Don’t blame me, public-health fugitive Andrew Speaker said yesterday, claiming his lawyer father taped federal officials saying he was OK to fly to Europe even though he carried a deadly strain of tuberculosis.
“At every turn, it was conveyed to me that my family, my wife, my daughter, that no one was at risk, and that I was not contagious,” Speaker, a 31-year-old Atlanta lawyer, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” from his quarantined room at National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver.
Centers for Disease Control officials wouldn’t say yesterday exactly what they told Speaker.
CDC officials also declined to detail the role played by Speaker’s father-in-law, Dr. Robert Cooksey, a longtime CDC tuberculosis researcher, though they did say he helped put officials in touch with Speaker.
Speaker was told May 10 that he had a drug-resistant strain of TB.
“Everyone knew,” he told ABC.
“The CDC knew, doctors knew, [health insurer] Kaiser [Permanente] knew. They said, ‘We would prefer you not go on the trip.’ ”
“And that’s when my father said, ‘OK, are you saying because he’s a risk to anybody or are you simply saying it to cover yourself?’ And they said, ‘We have to tell you that to cover ourselves. But he’s not a risk.’ ”
But CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said federal officials didn’t know Speaker’s identity until he was in Europe.
Despite the warnings, on May 12, Speaker and his wife, Sarah Cooksey, flew to Europe for their wedding on the Greek island of Santorini.
The wedding, however, may not have been legal. Santorini Mayor Angelos Roussos told the AP the couple lacked the required paperwork.
After three days in Santorini, Speaker, Cooksey and her 8-year-old daughter went to Rome, where CDC officials advised him by phone not to come home on any commercial flight.
So on May 24, they flew Czech Air from Rome to Prague to Montreal. In Montreal, they rented a car and crossed the New York border. After stopovers at hospitals in New York and Atlanta, Speaker was moved to Denver.
Speaker says he doesn’t feel ill. CDC officials say his symptoms indicate he is not contagious.
But Speaker still offered apologies. “I am very sorry for any grief or pain that I have caused anyone,” he said.
With Post Wire Services