Preston’s account opens with a description of the lifestyle and activities of Robert Stevens, a tabloid photograph retoucher who was for a time employed by the National Enquirer. Late in September or early in October of 2001, Stevens was struck by an illness that progressed rapidly through his body and ended his life. Sherif Zaki and a group of his colleagues at the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) performed the autopsy on Stevens; this team quickly determined that Stevens had died as the result of exposure to anthrax spores. As Zaki was arriving at these conclusions, an investigation of Stevens’s movements yielded a troubling discovery: the presence of anthrax in the mail system at American Media, the company that employed Stevens just before his death.

Later in October of the same year, a letter containing an ominous powder arrived at the offices of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Similar anthrax letters were directed to media outlets including CBS, NBC, and ABC. After gathering samples of the powder directed to Daschle’s office, federal agents made their way to the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infections Diseases (USAMRIID), where the anthrax samples were handed over to a researcher named John Ezzell.