March 2004

First-Time Author Hits New York Times Bestseller List

Ask Michael Carroll, SPA/BA ’94 if he ever imagined he’d be sitting across from Ann Curry on the Today Show or see his first effort at writing a book land on the New York Times bestseller list after less than a month in print, and his answer is the same: “Not in my wildest dreams!”

Carroll, who double-majored in political science and CLEG at AU, felt the pull to write, LAB 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory, as practically a calling. “I can’t seem to conjure up some media savvy, intriguing reason why Plum Island seized me and the better part of seven years of my life,” says Carroll. But seize him it did.

Following his 1997 graduation from law school, Carroll went to work practicing corporate law for respected Wall Street firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher. There, he rubbed elbows with big clients, worked alongside former governor Mario Cuomo, and drew a salary that allowed him to begin living the New York lifestyle about which he had only dreamt.

But he couldn’t seem to shake the desire to learn the real story behind the mysterious island he had heard about growing up in Bellmore, N.Y., and that he had seen from atop a bluff overlooking Long Island Sound years earlier en route to pick up a friend from the ferry down below. “The island triggered a series of thoughts – rumors of biological warfare tests, news stories about deadly virus experiments, talk about Lyme disease being hatched there, hearing about a family friend who worked on Plum Island and contracted some strange undiagnosed ailment…” describes Carroll.

And so, he “threw away the dream job of a lifetime,” and began researching the story of Plum Island. At first, he just started asking people what they knew about the island and going to local libraries and historical societies. Next thing he knew, he was sifting through dust-covered boxes of documents that hadn’t been opened since they were stowed away 50 years earlier at the National Archives. He submitted a total of 10 Freedom of Information Act requests to federal entities including the Army, Navy, CIA, FBI, and the EPA, and he conducted more than 100 hours of interviews with scientists. Best of all, he was able to visit Plum Island six times between summer 2001 and late 2002.

“My publisher said I was writing a book on the history of Plum Island,” he explains. “But when they realized the direct nature of some of my questions and some of the documents I was asking to copy, I think they got very scared… Then the Washington office of the USDA pulled the plug and said I couldn’t go anymore, on the grounds of national security.”

In a nutshell, LAB 257 tells the often unsettling story of an island with a long and interesting history that goes back several hundred years, the last 50 of which it was home to research related to animal disease under the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Carroll says the lab was really well run in the 1950s and 60s. But he asserts that the government’s innocuous explanation about the facility’s research on animal diseases to the public is misleading, and it has fallen into such decline that he compares its safety and security to that of a junior high school bio lab.

“Over the last half century Plum Island has contained some of the deadliest germs known to humankind,” says Carroll. “They had always said ‘we just do animal diseases here, it doesn’t affect humans.’ But foot and mouth disease does infect humans.” And the Rift Valley Fever virus studied there, for example, is a first cousin of the deadly Ebola virus. And then there’s Lyme disease and the West Nile virus. Carroll suggests it’s no coincidence that research on both has been conducted on the island – and that people have turned up sick with both in nearby Connecticut, New York and beyond.

“This is a place where the containment lab, which is supposed to be sealed from the outside world, had three-quarter-inch holes in the roof. Even worse, the incinerator where they burn these infected animals had hundreds of cubic feet of air per minute escaping from it,” he says. They’ve had repeated power outages, yet the “negative air system” that’s supposed to suck the germs inside instead of outside fails when there’s no power. They’ve hired people with criminal arrest records. And a 1983 report issued by the National Academy of Sciences – an organization of the brightest scientific minds in the U.S. – said the Plum Island germ lab was so dangerous it ought to be shut down immediately. “That was over 20 yrs ago, but it’s still run the same way, under the same conditions,” says Carroll. "It’s putting us all at a risk that none of us can safely ignore.”

Indeed, the book notes that a dossier on Plum Island was found in Kabul, Afghanistan, in the hands of a suspected terrorist with ties to Osama bin Laden. After September 11, 2001, the lab’s mission turned to biological warfare, says Carroll. Plum Island was taken over by the Department of Homeland Security in June 2003.

It took Carroll more than seven years to research and write LAB 257. “I bought every single book on writing and how to publicize your book that was recommended to me. As a first-time author it was not easy trying to understand the various aspects of the publishing world,” he says. “I went broke in the process. I borrowed money from my bank, my family, and my friends.”

But that’s all behind the new author now, who has served for the last year and a half as senior VP and general counsel at Medallion Financial Corp., a $700 million firm traded on NASDAQ. Already, the book is being looked at by several major motion picture studios, and Carroll is working on a proposal for a second book.

Although he can’t remember the last time he was on campus since his five-year reunion, Carroll hopes to see many of his old friends and ATO brothers at Homecoming & Reunion this October when he comes back for his 10-year reunion. He also looks forward to meeting and reconnecting with AU alumni when he comes to D.C. for a book talk, scheduled for April 22 at the Georgetown Barnes & Noble.

For more info about the book and a list of other cities on his book tour, visit http://www.lab257.com.

-Melissa Reichley