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Posted on 12/07/2001 9:46:24 AM PST by gumbo
Leahy, Daschle Anthrax Letters Same
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| Updated: Thu, Dec 06 6:35 PM EST |
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WASHINGTON (AP) - A newly opened letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy contained suspected anthrax and handwriting that appear identical to an earlier letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, the FBI disclosed Thursday.
With the letter and the powder undergoing laboratory analysis, "We hope to learn ... who did this and how they did it," said FBI official Van Harp.
The suspected anthrax in the Leahy letter "appears to be consistent with that found in the letter sent to Senator Daschle," Harp said.
The Leahy and Daschle letters state in part, "09-11-01 You can not stop us. We have this anthrax" and conclude, "Allah is great."
It will take weeks to complete all testing, because "there is a finite amount of material in that letter" to Leahy, necessitating "a very cautious analytical approach," Harp, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office, said in a statement.
The FBI posted photographs on its Web site that detailed Wednesday's opening of the Leahy letter at the Army's biodefense laboratory in Fort Detrick, Md.
The first step in dealing with the Leahy letter was to cut a small opening in the envelope and use a machine to suck out the suspected anthrax.
The photographs show a technician's gloved hands inside a laboratory device known as a "glove box," as the technician uses a pair of scissors to clip open one end of the Leahy envelope, then pulls out the letter with tweezers.
Harp described the laboratory procedure as taking place in "a controlled, pure, sterile environment in which we controlled motion and air." Glove boxes typically are set up as negative pressure chambers to ensure that in case of an accidental leak, the material would stay inside rather than escape outward.
Investigators now have four letters in the anthrax probe. Letters to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw and the New York Post also are identical.
The opening of the Leahy letter was delayed almost three weeks as technicians tried to determine the best way to protect evidence retrieved from it.
In October, some of the anthrax from the letter to Daschle "literally jumped off the slide" and was lost to investigators as lab technicians at Fort Detrick tried to examine the deadly powder under a microscope.
The suspected anthrax powder from the Leahy letter will be sent to various labs for analysis.
The letter itself must be decontaminated and irradiated before it can be tested for fingerprints, DNA and fibers.
The Leahy envelope was found by government investigators Nov. 16 among mail quarantined after the Oct. 15 discovery of anthrax in the Daschle letter. All edges of the Leahy envelope was taped, and it was loaded with so much powder - billions of spores - that "you could feel" it when touching the envelope, an FBI microbiologist said in a recent interview.
The Leahy letter was in one of 630 trash bags filled with congressional mail that was set aside after discovery of the Daschle letter. It took investigators a week to find a suitable warehouse to facilitate the search of potentially dangerous material in the unopened mail. Another two weeks were required to build a containment area inside a suburban Washington facility where investigators could test the mail.
And it took almost a full week of testing on the various trash bags to come up with the Leahy letter, the only piece of mail that was loaded inside with suspected anthrax.
Five people have died of anthrax exposure, and 13 others who became ill have recovered.
In another development in the anthrax investigation, the inspector general of the U.S. Postal Service has opened an inquiry into the government's response to the discovery of anthrax spores at a handful of mail facilities.
The four letters - to Leahy, Daschle, Brokaw and the New York Post - were postmarked Trenton, N.J.
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On the Net: Federal Bureau of Investigation: http://www.fbi.gov
And the dog ate my homework. Then again, if there's nothing we can do about it, perhaps we'd rather just not know who has the anthrax.
Although the FBI has done everything it can to confuse the situation, the most credible reports agree that this is probably the Ames strain and that it is probably beyond the capability of anyone else to make, other than the Russians and the Chinese, to whom clinton may have sold the technology.
Wouldn't irradiation make DNA test useless??
Good question. I don't remember.
aristeides, bvw, Mitchell, Alamo-Girl: anybody got that info at hand?
Don't know that either. Hope the gov't does.
It IS a foreigner...the "ones" 1's...have a tail and base...no American writes a one like that.
This letter looks identical enough to the Daschle letter that photocopying must have been at work.
The are going to irradiate the *letter*, not the the powder in the envelope.
Not true. You can't exclude all americans based on a writing style, and it isn't that unusual.
I've heard people say this before. Can you explain why you think a Muslim would not use the term Allah when writing in English?
Yes, but aren't they going to test the letter (and particularly the envelope) for traces of DNA from the sender ?
It's not just the anthrax's DNA they're interested in.
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