WASHINGTON — The man who attacked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention probably tried to enter the agency’s Atlanta campus days before the shooting, investigators believe.
The shooter, identified by authorities as Patrick Joseph White, appears to have been captured in security camera footage trying to enter the campus visitor’s center late in the afternoon on Aug. 6, according to an internal email to CDC staff, reviewed by STAT. The email said “the likelihood is very high” the person in the video is White.
“At that time, he was stopped at the first guard station and turned away by CDC Security without incident,” Jeff Williams, CDC’s director for the Office of Safety, Security, and Asset Management, wrote in the email. “Due to our existing security protocols, the shooter did not attempt to enter campus on Friday, August 8, prior to the attack.”
Investigators believe White “was conducting reconnaissance” for the shooting, which he carried out two days later, the email states.
“This is an understandably distressing development, and we want to emphasize that CDC security measures were effective,” Williams said in the email to staff.
No CDC staff were injured in the shooting, but a police officer, David Rose, was killed.
White fired hundreds of rounds at the CDC campus from across the street during the shooting, though many of the rounds were stopped by blast-resistant glass in the buildings, 11Alive in Atlanta reported.
CDC employees were held on lockdown for hours during and after the shooting, and at least four buildings were hit by gunfire. Cleanup is underway on the Atlanta campus, and some employees have returned to work in person.
White, who died by a self-inflicted wound during the shooting, targeted the CDC in the attack because of Covid-19, agency officials told staff in a previous email. He was upset over the Covid vaccine, officials and White’s father said, though his father highlighted mental illness as the main cause of the shooting.
The revelation comes as CDC has increased security across its campuses in recent days, adding guards and assuring staff in internal calls that leadership is acting to ensure the agency’s safety.
Those assurances have followed staff raising concerns about the agency’s vulnerabilities on internal calls following the shooting. Agency leaders have said they cannot share specific security details while the investigation into the shooting is ongoing.
Staff have increasingly asked Trump administration officials — especially health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — to tamp down rhetoric demonizing public health workers. More than 750 current and former HHS staff signed an open letter, sent to Kennedy on Wednesday, urging him to stop spreading misinformation.
The shooting has also represented an early test for the CDC’s new director, Susan Monarez, and for Kennedy, who has a history of anti-vaccine activism and misinformation around the Covid vaccine.
Kennedy, despite past remarks calling into question the trustworthiness and motives of government health officials, has voiced support for the CDC following the shooting.
“Public health workers show up every day with purpose — even in moments of grief and uncertainty. We honor their service. We stand with them,” he wrote in a social media post after the attack.
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