There's this huge rush to - it's definitely al-Qaida, Is it a lone wolf character? In the end, it was found to be, I believe, Bruce Edwards Ivins, who was a scientist at the government's biodefense labs actually in Frederick, Md. It was really, I think, a fascinating examination of the ways that we can potentially scapegoat people.ĬORNISH: Right. And we saw the conflict between fact and circumstantial evidence. We saw people working incredibly hard to find the actual culprit when there were pressures against them to find a culprit. KIM: It was complex because we saw, you know, a rush to judgment. Can you kind of remind us who that was and how you guys wanted to approach kind of a complex character? The events that real FBI agents undertook to solve the crime and the mystery were actual events, but they were personified through some semi-fictional characters like myself and my FBI team.ĬORNISH: This is also a very strange story in terms of who ends up being behind the letters. The investigation itself took a number of years, and so for the sake of storytelling, we compress that time. And I understand there's no real Matthew Ryker, but he was, you know, one of these kind of amalgamation characters, right? How did you bring him to life? He is the sort of force trying to investigate who's behind these anthrax-laced letters. So it was a little eerie as we were shooting to see how history in some cases repeated itself.ĬORNISH: So you have the lead role in this project, Matthew Ryker, who's an FBI agent who specializes in microbiology. The birth of the modern age of conspiracy theories happened around 9/11, and surely we know how many conspiracy theories there are now surrounding the pandemic. And, you know, what happened in the aftermath of both circumstances also seemed to parallel one another. KIM: You know, what was interesting in both instances was that for a brief shining moment, we were all united against a common enemy. And I asked him if he saw parallels between the days after 9/11 and the pandemic we're living through now. Actor Daniel Dae Kim, who plays agent Matthew Ryker, spoke with me earlier. Agent Riker is not a real person, but he's part of a very real story told in National Geographic's latest "Hot Zone" series. And Stevens became the first of 22 known victims to be exposed to anthrax-laced letters in the U.S. We'll get right on it.ĬORNISH: And those tissue samples show Bob Stevens, the journalist, had been exposed to anthrax. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Of course, Agent Ryker. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) What about the 3,300 flights already in the air? Who's got NORAD on their line?ĬORNISH: And agent Matthew Ryker is troubled by a Florida journalist's sudden mysterious illness, and he calls the CDC.ĭANIEL DAE KIM: (As Matthew Ryker) I have some tissue samples being flown up to a few labs from Florida.
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(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE HOT ZONE: ANTHRAX") The FBI is one of many government agencies tracking down leads connected to the attacks. We're going to take you back 20 years now, just weeks after 9/11.