By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 30, 2004; Page B01

Lawyers for 2,300 employees at the Brentwood mail facility urged a federal judge yesterday to let them move forward with a lawsuit accusing the U.S. Postal Service of lying to the workforce after discovering deadly anthrax contamination in the plant, saying officials must be punished for exposing so many people to harm.

"These workers were treated like caged canaries in a mine shaft until they literally started dying off," said Dale Lee Wilcox, an attorney for the workers. "It just screams outrageousness."

Two letters containing anthrax spores passed through the Northeast Washington facility in the fall of 2001 on their way to Capitol Hill, and the lawsuit alleges that postal officials knew of potential dangers for days before closing the plant. Two postal workers -- Joseph Curseen Jr. and Thomas Morris Jr. -- died of inhalation anthrax.

Wilcox's remarks came at a hearing in U.S. District Court to decide the future of the class-action suit, which seeks $100 million from U.S. Postmaster General John Potter and other top federal officials. The federal government sought to have the case dismissed, saying officials did nothing illegal.

The suit, filed by the government watchdog group Judicial Watch, charges that the Brentwood employees, of whom nearly 95 percent are black, were assured during the anthrax crisis that the building was safe and were reprimanded if they questioned that judgment.

All told, five people across the country died and 17 were sickened in October 2001 after the attack through the mail system. The victims included another Brentwood worker, Leroy Richmond, who contracted anthrax from the lethal bacteria and is slowly recovering.

More than 80 Brentwood employees attended yesterday's hearing before Judge Rosemary M. Collyer -- workers who had taken the day off to attend or who normally staff the night shift.

Government lawyers told Collyer that federal officials had no special duty to tell the workers about suspected or known anthrax bacteria. If workers believe that exposure to anthrax made them sick, they should file workplace injury claims or file grievances with their union, the lawyers said.

"There's nothing in the Constitution prohibiting the federal government officials from saying the plant was safe when they had other information or they had doubts about that statement," said R. Joseph Sher of the Justice Department.

Unveiling a series of internal Postal Service documents yesterday, Judicial Watch lawyers offered a day-by-day chronology of the early stages of the anthrax crisis, which began Monday, Oct. 15, 2001, when an aide to Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) opened an anthrax-laced letter. Postal Service officials quickly determined that it came through the Brentwood processing plant.

Postal officials suspected, and then confirmed, that anthrax had spread through the Brentwood facility, but they repeatedly assured workers that they were safe.

Notes from Brentwood plant manager Timothy C. Haney show that on Thursday, Oct. 18, he warned Postal Service Vice President Deborah Willhite of problems. Tests were immediately ordered for the building, and some spots "tested hot" for the anthrax bacteria.

"Again, workers were told, 'Don't worry, there's no anthrax, keep working,' " said Judicial Watch attorney Paul Orfanedes.

On Friday, Oct. 19, at an emergency meeting, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials recommended that the Postal Service contact the D.C. Department of Health to get Cipro antibiotics for its employees.

"But workers weren't told that," Orfanedes said. "They were told to keep processing the mail."

On Saturday, Oct. 20, a sickened worker's wife frantically called Haney, leaving messages that her husband had likely contracted anthrax and urging that the plant be closed, Orfanedes said.

At 1 p.m. the next day, the CDC called Haney to report that Morris had tested positive for anthrax. The plant was evacuated and shut down within a few hours. Morris died that day. The facility was closed until December 2003, after it was decontaminated.

A key issue in the lawsuit is whether the Postal Service's actions were so seriously wrong that they violated the workers' constitutional rights. Collyer pointed to a case in which a court decided that the government violated an employee's rights when its actions were "so egregious . . . as to shock the contemporary conscience."

From the start, the case has had racial overtones. Many employees who assembled on the courthouse steps yesterday said they believe that race was a factor in the government's failure to exercise more immediate caution. The predominantly white staff members in congressional offices were immediately sent home within a day of the Daschle letter's discovery.

"If 95 percent of the employees on the work floor had been white, they wouldn't have hesitated to close that building," said Herbert Gatling, 60, a Brentwood worker who retires today after several decades in the Postal Service.

Postal officials have said that they relied on the advice of the CDC and that they take the health and safety of the workforce seriously. They have said they closed the facility as soon as public health officials understood the nature and extent of the risk. "We were operating on good faith, trying to make the right decisions and operating on discussions with health authorities," Potter told Capitol Hill lawmakers in October 2001.