Shadow Of Fear

By NANCY GIBBS

We can argue over when the enemy decided to wage war against us--was it the moment the Ottoman Empire fell or when U.S. troops arrived in Saudi Arabia? But we know exactly when we went to war with them: 12:30 p.m. E.T. on Sunday, Oct. 7. Now our pilots are shredding Afghanistan, and the waiting is over, and you didn't need to be in New York or Washington or Kabul to feel like a soldier--or a target. The clock becomes a time bomb: we were warned that retaliation is now certain; we wait, move to higher alert; time passes, tick, tick; see anything suspicious? And we come to realize that something sinister has been planted in our midst, not just the threat but also the fear of the threat.

By the time President Bush appeared in prime time to invite the country officially both to buck up and freak out, the war at home was already well under way. Haz-mat teams from coast to coast were being called out two and three times a day to decontaminate buildings because someone worried about powder in a package. The Governor of Tennessee put a $10,000 bounty on the head of anyone calling in a bomb hoax because the schools were having to be evacuated so often. A pilot returned to the gate because a passenger switched seats too many times. Donald Trump was reported to be shopping for parachutes.

The President's dilemma--like the country's--was plain. We are at war now, called to fight unseen enemies on multiple fronts. Report anything unusual or alarming, Bush said, in the hope that 280 million investigators have a better chance of foiling the next plot. But we are not trained for this, and an unmarked catering truck on a quiet street prompts three different neighbors to call the cops. "Be on the lookout for mysterious health symptoms," said health czar Tommy Thompson, but who doesn't have those? We were told last week not to panic but to be prepared; to get on with our lives, even though we barely recognize them now that there are F-16s overhead and National Guardsmen at the train station. The Vice President is in the witness-protection program, and the FBI initially coded its Thursday warning of an imminent attack "skyfall." Officials were vague about the target but precise about the timing. They had "certain information" that there would be more attacks, somewhere, "over the next several days." And so people who by last week felt they had regained their footing, who found it liberating to get on an airplane and luxurious to go to a football game on a gorgeous fall day, also found that the path out of our private caves is not a straight and steady one. You can feel cold again just by turning on the news. Or opening the mail.

Once the first cases of anthrax exposure appeared in Florida and the envelope became a potential weapon of mass destruction, we got to see what panic looks like. On Tuesday an office worker in suburban Virginia settled down on a toilet seat, yanked off a piece of double-ply toilet paper and found a message written between the leaves: "You're sitting in anthrax, and you're dead." The investigators rushed in: false alarm. The Nashville, Tenn., haz-mat team was called out five times in 48 hours, all for hoaxes. A woman phoned in a report that her computer keyboard was covered with a powdery substance. The FBI discovered that she had been eating cookies. The State Department was evacuated because somebody spilled some talcum powder. Cipro overtook Viagra as the drug of choice on Internet sites.

That did not seem like sheer hysteria by Friday, when we learned that Tom Brokaw's assistant at NBC had tested positive for anthrax after opening a threatening letter with powder inside. At that moment the New York Times was being evacuated after another letter rained powder in the newsroom; this one was addressed to bioterrorism expert Judith Miller. Initial testing showed no sign of anthrax, but the threat still seemed real, and cunning. You didn't need to shoot the messengers; you just needed to scare them to death, because fear is bacterial as well. It can spread in the air and over wires, infect the marketplace, lay waste to whole industries and leave its victims at home in bed with the covers pulled up. And the worst part was that since there were so many scares, so many hoaxes, we were in some ways doing this to ourselves.

Yet as the week went on, many rattled people found an antidote soon after they felt their first symptoms. Terror squeezes you into a corner; fighting back, even with a superstitious gesture, sets you free. So people updated their wills and then tucked them away again, put fresh batteries in the flashlight but then stuck it in a drawer. "You're less likely to get blown up by a terrorist," said a Washington dad as he dropped his kids at school, "than to get run over by the mom in her SUV who's worrying into her cell phone about getting blown up by a terrorist." While the authorities called for vigilance, we also had a patriotic duty to keep our heads.

A thousand false alarms from an anxious nation are an exquisite diversion for those intent on mayhem; the police cannot be everywhere at once, and there is only so much they can do to button down the cities. Overworked cops who had already been on high alert worked even harder as the frightened calls poured in. "We are at risk of being overwhelmed," says a spokesman for the Kentucky division of emergency management. There are metal detectors at the Liberty Bell; Denver canceled its New Year's Eve celebrations; Ohio called off a corn-husking festival. In Washington, where lawmakers are quietly terrified that the terrorists mean to finish what they started on Sept. 11, officials closed 40 blocks around the Capitol to trucks and taped plastic over Senate office windows. There are enough gas masks in a room off the House chamber for each member and the floor staff, so members are told, leaving five for people in the press gallery, who number in the hundreds.

Fear conscripts its own armies, takes its own prisoners. Even people who appear to be calm will privately confess: I won't go to the mall anymore. I ask for a low floor at the hotel, near a staircase. I throw up every morning before I get on the train. I thought I heard a crop duster in the middle of the night. The strain of these weeks, the psychiatrists say, is especially hard on people who are already on the edge, and so, day by day, people began to snap. Last week it was the man on an American Airlines flight to Chicago who stormed the cockpit screaming, "Save the towers! Save the towers!" A Delta plane made an emergency landing in Shreveport, La., escorted by fighter jets, after a passenger passed a threatening note to a flight attendant. Washington's Reagan National Airport finally reopened, but if you so much as get out of your seat to go to the bathroom, you risk having the plane diverted to Dulles.

The rest of the nation's airports, however, were full of people who are quick to remind you that it's a big country, it's a long walk from Miami to Seattle, and flying is safer than driving. Some say they think it is now safer than ever. And besides, passengers note, if anyone tries anything now, the guy in 9A will go low, 11C will hit high and the hijacker will end up stuffed in an overhead bin. "The rules have changed," says a banker from St. Louis, Mo. "Everybody is ready to get vigorously involved if anyone tries anything on a plane." He's spending extra time on the firing range these days. A bartender from New York City with tattoos up and down his muscled arms packed a pair of heavy construction gloves for his flight to Los Angeles--just in case he has to confront someone with a box cutter.

Can America limit itself to one carry-on bag? What are the absolute essentials we can't leave home without anymore? A book of Scripture and a pair of sneakers, a cell phone, a picture of the people we love, a canary to send into the mine. In Chicago a maintenance man on the 90th floor of the Sears Tower takes his flame-resistant drag-racing suit to work with him. "At least I'll have a chance of running through the fire," he says. An elegant Manhattan woman cuts her hair suddenly short. "It reflects how I'm feeling," she says, "and besides, if I have to leave town fast, who wants to worry about hot rollers?"A Wisconsin office manager prepares letters to the people she loves most because "I think of all of those people who died with 'what ifs' and regrets." A Los Angeles mother talks about writing a letter to her children "so they know what I want for them in their futures."

It's a brew you can choke on, ingenuity and grit filtered through a nightmare. People share fantasies and game plans, revealing what is sloshing around the back of their minds while they pretend to work. "I would break into the marina and steal a boat, heading straight north," says a Chicago real estate lawyer who is worried that traffic will congeal in the event of an attack. "Usually the wind blows in from the lake, so toxins should not be over the water. I already have a life jacket and wet suit. My parents have a place in way north Michigan that is our family's designated meeting place, and I would try to make my way there." He's no expert, but he figures that if he's in immediate danger, he won't be criminally liable for theft.

If many people had a bad passage last week, there were also plenty who were trying to make their peace with war. "The vast majority expect us to win this war on terrorism sooner rather than later," says another lawyer in Chicago. "There likely will be other terrorists attacks and other American casualties--but you can't live your life like you're the next to go." How much sleep do we have to lose, how many routines do we change, before we should count ourselves as casualties? If we stop taking the subway, are we wounded? What if we skip a grandchild's baptism because we don't want to get on the plane? Have they won? That which does not kill me makes me stronger--but who decides which it will be?

We are now deciding every day, deciding whether the cost of caution is too high, discovering whether we actually fear doing nothing more than doing something that frightens us. Because we know that this is the definition of courage--not an absence of fear but a willingness to live and move in its company, without becoming its hostage. If it weren't frightening, it wouldn't be a war; if it weren't about our most precious freedoms, it wouldn't be worth fighting.

--Reported by Matt Baron/Chicago, Elisabeth Kauffman/Nashville and Elaine Shannon/Washington, with other bureaus

With reporting by Matt Baron/Chicago, Elisabeth Kauffman/Nashville and Elaine Shannon/Washington, with other bureaus