|
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
"Although the media have begun to focus on the anthrax hoax phenomenon in light of the fall 2001 anthrax letter attacks,
the hundreds of anthrax hoaxes that occurred in the United States in 1998-2001 received very little attention. It is probably
not a coincidence that three years of anthrax hoaxes predated the actual attacks. Although there is as yet no clear linkage
between the perpetrators of the anthrax letter attacks and the anthrax hoaxes, systematic tracking of hoax events could provide
some basis for bioterrorism response planning."
-Monterey Institute of International Studies
___________________________________________________________
"In addition, at least three of the five anthrax recipients also received "hoax" letters containing an innocuous powder; and
several different media offices received similar hoax letters. Some of the hoax letters were mailed BEFORE the first anthrax
case (in Florida) was reported, and all but one hoax letter were mailed BEFORE there were any reports of anthrax letters or
hoax letters. Therefore the hoax letters targeting media are not simply a copycat phenomenon." [Barbara Rosenberg
"It said this was anthrax, death to America, something to that effect, and 'stop the bombing' was the only phrase that
was new."
Sen. Daschle
Hoax letter to Senator Daschle: was received and opened by Sen. Daschles office in the Capitol on 3 Jan. 02, after a delay
for irradiation.
The letter was mailed from the UK. The envelope contained a powder and a threatening letter unlike those that were mailed
with anthrax, according to the FBI.
This letter was mailed much later than the others, sometime in late Nov., a month after the other hoax letters and the
anthrax letters had been reported. Whether the letter was addressed in block printing, like the anthrax letters, has not been
revealed.
Analysis of the Anthrax Attacks
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg,
Federation of American Scientists
FBI: Letter in Daschle's office a hoax
The letter was found in the Capitol office Daschle uses as majority leader.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An envelope containing a threatening note and a "powdery substance" found Thursday in the
U.S. Capitol office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is likely a hoax, according to an FBI spokesman.
Two initial tests showed the powder was not hazardous, Lt. Dan Nichols of the Capitol Police said earlier Thursday.
Postmarked in London and dated in late November, the letter was triple bagged and taken to a U.S. Army lab at Fort Detrick,
Maryland, for further analysis, government sources said.
"While we don't know exactly what it is, because it's still in the process of being investigated, we do know it's
not hazardous," Nichols said.
Thursday's development came nearly three months after a letter containing a potent form of anthrax was opened October
17 at Daschle's office in the Hart Senate Office Building. Another letter, addressed to Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, was found
before it was opened.
Since October, all mail coming into the Capitol complex is irradiated to render any anthrax harmless. A machine then cuts
a corner off each letter and shakes it to see if there is a powder inside, congressional sources said.
The letter found Thursday arrived via the U.S. mail and was subject to usual process before being sent to Daschle's office,
Nichols said.
A member of Daschle's staff found the letter in the office used by the South Dakota Democrat in his role as Senate leader
and called Capitol police at 11:40 a.m.
A hazardous materials team responded and tested the substance. The area was immediately sealed off and the historic building
was closed until field tests showed the powder was harmless.
Nichols, who refused to discuss the letter's appearance, said the FBI has launched a criminal investigation.
Despite a recent fumigation completed Monday, the other offices of Daschle and 49 other senators in the Hart building
remain closed, as they have been since October.
Even if the latest samples test negative for anthrax, the EPA said it has no timeline for when the building will reopen.
No Anthrax In Daschle Letter
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4, 2001
(Photo: AP / CBS)
"It said this was anthrax, death to America, something to that effect, and 'stop the bombing' was the only phrase
that was new."
Sen. Daschle
(AP) The suspicious powder sent in a threatening letter to Sen. Tom Daschle's office was talc, the FBI said Friday.
"We are going to investigate the letter as a criminal hoax," FBI spokesman Chris Murray said.
He declined to discuss details of the letter.
The tests confirmed earlier procedures which showed the letter did not contain anthrax, unlike a heavily contaminated
letter sent to the senator Oct. 15.
Discovery of the new letter Thursday prompted a quick response from emergency crews, who were dispatched to Daschle's
Capitol office. But an FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said later that the new letter appeared to be an
anthrax hoax. It was sent to the Army's Fort Detrick, Md., testing facility.
Fort Detrick spokesman Chuck Dasey said tests on the new letter would take about 48 hours and final results were not expected
before late Saturday. He said the results would be announced by the FBI.
Daschle described the letter opened Thursday as "a copycat mailing" that was similar in message and tone to
the previous letter.
"It said this was anthrax, death to America, something to that effect, and 'stop the bombing' was the only phrase
that was new," Daschle told reporters.
"Stop the bombing" apparently referred to the American air campaign in Afghanistan, which had not yet swung
into high gear at the time the anthrax-tainted letter was postmarked in October.
Daschle, who was not in the room at the time, said the new letter was opened Thursday morning in the Capitol barely 20
feet from the Senate chamber. Congress is currently in recess.
"The early test showed in this case that it was not anthrax," Daschle said in a telephone conference call with
reporters. "We took this white powder very seriously. There was a note inside that basically said this was anthrax."
Daschle said the substance was in a separate packet, possibly explaining why no powder fell out when the corner of the
envelope was cut under congressional mail screening procedures. The mail was irradiated, and a field test showed the substance
is not hazardous, Capitol Police spokesman Lt. Dan Nichols said.
Nichols would not rule out the possibility the substance could have been harmful before it was irradiated.
Discovery of the letter in Daschle's second-floor suite of offices prompted officials to briefly quarantine some areas
of the Capitol, but the building was not evacuated.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., also has received a letter contaminated with anthrax. Five people have died from anthrax since
early October and 18 more were infected.
An FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the new letter appeared to be an anthrax hoax. It was sent to
the Army's Fort Detrick in Maryland for further testing.
A separate law enforcement source, who would not be quoted by name, said the letter was postmarked from London in November.
The letter had a stamp affixed, whereas anthrax-contaminated letters previously sent to Daschle nd Leahy were on pre-stamped
envelopes used only for domestic mail.
The initial field test on the new letter normally would pick up the presence of anthrax spores even if they had been killed
in the irradiation process now used on all mail addressed to Congress, the law enforcement source said.
However, Dr. Richard Meyer, an expert at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said field
tests were not very good at detecting low amounts of anthrax and that laboratory tests were more reliable.
The October letter sent to Daschle exposed more than two dozen people to anthrax spores and led to the closure of the
Hart Senate Office Building, where Daschle also maintains an office. The Hart building, which is across the street from the
Capitol, remains closed. But Environmental Protection Agency officials said they believe a repeat fumigation effort last weekend
killed any remaining spores.
Azeezaly Jaffer, a Postal Service vice president, said postal officials were talking with the FBI about increasing to
$2 million the reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone mailing anthrax.
©MMII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Local postal workers report symptoms
Shortly after 10 p.m. Friday, paramedics were called to the mail processing center in St. Petersburg to check a few workers
who were complaining of headaches or other symptoms.
The workers feared that they might have been exposed to something a couple of days earlier, according to paramedics at
the scene.
A hazardous materials team also was called to the mail center to test for any contamination.
"We anticipate getting a clean bill of health," said Walker, of the postal inspection service.
Earlier in the day, federal authorities told the St. Petersburg Police Department that they were investigating multiple
mailed envelopes that had St. Petersburg postmarks.
St. Petersburg police Chief Mack Vines confirmed reports that one of the suspicious envelopes was mailed to NBC and one
to the New York Times, but would not comment on whether other such envelopes had been found.
Detectives with the St. Petersburg Police Department's intelligence unit came to Vines' office shortly after 5 p.m. to
inform him of the development.
Vines said St. Petersburg detectives were working on the case with FBI, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Manhattan homicide
squad of the New York Police Department.
"We're on top of the issue. We're working with the bureau to determine if we can identity any type of situation relating
to the postmark," Vines said Friday night. "We're just trying to develop any kind of information that would tie
in to something like that."
Vines said he could not say anything else about the ongoing investigation.
"We're working diligently on it," Vines said. "We'll see if we can trace some of these things back. That's
the issue."
"The only thing we know for sure is that they (the letters) were postmarked in St. Petersburg," said Gary Sawtelle,
Tampa postal spokesman.
"Until we examine them, there's no way to break down where they were mailed from," he said.
The St. Petersburg postmark is given to letters collected from mid Pinellas County to south St. Petersburg, he said. He
could not immediately be more specific.
[Times photos: Jennifer Davis]
Firefighters and guards cover St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler's desk with plastic after he received an envelope,
below, Tuesday with a substance like salt or sugar.
St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler opened his letter at his desk Tuesday. As he did so, a white powdery substance,
resembling sugar or salt, spilled out.
Troxler stopped opening the letter. Authorities were called to the newspaper's offices in downtown St. Petersburg. Police
put the envelope in an airtight container and drove it to a state health lab in Tampa for analysis. Firefighters covered Troxler's
desk with a plastic sheet and yellow emergency-scene tape reading "caution."
Health officials found no signs of anthrax or bacteria in the powder. The envelope and a letter inside also tested negative.
The letter had no return address and was postmarked St. Petersburg. It bears a code 337, then a space, then 1.
Anything that is mailed in Seminole, Largo, Bay Pines, Gulfport, Pinellas Park or any St. Petersburg neighborhood goes
through the main post office on First Avenue N and is stamped with a 337.
The cryptic letter misspelled Troxler's name and had little punctuation. It said:
"Howard Toxler ... 1st case of disease now blow away this dust so you see how the real thing flys. Oklahoma-Ryder
Truck! Skyway bridge-18 wheels."
Postmaster General John Potter told CNN that the Postal Service investigates more than 80 threats involving anthrax every
year.
"Until these incidents, we have never had anthrax delivered through the mail," Potter said.
He noted that the Postal Service delivers more than 208-billion pieces of mail every year.
Asked if there were ways to determine a letter's origin more precisely than just the St. Petersburg postmark, Potter said,
"I'm going to leave that up to law enforcement."
This year, the postal service received about 60 threats or hoaxes, which included anthrax, hoof and mouth disease, the
Klingerman virus hoax and others. Nationwide, in the past two years, authorities have received about 178 anthrax threats at
courthouses, reproductive health service providers, churches, schools, and post offices.
Bioterrorism experts said anthrax can be grown in large batches, using routine commercial laboratory equipment. When the
bacteria are dried and form tiny protective spores, anthrax turns into a white or beige powder.
To infect an entire city, large amounts would have to be spread by airplane or industrial sprayer after the spores are
mixed with an inert chemical to keep them suspended in air. Small amounts capable of infecting a few people can be sprinkled
in an envelope.
Microbiologists caution it is not easy or cheap to make effective biological weapons. Pranksters who want to spread fear
rather than disease might use baby powder, cornstarch or another benign look-alike.
Anthrax spores measure between 1 and 5 microns in size - too small to see with the naked eye. Even trained biologists
need the right equipment to distinguish an infectious agent from ordinary materials, so most suspicious envelopes should be
investigated.
Anthrax Hoaxes
|
| Judith Miller New York Times |
___________________________________________________________
Hoax letters to Judith Miller at the NY Times and Howard Troxler at the St. Petersburg Times: these were mailed on 5 Oct.
from St. Petersburg and were similar in appearance and content to the NBC hoax letter mailed from St. P on 20 Sept. but not
yet reported. The NY Times and St. P Times letters were in stamped, plain envelopes with no return address. A photo of the
St. P. envelope was published in the St. P Times, showing great similarity to the printing on the anthrax letters (which had
not yet been reported—in two cases—or mailed—in the other two cases). The NY Times letter contained
talcum and threatened the Sears Tower in Chicago and President Bush. The St P Times letter contained what looked like sugar
or salt and said "Howard Toxler...1st case of disease now blow away this dust so you can see how the real thing flys.
Oklahoma-Ryder Truck! Skyway bridge-18 wheels."
Analysis of the Anthrax Attacks
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg,
Federation of American Scientists
THE LETTER
October 14, 2001
Fear Hits Newsroom in a Cloud of Powder
By JUDITH MILLER
It looked like baby powder. A cloud of hospital white, sweet- smelling powder rose from the letter dusting my face, sweater
and hands. The heavier particles dropped to the floor, falling on my pants and shoes. An anthrax hoax, I thought.
My mind had been on something else. At my desk at The New York Times, I was already focused on what I thought was going
to be the story of the day: the Bush administration's effort to seize the assets of more people and groups it said supported
terrorism. It was after 9:15 a.m. on Friday, and Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill would soon begin discussing the list of
39 additions to his agency's roster of rogue financiers of terror. I was on the phone, talking to Jeff Gerth, my colleague
and friend, about the article we were planning to write. As we spoke, I was picking my way through the pile of unopened mail
beside my computer.
I had been getting many letters since Sept. 11. Some were complimentary; others were angry about the government's failure
to protect Americans from terrorism. But most writers wanted to know how they could protect themselves and their families
from bioterrorism, having seen two colleagues and me on television discussing our book, "Germs: Biological Weapons and
America's Secret War."
Had I not been distracted, I probably would not have opened the stamped letter in the plain white envelope with no return
address and a postmark from St. Petersburg, Fla. My sources and I had been discussing the threat of anthrax attacks ever since
the death of a man this month who contracted an inhaled form of the disease at a newspaper office in Boca Raton, Fla. not
far from where one of the hijackers of the Sept. 11 attacks had done his flight training.
But I wasn't thinking. I was rushed, absorbed in my work, and only half paying attention to the mail.
The powder got my full attention. I immediately asked the reporters and editors around me to call security. I didn't want
to touch the phone.
They looked alarmed. It's O.K., I told them. It's probably just a hoax.
Just then the phone rang. Instinctively, I pressed the headphone button. It was a source. Had I heard, he asked, about
Tom Brokaw's assistant? She had contracted anthrax from powder in a letter she opened in late September.
The envelope, he said, had a Florida postmark.
Calm down, I thought. It's still probably a hoax. But when The Times security officials arrived promptly I was relieved
to see that they were carrying a plastic garbage bag and wearing gloves. As I moved away from the desk, they gingerly placed
the letter and envelope in the bag, and sealed it, along with the glove that had touched them. Perfect, I thought.
As I washed my hands and tried to dust off the powder that clung to my pants and shoes, I thought about what Bill Patrick,
my friend and bio-weapons mentor, had told me: anthrax was hard to weaponize. To produce a spore small enough to infect the
lungs took great skill. Bill knew that firsthand. He had struggled to manufacture such spores for the United States in the
1950's and 60's as a senior scientist in America's own germ weapons program, which President Richard M. Nixon had unilaterally
ended in 1969.
Growing anthrax that would penetrate the skin cutaneous infection, it was called was less difficult, though still not
easy.
That's why Bill had been very concerned when he heard about the Florida case. Whoever had done this had been able to produce
the tiny spore of roughly one to five microns that could enter the lungs.
The other cases, Bill told me, could well have involved a larger spore that was cut with baby powder or another substance
to mask the deadly pathogen with a smell that was reassuringly familiar. Anthrax itself had no smell. And it was almost never
white.
By now, I was no stranger to this deadly agent. My education had started with Bill Patrick's demonstration of how easily
anthrax could be slipped past airport security. Bill had shown me how the fine powder in the small vial he kept on his desk
dissolved like magic into the air when the vial was shaken and poured. Since 1998, I had been touring the laboratories and
plants that had been part of the Soviet Union's vast germ empire. I had visited the decaying laboratories in once secret cities
and interviewed some of the tens of thousands of Soviet scientists who had worked to perfect mankind's most vicious, efficient
killers. I was now familiar with the stench of such places the haunting mix of bleach, dust, animal waste the smell of death.
The research had terrified me at first. Not even the terrorism I had covered as a Times correspondent in the Middle East
in the 1980's had so unnerved me. But I had remained, through it all, detached from the reality of my often awful subjects.
To do our work, journalists had to be. We were trained to be the cool, professional observers that our business requires and
readers demand.
Yet now I was no longer covering a story. I was the story.
Returning to my desk, I was determined to remain calm. Or at least appear calm. If my exquisitely observant colleagues
felt that one of their in-house experts was frightened, they, too, might lose their professional cool.
Had The Times planned for such an emergency, I would have been isolated from my colleagues and the potentially deadly
letter. But like most organizations, we had not conducted drills for a biological or chemical attack. So a senior editor and
friend put his arm around me and went with me to the medical department on another floor. When I returned, concerned colleagues
and editors also rushed to my side. Someone brought a cup of tea for me. They, too, are now taking Cipro.
Within 20 minutes of the incident, almost a dozen law enforcement officials from almost as many agencies had arrived in
the building, each with its own idea of what to do. While the newsroom floor was evacuated, photographs were made and tests
conducted at my desk by police officers, many of them in tan head-to-toe bio- suits with gas masks. I stayed with them to
show them where the powder had fallen and where I went after I had opened the letter. I shall never forget the sight of these
moon men moving through our normally bustling, now empty newsroom, silent save for the ringing of unanswered phones.
They began questioning me almost immediately. Whom did I know in Florida?
Had I been there recently? Did I usually open my own mail? Was there a reason for someone to want to send me such a letter?
Could I describe the powder; where and how had it fallen? I knew they were checking to verify the particle size. The joint
terrorism task force officers, dressed in civilian clothes, were polite, professional and clearly concerned. So was Don Weiss,
the doctor who headed a surveillance unit of New York City's Department of Health Communicable Disease Program.
Calm, reasoned and well informed, he answered questions from reporters and editors, many of whom had by then drifted back
into the newsroom. He and his team stayed with us most of the day, taking swab samples from our noses, dispensing Cipro to
those who were at risk and answering the questions all of us had about the situation in New York.
Several times, he was called away to the phone.
At 6 p.m., I started writing my part of the Treasury Department article for the Saturday paper.
By Saturday evening, it was still unclear whether the powder contained anthrax. Two preliminary tests had come back negative
and a third definitive test seemed to suggest that the powder was benign.
But I was sure of one thing: similar letters had been sent to a nationally distributed supermarket tabloid published in
Florida and to NBC, and now one had been sent to The New York Times. Maybe there was anthrax in my letter, or maybe there
wasn't.
It almost didn't matter. What did matter was that this was a relatively inexpensive way to spread maximum terror without
having to solve the technical challenges of spreading the disease widely. Whoever did this had spread panic with only a few
anthrax spores, or perhaps only baby powder, and the price of a few stamps.
The Anthrax "Hoaxes"
Thursday, Nov. 1, 2001 9:15 p.m. EST
Hannity, O'Reilly Hit by Anthrax Scare Letters
"In addition to the letters with an Indianapolis postmark, "one or two were from Trenton (N.J.)"
Fox News Channel personalities Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly were hit by threatening letters similar to those laden with
anthrax sent to Sen. Tom Daschle and NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, the New York Post reported Thursday.
"In my gut, I know it's the same person," Hannity told his nationally syndicated radio audience Thursday afternoon,
explaining that he'd kept quiet about the suspicious letters because they were the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation.
The letters arrived before Sept. 11 but were addressed in the same kind of block letter handwriting used in Daschle and
Brokaw missives. They apparently contained no anthrax.
Each line in the printed address clearly sloped downward to the right, the paper said. The envelopes bore a postmark from
Indianapolis, where the Post Office discovered yesterday that some of its equipment is contaminated with anthrax.
Hannity said that he'd begun receiving the suspicious mail last winter and again in August.
"When I saw the Tom Daschle envelope and the Tom Brokaw envelope, I immediately was stunned," Hannity told listeners.
"It was the exact same handwriting that I had recognized. ... When I saw it I said, 'Oh my God, that's the same guy.'"
The "Hannity & Colmes" co-host revealed that in addition to the letters with an Indianapolis postmark,
"one or two were from Trenton (N.J.)," where traces of anthrax have also been reported.
Hannity said he hasn't gotten any more of the letters since the Sept. 11 attacks and hasn't been tested for anthrax exposure."
Brokaw’s aide tests positive
Suspicious letters to NBC, N.Y. Times sent from St. Petersburg, authorities say.
[AP photo]
Barry Mawn, left, head of the FBI office in New York, addresses the media as New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani looks on
today at NBC headquarters in New York. Mawn said two suspicious letters were sent from St. Petersburg. Police Commissioner
Bernard Kerik is at center background.
By DAVID BALLINGRUD, MIKE BRASSFIELD and WES ALLISON
© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 13, 2001
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More information
• CDC Public Health Message Regarding Anthrax, Dated Oct. 12, 2001 [pdf file]
• CDC Anthrax FAQ Web page
[To get the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view .pdf files, click here]
A broadening national bioterrorism investigation turned toward St. Petersburg late Friday after NBC officials disclosed
that a New York employee has contracted anthrax.
A woman who opens the mail for news anchor Tom Brokaw was diagnosed with a skin form of anthrax several days after she
opened a letter that contained white powder and was postmarked from St. Petersburg.
The New York Times on Friday received a letter with a white powder and the St. Petersburg Times received one earlier in
the week. All three letters were postmarked in St. Petersburg.
Federal law enforcement officials said late Friday that all three letters postmarked St. Petersburg tested negatively
for anthrax.
Still, the case of the NBC worker hit a nerve and touched off a new investigation in Florida.
Late Friday, postal officials converged at the main post office in St. Petersburg, saying they were working with the FBI
and others in the early stages of an investigation. They would not address specifics of the investigation or what inspectors
could do to pinpoint the origin of the letters.
"The Postal Service does not have the means to track an individual letter to its source," said Linda Walker,
spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Tampa.
Despite repeated government assurances Friday that investigators have found no definite link between the anthrax incidents
and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the letters fueled growing concerns about a possible biological attack.
Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday there may be links between U.S. anthrax cases and Osama bin Laden, the suspected
mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I think the only responsible thing for us to do is proceed on the basis that it could be linked," Cheney told
Jim Lehrer of PBS. He said the United States has evidence that bin Laden's terrorists were trained in spreading chemical and
biological toxins.
In developments Friday:
• An assistant to NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw contracted the skin-based form of anthrax after opening a "threatening"
letter to her boss.
Officials quickly said there was no known link to either the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or the more serious inhaled form
of anthrax that killed a supermarket tabloid editor in Florida last week. The 38-year-old NBC employee was being treated with
antibiotics and is expected to recover. The letter was postmarked in St. Petersburg on Sept. 20 and opened Sept. 25, authorities
said.
[AP photos]
Police officers gather outside the New York Times offices today, in top photo, as they investigate a letter sent to investigative
reporter Judith Miller, at left, that contained a powdery substance. Two floors of newspaper offices were evacuated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• Within hours, another scare broke out at the New York Times' 43rd Street headquarters. Staff writer Judith
Miller, the author of a recently released book on bioterrorism, received an envelope containing a powdery substance that smelled
like talcum powder, said Kathy Park, a spokeswoman for the paper. Two floors of employees were evacuated but later returned
to their desks.
FBI officials confirmed late Friday that the letters the NBC employee and Miller received were "business-type"
letters, postmarked in St. Petersburg, and contained a similar powdery substance. Neither had a return address.
• In Columbus, Ohio, three employees of the Columbus Dispatch remained in quarantine late Friday after one of
them opened a Halloween card and found a powdery substance. Steve Berry, an assistant features editor, said the card arrived
in the mail with a Dayton postmark but no return address. The substance was taken to the Ohio Department of Health, where
officials said a preliminary report was expected late Friday.
• Fox News Channel reported receiving a questionable envelope with a powdery substance and all mailroom employees
were being tested for anthrax. The woman who received the envelope at Fox has tested negative for anthrax.
• In Nevada, a letter containing pornographic material that was sent from Malaysia to a Microsoft office in
Reno was first reported as testing positive for anthrax, but state officials said later that was in error.
New organizations including CNN, the Los Angeles Times and the San Jose Mercury News also stopped accepting outside mail,
and the Miami Herald continued to provide latex gloves to concerned employees, as it has since the anthrax fatality at American
Media Inc. in Boca Raton.
The New York offices of Newsweek magazine, the Associated Press, ABC and CBS stopped mail deliveries to staff as a precaution.
In a briefing at the Pentagon, a senior defense official confirmed that al-Qaida, bin Laden's global network, is thought
to have crude facilities in Afghanistan where it could produce chemical or biological weapons. If al-Qaida has biological
warfare agents, they could include anthrax, said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Local postal workers report symptoms
Shortly after 10 p.m. Friday, paramedics were called to the mail processing center in St. Petersburg to check a few workers
who were complaining of headaches or other symptoms.
The workers feared that they might have been exposed to something a couple of days earlier, according to paramedics at
the scene.
A hazardous materials team also was called to the mail center to test for any contamination.
"We anticipate getting a clean bill of health," said Walker, of the postal inspection service.
Earlier in the day, federal authorities told the St. Petersburg Police Department that they were investigating multiple
mailed envelopes that had St. Petersburg postmarks.
St. Petersburg police Chief Mack Vines confirmed reports that one of the suspicious envelopes was mailed to NBC and one
to the New York Times, but would not comment on whether other such envelopes had been found.
Detectives with the St. Petersburg Police Department's intelligence unit came to Vines' office shortly after 5 p.m. to
inform him of the development.
Vines said St. Petersburg detectives were working on the case with FBI, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Manhattan homicide
squad of the New York Police Department.
"We're on top of the issue. We're working with the bureau to determine if we can identity any type of situation relating
to the postmark," Vines said Friday night. "We're just trying to develop any kind of information that would tie
in to something like that."
Vines said he could not say anything else about the ongoing investigation.
"We're working diligently on it," Vines said. "We'll see if we can trace some of these things back. That's
the issue."
"The only thing we know for sure is that they (the letters) were postmarked in St. Petersburg," said Gary Sawtelle,
Tampa postal spokesman.
"Until we examine them, there's no way to break down where they were mailed from," he said.
The St. Petersburg postmark is given to letters collected from mid Pinellas County to south St. Petersburg, he said. He
could not immediately be more specific.
[Times photos: Jennifer Davis]
Firefighters and guards cover St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler's desk with plastic after he received an envelope,
below, Tuesday with a substance like salt or sugar.
St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler opened his letter at his desk Tuesday. As he did so, a white powdery substance,
resembling sugar or salt, spilled out.
Troxler stopped opening the letter. Authorities were called to the newspaper's offices in downtown St. Petersburg. Police
put the envelope in an airtight container and drove it to a state health lab in Tampa for analysis. Firefighters covered Troxler's
desk with a plastic sheet and yellow emergency-scene tape reading "caution."
Health officials found no signs of anthrax or bacteria in the powder. The envelope and a letter inside also tested negative.
The letter had no return address and was postmarked St. Petersburg. It bears a code 337, then a space, then 1.
Anything that is mailed in Seminole, Largo, Bay Pines, Gulfport, Pinellas Park or any St. Petersburg neighborhood goes
through the main post office on First Avenue N and is stamped with a 337.
The cryptic letter misspelled Troxler's name and had little punctuation. It said:
"Howard Toxler ... 1st case of disease now blow away this dust so you see how the real thing flys. Oklahoma-Ryder
Truck! Skyway bridge-18 wheels."
Postmaster General John Potter told CNN that the Postal Service investigates more than 80 threats involving anthrax every
year.
"Until these incidents, we have never had anthrax delivered through the mail," Potter said.
He noted that the Postal Service delivers more than 208-billion pieces of mail every year.
Asked if there were ways to determine a letter's origin more precisely than just the St. Petersburg postmark, Potter said,
"I'm going to leave that up to law enforcement."
This year, the postal service received about 60 threats or hoaxes, which included anthrax, hoof and mouth disease, the
Klingerman virus hoax and others. Nationwide, in the past two years, authorities have received about 178 anthrax threats at
courthouses, reproductive health service providers, churches, schools, and post offices.
Bioterrorism experts said anthrax can be grown in large batches, using routine commercial laboratory equipment. When the
bacteria are dried and form tiny protective spores, anthrax turns into a white or beige powder.
To infect an entire city, large amounts would have to be spread by airplane or industrial sprayer after the spores are
mixed with an inert chemical to keep them suspended in air. Small amounts capable of infecting a few people can be sprinkled
in an envelope.
Microbiologists caution it is not easy or cheap to make effective biological weapons. Pranksters who want to spread fear
rather than disease might use baby powder, cornstarch or another benign look-alike.
Anthrax spores measure between 1 and 5 microns in size - too small to see with the naked eye. Even trained biologists
need the right equipment to distinguish an infectious agent from ordinary materials, so most suspicious envelopes should be
investigated.
Anthrax Hoaxes
Los Angeles, Alta California - October 9, 2001 (ACN) -
On Monday July 9, 2001, we received a handwritten letter in our mail box addressed to the publisher of La Voz de Aztlan.
The letter had no return address but had a July 5, 2001 U.S. postal mark from Santa Clarita, California.......
The one page letter contained a small amount of a yellowish white substance and the text of the letter alluded to the
fact that Jews had an illustrious history in biological research that included the development of the Salk vaccine.
The letter ended with "Unfortunately, if Hitler was alive today he would pin a medal on you. Unfortunately during
World War II the Arabs also supported Hitler. Racism and hatred destroy!"
A few minutes after opening and reading the letter, I started sneezing and coughing and became ill with flu like symptoms.
I connected the commencement of the symptoms with the suspicious white substance in the envelope and proceeded to place
the letter and envelope in a plastic zip lock bag. Within hours I was able to see my doctor and he put me on 30 days of antibiotics.
I have had recurring flu like symptoms ever since.
A few days ago a similar situation occurred in Boca Raton, Florida where, according to news reports, a letter was sent
to the offices of a news service with a white soapy substance that killed at least one person.
Another person in the office tested positive for Anthrax spores in his nostrils. The laboratory engineered Anthrax spores
came in the mail in an envelope that included a "Star of David" charm according to an Associated Press news article
released today.
The FBI is presently conducting an investigation and very little information has been released concerning this case...."
***
by
Hector Carreon
La Voz de Aztlan
The Ricin Solution
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