ABC Producer’s Infant Contracts Anthrax of Skin

The 7-month-old son of an ABC News producer contracted the skin form of anthrax after visiting the network’s Manhattan newsroom, officials said Monday.

Detectives and FBI agents questioned employees of the network and examined two floors of ABC News headquarters. As a precaution, police also sent teams of investigators to other major news organizations in New York to conduct environmental surveys to check for further outbreaks.

“The baby has responded to treatment, and we are very hopeful he is going to make a full and complete recovery,” said Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

“At the same time, we will be conducting an environmental review to make sure the premises and the areas are safe,” the mayor said at a news conference with other city officials and ABC News President David Westin. “We are doing that out of an excess of caution. We will interview a significant number of employees to try to re-create what happened. . . . We will see if we can trace it to a source.”

Giuliani said no other cases of anthrax had been found at ABC News.

He said the infant visited the newsroom Sept. 28 “for a couple of hours.” Network sources added that the baby was taken there by his mother, a producer for “World News Tonight.” He got sick the next day, but the test results did not come back until Monday.

Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik announced that teams of detectives and FBI agents were sent Monday night to CNN, CBS, Associated Press, the New York Daily News, Fox News and the New York Post.

“We will be doing environmental surveys in and around the mail rooms,” Kerik said. “This is strictly a precautionary measure to determine whether there is any indication there is any contamination in those areas.”

The commissioner stressed that there were no people with symptoms at the six other news organizations.

Westin said the infant, whose identity was not disclosed, was hospitalized and that blood samples and biopsies tested in conjunction with the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta had shown positive for cutaneous anthrax.

Investigators took samples and questioned employees on the floors containing the network’s anchor desk and the desk for “World News Tonight,” ABC’s signature nightly newscast.

It was the second case of anthrax at a Manhattan news organization. Police and the FBI are investigating a letter postmarked from Trenton, N.J., that infected the assistant to NBC anchor Tom Brokaw with cutaneous anthrax.

Like the infant, she was being treated with antibiotics and was expected to recover.

Westin said ABC was confident it could protect the health of its employees, but at the same time he stressed: “We are taking this very seriously.”

He said if the baby was exposed Sept. 28, it had to be from some anthrax spores that were left behind. Westin said it appeared the infant had visited two floors of ABC’s news facilities.

Westin said it was possible, though unlikely, that the infant had become infected with the disease somewhere other than ABC News.

Barry Mawn, assistant FBI director in charge of the agency’s New York office, said that comparisons would be made of the anthrax recovered from the infant, the NBC employee and other reported cases.

Both Kerik and Westin declined to label the cases at ABC and NBC as attacks on the media.

“We don’t know what the motives of these people are,” Westin said at the news conference.

“It is more important now than ever that we stick to what we know and putting it in context. . . . We are obviously concerned.”

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Times staff writer Elizabeth Jensen contributed to this report.