Column: A secret deal and a visit from the FBI — a hospital’s strange quest for coronavirus masks
LA TimesIt had all the markings of an illicit drug deal in a Hollywood movie: an encounter at a secret warehouse, with a last-minute sampling of the goods to make sure they were the real thing, a wire transfer of more than $1 million, and the sudden appearance of the FBI at the moment of handoff. “I thought I’d seen everything in 30 years,” said Andrew W. Artenstein, whose career encompasses 10 years as an Army physician including a stint as a department head at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the leadership of an academic biodefense program, “but these experiences I’ve never had before in this business. Baystate’s 30-member supply chain team “has worked around the clock to secure gowns, gloves, face masks, goggles, face shields, and N95 respirators,” he wrote. “ That brings us to the subject of Artenstein’s New England Journal note: a transaction he made about two weeks ago, originally for 1 million N95 and surgical masks from China. That didn’t guarantee, however, that the samples were representative of the final shipment, so Artenstein flew three members of his supply chain team and an expert tester “to a small airport near an industrial warehouse in the mid-Atlantic region.” He followed by car.