Posted on 09/15/2002 11:32:25 AM PDT by knak
BOCA RATON -- FBI investigators believe photocopy machines helped spread anthrax throughout the American Media Inc. headquarters last year before the building was quarantined.
While testing the three-story building for anthrax spores, investigators found that every copy machine in the building -- more than two dozen in all -- tested positive for anthrax, according to a source familiar with the investigation.
The anthrax is believed to have gotten into the copiers from reams of copy paper that had trapped airborne spores in the company's mail room, where the paper was stored.
The FBI's theory helps explain for the first time the presence of anthrax throughout the 68,000-square-foot building.
Since AMI photo editor Bob Stevens died last October and AMI mail room employee Ernesto Blanco was hospitalized, officials surmised the anthrax might have been spread by a rolling mail cart used to deliver the letters to AMI departments.
More important, the FBI's discoveries will lay the foundation for an emerging branch of science that studies anthrax dispersal in public buildings.
Anthrax previously had been studied as a livestock disease or in the context of biochemical warfare on the battlefield.
"No doubt, whatever they discover will be significant, because it will be a onetime opportunity to see what happened," said Dr. Keith Ward, program manager in the Biomolecular and Biosystems Group at the federal Office of Naval Research in Virginia. "The problem is we don't have a lot of experience with this sort of thing."
The FBI search operation, which began Aug. 27 and ended last Sunday, was the first comprehensive search of the supermarket tabloid's publishing office, the FBI said.
The Environmental Protection Agency last year had detected trace residues of anthrax in 84 spots in the building in a partial search.
One of the FBI's objectives this time was to map the entire AMI building for anthrax distribution.
The agency said it would use newly developed forensic techniques to determine how the anthrax spread through the building once it was brought in.
Officials surmised last year that anthrax entered the building in at least two letters, because of anthrax contamination at two different post offices that served the building.
Once investigators realized the copy machines were contaminated, they traced the anthrax back to its point of origin: an open storage area in AMI's first-floor mail room.
Apparently, someone in the mail room opened a letter containing anthrax, which dispersed the microscopic particles. The spores settled on the company's supply of copy paper.
Anthrax spores tend to stick to surfaces upon settling, said Palm Beach County Health Department spokesman Tim O'Connor. The spores can detach from surfaces, but loosening the particles requires sufficient force.
This adhesive quality was described to local health officials by anthrax experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during last year's anthrax crisis in Palm Beach County.
"Once it falls, it stays," O'Connor said. "It was stuck to the keyboard in Stevens' office. It stuck in the machinery that sorts the mail in post offices."
According to the FBI's reconstruction of events, AMI employees unwittingly distributed the clinging spores throughout the building when taking reams of copy paper to every department in the building, including AMI's library, executive offices and such publications as The National Enquirer, Weekly World News and National Examiner, which were published in the building.
When the copy paper was inserted into the machines and used to make copies, investigators believe, the spores dislodged and were "aerosolized" into the atmosphere by the whirring fans and other moving parts of the high-speed copiers.
FBI investigators, working with scientists from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, removed nearly 5,000 pieces of evidence during their search of the building.
The property seizures included more than 800 letters tainted with anthrax as well as shelves and folders from AMI's mail room.
However, no copy machines were removed from the building, according to a 34-page inventory the FBI filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington.
It's not clear whether the FBI took any items from the photocopying areas. The FBI's court filing lists two vacuum samples and six carpet samples, but it doesn't disclose where they came from. The court papers also list several broom heads and mop heads.
by Allen G. Breed
Associated Press Writer
10/10/01
BOCA RATON, Fla. (AP) -- When Jordan Arizmendi finished his internship at the National Enquirer in August, he thought he'd leave a "cute, funny" e-mail behind to say good-bye and thanks. "I will be remembered by all the little tricks and treats that I hid around the office," he wrote.
Not everyone thought the note cute. And for one agonizing day, the soft-spoken college senior was the object of fears and media reports that one of those "treats" might have been anthrax.
The FBI met with the Fort Lauderdale man for about an hour Monday on the Florida Atlantic University campus and quickly cleared him of any suspicion of bioterrorism. But Arizmendi fears the taint will stay with him.
"I think it will hurt me indeed," Arizmendi, 23, said Tuesday before going to be tested for anthrax. "I think my name will be connected with terrorists. You read in the papers, they write a two-page story of what the man's accused of, and then maybe a week later they'll write two sentences to exonerate him."
Arizmendi was one of a dozen FAU students who won $2,500 summer scholarships sponsored by American Media Inc., which publishes the Enquirer and five other tabloid newspapers.
Officials descended on the AMI headquarters in Boca Raton after a photo editor for The Sun died Friday of inhaled anthrax and a mailroom employee tested positive for it Sunday. Immediately, employees began looking for anything suspicious that happened in the past few weeks.
One senior reporter mentioned the e-mail from Arizmendi, noting that his dark skin and exotic name made him seem Middle Eastern. In reality, his father is of Spanish-Basque descent, and his mother is Jewish.
Arizmendi said he learned from a New York Daily News reporter Monday that the FBI wanted to question him. Agents plucked him from an interview with the Walt Disney Co. about a post-college internship.
Arizmendi said he borrowed the e-mail idea from his brother, who sent a similar note on his last day at a law firm and left little caches of sweets hidden around the office. On his last day, Arizmendi brought about $30 worth of bagels and cream cheese to the office as a token of his appreciation.
"It was cheesy and humorous," the stocky, bespectacled man said of the note. "That's what I was trying to do. ... Maybe that was a little too bold."
Arizmendi planned to resume his Disney meeting where it broke off, though he's concerned how all this controversy will effect his job prospects.
"It couldn't have happened at a worse time," he said. "In a couple of months, I'm going to be graduating and looking for work."
Besides being racially profiled incorrectly, Arizmendi is hurt that anyone at the newspaper would think him capable of anything like this.
"I don't really know what to think," he said. "I don't really hold any resentment. That's not my nature. The trick whenever a tragedy befalls someone is to try to turn it into a positive event.
"I hope I can do that."
------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arizmendi’s highlighted comments are eerily reminiscent of another recent “joke” played out in Florida (although CAIR didn’t threaten lawsuit; perhaps he isn’t a Muslim, or was it too soon for them to go on the offensive?)
Life is full of coincidences, or is it?
The story doesn't mention it, but Arizmendi was also hospitalized for "pneumonia" soon after, at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale -- same hospital Atta supposedly took his cohort to, for treatment of leg lesion which was ID'd as possible skin anthrax in retrospect. Arizmendi lived in Fort Lauderdale, so Holy Cross is logical; Atta was living in Boca, and there's more than one hospital closer (and less congested) than Holy Cross -- residents of Boca don't normally travel that distance for an ER.
Of course, the "pneumonia" (or perhaps inhalation anthrax) can now be explained by contact with copying machines -- depending on what his duties as an intern were...but the only other person to come down with pneumonia/anthrax was the elderly mail room clerk, and since he quit in August, that would place the anthrax there earlier than September.
So if it was the 9/11 hijackers, why did they do everything possible to kill as FEW people as possible with the anthrax they had?
From the case report by Bob Stevens treating physicians in The New England Journal of Medicine, Index Case of Fatal Inhalational Anthrax Due to Bioterrorism in the United States:
Coworkers report that the patient had closely examined a suspicious letter containing powder on September 19, approximately eight days before the onset of illness. (This incubation period is highly plausible, given the modal incubation period of 10 days reported inthe Sverdlovsk outbreak.)Uh, I think I'll go with Steven's phycisians and the New England Journal of Medicine on this one. Not that I don't have the highest respect for your intellect, John.
Because the anthrax, the most highly sophisticated ever seen by US authorities according to Newsweek, was the product of the terrorist's sponsor state, and that state can only hope to avoid retaliation by threatening us with WMD. Guess you weren't listening to President Bush's speech to the UN on Thursday, but then, your always out of it, aren't you, John?
He could have had more than usual contact with Blanco regarding his mail while he was gone. I think Stevens exposed Blanco. Jarring Blanco's memory might help.
Don't forget Blanco is MUCH older.
The Sept 18 mailings produced cutaneous (moisture laden anthrax).
The other Post Offices were contaminated because they picked up the mailat the Post Office serving the old address daily and brought it to AMI
Jarring Blanco's memory might be helpful.
Still think this was a "walk in" delivery of anthrax.
Is Steven's name shown on the bottom of those spicey headline pictures as Photo editor in the Publications??
AMI was a diversion! It sent everyone to Florida first!!
We keep overlooking ingested/inhalation combo..Stevens reported stomach sickness first.
Getting interesting.
Sac
No. 2 is: Why did STEVENS get the lethal dose at AMI, leave AMI on Sept 26th for vacation, get sick on vacation and literally die while temporarily disconnected from AMI.
Sac
Yes. High speed copiers use high voltage discharges. You can smell the ozone they create in a small room. These discharges collect dust and the copier has to be cleaned periodically. Anthrax spores behave just like tiny particles of dust.
Oops, my bad! It was Amad Al Haznawi and Ziad Samir Jarrah that showed up at Holy Cross. They were renting a house in Lauderdale-By-The-Sea at that time, so Holy Cross makes sense. Atta, on the other hand, showed up at a Boca pharmacy with red hands, and his cohort had the "sniffles."
I've heard this argument before. It was Hatfil, not Atta because 'real' terrorists would have killed more people. Well this ineffectual' attack stood a good chance of killing top Congressional leaders. It shut down the DC mail for months. It bankrupted many businesses. It closed the Senate for months.
This sounds like the most logical explanation for the discovery on every machine. Paper, wrapped in the ream covers, from the paper mill, is about as close to a sterile substance as can be found outside of a medical setting. I don't think it went from machine to machine, but rather was collected from the air by the static charge. How long was the building in use before it was shut down? Probably plenty of time for the anthrax to be minutely in the air all through the building.
Right on, and as others have pointed out, we are talking about 20 some copiers. And 5000 items gathered as evidence [ BS Detector Vibration in my pocket].
Has anyone on this investigative team ever had an electrostatic air cleaner? Copiers have filters to keep out the dust that would be contaminating these same 20 copiers.
This anthrax was not as highly milled, and neutrally charged as the stuff that missed Daschle and Leahy, but this anthrax is probably smaller than the dust particles trapped in the filters. Air is constantly drawn in to cool these copiers (many times night and day since they are not turned off frequently).
The drum is highly charged and attracts fine carbon particles and yes this (concentrated by the intake fans) anthrax. I
But one might ask, why are we going through all this nonsense now, gathering more items of evidence than were on my last Moving Van bill of lading?
The following is a Talking Points Memo...
This anthrax will turn out to be Iraqi anthrax, and will fit perfectly with the puzzle piece of Atta asking a pharmacist for something for his bleach irritated hands and forearms. It will be the anthrax that he got from his meeting with Iraqi Intelligence. This anthrax will be tied to Iraq by DNA and generation dating analysis, as well as the material used to provent clumping and to reduce the electrostatic charge on the anthrax.
And how long do you suppose this has been known by the administration. Speaking for myself, I figured it out sometime in March, I believe.
I'm thinking the administration had solid proof of Iraqi involvement no later than last Thanksgiving...
The short answer is not long enough... it took you till March? You sound like you are defending the performance of the dunces we have doing this?
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