The Virginia Anthrax Bungle

Officials Say Fairfax Was Out of Loop

As Fairfax County emergency crews converged on a Department of Defense mailroom in Baileys Crossroads on Monday afternoon, county officials learned for the first time about a biohazard alert at a Pentagon mailroom -- four hours earlier.

Doug Bass, the Fairfax emergency management coordinator, said he was contacted by his counterpart from Arlington County government, not by the Department of Defense. "Until then, no one had connected Fairfax with Arlington," Bass said yesterday.

Pentagon officials said they have found no connection between the anthrax scare in Arlington and the alert four miles away in Fairfax, where sensors detected a suspicious biological substance, calling the two incidents an apparent coincidence. After tests came back positive for anthrax, officials said they followed their standard response plan in alerting emergency officials in Arlington, who then told Fairfax.

But angry Fairfax officials raised questions yesterday about why the Pentagon had not alerted them and others in the region to a potential biological threat. Those concerns were echoed by others in government at levels as high as the White House.

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