CDC Researcher's Son-in-Law Identified as Man With Rare TB

The head of the health department in suburban Atlanta's Fulton County, Steven Katkowsky, said he did not learn until this week that Speaker was related to a CDC scientist.

Katkowsky also confirmed that a lawyer for the health department advised that Speaker could not be involuntarily detained until he defied a "medical directive." A letter explicitly telling him not to fly to Europe was mailed to Speaker on May 11, three days before the date health officials believed he planned to depart.

"You can't stop him from traveling until he has traveled -- isn't that a conundrum?" Katkowsky said.

ABC News reported last night that Speaker claims to have a tape recording of a meeting with health officials and that it confirms his view that it was all right to travel in his condition. The network plans to air its interview with Speaker, recorded yesterday, on "Good Morning America" today.

Speaker left Atlanta and flew to Paris on May 12, the day after the letter was mailed.

He apparently changed his travel plans for returning to the United States after being contacted in Rome on May 22 by a CDC official who told him to stay put while arrangements were made for safe travel or possible treatment in Italy. Two days later, on May 24, he flew to Prague and on to Montreal.

The next day, Martin Cetron, CDC's director of quarantine and global migration, reached Speaker in Upstate New York and asked him to report to a New York City hospital. He stayed there until he was flown in a CDC aircraft to Atlanta on Monday. He had been hospitalized in isolation until yesterday, when he was flown by air ambulance to Denver.

Speaker went there because National Jewish is one of the few hospitals that sometimes use surgery to treat tuberculosis -- an option being considered in his case. He will be there for weeks and possibly months, officials said.

Also yesterday, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, Russ Knocke, said that Speaker and his wife were both positively identified by a port officer in Champlain, N.Y., where they entered the United States from Canada. Both had been entered on a list of people who should be detained and flagged for public health authorities.

Why they were not detained is under investigation, he said. The agent who identified the Speakers has been removed from border duty.