[John Faust]

John, what are the "strong indications" the hoax letter had any connection to the anthrax murders ?
I'm curious.
(Hoax letters were mailed by the hundreds prior to 9/11;by the thousands afterward.)

Yes, there are very many hoax anthrax letters which have nothing to do with the 2001 mailings.

But the letter to Judith Miller was part of a small set of letters from St Petersburg, Florida, whose connection with the 2001 mailings is very probable.

Both Barbara Hatch Rosenberg and Don Foster have written about this set of hoax letters. While one may discount their conclusions regarding the case as a whole, their analysis of why these particular hoax letters are connected to the case is solid.

Rosenberg's paper is on-line. Foster wrote an article in Vanity Fair, but I don't think Vanity Fair has an archive on the web.

[Khan Noonian Singh]

Yes, the Saint Petersburg hoax letters were sent by someone with a connexion to the real 2001 anthrax mailings.

Thank you for drawing one's attention to Foster's article in Vanity Fair. You are right, Vanity Fair doesn't have an archive online, but I did a search and found a posting of it at the UCLA anthrax website - http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/messageanthrax.html.

I recommend this article greatly for the info on the 3 hoax letters sent by the mailers.

Here is an outline. Read the article for more info.

	Postmark Date	Addressee	Text
Hoax Letter #1	20 Sep 2001	Tom Brokaw; opened by aide Erin O'Connor Same people received a real anthrax letter postmked 18 Sep 2001!	Started: "THE UNTHINKABEL" SAMPLE OF HOW IT WILL LOOK In the 1st line above, you should see one quotemark below the line, and also the 2 underlined Ns in the word UNTHINKABEL should be Ns reversed left-right as mirror-image. Included bio-terror threats against New York, Chi, LA, and Wash DC. If Newsweek is correct, also contained the text: SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. But this may be a paraphrase of SAMPLE OF HOW IT WILL LOOK rather than a quotacion.
Hoax Letter #2	5 Oct 2001	Howard Troxler	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. According to Foster, same hand-writing and same simbolic oddities. Exact details have not been made public.
Hoax Letter #3	5 Oct 2001	Judith Miller	Bio-terror threats, same hand-writing and simbolic oddities. Text has not been publicised.

Question: What do the 3 letters have in common?

Answer:

• Commonality A: All 3 contained powder, but some inert material, not anthrax.
• Commonality B: All 3 were mailed from Saint Petersburg.
• Commonality C: All 3 contained threats of bio-terror.
• Commonality D: All 3 were written in the same hand-writing and with fake Russian script: Cyrillic-looking backward Ns and opening quotacion marks below the line a la Russe.

Question: How do we know that the 3 letters are connected to one another?

Answer: Primarily because of Commonality D. Secondarily because of Commonality B. Tertiarily because two were postmarked on the same date, 5 Oct 2001.

Question: How do we know that these letters are connected to the 2001 anthrax mailings?

Answer: There was an 18 Sep 2001 mailing of real anthrax to Tom Brokaw, also opened by his aide Erin O'Connor. Here we have a 20 Sep 2001 hoax mailing to the same person. At the time, no one knew:

• that there was an anthrax attack in progress,
• much less that such an attack would take place via the US mails accompanying letters,
• and even less that Tom Brokaw would be the recipient of such a letter.

This is very further-fetched to be a co-incidence.

And the Brokaw hoax letter is quite explicit: "The unthinkabel" and, even more pointedly, "Sample of how it will look".

The other two letters were postmarkened 5 October 2001. Bob Stevens had just died from anthrax. That was in the news. But... it was not being widely attributed to bio-terrorism, and I believe there was no suggestion of delivery via letter. And... no one knew that AMI was merely the first media target to be noticed, of several real anthrax letters already mailed but still unknown. So again on 5 Oct we have what would be an amazing co-incidence if it were a co-incidence... Two more hoax letters containing powder, threatening bio-attacks, sent to news media outlets. Just like the real letters that were unknown at the time to all but the mailers.