New Jersey Mailbox Tests Positive for Anthrax

Reuters via Yahoo ^ | Mon Aug 12, 9:27 PM ET | Unknown

[B-bone]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. postal inspectors investigating the anthrax mailings linked to five deaths have discovered a mailbox that tested positive for traces of the bacteria, a postal official said on Monday.

The mailbox was found on Thursday night in Princeton, New Jersey, and has been sent to a U.S. Army facility in Aberdeen, Maryland, for forensic analysis, U.S. Postal Service spokesman Dan Mihalko told Reuters.

He said the mailbox was discovered as investigators checked hundreds of boxes from which mail is funneled to a postal sorting center in Trenton, New Jersey, where four anthrax-laced letters were postmarked last year.

"We've been looking at all the mailboxes that feed into the Trenton facility," Mihalko said. "One of them did test positive."

The mailbox was sent to the army laboratory for more conclusive tests, he said, adding, "We've seen in the past, field tests that turn up false positives."

Five people died and 13 were sickened last year as anthrax-tainted letters were sent to government officials and media outlets in Washington, Florida and New York. The letters were mailed in the weeks following the Sept. 11 attacks.

The FBI launched an investigation in October to find the person responsible for the anthrax attacks. Authorities are offering a $2.5 million reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.

[aristeides]

This news does seem to let Steve Hatfill off the hook, doesn't it? I wonder if that explains the timing.

[B-bone]

I suspect it is not a coincidence.

[Catspaw]

I have been on that part of Nassau St. countless times.

So has my daughter. She lived in Princeton for about 15 years, but she's move out of the "big city" into the countryside where the overly-fecund deer are in their natural habitat and not in her backyard.

Everytime we'd visit her, we'd go down to Nassau street and windowshop. It's so much fun.

I did check the local papers and none have the story yet, and neither did the Trenton Times. They'll have more coverage tomorrow.

[Tarheel]

What is even more incredible is that this info surfaces the day after that Dr. Hatfill fellow had the press conference in front of his civil attorney's office. I wonder if the Feds are suddenly trying very hard to avoid a 'Jewel' of a case.

The Tarheel

[aristeides]

I don't imagine the investigators would have been too diligent if they were under orders not to get results.

[eno_]

It was a regular Post Office mailbox directly adjacent to the Princeton University campus.

[John H K]

This news does seem to let Steve Hatfill off the hook, doesn't it? I wonder if that explains the timing.

Why gosh, yes it does....everyone knows that it's IMPOSSIBLE to drive 3 hours from Frederick MD to Princeton NJ, and 3 hours back, to mail anthrax letters. I've never heard of anyone driving that far in my life.

Seriously, Trenton/Princeton NJ is the precise distance of a 6-7 hour day trip from Frederick, MD, if you wanted to drive far enough away from your house to make a mail attack and not attract suspicion to yourself, but still have you gone for a brief enough period of time that it's not noticed.

If I were mailing anthrax letters, I'd drive about 3-4 hours away, mail them, and drive back.

[Fred Mertz]

NYT has an article on another thread. I flagged you. Sounds like we're being played like fiddles.

[eno_]

You would drive 4 hours away, but still be dumb enough to mail them from a commercial/university main street with dozens of shops that might have surveillance cameras and where parking is tough to find? I've been there many times, and it would not be my first choice for a place not to be noticed.

Any Moslem profs or grad students within walking distance? Or is Hatfill such an Evil Genius he drove to Princeton to frame someone?

[aristeides]

Why, if it was Hatfill, would he drive to downtown Princeton, a few miles from the New Jersey Turnpike? Why, if he did that, would he put on the envelope as a return address Franklin Park together with the Zip Code for the adjoining Monmouth Junction (which just happens to be where the main mosque in the area is)? That sounds like the sort of a mistake a local would make, not someone researching for a return address in books or on the Internet.

[John H K]

Why are Muslim terrorists sending anthrax letters to two left wing Congressmen, and absolutely no one else in the Congress or Executive branch, including any number of people who played key roles in the Gulf War, policy towards Israel, etc.?

Why are Muslim terrorists who go out of their way to kill as many people as they physically can on 9/11 going out of their way to kill as FEW people as possible with the quantity of quality anthrax they had (letters instead of dispersal in a crowded place, letters TELLING people it was anthrax and recommending antibiotics?

[aristeides]

Why should Moslem terrorists target the left? They hate the left more. It represents what they hate in our society.

Why should Moslem terrorists attack in a way that minimizes casualties? I think the Great Satan has offered a plausible explanation for that: the letters were a warning and a threat, not an actual attack.

[aristeides]

A professor in Princeton University's Department of Molecular Biology is Bana Jabri. Her research is in immune responses.

[Fred Mertz]

It's deja vu all over again;^) I swear I've seen that link many months ago.

[Fabozz]

There is a loose Princeton connection with the 9/11 hijackers. Ziad al-Jarrah, a college roommate of Atta's from Hamburg, was the leader of the Flight 93 hijackers. Al--Jarrah is the one who took al-Haznawi to the emergency room on 6/22 with an (apparent) cutaneous anthrax infection. He arrived in Newark from Florida on 9/7 and is not known to have stayed in any hotel until the night of 9/10, when he checked into the airport Marriott. In between, after midnight on 9/9, he received a speeding ticket doing 90mph on the New Jersey Turnpike, which is of course the highway between Newark and Princeton. There is no known reason for him to have left Newark, and even less reason for him to have done so in an attention-grabbing hurry.

If one wished, one could suppose that Jarrah delivered the letters to someone in Princeton on 9/9, who held onto them for exactly one month and mailed them on 10/9.

[Don Joe]

There was somebody who kept posting here shortly after the anthrax mailings insisting on a Princeton connection. I forget the person's screen name.

[B-bone]

I suspect we have a pretty good idea who did it, but don't want to complete the case until we are ready to spring the trap. If suspicians that this is coming from a foreign state are correct, than that is a pretty big trap to build and will take time.

[Fabozz]

"...who held onto them for exactly one month and mailed them on 10/9."

Okay, amend that a bit. I checked with an epidemiology study done by UCLA and got the "definitive" (i.e., best guess) list of letters. There were five letters mailed 9/18, exactly one week after 9/11. All five were sent to the media: American Media, the NY Post, NBC, ABC and CBS. The Daschle and Leahy letters, which contained superior anthrax and a different message, were mailed 10/9.

The aforementioned study, by the way, is very much worth reading. It also contains a link to another excellent site, anthraxinvestigation.com. That site's author is altogether too quick to pooh-pooh the al-Qaeda and Iraq links, but aside from that he's written a lot of thought-provoking material.

[The Great Satan]

AMI workers and Bob Steven's physicians concur that his exposure was probably from a suspicious package containing an obscene letter and a tobacco tin holding a Star of David buried in powder. The letter was received about one week before 9/11, but was deemed suspicious and Stevens did not examine it until the 19th. Had the letter been opened on arrival, the anthrax cases at AMI would have started on or shortly after 9/11. The timing, combined with the lack of warning or self-identification and the fact that the anthrax aerosolized readily, unlike that in subsequent media letters, suggests this incident may have been intended as a lethality demonstration or "calling card" rather than a warning.

The editor of The Sun, Michael Irish, is a private pilot who flies out of the Lantana airfield where Mohammed Atta practiced for the WTC attacks. His wife, Gloria Irish, is a realtor who found apartments near AMI for several of the hijackers, and had numerous contacts with them in the run-up to their destruction of the World Trade Center.

The FBI chooses not to discuss or explore the AMI incident on the AMERITHRAX web-site. AMI officials believe the FBI has not been frank with AMI's employees about the nature of the attack, and discounts the domestic loner premise which is, for public consumption at least, the focus of the AMERITHRAX investigation.

[weegee]

Just as DC is often forgotten in the 9/11 attacks, Florida is forgotten in the anthrax attacks. Coincidince just won't cut it and that strike appeared to have happened prior to 9/11.

Moden science is wonderful. When the details don't fit the theory, throw them out.