. Let us go from there, then, to the other 
relevant facts leading up to your decision to close on October 
21. That would take us to October 19, I suppose.
    Mr. Potter. Right.
    Senator Thompson. I believe you indicated that an employee 
showed some preliminary symptoms that could have been diagnosed 
as possibly as anthrax on the----
    Mr. Potter. Friday night, we had an employee go to the 
hospital with flu-like symptoms, and I think I have the dates 
right. If I do not, we will correct it.
    Senator Thompson. Friday night? That would have been 
October 19.
    Mr. Potter. Right. But the issue that we have now fixed is 
the fact that our employees go to a hospital with flu-like 
symptoms. They think they have the flu. And what we now have 
instructed all of our employees to do is when you go--if you 
have flu-like symptoms, and this is throughout the country, we 
have asked the employees to tell the attending physician that 
they are a Postal employee.
    Senator Thompson. All right. Let me ask you this now. I 
want you to get all this in, but I have got limited time here 
and I want to get through this one line of questioning. Did top 
management know at the time that that employee went in, that 
they went in with those symptoms on October 19?
    Mr. Potter. No.
    Senator Thompson. You did not learn that until later?
    Mr. Potter. We did not learn that until Sunday night.
    Senator Thompson. Until Sunday night? That would have been 
October 21.
    Mr. Potter. It would have been after we had closed the 
facility and after----
    Senator Thompson. After you had closed the facility?
    Mr. Potter. And after we had begun----
    Senator Thompson. All right. So that is not a relevant fact 
in terms of your thinking as of October 20. All right. What 
else happened before October 21? I understand that the CDC 
began testing.
    Mr. Potter. No. Our outside company, URS, began testing, 
but the tests take, at a minimum, 48 hours. In fact, we did not 
get the Brentwood results back for 72 hours.
    Senator Thompson. All right. So what else happened between 
October 19 and your closing of the facility?
    Mr. Potter. What happened on that Saturday, we appealed to 
the CDC and to local health officials to begin our employees on 
medication. We felt that they should be tested and medicated. 
We were told that there was no need to do that.
    And then on October 21, we had a confirmed inhalation 
anthrax case of a gentleman that was in Inova Fairfax Hospital, 
and thank God he is on his way to recovery. It is at that point 
that we immediately shut the facility down and we began giving 
medication to employees.
    Senator Thompson. All right. I think that is pretty clear, 
and I am almost out of time. Well, I will throw something out 
and follow up later. In talking about the cost of this 
equipment, you are talking about the equipment that you are 
using now, in order to get it fully in place and implemented in 
the number of facilities that you feel like you need, I have 
seen an estimate of a total cost of $2.5 billion?
    Mr. Potter. Yes, sir, several billion dollars.
    Senator Thompson. I just wonder how that is going--
obviously, before this happened, the Postal Service had 
significant financial problems, and we have had hearings on 
that from time to time, an $11 billion debt and facing a $1.65 
billion deficit at the end of fiscal year 2001. Obviously, you 
are going to have to rethink your entire financial picture.
    Can you just broadly outline the significance of this? Is 
this going to require a direct Congressional appropriation for 
at least $2.5 billion and then start from there with your 
problems that you have had for a long time and having to solve 
them, and what impact is this--are you going to be able to 
estimate what impact that this event, notwithstanding the $2.5 
billion, assuming that you get that, what impact this is going 
to have on the Postal Service, your financial picture, and your 
competitiveness?
    Mr. Potter. Well, first of all, regarding the appropriation 
or requesting an appropriation to reconfigure our operation 
such that we can sanitize mail, yes, we will ask for that 
appropriation. We were in financial straits prior to September 
11. As you have accurately said, our loss for fiscal year 2001 
was approximately $1.7 billion.
    In the month following the September 11 attack, the Postal 
Service lost, against plan, what we thought we would get, and 
it was a very conservative plan, some $300 million. We do not 
have an estimate of what the impact of this anthrax situation 
will be. We are working as hard as we can to restore confidence 
in the mail. That is going to take time. So it will have 
further--it could be several billion dollars' worth of impact.
    In addition to that, we have costs associated with masks, 
gloves, and other operational procedures that are just going to 
change the way we do business. We were very grateful that the 
President made monies available to us, some $175 million to get 
us started, but we know that more money will be needed and it 
does put the Postal Service's long-term viability, not in 
jeopardy, it just makes it a very difficult road to hoe.
    Senator Thompson. Thank you very much.
    Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Thompson, and thanks, 
General Potter. Obviously, this Committee wants to work with 
you on the long-term viability and health of the Postal 
Service.
    We are going to have somebody in from CDC tomorrow at the 
second day of these hearings--on the advice that you got that a 
sealed package or envelope would not endanger your employees, 
which obviously turned out not to be true or accurate, I wonder 
whether CDC understood that mail is repeatedly compressed 
during handling when they gave you that advice.
    Mr. Potter. Mr. Chairman, I would have to let the CDC speak 
to that. Obviously, as was said earlier, we were all on a steep 
learning curve.
    Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
    Mr. Potter. We were trying to understand the medical side 
of this issue. They were trying to understand the operational 
side of this issue. Again, I think there was a good faith 
effort on the part of everybody to work with what we had. Keep 
in mind that the envelopes in question were evidence. Keep in 
mind that the envelopes in question were contaminated. So it 
was not that people had ready access to them to do analysis. 
Again, I think everybody was operating under descriptions that 
were provided by those who physically handled the mail.
    Chairman Lieberman. Thanks. Senator Akaka.
    Senator Akaka. Thank you very much.
    Postmaster General, as we know, the Daschle letter was 
opened on October 15 and the Hart Building was open October 16 
and 17 and closed on October 18. Senate employees were tested 
October 16 and 17. Did you ask CDC or DC Public Health to test 
your employees and provide antibiotics at the same time the 
Senate employees began being tested?
    Mr. Potter. There were ongoing discussions throughout that 
week. I do not think we made an official--I do not think we 
requested of the DC health officials until Saturday.
    Senator Akaka. When were you notified that the Dirksen mail 
room had tested positive for anthrax and did CDC recommend 
testing and preventative medication at that point?
    Mr. Potter. I do not know that we were ever officially 
notified, but we did become aware of it the morning of October 
17 and that is why we immediately began to hire outside testing 
agencies to come in and do a thorough check of our facilities.
    Senator Akaka. The Attorney General has said there is 
credible evidence of another attack on the United States or its 
interests abroad. Given this latest warning and the existing 
anthrax threat, what is the Postal Service doing during this 
heightened state of alert to safeguard the mail and its 
employees? Is mail being screened for high-risk targets?
    Mr. Potter. Senator, the mail is being screened at origins 
where we believe the anthrax was deposited into the mail 
stream, and what we are doing there is screening the mail to 
prevent it from getting into our system to be worked on our 
machines. I would be happy to give you a lot of detail offline, 
but I do not think it is wise to invite people to circumvent 
what we have put into place.
    Senator Akaka. The Postal Service, I understand, intends to 
sanitize mail. Will the Postal Service install such a facility 
in remote areas like Hawaii so that Hawaii and other Pacific 
Island mail will not need to be sent to the United States 
mainland, and if so, when would you expect the facility to come 
online?
    Mr. Potter. Senator, our initial plan, and we are working 
through that plan as we speak, is to sanitize all possible 
entries of mail, including Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and the 
continental United States. Regarding timing, I will turn to our 
Vice President for Engineering, Thomas Day, who could respond 
better to that.
    Mr. Day. Senator, we are still very early in the process of 
trying to figure out a time line. The type of equipment that we 
are looking to deploy is coming from an industry that primarily 
served food processing and medical sterility needs. Our demands 
on that industry are unprecedented, so we have entered into 
discussions with the two major companies that we are aware of 
in the United States that make this type of equipment and 
looking to see what they can do to ramp up their manufacturing 
capability. So we are looking to do it as quick as we can, but 
we are still very early in that discussion.
    Senator Akaka. Thank you, Mr. Day. New York's Morgan 
facility has at least four confirmed areas of contamination and 
yet continues to operate. I know that the Morgan employees have 
been offered the option to work on another floor or across the 
street if they have safety concerns. However, how does this 
reconcile with the temporary closure of the Princeton, New 
Jersey Post Office, where only trace amounts of anthrax were 
found? I would also like to know who makes the final decision 
to close a facility and what criteria is used.
    Mr. Potter. I think it is important that we describe the 
Morgan facility and what we have there. We have a 1.8 million 
square foot building. We have an area of contamination that is 
about 8,000 square feet. We have sealed off 156,000 square feet 
while we decontaminate not only the 8,000 square feet, we are 
going to decontaminate the whole 156,000 square feet of that 
facility.
    We have traces of spores on our machines that will be 
decontaminated. We have no spores in any ventilation system in 
Morgan. We are very, very careful to check that. If that were 
the case, that facility would close immediately.
    Again, I am not a medical expert, but traces of anthrax 
are, when we talk about traces, we are talking about very few 
spores. We are not talking about thousands. We are talking 
about less than 50. And we bring in and get advice from, in the 
case of New York City, from CDC, who is on site, NIOSH, who is 
on site, the New York City Department of Health is on site.
    We work collaboratively with those folks to determine 
whether or not we need to evacuate a facility or whether we can 
treat that facility. We have done that in other places. Again, 
we work with the local and national officials, the experts, to 
determine what the appropriate course of action is.
    As far as the Princeton site is concerned, we have a much 
smaller facility. We did not have the ability to rope off a 
150,000 square foot area because it is a smaller facility. In 
addition to that, that is also a crime scene. So any time a 
crime scene is declared, we evacuate and we make sure that the 
crime scene is not disturbed.
    Senator Akaka. Thank you very much.
    Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Akaka. Senator Cochran.
    Senator Cochran. Mr. Chairman, one of the questions that I 
have is the capacity you have with your Postal inspectors to 
actually respond to all of the reports that you have received 
for incidents that may be suspicious or may be threatening to 
not only Postal workers but to the general public.
    For example, I noticed in one of your fact sheets that you 
released on Sunday that you say a total of 5,477 suspicious 
incidents have been reported to Postal inspectors as of Friday, 
October 26. How are you coping with that and what can we do to 
help you in regard to that problem?
    Mr. Potter. We only have 1,900 Postal inspectors, so 
obviously, our resources are spread very thin. We are working 
closely with other law enforcement agencies regarding these 
hoaxes. That is both at the local level and national level. So 
the FBI, working with our Inspection Service, working with 
local law enforcement, are doing the best job that they can to 
track down those folks that are committing the hoaxes. That is 
playing as much on the fear of Americans as the actual anthrax 
and we are taking those very, very seriously and a number of 
arrests have been made of those folks who are committing those 
hoaxes, those folks that are trying to instill fear in the 
American public.
    Senator Cochran. I think the word should go out that that 
is a violation of Federal law, is it not, and those who are 
committing those acts to alarm or to frighten others are 
subject to criminal prosecution, is that correct?
    Mr. Potter. Let me introduce Chief Postal Inspector Ken 
Weaver, who can accurately answer that question.
    Mr. Weaver. Senator, you are exactly right. It is as 
vicious as the crime itself and it is treated as such because 
it does spread fear among the population. To date, we have 
arrested 18 individuals--in the last 3 weeks--for sending 
prohibited material through the mail. So you are exactly right.
    Senator Cochran. When can we expect these facilities that 
have been contaminated to be cleaned up and put back in 
service? Do you have a time line and can you give us that 
information now, when they will be operational again?
    Mr. Potter. Senator, for most of these facilities, it is a 
matter of a couple of days, because what we have found are 
traces of anthrax. However, in the case of Washington, DC, and 
Trenton, the contamination is more widespread, so I do not have 
a good estimate on when or how long it would take to clean 
those facilities, or even looking through, just as you are 
experiencing in the Senate, what is the proper process to go 
through to clean a facility of that size. In addition to that, 
those two locations are crime scenes, so we do not even have 
access to them right now to go in and begin remediation. I will 
turn to Mr. Day, if he has anything.
    Mr. Day. I would just say, Senator, that my staff in 
Environmental Programs has contracted out for those services, 
and as Jack has already indicated, until we fully understand 
the extent of the contamination, it is hard to assess how long. 
Then the process will require not just decontamination, but 
then another round of testing to ensure that what we did is 
actually effective.
    Senator Cochran. Some people have asked us, what has 
happened to all the mail that has been held up and not 
delivered? Are you storing that, and what efforts are being 
made to sanitize or sterilize that mail and then to have it 
subsequently delivered to those who are entitled to receive it?
    Mr. Potter. All mail that we had in our possession on 
Monday, October 21, has been held. It is in the process of 
being sanitized in Lima, Ohio, and that will take several days 
for us to catch up, and until that time, obviously it will not 
be delivered. We want to make sure that mail is safe for the 
American public.
    Senator Cochran. There were some people who had heard that 
some of the mail that had been accumulated was going to be 
burned. That is just a rumor, is it not?
    Mr. Potter. That is absolutely a rumor. The sanctity of the 
mail is our top priority. We cannot open mail. We would not 
destroy mail, or open mail short of having a warrant.
    Mr. Donahoe. I can clarify. One of the things that we did, 
Senator, we held any empty equipment. We move equipment 
throughout our whole system. So what we did, the equipment that 
was empty and on trailers for dispatch--we have a recycling 
area where we put things back together as far as reuse--we held 
those trailers both in Washington and in Trenton and what we 
are going to do is remediate some of the equipment and other 
things, like cardboard trays, that is what will be destroyed. 
It is not mail, it is just that type of equipment.
    Senator Cochran. There was some suggestion, too, that it 
was misleading to assure Postal workers that they were going to 
be safer if they wore gloves in handling mail, and this is 
other people, too, who come in contact with equipment and the 
like. But that does not have anything to do with the process by 
which you contract inhalation anthrax illness, which is the 
most serious, is that correct?
    Mr. Potter. That is correct. Again, in terms of what 
happened first, the first case of anthrax in the Postal Service 
was cutaneous anthrax, and again, there, it was a matter of 
somebody had touched, we believe, touched the anthrax and 
contracted the anthrax through their hand.
    We were very careful, by the way, to make sure that we did 
not go out and say masks, in general, were going to protect our 
employees or anybody else--because we found out that the key 
piece of information that you needed to determine what the 
proper mask was was the size of the spore. Once we got that 
information from CDC, we bought the appropriate masks for our 
employees. So throughout this process, we have been learning, 
and every time we learn something, we change our behavior in 
response to what we learn.
    Senator Cochran. In closing, let me just make sure I 
understand what your needs are so we can respond and try to 
help provide you with the support you need to do your job. Are 
you submitting through the process of appropriation or with the 
administration a request for supplemental funding that is 
needed on an emergency basis to take care of some of these 
needs that you have cited?
    Mr. Potter. Yes, Senator, we will, but we want to do our 
homework and make sure that we have a proper estimate of what 
those funds would be.
    Senator Cochran. Well, I think you can be assured that we 
are going to respond in this Committee to recommend and try to 
be an influence to get those funds to you as quickly as 
possible.
    Mr. Potter. Thank you, Senator.
    Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Cochran. I thoroughly 
endorse the statement you have just made and we will obviously 
do that in a bipartisan way.
    Senator Carper has to preside in the Senate at 11 a.m., and 
with the gracious consent of Senators Levin, Cleland, and 
Carnahan, who were supposed to go first, we will call on 
Senator Carper now.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER

    Senator Carper. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and I want to 
thank my colleagues, as well, for graciously yielding.
    Mr. Potter, welcome, and to you and your colleagues, we 
thank you for being here. We thank you for your service.
    I have just been sitting here reflecting on how in the last 
month and a half we in this country have seen our domestic 
airliners converted into a delivery system for lethal weapons 
and used to kill thousands of people. We have seen how our 
Postal Service is being turned into a delivery system for 
lethal weapons, in this case anthrax, to kill innocent people, 
not even the people for whom the anthrax was intended.
    As we try to retrace what happened or did not happen, what 
we could have done better over the last several weeks, one of 
the things I am walking out of here with before I go to preside 
is just the conviction, the strong conviction that we need to 
figure out who is doing this. We need to apprehend them right 
away and we need to make sure that they get punished severely 
for what they have done to our Postal employees and the kind of 
predicament they have put a lot of other people in.
    Early yesterday afternoon, I was back in Delaware and I 
visited the Hares Corner mail distribution center just south of 
Wilmington, which is our major distribution center in 
Wilmington. I had a chance to meet over the lunch hour with a 
lot of the employees in a big public setting and share with 
them a little of what we are doing here and really invited them 
to share with me what concerns they would like for me to 
express to you and to the representatives of the employee 
unions that are here today. I came away very impressed with the 
cooperation that is going on between labor and management at 
that facility and was grateful to see that kind of cooperation.
    Among the concerns that the employees raised were the 
effectiveness of the protective equipment you're supplying. 
People said, I am concerned that some day the money will run 
out for masks or gloves, and several people said to me, we walk 
around here and we gather things on our shoes and our boots and 
then we go home. It would be nice to have disposable boots to 
wear. Several people talked about the ventilation system and 
said it would be wonderful if we could have a ventilation 
system that sucked everything that could be dangerous to us out 
of here and sent it outside where it would not pose a danger to 
the general populace. But I just wanted to share those 
particular concerns that were raised with us yesterday.
    Could you just trace for us the mail process? Someone goes 
to a post office drop box in Trenton, New Jersey, for a letter 
that is addressed to Senator Daschle here in Washington. Just 
trace for us how the mail moves through your system before it 
ends up in his office.
    Mr. Potter. A collector would go to the collection box, 
would put the mail that comes out of that collection box into a 
larger container, a hamper. That hamper is brought to the 
Trenton mail processing center, I think they call it the 
Hamilton Township mail processing center--the names change all 
the time--and it is dumped into a hopper, where it goes through 
a canceling machine that processes that mail at about 30,000 
pieces an hour.
    It then moves to an optical character reader or to a bar 
code sorter, depending on whether or not it is machine-printed 
or not. So in the case of the Daschle letter, it would move to 
a delivery bar code sorter, which is just a big automated piece 
of equipment, sorts mail at about 30,000 pieces an hour. On 
that machine, it would be held out for DC Government mail in a 
zip code range of 202 to 205. That would then be transported to 
Washington, DC, where it would move to a machine that is called 
a government mails machine and it will be sorted on that 
machine to the Senate. From there, it will be put into a tray 
and transported via government mails to the Senate office 
building.
    Senator Carper. In terms of the processing, the actual 
processing of the mail and different pieces of equipment, I 
have had the opportunity to observe the Hares Corner plant 
before, and as you said, they sort a lot of mail in a hurry, 
especially on the bar-coded mail. But as the mail goes through 
these machines, if there were anthrax inside, a very small 
size, if the paper or the envelope were porous, one could see 
how the action of the machines and the movement of the mail 
through those machines could, even if the envelopes were not 
torn, cause something to come out of the envelope.
    I have also seen, and you probably have seen a lot more 
than me, pieces of mail that have been torn as they go through. 
Odd-sized letters, especially, they can be torn or come loose 
in some way or other.
    Mr. Potter. Yes. If I could comment on that, one of the 
things we are looking at, we want to move ahead with the 
sanitizing of mail, but in addition to that, on an interim 
basis, what we are looking at is at spots in that machine where 
mail is pinched, we are looking to create a vacuum to collect 
any dust that comes out of a letter--and you always have paper 
dust when you are around a lot of paper. So we are looking to 
vacuum that dust up as it is generated.
    We are also looking at working with the manufacturer, 
Siemens, to see if we can create a downdraft within that 
machine so that any dust that might be generated is pulled down 
into the body of the machine and is appropriately filtered. 
That is not something that we, until this situation, felt was 
necessary, but now we are a lot smarter and we are moving ahead 
with that, as well as moving ahead with sanitizing equipment.
    Senator Carper. That sounds like a good idea. We have 
appropriated a lot of money to the administration to use and 
the administration has provided financial assistance, some of 
which could be used for providing machinery that hopefully 
would sanitize a portion of the mail, but of the things that we 
have done, what has been particularly helpful? What else can we 
do that would be helpful at this point in time?
    Mr. Potter. Well, again, the appropriation of that money, 
the $40 billion from which we will receive some $175 million 
that was critical to helping us, and the appropriation that we 
talked about earlier. Once we are aware of what our costs are, 
that would be a big help to the Postal Service in terms of 
allowing us to reconfigure our operations so we can confidently 
say that the mail is safe and secure. Those are the two things 
that are very helpful to us.
    Senator Carper. And in terms of what else we could do, did 
you want to add anything else?
    Mr. Potter. Well, again, I think we will call upon you as 
we need you. In my statement, I said that Governor Ridge in his 
new role has been extremely helpful in terms of providing 
coordination. I think we are well down the road to--the 
government is, in my opinion, to being able to respond very 
rapidly to these situations. But one thing I have learned, 
though, is that science is not perfect and every day you learn 
something new.
    Senator Carper. I would like to ask if there is anything 
you would like to share with the folks that are working back in 
Delaware in that Postal facility that I visited yesterday where 
those concerns were expressed?
    Mr. Potter. I would like to thank them for what they are 
doing. I would like them to do what we have asked them to do, 
and that is update their employee information to make sure that 
we have proper addresses, phone numbers, emergency numbers in 
the event that something happens. I would like to strongly 
encourage them to wear masks, gloves, to be on the lookout, to 
be diligent about what they see in the mail, to bring any 
concerns they have to the attention of their managers so that 
we can deal with them.
    And I want to thank them for delivering America's mail and 
keeping America connected. They are on the front line now. We 
are all a little less confident than we were a very short 
period of time ago and I think they need to know that the 
American public is behind them, that the Congress, the 
administration, and Postal managers are doing everything they 
can to make them safe.
    Senator Carper. Well said. Thank you very, very much.
    Mr. Chairman, to my colleagues again who have been very 
gracious in allowing me to go ahead of them, thank you, and I 
will return after the noon hour and look forward to seeing our 
next panel.
    Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Carper. We look forward 
to your return. Senator Collins.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS

    Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Potter, at this oversight hearing, I think we cannot 
say often enough that the tragic deaths and illnesses of the 
Postal workers are the fault of the terrorists. They are not 
the fault of the Postal Service managers. They are not the 
fault of the CDC. They are not the fault of other public health 
experts. They are the fault of the terrorists. I think that is 
important for us to say over and over again.
    All of us benefitting from hindsight wish that different 
decisions had been made. We wish that public health officials 
had advised you to promptly trace the tainted mail's path and 
to undertake rapid testing of workers and of the environment of 
the Postal facilities. But again, we are learning that there is 
so much we just do not know.
    When I hear the description of how mail is handled in 
response to Senator Carper's question, one wishes that public 
health officials had realized how roughly the mail is handled 
and that it would be likely, given the quality of this anthrax, 
that some of the spores would go through the envelopes. But 
that is information that we did not have.
    An expert in anthrax from the State of Maine, Dr. Merle 
Nass, has written to me to advise me that the single most 
important step that we could take now would be to undertake 
accurate, rapid, and widespread environmental testing. She 
further has recommended that the samples be tested in labs that 
are decentralized to avoid overwhelming Federal facilities, and 
I can see Mr. Donahoe is nodding is response to that 
recommendation.
    You have testified that 128 Postal facilities are 
undergoing some sort of environmental testing. Could you tell 
us how they are selected, whether you are able to decentralize 
the lab work that needs to be done in order to get the results 
promptly, and whether you plan additional testing?
    Mr. Potter. We have tested in those areas that have been 
targeted, the tests that you talked about that have been 
completed and scheduled, initially, they were scheduled and 
targeted for those areas where anthrax was found. So that was 
in New York City, in New Jersey, in the Washington, DC area, 
and in Florida.
    Since that time, we have decided that we are going to test 
our entire system, and this past weekend, we were in 30 
facilities around the country and we began that test. We 
started with our larger facilities and we are going to work our 
way down to the point where all of the major nodes in our 
network have been tested, and that is the plan that we have.
    I appreciate, very much appreciate the comment about trying 
to use multiple labs and we have found that we did put too much 
of a demand on individual labs, and so, therefore, we are 
looking at that to try and spread the work around so that we 
can get quicker results.
    As far as environmental testing and air sampling, I'm not 
the expert again, but I do have some concerns about quick 
tests. Again, I do not want to sound like an expert because I 
am absolutely not, but we are talking to someone who had a 
quick test done that was negative, that gave me and others some 
reassurance that our employees were not in harm's way. So I do 
have some concerns about the fact that we do get a lot of false 
negatives there and we are looking at every means possible to 
determine what the appropriate testing is, what is the right 
test that is going to give correct information to us.
    I want to thank, by the way, the American people. I have so 
many folks who have reached out to me offering solutions, 
offering advice, and I know if I have received 20 messages, I 
can just imagine what our Vice President of Engineering, Tom 
Day, received.
    So we are looking at everything, but the advice about the 
spreading out of most of the labs is very sound and we are 
moving in that direction.
    The advice about the quick tests, we are working with the 
experts to determine what is the appropriate test, including 
the EPA. Part of the monies that were provided for us were to 
purchase testing equipment to be used in Postal facilities, and 
once we know what the appropriate equipment is, we intend to 
buy it and use it.
    Senator Collins. Is the Postal Service also looking at the 
possibility of installing biochemical sensors? There is a lot 
of interesting work going on in companies across the United 
States. There is a small firm in Maine that is doing a lot of 
research in developing sensors. Mr. Day, is that one of the 
options you are looking at?
    Mr. Day. Yes, Senator. I have a group that is very 
specifically dealing with biochemical sensors. We are teamed up 
with the Department of Defense. The Joint Program Office for 
Biological Warfare is one group I know of that we are dealing 
with specifically. We are very interested in seeing if there is 
applicable detection technology. There has been a lot of work 
done with it. However, I would caution, we are going to pursue 
it. We think there are some things that could work for us.
    But up until this point in time, the bio threat was more 
towards the military. Bio threat was in large quantities, 
aerosol sprays, that kind of thing. And so our type of threat 
is similar, but not the same. So we are trying to see how we 
can modify the technology to fit our needs.
    Senator Collins. Mr. Potter, I want to follow up on a 
question that Senator Thompson raised. The Postal Service was 
in a precarious financial situation prior to this crisis. are 
you seeing a dropoff in your mail volume because Americans have 
reservations about using the mail right now, because if that is 
happening, that is obviously going to exacerbate the financial 
strains.
    Mr. Potter. We saw a pronounced dropoff in mail volume 
following September 11, and the pronounced dropoff was 
attributable to a lot of our advertiser mail, in particular, 
not being sent. The advertisers felt that the American public 
was just not in the mood to buy. We saw that mail begin to 
bounce back just prior to this anthrax situation.
    It is too early to tell whether or not the American public 
is reacting to the anthrax situation. Some things that I have 
seen suggest that people still have confidence in their mail. 
They are following our advice. Basically, people know what 
comes to their mailbox. They know the difference between a 
magazine and something that might be threatening, or a bill and 
something that might be threatening. So it is too preliminary 
to really give you an accurate answer. We will know more a 
month from now.
    Senator Collins. Finally, I know that the Postal Service is 
making the protection of its workers its top priority and that 
has to be the top priority for all of us. In that regard, I 
have heard public health experts give varying opinions on the 
effectiveness of wearing gloves. Some recommend it, but others 
say that when the gloves are removed, the anthrax spores, if 
they are on the gloves, will be dispersed into the air, making 
it more dangerous than sorting mail without gloves. Has the 
Postal Service reached a determination on whether or not gloves 
are the right tool for your workers?
    Mr. Potter. We believe that gloves provide some protection. 
We are not sure exactly how much. Again, we are not the medical 
experts. We do not pretend to be. When we hand out gloves, we 
also tell people what to do regarding disposal of the gloves. 
We also advise people and continue to advise people that when 
it comes to cutaneous anthrax, the best thing that a Postal 
worker or any other worker could do is to wash their hands, and 
that is just for general health. If you follow general health 
principles of before you eat, wash your hands, if your hands 
are dirty, before you rub your eye, you wash your hands, that 
is helpful with cutaneous anthrax.
    Now, I was told by the CDC that we are not talking about 
just stick your hand under a faucet and take it out. It is to 
use soap. I asked if they needed any antibacterial soap and the 
answer is no. Regular soap, but you should hold your hands 
under there for 20 seconds. If you recite the alphabet, that is 
sufficient. It sounds funny, and it was not meant to be a joke, 
but it is very practical advice to people, and that is the type 
of thing that we are sharing with folks. I did not mean to make 
a joke.
    Senator Collins. My time has expired. Thank you, Mr. 
Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Potter.
    Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Collins. Senator 
Levin.

               OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN

    Senator Levin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to each 
of you. I want to go back to the chronology, because I have 
some questions remaining about it. On October 17, which was 
Wednesday, that is when you learned that the Senate staffers 
had tested positive for exposure, on that day. According to 
your testimony, you then contacted the Centers for Disease 
Control to determine if testing was necessary for employees at 
the Brentwood center. According to your testimony, you were 
advised that because the Senate letter was sealed, that 
employees were not at risk and no action was necessary. When 
you say you were advised, was that by the Centers for Disease 
Control on October 17?
    Mr. Potter. I believe so.
    Senator Levin. The day before, however, at a post office in 
Boca Raton, there was anthrax found in a processing area on 
October 16.
    Mr. Potter. Right.
    Senator Levin. That was not because the letter was opened. 
There was--presumably, the letter was not opened at the 
processing center, and so the question that I have is whether, 
when the CDC told you on October 17 not to worry because the 
mail was unopened, the day before, they had announced that 
anthrax had been found in Boca Raton, and that they, as a 
precaution, as they put it, were closing the post office down 
there for the day while it was being cleaned. Did you ask them, 
or did they explain to you on October 17 how it was possible 
for anthrax to be found in a Boca Raton Post Office without the 
envelope being opened down there the day before?
    Mr. Potter. What I have come to know is that anthrax is 
common throughout the United States and there was a trace of 
anthrax found in Boca Raton. There was no linkage between that 
anthrax and what happened at AMI.
    What I am told that I should expect as we start to test our 
facilities, that we are going to find some anthrax throughout 
our system, not because it is associated with the acts of 
moving anthrax through the mail, but we may just find some 
naturally existing anthrax. There was no definitive way of 
determining where that anthrax in Boca Raton came from. It was 
my understanding that it was on the floor. It could have easily 
been brought in by somebody's shoe.
    And in terms of shutting it down, what we did was we closed 
it down at the end of the day because that is when we were 
advised. By the next morning, that facility was open because 
the area where it was found had been remediated.
    Senator Levin. As of last Friday, I believe there were 23 
Postal Service employees in the Washington-Baltimore area that 
were hospitalized for suspicious symptoms.
    Mr. Potter. Yes, sir.
    Senator Levin. Do we know what the outcome of those tests 
are for those 23?
    Mr. Potter. We have three cases of inhalation anthrax out 
of those 23. Some tests are still pending.
    Senator Levin. And are there any cutaneous----
    Mr. Potter. Excuse me. I am sorry. There were four cases of 
inhalation anthrax in Washington, DC.
    Senator Levin. Out of those 23 that were still in the 
hospital on Friday? Those are the ones I am referring to.
    Mr. Potter. OK. There were two cases of inhalation anthrax 
that were confirmed. The others, while they tested negative, 
more tests are still pending.
    Senator Levin. And you do not know how many of those have 
been tested negative and how many are pending the division?
    Mr. Potter. I certainly can get that for you, but I would 
not venture a guess off the top of my head.
    Senator Levin. OK. And then you have also tested all 36 
stations and branches that receive mail from Brentwood, I 
believe, and if you can tell us what the results are on those 
stations and branches.
    Mr. Potter. We had two of those 36 where we had a finding 
of anthrax. In one case, it was isolated to a bin for 
government mail. That station was closed and remediation is 
underway and I believe we might be opening it today. And then 
we had another case that we found at another facility, working 
with the Army Corps of Engineers. It was a trace of anthrax, 
and overnight, we cleaned that facility. We did not allow 
employees into that facility once we found out and the 
employees that reported today were held out of that building 
until the Corps of Engineers advised us that the building was 
safe.
    Senator Levin. As to the equipment in Lima, Ohio, what 
percentage of the Nation's mail is going to be going through 
that particular operation? Is that just Washington mail or is 
that----
    Mr. Potter. That mail is going to be, in terms of 
percentage, it is probably less than one-tenth of one percent, 
a very small percentage of the mail.
    Senator Levin. And is it your goal in trying to purchase 
additional sanitizing equipment that all of the Nation's mail 
will go through equipment someday such as that, or what is the 
goal?
    Mr. Potter. All the mail where the public has open access 
to our facilities would go through a sanitizing process. We do 
have manufacturing processes, like some of our major printers 
who do things such as magazines, we are going to go into their 
operations and make sure that they are safe and secure and that 
there is necessary security there. We do not need to sanitize 
all the mail, just that mail which anybody could have access 
to.
    Senator Levin. In other words, where it is deposited in a 
public place.
    Mr. Potter. Exactly.
    Senator Levin. Then you would want all mail----
    Mr. Potter. A collection box on a street corner, and a 
collection box maybe in a large office building where there is 
open and free access.
    Senator Levin. Are you considering a Postal rate increase 
to pay for some of your losses here?
    Mr. Potter. Well, we have a Postal rate filing that was 
filed in September, and at this point in time, we are going to 
look to find other means of remediating or paying for some of 
the steps that we have to take for the mail. Certainly, as I 
said earlier, we are looking for appropriations. We do not feel 
that the rate payer should have to bear the burden of the 
protection from the terrorists that is required.
    Senator Levin. So you are not contemplating any request for 
a Postal rate increase because of the cost of protecting the 
mail that results from these attacks?
    Mr. Potter. At the current time, no.
    Senator Levin. Is it under consideration?
    Mr. Potter. It will be if we do not have another source of 
funds, yes.
    Senator Levin. Can you tell us whether or not you are 
considering a mechanism to cancel mail at an earlier point or 
to identify a source prior to a large facility, such as the New 
Jersey facility, because when you trace back mail, you can only 
trace it back to that central point and not to the smaller 
points, each individual post office where it may have been 
deposited. Are you considering ways of trying to stamp mail or 
cancel mail at an earlier point so that you can identify the 
source at an earlier point?
    Mr. Potter. There is consideration for identifying mail as 
it moves through the system, but it is part of our 
investigation. Again, I do not want to advise people how to 
circumvent that. Once we have the sanitizing process in place, 
it will be irrelevant because the mail will be safe after it 
goes through that process.
    Senator Levin. At least we hope it is.
    Mr. Potter. We are working with all the experts that we 
possibly can find to make sure, and we will test these systems 
to assure that they work as expected.
    Senator Levin. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Potter. Thank you, Senator.
    Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Levin. Senator 
Bennett, you are next.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BENNETT

    Senator Bennett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Potter, I appreciate your testimony here today and the 
diligence that you have shown as you have moved through terra 
incognita and dealt with challenges that you undoubtedly had no 
idea you were going to face when you took this assignment.
    I want to change the whole subject for just a minute 
because I think my colleagues have pursued the time line and 
the question of security and safety and so on for your 
employees sufficiently well that I would just be re-raking the 
same leaves if I went back in that direction.
    We are in a war and it is a different kind of war than we 
have ever fought before. We have always thought of war as 
something that was conducted by the armed forces with the rest 
of us as the homefront, providing support, equipment, materiel, 
etc., for the war fighter. Indeed, if you talk to people in the 
military, that is a term they use, the war fighter, and they 
talk about the tail, the logistics tail that comes along behind 
the war fighter.
    We have to break out of that mentality in this kind of war 
and recognize, as Senator Carper talked about, that our airline 
system, which is an essential part of our whole economic 
structure, has been turned into a delivery system for weapons, 
and the mail has been turned into a delivery system for those 
who are our opponents in this war.
    Now, I understand exactly why the media wants to know how 
the mails work and why you want to be responsive to the media, 
and what I am about to say is not in any sense a criticism of 
what has been done, but it is something I think all of us need 
to start thinking about.
    As the anthrax story has unfolded, the Federal Government, 
with your full cooperation, has identified for a potential 
enemy all of the key facilities for processing mail for the 
Federal Government. We have given them a blueprint of where the 
next attack should come, and it has never occurred to us to 
think in terms of military information security when we are 
talking about private facilities that everybody can walk into 
and walk out of.
    Now, we are told that the hijackers of the airplanes did 
dry runs. There have been stories in the paper about this, 
people who have been identified as being on the airplanes 
literally taking notes. Where is the flight attendant at this 
time in the takeoff? What is the situation? Where are things 
going? That they took these flights in advance of the time they 
decided they were going to hijack them. Now, that is not 
illegal, but it is a demonstration of the new world in which we 
are living.
    If I were somebody who wanted to cripple the Postal 
Service, I would be forced to go into post offices and take 
notes and look around and try to figure out how things are 
going on. But now, all I need to do is tune in CNN and I can 
have, in the name of full disclosure of what is going on, a 
complete analysis of the entire system so that I can sit in my 
cave somewhere--probably not Afghanistan, frankly, it will 
probably be in Hamburg or London or maybe even someplace in the 
United States, and say, oh, now I know exactly where to attack 
in order to use this new paradigm, where our critical 
infrastructure and our economy becomes a delivery system for 
terror.
    So all I am suggesting to you, again, without any criticism 
of what has been done in the past because it requires a whole 
new set of thinking that we are not used to, from now on, you, 
this Committee, the Federal Government, everybody has to think 
entirely differently about the kind of information we give out.
    If I were a terrorist, and I am about to break my own rule 
here and speculate, but if I were a terrorist, the next place I 
would go would be to the Internet and E-mail because that is 
the way people are getting around their fear of communicating 
through the Postal Service. And so I want to be very careful as 
to how much information I give out as I look at this particular 
issue that a terrorist might be able to use.
    They might be able to say, oh, Senator Bennett just gave a 
speech to CSIS in which he outlined our vulnerabilities on the 
Internet and I am going to take notes so that I know how to 
exploit those vulnerabilities. I am going to change some of the 
things I say as I talk about critical infrastructure protection 
as it begins to dawn on me just what kind of a new enemy we are 
facing.
    So I simply wanted to take this opportunity to share that 
view with you, underscoring for the third time that I am not 
being critical of the information you have given out and that 
the Federal Government in settings like this has asked you for, 
but to use this hearing to alert all of us to the fact that we 
live in an entirely new, entirely different kind of combat 
situation than we have ever thought about before. And you in 
your position suddenly find yourself not part of the tail but 
right on the front lines in a war situation that no one has 
ever faced or understood.
    If I can close with an historical note, Benjamin Franklin 
is credited as the founder of the U.S. Postal Service. Benjamin 
Franklin was the Deputy Postmaster or Co-Postmaster for 
Philadelphia and later became almost all of New England that he 
had responsibility for. One of the reasons the British were 
after Benjamin Franklin is that they realized that the way the 
Revolutionary War spread throughout the colonies was through 
the network of the Postal Service. It was a critical 
communication system in those days that made it possible for 
the Continentals to maintain and mount their opposition to the 
British Regulars. And so they went after Franklin and the 
Postal Service in a recognition of how important that was in 
terms of the war effort. Now, that is 250 years ago, but it is 
being recycled now in a deadly new way that we Americans need 
to pay attention to.
    So I do not have any questions, Mr. Chairman, but I thought 
I would share that view while our witnesses are here.
    Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Bennett.
    Senator Cleland.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CLELAND

    Senator Cleland. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and 
gentlemen, thank you for joining us.
    Mr. Potter, I think you can be very proud today of your 
800,000 Postal Service workers and colleagues. They have 
withstood the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and they 
are still out there doing their job, a great testimony to them 
and to the leadership of the Postal Service and I commend you 
for that. You have suffered tremendous adversity, and yet you 
are coming back with great strength and stamina and we 
appreciate that very much.
    A former member of this body, Senator Sam Nunn, played an 
interesting role last June in a series of events called ``Dark 
Winter'' in which it was a mock exercise put on by Johns 
Hopkins about what this country would do, how it would react to 
a biological attack. In this case, it was not anthrax, it was 
another kind of threat, smallpox. As a matter of fact, Senator 
Nunn testified before our Armed Services Committee, of which I 
am a member, and we heard of some of the lessons of that 
exercise.
    One of the things I remember that Senator Nunn said was 
that a few days into the exercise--he acted as President and he 
had his cabinet and so forth--that a few days into the 
exercise, he got very frustrated, he said, with bureaucracy. 
And a couple of things that he left us with in terms of lessons 
learned from that exercise were, one, the bureaucracy elements 
did not talk to one another, and two, a powerful need to 
communicate with the American people.
    We have gone through this anthrax attack and I think we 
have picked up on the need to do both of those things. First, 
the bureaucracies have to communicate with one another and 
coordinate with one another. We need Governor Ridge to step in 
and do a great job of coordination. Second, we need to 
communicate to the American people.
    I think, in many ways, the Postal Service, and particularly 
the Postal workers at Brentwood, fell through the bureaucratic 
crack early on. The reason I say that is this: When we first 
got into the anthrax issue, it was in Florida. It was basically 
cutaneous. How did we even know it was anthrax?
    We are very fortunate that there was a physician on the 
ward there that thought that he might try to see if this might 
be that, since it was not a common illness in America. He 
contacted the Florida State Health Department in Jacksonville 
and was immediately in the public health channel. They 
contacted the CDC in Atlanta and the person that contacted the 
CDC in Atlanta had just gone through a CDC class on anthrax. So 
about 3:30 one morning, it was confirmed as an anthrax case. 
That is one reason we got right on top of it. The CDC was 
called in early on. My understanding is that they were called 
in also on the New York case, the Tom Brokaw case.
    What happened with the anthrax case here in Washington? 
Well, it seems it was handled in a different way through a 
whole set of bureaucracies that were different than the public 
health bureaucracy. I understand that in your public testimony, 
your full testimony, you say the different focuses of various 
law enforcement and health organizations occasionally resulted 
in parties speaking different languages, and absent an 
established protocol, lines of authority could occasionally be 
unclear. I think that is an understatement in terms of what 
happened.
    What happened here was that letter went through Brentwood 
into Senator Daschle's office. We were told in the Senate 
that--even the term ``garden variety'' was used, that it was 
not weapons grade, that it was not all that dangerous, so to 
speak. A week later, that story changed even for us, much less 
you out there and your Postal workers on the front line.
    But what happened here? It went to the Capitol Police, who 
took it to the FBI, who did not send it to the CDC, which was 
on top of the case. They sent it to Fort Detrick, Maryland, to 
a biological warfare center that is trained to teach soldiers 
how to deal with biological warfare in Kuwait, not how to deal 
with a public health emergency here. So we got that evidence 
into another whole channel. It was an FBI-DOD channel, not the 
public health channel where the CDC was most familiar and most 
expert.
    So what happened? Ultimately, that Fort Detrick, Maryland, 
facility communicated with the FBI but not necessarily with the 
CDC. Now we know that there has been through the years 
competition for resources and so forth between the biological 
warfare center at Fort Detrick, Maryland, run by the Army and 
the CDC, run by the HHS in Atlanta. So there was, like, subtle 
competition. But in effect, the right hand did not know what 
the left hand was doing.
    So when you called for the Brentwood analysis from the CDC, 
they came up. The only contact they had with anthrax and the 
information was the variety that landed in Florida and the 
variety that landed in Tom Brokaw's office. The problem was, 
when Senator Daschle's office had a much higher level of 
quality of anthrax and it was more lethal, it was more 
aerosoluble, so to speak, and smaller in size in terms of 
spores. Therefore, your employees were at risk. The CDC did not 
have that information until later.
    The problem is, I think we need one central clearinghouse 
in this whole effort to defend ourselves against germ warfare. 
We need a totally coordinated effort here. That is one of the 
things I get out of your experience and out of the experience 
of the Nation.
    Let me just ask you, do you think that the authority exists 
in Governor Tom Ridge's office to go ahead and instill this 
sense of discipline in defending our homeland and have a 
central clearinghouse for these kind of public health issues 
rather than it going off to this agency and that agency and 
people like yourself not really knowing who to believe?
    Mr. Potter. I personally believe that Governor Ridge can 
get that accomplished. The response from Governor Ridge's 
office to the Postal Service has been nothing short of 
phenomenal. When we did run into situations, we spoke to him 
and asked for some clear direction on things. I have not had 
anybody fail to cooperate with the Postal Service. A lot of 
what you described is news to me. As you say, I cannot even 
comment on it.
    But I can tell you this. I have never picked up the phone 
to ask for help from anybody in the administration and not 
received it. I did not always know who to ask, but Governor 
Ridge has helped clarify that. I did not understand, and still 
to this day I am not totally clear on how the Public Health 
Administrations work around the country, and in the health 
arena, there are a lot of opinions on how to approach 
anything--the common flu--somebody gets prescribed different 
medications.
    So we are learning as we go here. But I think the Federal 
Government is lined up now. Governor Ridge is providing the 
type of coordination and direction that you speak of and I 
think, in terms of me, I am satisfied that we are getting the 
level of cooperation that I would expect.
    Senator Cleland. If we had another outbreak of anthrax in 
the Postal Service around America, who would you ask? What 
would you do? Would you go to Tom Ridge? Would you go 
immediately to the CDC? Or would you just depend on Tom Ridge 
to guide you to the best experts?
    Mr. Potter. If I knew that we had an outbreak of anthrax, I 
would go to Secretary Thompson at Health and Human Services and 
seek his advice. He has the medical experts that can help us 
with that. He has the prophylactics, the drugs, prepositioned 
and can move them into the spots around the country where we 
might need them. He has the resources to bring on board to 
provide the medical screening that is necessary.
    When we set up in New York and in Washington, DC, to have 
thousands of people receive medication, it was the resources 
that we got from HHS. They provided the doctors. They provided 
the screeners. And working jointly with all of the entities 
that report to Secretary Thompson, they provided the resources 
that we needed. That is not to say that initially there was not 
a little bit of a learning curve there, but I think certainly 
this has galvanized everybody in terms of being prepared to 
respond.
    Senator Cleland. Thank you very much, and thank you for 
your response and thank you for your testimony.
    Mr. Potter. Thank you.
    Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Cleland. I think you 
know, tomorrow, we have folks here from CDC and, hopefully, 
from the military, as well, so we can have some good cross-
exchange on exactly the points you are making.
    Senator Voinovich.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH

    Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    First of all, I would like to thank you, Mr. Potter, for 
your service to our country and the sacrifice of your family. I 
would like to thank the many Postal workers that we have 
throughout the United States whose families are worried about 
them, who are coming to work every day to take care of the mail 
for the citizens of our great country, so thank you very, very 
much.
    Mr. Potter. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Voinovich. The day after we had the attack on 
September 11, I went to mass over at St. Joseph's and Father 
Hemerick said that our lives have changed forever, and our 
lives certainly have changed in this country forever. I see 
that as I walk around the Capitol and see the barricades being 
put up and the permanent blocks and so forth to secure our 
security here on the Hill.
    People at home are really worried. They have a cloud of 
fear hanging over them, and I think it is our obligation, all 
of us, to do what we can to lessen that fear, to lessen that 
anxiety. I have been spending a lot of time just going around 
talking to people. People are complaining that they cannot 
sleep at night. Mothers are worried about their kids. We have 
got to try to see what we can do to alleviate that. Those who 
have strong faith, I suggest that they ought to let go and let 
God--I think God has a plan.
    But when you think about what you are doing, it has an 
enormous impact on people's confidence in this country. Just as 
airline security has had an impact on how we feel about 
ourselves and about security in this country, the Postal 
Service has certainly had a large impact on their lives because 
it is something that touches them each day.
    I think we ought to admit that we were not prepared for 
bioterrorism. I am not here to criticize you but to help you. 
We have not done a very good job in the Senate, either. The day 
it happened in Senator Daschle's office, we were told not to 
worry about it. It is not a problem. It is garden variety. 
Nobody needs to get the nasal swab. The next day, we read in 
the paper that it is a higher level of anthrax, that everybody 
ought to get their swabs. There was a lot of disorientation and 
miscommunication and a lot of panic. So you were confronted to 
a large degree with the same kind of problems that we had.
    I think we have to also admit that in terms of physical 
terrorism, we are a lot better prepared. I think that they did 
a marvelous job up in New York and in Washington. Our local 
government officials were there on the spot. Our search and 
rescue teams were there. They had practiced. They were ready. 
They got the job done. I think they did a pretty good job in 
Florida, too, in terms of responding to that situation that 
they had there.
    I think the first thing that I am concerned about is taking 
care of the families of the people who have lost their lives, 
and I am going to ask you a series of questions. I will try to 
make them brief, but what are we doing about those families to 
make them take care of their physical needs? They are grieving 
for their loved ones that they have lost. What is the Postal 
Service doing to take care of them?
    Mr. Potter. Senator, from the outset, we have counselors 
there with them. We set up, obviously, services for those 
people. We are advising the families and making sure they get 
the benefits due them. The Postal Service took care of the 
funeral arrangements and the Postal Service was preparing a 
memorial service at the request of those families later this 
week or earlier next week. We are not going to abandon those 
employees' families. We are staying very close to those 
families and we are doing what we can to help with a very, very 
difficult transition for those families.
    Senator Voinovich. I can say this, that the way you treat 
them will have a lot to do with the rest of the Postal workers 
and how they feel about the Postal Service, and I am very 
impressed with what you are putting in place to try and restore 
their confidence in going to work. I think it is really 
important for you to understand that if they feel confident and 
safe in their workplace and they are taken care of, then the 
general public is going to feel much more comfortable about 
their particular situation and their mail delivery.
    The other issue that is one that has been on my mind, 
because I am concerned about the human capital crisis. How many 
people in your Postal Service are eligible for retirement? Are 
you concerned at all about that?
    Mr. Potter. I am certainly concerned about the fact that we 
have--I do not know the exact number, but we have better than 
50 percent of our employees in that category, that are either 
eligible or will be eligible in very short order for 
retirement. So that is a concern of mine.
    One of the things that we are doing is attempting to 
recruit people with the appropriate degrees and move them into 
the chain so that they can move up the management ranks. In 
1992, we had a program called the Management Intern Program 
that was designed to do that, and it had been in place prior to 
1992. In 1992, we stopped that. We also stopped an engineering 
program.
    Senator Voinovich. Are you covered by Title V of the Civil 
Service Code or do you have a separate hiring and firing 
program?
    Mr. Potter. We have a separate program, but we do have the 
caps, compensation caps applied to the Federal Government.
    Senator Voinovich. So you are worried about your personnel 
problem?
    Mr. Potter. Right. We are worried about our ability to 
recruit and we are worried about the fact that for the last 9 
years, we have not aggressively sought out people who have the 
same skills that we need to replace some of the senior people 
that we have.
    Senator Voinovich. I understand that you are not ready yet 
to come to us with a comprehensive plan or at least a cost for 
a comprehensive plan to secure the Postal Service, is that 
right?
    Mr. Potter. We have estimates, but I would hesitate to give 
you an exact number for fear of being too high or too low. I 
can tell you that for certain it will be several billion 
dollars.
    Senator Voinovich. Another thing that concerns me, Mr. 
Chairman, is that we have this problem and we are going to move 
forward and come up with a comprehensive plan to secure the 
mail. But how reoccurring is this situation going to be in this 
country? What kind of anthrax is it? How available is it to the 
common, ordinary person? If our intelligence and law 
enforcement people go out and solve the previous cases, is 
there any chance at all that we can eliminate the threat?
    You can spend billions of dollars to secure the Post Office 
and put in new technologies, but if we are successful in terms 
of our law enforcement and intelligence and we eliminate the 
threat, then this money has been spent unnecessarily. You have 
got to look at it from a cost/benefit point of view. Have you 
spoken to the people in the FBI and other places to really get 
a handle on just how significant this threat is and whether it 
will continue?
    Mr. Potter. Our evaluation has been that a vulnerability in 
our system has been identified. What we are looking to do is 
shore up that vulnerability. If one were to capture and arrest 
one or multiple people who are perpetrating this heinous act on 
America today, that does not preclude the fact that somebody a 
year from now, 6 months from now, would not choose to take 
advantage of that vulnerability. Our goal is to look at all our 
procedures and try and eliminate that vulnerability as best we 
can.
    Senator Voinovich. Mr. Chairman, I would hope that in our 
hearings, we could get some information back from the law 
enforcement people about just how often they believe that this 
threat will occur. Is there any way that we can stamp it out so 
that we do not have this threat hanging over our heads?
    The last thing I want to ask you is an Ohio question. By 
the way, it is not Lima (lee-ma), it is Lima (lie-ma), Ohio.
    Mr. Potter. I am from the Bronx. I do not know that place. 
[Laughter.]
    Senator Voinovich. But there has been a lot of talk in our 
papers about the potentially dangerous shipment of mail coming 
to Ohio, and I would like for you to comment about how 
dangerous that shipment is.
    Mr. Day. Senator, I have responsibility for that. Members 
of my staff are dealing with it. We are being overly, extremely 
cautious with the shipment of that product to that facility. We 
are using an outside firm. We have contracted for a firm to bag 
all of that mail that we send up there. There are no guidelines 
necessarily in place for how you would transport anthrax, but 
we use the highest level of hazardous material handling process 
for biohazards. So we are following all of those procedures, 
working with the EPA to get it properly prepared to transport 
it to Ohio. It is escorted. The Postal Inspection Service has 
helped us with that.
    Senator Voinovich. I guess what I am saying is that there 
is a perception today that anthrax is like moving nuclear spent 
fuel or hydrochloric acid. Put it on that level for me.
    Mr. Day. Senator, we are being, again, overly cautious. The 
risk that there is actually anthrax in those vehicles is 
minimal, but we are going to treat it as though there is. We 
are overly cautious. There is not a risk that we see. Again, it 
is a level of caution so that when it is irradiated, any 
possibility, and it is minimal, that it would be irradiated and 
eliminated.
    Senator Voinovich. OK. So if the truck tipped over and all 
the mail went all over the highway or whatever, there is----
    Mr. Day. Senator, just as an example, it got local coverage 
in Ohio. Unfortunately, one of the bags opened. A little bit of 
mail spilled out. We filed all the protocols. We tested inside 
and outside the vehicle, decontaminated the vehicle, rebagged 
everything. Nothing was found. So this is a minimal risk.
    Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
    Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Voinovich. Senator 
Carnahan.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARNAHAN

    Senator Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Clearly, there is a new group of heroes in America today 
and they are the working men and women of this country, the 
Postal workers, the police, the firemen, and those who are on 
the front line in this battle against bioterrorism against our 
homeland today. I want to extend my sympathy to the families of 
those who died in the line of duty. They died in the 
performance of public service and we should all be indebted to 
them.
    We remember them all the more because they were among the 
first to fall in this newest battle to preserve freedom, and we 
pledge that we will do all the more to make it safe to handle 
and deliver and to receive mail in this country. But I believe 
it is a shared responsibility of the Congress, of the 
administration, and of the Postal Service to put into place 
safeguards that will make it possible for us to be able to 
receive our mail and feel safe and good about it.
    We have heard a lot today about the test site and about the 
decontamination effort. I was wondering if you would take just 
a minute to tell us something about the testing. Is it a random 
testing? Is it something that covers every square inch of the 
area that is defined? And then how does the decontamination 
process work? Could you just tell us a little bit about that?
    Mr. Potter. I am going to let Pat Donahoe handle that.
    Mr. Donahoe. Senator, first, let us cover the testing. 
There have been two types of testing we have done. One is in 
the areas where we were suspicious, as Postmaster General 
Potter mentioned, in New York, and in Washington. The CDC and 
the FBI had done the testing in Trenton and down in Florida.
    The rest of the testing we are doing, the additional 200 
facilities, is a precautionary effort. What we are doing is we 
are going out, as Postmaster General Potter said, and 
identifying downstream operations like we had in Washington, 
DC, downstream operations like we had in Trenton, and then a 
random sampling nationally of our largest facilities to see if 
anything is out there and to get a baseline.
    From a remediation perspective, we are working very closely 
with the Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA, and the local public 
health people to really assess what is there. What we are 
seeing is different in every case. What we have seen in Trenton 
and what we have seen in Washington is a higher level than what 
we have seen in New York and Florida. And once it is 
established what is there, the local public health and the EPA 
people have been telling us, these are the exact steps that you 
need to remediate. If we find anything anywhere else in the 
country, we will follow that same protocol. Our whole goal here 
is to assess the system and then make sure it is safe for the 
employees and the general public.
    Senator Carnahan. Thank you. I have one other question. Is 
there any particular action that the Postal Service is taking 
to ensure the safety of the rural letter carriers who may not 
have the same access to many of the resources that the Postal 
workers have in the urban areas?
    Mr. Potter. All employees have been provided masks, gloves, 
have been provided the same training, have gotten the postcard 
from my office describing what they should do. The rural 
carriers are part of the task force. They are at every meeting. 
They are not being treated separately or differently from any 
other Postal employee.
    Senator Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Carnahan. Senator 
Durbin.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN

    Senator Durbin. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    I would like to follow up on what Senator Carnahan said by 
way of her introduction. I just hope for a moment that the 
critics of public employees and public employee unions are 
keeping score as they reflect on the Postal workers, the police 
officers, and the fire fighters who have ended up on the front 
line of our war against terrorism since September 11. Many have 
given their lives, and Postal workers Thomas Morris and Joseph 
Curseen served America and their families deserve our sympathy 
and gratitude for their sacrifice and I thank you for being 
here, Mr. Postmaster, as well as those on the panel.
    Last Friday, I went to the Chicago facility. Danny Jackson, 
your Vice President for the Great Lakes Region, came down. We 
met with not only the postmaster, but all of the labor unions 
and a group of employees in the facility and around the Chica