[iwar] [fc:Mailbox.Pinpointed.in.Anthrax.Cases]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-20 12:30:24


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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Mailbox.Pinpointed.in.Anthrax.Cases]
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Mailbox Pinpointed in Anthrax Cases   

By ALAN FRAM
.c The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (Oct. 20) - Authorities say they have pinpointed the New Jersey 
post office sorting box from which anthrax-bearing letters were sent, 
advancing their investigation even as two more people were found to have the 
skin form of the disease.

Tom Ridge, chief of homeland security, disclosed the discovery of the mailbox 
Friday but provided no details. Determining which sorting box the letters 
were in may give authorities hints as to where the letters were sent from.

Ridge also said anthrax strains that have been found in Florida, New York and 
Washington are ''indistinguishable'' from each other and may have been from 
the same batch.

Both revelations were important developments for investigators trying to 
learn who managed to get the potentially fatal bacteria into newsrooms in New 
York and Florida and the Washington office of Senate Majority Leader Tom 
Daschle, D-S.D.

Eight people have now contracted the disease, including one Florida man who 
died, and 37 others have tested positive for exposure. Even though the ill 
and exposed people are all using antibiotics and are expected to recover, an 
entire nation - already frazzled by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - has 
seemingly moved to an even higher level of anxiety.

''It is terrorizing people, and Americans are not ready to live with this,'' 
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a crowd of troops and their 
relatives at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri on Friday. ''What is in the 
mind of people who do this, we don't know. We haven't been able to track down 
who they are, but I am confident we will.''

Ridge told reporters the anthrax had not been ''weaponized,'' meaning it had 
not been manipulated to facilitate inhalation by potential victims.

Even so, one participant in a conference call for lawmakers said Robert 
Gibbs, a Defense Department official, reported the anthrax was of ''relative 
high quality'' and that ''there is an effort to downplay and not promote the 
abilities of the people doing this.'' The participant spoke on condition of 
anonymity.

Congress recessed until Tuesday so hazardous materials teams could check the 
Capitol and House and Senate office buildings for evidence that anthrax 
spores had spread.

Officials said they had not found any of the bacteria beyond previously known 
locations, including Daschle's office and a central Senate mailroom.

They said three of 31 people had been removed from a list of employees who 
earlier tested positive for exposure, citing more complete tests. That was 
out of 1,400 people for whom nasal swab results were completed. Test results 
remain incomplete for 2,500 more people.

The 28 people who tested positive for exposure were six Capitol police 
officers, 20 Daschle aides and two staff members who work for Sen. Russell 
Feingold, D-Wis., who occupies the office suite next to the majority leader.

Feingold's aides have said they were not in Daschle's suite Monday, when the 
letter was opened. Officials conceded for the first time that meant the 
anthrax-laden powder had escaped the confines of the majority leader's 
offices.

Dr. John Eisold, the Capitol physician, said at least 120 people had been 
placed on a 60-day regiment of Cipro, an antibiotic used to treat those at 
risk or affected by the disease.

One of the two new reported anthrax victims was Johanna Huden, 30, an 
assistant to the editorial page editor of the New York Post, Bob McManus. He 
said she had recovered and was working Friday.

The other, a mail sorter at a Hamilton, N.J., postal facility, was infected 
with cutaneous, or skin, anthrax, a much milder form of the disease than the 
inhaled form that killed a Florida man Oct. 5.

The 35-year-old Levittown, Pa., man was in stable condition at a hospital and 
is expected to recover, Pennsylvania Department of Health spokesman Richard 
McGarvey said.

A letter carrier who works at the West Trenton, N.J., post office had already 
been diagnosed with the skin form of the disease. The carrier may have 
handled the letters that were mailed to Daschle and to NBC News anchor Tom 
Brokaw. FBI investigators are interviewing people who live and work in the 
carrier's Ewing Township route to try tracing the source of the tainted 
letters.

The West Trenton post office feeds mail to the Hamilton facility.

Officials have not been able to determine the source of infections traced to 
ABC, CBS or the Post.

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