Workers Can't Sue Postal Officials Over Anthrax, Judge Rules

A federal judge ruled yesterday that U.S. Postal Service officials had no special responsibility to alert workers at the Brentwood postal facility to deadly anthrax contamination in the building and cannot be sued by the employees.
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U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer said she found ample reason to believe that the officials showed deliberate indifference to worker safety by keeping the plant operating for four days after they privately confirmed the toxic spores had spread through the facility.
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Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said, "We can't imagine that in the end that courts will sanction government supervisors lying to workers about biological toxins infecting their workplace. Let's be clear about the consequences here: People are sick to this day and some are dead, and the courts are saying 'Tough luck.' "

Am I correct in saying that Tom Brokaw is the only person that got both a hoax and a real letter??

A very good question. If the perp was going to send hoax letters also to the anthrax recipients, he wouldn't have just done Brokaw, would he?

Yet it is hard to believe that it's a coincidence that one of the anthrax targets was mailed a warning letter just a couple of days after the anthrax letter was mailed. As you pointed out, Khan, no one else could have known at the time.

You're also right about the incubation period, Khan. If the purpose was to have another, more recent, letter to be remembered by the victim after symptoms ensued, then waiting a couple of days before mailing is what you would do.

I am half way up the fence on the hoax letters.

I am on the fence on the hoax letters also, Battle Axe. It seems credible that the two letters to Brokaw within two days could not be a coincidence. So I would like to believe the theory. Yet, where are the hoax letters to the other anthrax victims that one would suspect would have been sent if this theory is right??

Battle Axe::: << Am I correct in saying that Tom Brokaw is the only person that got both a hoax and a real letter?? >>

John Faust::: << If the perp was going to send hoax letters also to the anthrax recipients, he wouldn't have just done Brokaw, would he? ... If the perp was going to send hoax letters also to the anthrax recipients, he wouldn't have just done Brokaw, would he? >>

Tom Brokaw was not the only anthrax recipient to receive a hoax letter! He was just 1 of at least 3 anthrax recipients who received hoax letters too.

So, by your reasoning, this works in favor of the theory that the hoax letters were part of the anthrax plot.

There was a hoax letter addressed in block capitals to the Editor of the New York Post, just like one of the anthrax letters, according to the rememberance of the worker who opened the letter. This letter was received and thrown out either in September or some-time in October before the 19th. Best guess is it was mailed around 20 September along with the hoax letter to Brokaw as part of the 1st set of Saint Petersburg letters, but it could have been mailed on 5 October with the 2nd set of Saint Petersburg hoax letters.

Sen Daschle, another anthrax target, also received a hoax letter, this one much later than the others, in November 2001.

Source is Barbara Hatch Rosenberg's research, http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/BHR-FAS2.html, article from 5 Feb 2002. As she says:

<< 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. The envelopes on most or all of the hoax letters were addressed in block capitals similar to the addresses on the anthrax envelopes, even though they were mailed before the anthrax envelopes became known. >>

Hang in there !

I'm reminded of the "joy" of untangling the cheap cuttyhunk fishing line I used as a kid: You just have to keep pulling at those loose ends !

Now: two divergent thoughts on the "hoax" letters.

1. Hoax letters will almost always be addressed in spikey,"angry-looking" capital letters.The hoax letters could have been JUSt THAT !

2. On the other hand,the hoax letters could have been a test run to measure how well the mailing plan would work.

(The "problem" with this is that one would have to have insiders at the receiving end to give you the particulars:When did they arrive?Who handled them ? How ? What was the reaction,etc.? In the absence of multiple insiders,would you not have to have a police,postal,or FBI contact to tell you these things ?)

(This is for Khan: In what countries would penicyllin (?)be the first drug thought of for treating anthrax ? Would that be the drug of choice for Veterinary medication ? )

<< This is for Khan: In what countries would penicyllin (?)be the first drug thought of for treating anthrax ? >>

Penicillin was the tradicional remedy for anthrax, in the US and else-where.

CDC still includes penicillin first in its list of treatments, altho cipro has now become the primary recommendation for adults: << Bacillus anthracis usually responds effectively to several antibiotics including penicillin, doxycycline, and fluoroquinolones (such as ciprofloxacin). >> http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/anthrax/faq/treatment.asp

For children, CDC has amoxicillin, a type of penicillin, as the primary recommendation, unless the anthrax strain is penicillin-resistent: << As soon as penicillin susceptibility of the organism has been confirmed, prophylactic therapy for children should be changed to oral amoxicillin 80 mg/kg of body mass per day divided every 8 hours (not to exceed 500 mg three times daily). >> http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5041a1.htm

Amoxicillin/penicillin is the primary option not just for children, but also for pregnant women, and in general when there is a contra-indication for cipro. http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/anthrax/treatment/amoxicillinpatient.asp

Etc..... And penicillin is still an acceptable treatment option for anybody, altho cipro is now preferred in many cases.

Summary: Having recommended penicillin in the anthrax letters does not point to any place of origin, neither foreign nor domestic. Nor does it suggest veterinary experience versus medical experience.

Conclusion: Penicillin is a reasonable suggestion to have made. It is also the most widely recognized anti-biotic. If cipro had been named, most people would have said "What is that?" But penicillin is immediately recognized as an anti-biotic.

I would guess, if the notes said "God is great !",most people in our society would have said: "Aha ! The Religious Right at work !!"

( I mention this,because at one time,much was made of the mention of "Allah".Some "experts" insisted most Muslims would say "God". Glancing at this line in the letter text,I couldn't help but notice what looked like a "hesitation mark" on the Letter "A" of Allah-suggesting the writer might have been more comfortable writing "Al'lah"-which,I believe, is the non-Aglicized way of writing it."

OK, it is starting to be very convincing that some of the hoax letters were part & parcel of the anthrax plot.

Both Tom Brokaw and the New York Post received hoax letters at about the same time as real anthrax letters? Before it was known that Brokaw and the Post had been sent real anthrax letters? Before it was known that anyone had been sent anthrax letters?

This is not just one recipient, but two. The chance of a double coincidence is well past astronomical.

There were probably unnoticed hoax letters sent to the other anthrax recipients. Indeed, most of the anthrax letters themselves went unnoticed at the time, and several were never found.

It is even possible that there are some anthrax letters which were never discovered and which happened never to infect anybody. The cases that we know about only infected 1 or 2 people, so the chance of infection was low. For that reason, it's quite possible that there were anthrax letters that infected nobody and were never found. Maybe some of the recipients of other hoax letters that were found - Miller, Troxler, CBS in Washington DC, Fox News - were also recipients of real anthrax letters???

Of course, that's idle speculation. But there is no doubt of a connection between the St Petersburg hoax letters and the anthrax letters.

Let's go over the incubation period. I think the timing is off if the desired effect is as you stated. What if the letters are not opened in a timely manner and the perp does not know that.

There's no such thing as perfect timing, and no one expects guarantees in black ops. The point is that, because of the incubation period, there is a window of several days after mailing the actual letter during which additional "hoax" letters could be sent. It is then probable that the hoax letters would be received before any anthrax case had been diagnosed. In point of fact, this is what happened - exactly what happened - with NBC News and with the New York Post.

The hoax letters make it more likely that the recipient will read at least one of the perps' letters, and if the recipient reads both, so much the better for increasing the threatening feeling.

I'm not buying same perp sending the hoaxes, but the cell might be big enough that someone else knew about it and got on the bandwagon and sent his own powder without having the real stuff.

It might not be the same person, no one said that it was. The St Petersburg hoax letters were sent either by a compatriot of the sender of the real letters or by the sender himself as part of the same plot.

<< No, I think what I am trying to say and the older I get the harder it is to make my self clear.......is that Tom Brokaw is such a commonly known person that many would have had him on their list....if we had a list of hoaxers. He is so visible that he would be a common target of authority. >>

This analysis doesn't hold water without leaks. Look at the dates. There were very many hoax letters after the anthrax letters to Brokaw and the New York Post were announced. That Brokaw was the recipient of an anthrax letter was made public on 12 Oct 2001, the Post anthrax letter wasn't discovered and made public until later, 20 Oct 2001.

But on 5 Oct 2001, when the Saint Petersburg hoax letter to Brokaw was post-marked, we were still in an earlier time when there were far fewer anthrax hoax letters, since there was no public knowlege yet of the real letters. Perhaps one or two hundred hoaxes a year, mostly sent to abortion clinics.

There was some concern about anthrax after 11 Sept, but mostly the fear was distribution by crop-duster or in the ventilation system of a highrise, etc. Letters would be way down the list of fears, because they just are not an effective distribution method.

Brokaw is famous, but he would not have been on anybody's list of potential targets, if anybody were to make up a list of targets. Can you find even a single document from before 12 Oct 2001, the date the Brokaw letter was announced, that lists Tom Brokaw as a likely target of a terrorist attack? How about the New York Post? Alternately, can you find any evidence that hoax anthrax letters to the media were so common prior to 12 Oct 2001 that any particular letter would be no surprize?

No. It is clear, as Faust says, that the hoax letter to Brokaw could not be a coincidence.

So we know that the 3 Saint Petersburg letters were mailed by anthrax coconspirators. Now... the interesting question is... << What does that tell us? >>

<< If the Tom Brokaw St. Petersberg letter was postmarked on Oct. 5, then is it no more than a hoax. It was announced on the radio that there was a person that was sick with anthrax on Oct. 4. It is a copycat. >>

Not a chance. Yes, it was known that Stevens had somehow contracted anthrax, probably the hoax letter was mailed right after the announcement that Stevens had died of anthrax. But 5 Oct letters weren't from a copy-cat.

How did the supposed copy-cat know to send a letter to Tom Brokaw? A real anthrax letter had been mailed to Brokaw on 18 Sept, but on 5 Oct only the plotters knew about it.

It's not credible that they picked a name at random, out of tens of thousands, or more, famous people, and they just happened to pick somebody who would not have been widely viewed as a target at all but who in fact was, unknown to anyone else, already the recipient of a real anthrax letter.

And then they did it again with a hoax letter to the New York Post, received before it was known that the Post was an anthrax recipient !!

The Daschle hoax letter may be a copy-cat; it was sent too late to tell, after it was known that Daschle had received anthrax in the mail. Daschle is a more likely random pick anyway. One can-not tell if the Daschle hoax was sent by a copy-cat or not. But the Brokaw hoax letter certainly and the unrecovered but recalled Post letter almost certainly were sent not by copy-cats but as part of the ongoing plot, what-so-ever its purpose might have been.

The question of interest now is: << What does it tell us that the Saint Petersburg letters were sent by the anthrax plotters?? >>

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