Front and Center: Security at Boston's Infectious Disease Research Lab

When controversy hit, Kevin Tuohey became the public face of a high-profile plan to study deadly diseases in Boston. To succeed, the security director would have to become part diplomat, part great communicator.

Tuohey's comments about this public relations disaster suggest that he understood the reactions. "They said, basically, â¬ÜStop talking down to us. We don't care about the science. Make it safe.' We were focused on the potential outcomes from this lab; they were focused on potential risks. It was then I realized our perceived concerns were much, much different than theirs."

BU Medical Center clearly needed a new front man. Enter Tuohey. He was approachable, human. He maintained eye contact without staring. His voice was calm but strong, and he responded to the harshest attacks with polite replies. But most of all, as director of "anything to do with risk," Tuohey could address citizens' most urgent concerns. And so BU Medical Center, and those opposing this big lab project, looked to him to do that.

Tuohey Gets Going

In the 90 days following that initial community gathering, Tuohey held about 100 meetings with citizen groups, politicians and scientists. Meetings usually had a couple dozen attendees. He had a presentation outlining the basic security and safety issues at hand, but for the most part, his job was to listen. After a while, it seemed like every question had been asked, including, Tuohey recalls, if there would be snipers on the roof (no), if the lab was designed to withstand an earthquake (yes) and if the building would be fortress-ugly (no). When he didn't know the answer, he said so. "I said, â¬ÜI'm not going to tell you I'm the smartest guy, but I will research it. I will use all the resources I can to find an answer.'"

What he learned by listening made the project safer, Tuohey says. "We started with one risk to mitigate&mdash:a release from the building, the worst-case scenario," Tuohey says. "The neighborhood said, â¬ÜFine. But how do these things get to and from the lab? On our streets. By our houses.' So we had to back up and look at transportation."

The team developed a far more detailed policy around transportation, including the use of GPS and arming drivers taking biologics to the lab with a duress alarm connected to the hospital, local police and the Centers for Disease Control. Eventually, Tuohey's one risk turned into five, all of which had full mitigation plans developed around them (see "Five Risks to Mitigate"). It was an attempt to erase that sense of inevitability that so outraged the community at the start.

A Political Animal

Tuohey is the son of American diplomats. He was born in 1961 in Frankfurt, and grew up in Vienna, Moscow, Bombay, Maryland, Berlin and, finally, Tel Aviv, where he graduated from high school. Then he came to Boston. He was 18. He wanted to be a cop, so he took criminal justice classes at Northeastern University and he also took a co-op with Boston University's security department as a security officer. At 19, he didn't want to be a cop anymore, but still finished his criminal justice credits. "My background really is political science, political theory and international relations."