Hoaxes and Scares Thrive Amid Fear

An out-of-work Norwalk man phones in four bomb threats to a Long Beach building in two weeks. Aboard a passenger jet bound for Chicago, a mentally unstable man rushes the cockpit. An ordinary pipe seen in a Phoenix street brings out a weary bomb squad besieged by a 600% increase in scares in the weeks after Sept. 11.

The Los Angeles Police Department says it has responded to twice the usual number of possible bomb scares in the last month, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reports a fivefold increase.

Across the country, a phony warning about a nonexistent disease virus placed in blue envelopes spreads with exponential haste from one e-mail list to another, further alarming the unnerved.

Of the many ways in which Americans have responded to last month’s terrorist attacks, perhaps none is more puzzling--or troubling--than the outbreak of hoaxes and opportunism. Despite evidence of remarkable unity nationwide and an enormous outpouring of aid, an unusual number of people have nonetheless grabbed the opportunity for attention by trying to frighten an anxious public with various threats.

“In the current climate, they can be more certain than ever that what they do will make its mark and get attention,” said Stanton Samenow, a clinical psychologist in Alexandria, Va., and author of the 1984 textbook, “Inside the Criminal Mind.”

Though it is conceivable that some bogus threats have been made by actual terrorists, authorities say the perpetrators are more likely pranksters and mentally unstable individuals.

Authorities Erring on the Side of Caution

From bogus anthrax and bomb warnings to hot rumors of new terrorist targets, false alarms have increased sharply after the terrorist attacks. They often have had extra potency because nerves are already frazzled. And law enforcement agencies, on the defensive since the terrorists infiltrated, have vowed to respond to every anomaly and whisper.

“Bomb threats are something that major cities live with all the time,” Phoenix Police Sgt. Randy Force said. Now, though, “everybody seems to be taking them more seriously. . . . Things that would have been unthinkable are now sadly being presumed to be possible.”

In response, authorities are erring on the side of caution, as happened in Washington, D.C., recently when transit police tangled with a 23-year-old who jumped a turnstile and then sprayed a fluid on police and fired a gun.

The subway system was shut down for six hours as a military lab tested the spray bottle for biological or chemical threats. Tests found that the bottle contained cleaning fluid. The suspect, Kenneth Ranger Jr., 23, is in custody, facing multiple charges, including attempted murder of a police officer, and a possible psychiatric evaluation.

Even as the government reacts to the scares, officials have contributed to the unsettled atmosphere. Last week, the FBI issued a somewhat bewildering two-sentence warning that “certain information” led authorities to believe “there may be additional terrorist attacks within the United States . . . over the next several days.”

Meanwhile, unnerved citizens add to the unsettled mood by reporting suspicious packages and strangers.

In Los Angeles, the sharp rise in bomb scares is due mainly to citizen reports of suspicious packages, not one of which contained an explosive. Still, police continue to urge citizens to report their suspicions. Law enforcement officials say they have not been overburdened by the scares.

Los Angeles Sheriff’s Capt. Ray Leyva said deputies have been trained to search buildings and spot hoaxes before dispatching bomb specialists to a scene, which cuts down on wasted resources. Likewise, a local FBI official said that after a rash of anthrax scares in Los Angeles in 1998, agents have learned to assess threats better and are less likely to overreact.

Like looting after a riot, bogus threats commonly break out after a real disaster.

“It’s a fairly understandable pattern,” said Case Western Reserve University psychologist Roy Baumeister, author of a 1997 book, “Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty.” The chaos of Sept. 11, Baumeister said, “planted the idea and created the opportunity” for some people with antisocial leanings to cause trouble and appear to affect events.

“It’s an antisocial way of getting attention by a person who on some level feels they’re not worth much,” said Carolyn Saarni, a developmental psychologist and counseling professor at Sonoma State University.

Saarni and others describe the perpetrators of bogus threats as misfits who feel so powerless, worthless or ignored that the quick, excited responses to the scares are oddly pleasurable and even validating.

“These are people who find excitement in every phase of making the threat,” Samenow said. “They know right from wrong, but they shut that off because this is what they want to do.”

Researchers said they were not aware of comprehensive studies on people who make bomb threats or other hoaxes. But such behavior is consistent with a syndrome called antisocial personality disorder, which is marked by irresponsible, exploitative and guiltless acting out, psychologists say.

Adults found to engage in disruptive antisocial acts usually betrayed a similar tendency before age 15, researchers say. Signs of the problem in children, sometimes known as conduct disorder, include unusual fighting, hurting animals and repeatedly pulling the school fire alarm.

In one authoritative estimate, 2% to 4% of men and 0.5% to 1% of women in the general population have an antisocial disorder. It appears to be equally prevalent in different racial and ethnic groups, but poor, less educated people are more likely to have it. Rates are much higher among prison inmates and homeless people. About two-thirds of antisocial people have an alcohol or drug addiction.

Beginning the day of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, unemployed Norwalk resident Robert Mayo allegedly made four calls to a Long Beach office high-rise. During one call, police said, Mayo told a building manager: “You never learn. Look what happened in New York.”

Police arrested Mayo after tracing calls to the house where he lives with his father and say he admitted making the threats, court records show. Police said Mayo made the bomb threats so a female friend who worked in the building could get the day off. He faces four counts of making bomb threats by telephone and a maximum 20-year prison sentence.

After Sept. 11, experts say, the heightened vigilance and anxiety practically ensured that all threats and bogus warnings would increase. Typical is an e-mail circulating in recent weeks warning people of a dangerous disease virus contained in a blue envelope purportedly from the “Klingerman foundation.”

No record of such an organization exists, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the e-mail is a hoax. The health agency urged people who received the electronic missive to “not forward it to others.” The CDC debunks eight other health hoaxes, detailed on its Web site, https://www.cdc.gov/hoax_rumors.htm, that appear to have nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks or the U.S. bombing of targets in Afghanistan.

Concern about germ warfare has run so high after identified anthrax cases in Florida and New York City that bizarre letters and litter have caused alarm. In Tucson, a powder-coated envelope handled by an employee of KGUN-TV prompted authorities Wednesday to put 13 people through “decontamination” showers and turn over their clothing for analysis.

The envelope contained a nonthreatening letter from an inmate at the Pima County Jail. Tests showed the powder wasn’t toxic, and it wasn’t clear that the inmate put it in the envelope on purpose, Tucson Police Sgt. Marco Borboa said.

Hoaxes often come in waves, fed by copycats emboldened by news accounts of “successful” scares. The Los Angeles area was struck by several bogus anthrax threats in 1998.

“After the first couple hit, and TV was showing the guys in the bubble suits and people quarantined on the sidewalks, we started getting three or four a day,” said Stephen K. Moore, the FBI agent who investigated the incidents.

Anthrax reports were called in to schools, stores, a nightclub and government buildings. The false threats overloaded the emergency response system, Moore said.

“It got out of hand, to a point that our [hazardous materials] teams weren’t capable of full responses,” he said.

A scare at the Woodland Hills courthouse was set off by Harvey Spelkin, a Calabasas accountant trying to avoid a court appearance. Spelkin was convicted in 1999. He was sentenced to a day in jail, five years’ probation and ordered to pay more than $600,000 in restitution.

A conviction on charges of threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction can carry a life sentence under a law enacted after the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center.

Authorities received no more anthrax threats after Spelkin was arrested. “When the television news showed one guy going to jail, it put some sense into the people who try these things,” Moore said.

It seems that bomb scares have both caused and been caused by the heightened vigilance. In shell-shocked New York City, police got about 80 bomb threats daily at first and, a month later, the number still hasn’t fallen to the pre-attack average of 15.