In wake of B'nai B'rith chemical scare , questions remain

MATTHEW DORF
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Clearfield last week was joined by one of the same Washington police officers who in March 1977 had rescued him to tell 108 employees that they were free to go home after a chemical threat had kept them quarantined in the building for eight hours.

The episode was over, but questions were just beginning as Jewish organizational officials were left to assess the motive behind the threat and how the situation was handled.

The announcement by Clearfield, B'nai B'rith's executive vice president, at about 8:30 p.m. on April 24 ended an ordeal that began when a B'nai B'rith mail clerk discovered an envelope leaking a red gelatinous substance from a petri dish that the sender claimed was an agent of "chemical warfare." The dish was labeled with a misspelling of anthrax, a highly toxic biological agent.

Hazardous material experts arrived at the downtown office building to remove the envelope, which also contained an anti-Semitic note, according to B'nai B'rith officials.

Preparedness is concern
The incident, which is being investigated as domestic terrorism, spread beyond the headquarters of the international service organization. Chaos descended as police cordoned off a five-block radius of the building, trapping people in adjacent buildings.

When tests at the Naval Medical Research Institute determined that the substance was not harmful, Clearfield announced that the quarantine was over. But the questions continued.

Citing conversations with law enforcement personnel who had tended to the emergency and had expressed their own concerns about lack of training to deal with such a situation, B'nai B'rith officials complained that the nation's capital was not equipped to deal with such an incident.

"It is inexcusable for police and fire personnel in a city which is so vulnerable to terrorist incidents to not have the highest level of training ... for dealing with situations as potentially deadly as this," Clearfield said.

He specifically cited the lack of proper suits and decontamination equipment needed to hose down some of the employees who were exposed to the potentially hazardous material. He also expressed anger that the decontamination took place in the open, leaving two of his employees shown on national television being hosed down in their underwear.

Security already tight
Last week's threat to B'nai B'rith came to an institution with unusually tight security. After the 1977 siege, when 12 Black Muslim extremists seized the B'nai B'rith building and two other buildings not affiliated with Jewish organizations, B'nai B'rith implemented strict security measures.

Of the 134 hostages held in the 1977 attack, 107 were held in the B'nai B'rith building. That siege ended peacefully after 39 hours. Although the site of last week's incident was the same, the situations were very different.

"In 1977, we were in an immediate life-threatening situation, with people holding guns to our heads and hitting people with rifle butts and their fists," Clearfield said. "This time we were at our desks, waiting and worrying."

Although Jewish hostages were not singled out during the 1977 raid, anti-Semitic epithets were hurled frequently at the group. This time, police believe that the Jewish group was specifically singled out.

The substance came in an envelope with a two-page, typed letter that identified the sender as the "Counter Holocaust Lobbyists of Hillel," according to the FBI. The letter was anti-Jewish and included non-specific threats, according to Clearfield, who was shown the letter at a private FBI briefing.

Clearfield confirmed that the letter included a reference saying that the only "good Jew is an Orthodox Jew," but cautioned that this was "a single phrase among many."

The letter also included references to Nazis, the Holocaust and Hillel, the Jewish college organization, but did not mention B'nai B'rith specifically.

"It's a crazy letter," Clearfield said. "It didn't make any sense."

As the situation began to return to normal at the building that also houses the Washington offices of the Council of Jewish Federations, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, law enforcement officials turned their attention to trying to identify the sender of the package.

At the same time, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service said it would pre-screen all mail addressed to Jewish community organizations in New York, according to the FBI.