A new case of anthrax contamination in New York and a possible case in Nevada have stirred fears Friday that someone is using the mail to deliver the potentially deadly bacteria to media companies.
In New York, an assistant to NBC network anchor Tom Brokaw was diagnosed with a mild case of anthrax more than two weeks after she opened a letter with a suspicious powder in it.
In Nevada, Gov. Kenny Guinn said Friday that Microsoft Licensing Inc., a Reno branch of Microsoft Inc., received a suspicious letter that tested “presumptively” positive for anthrax bacteria and that further tests were being conducted. Late Friday, a second test result was negative, though more conclusive tests are planned Saturday.
And in Florida, investigators said Friday that anthrax spores were found on a mail receptacle in the mailroom of the supermarket tabloid publishing company where an editor died of inhalation anthrax–the most rare and serious type.
The FBI said it does not know the source of any of the bacteria, but it is treating the cases as criminal matters and searching for links among them.
“At this time, we have no evidence that links the anthrax cases in Florida to the New York City case,” U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said before the Nevada case came to light Friday evening.
FBI officials also said they had no evidence of a connection between the anthrax cases and the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
But Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday there could be links between the apparent anthrax attacks and Osama bin laden, chief suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks. He offered no proof of a link.
“I think the only responsible thing for us to do is proceed on the basis that it could be linked,” Cheney said in an interview on the PBS show “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.”
The FBI summoned media executives to meetings in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Washington and advised them to increase scrutiny of incoming mail.
“It sounds like the news media are in the crosshairs of these anthrax threats,” Thomas J. Kneir, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Chicago division, told a gathering of media executives Friday afternoon.
Many broadcasters and media outlets suspended mail delivery and announced that they would re-examine their package- and mail-handling procedures.
Shortly after the announcement that an NBC employee had anthrax, police were called to investigate a suspicious letter sent to a reporter in The New York Times headquarters near Manhattan’s Times Square. That letter, like the one opened by the infected NBC worker, contained a powdery substance, bore no return address and was postmarked in St. Petersburg, Fla., according to the FBI.
The letter was addressed to reporter Judith Miller, who has written widely on terrorism and is the co-author of “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War,” a new book that examines the development of deadly biological weapons, including anthrax.
About 25 staff members at the newspaper were immediately put on antibiotics as a prophylactic measure, said New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Preliminary tests on the letter were negative, but further testing for evidence of anthrax was expected, the Times said in a statement late Friday.
Across the country, many newsrooms were disrupted Friday. The Columbus Dispatch’s newsroom was evacuated Friday after a reporter opened a Halloween card and found a powdery substance.
Other businesses, too, were evacuated around the country, often by scares that quickly proved to be hoaxes.
The general sense of alarm Friday extended to the State Department, where for the second time this week hazardous materials experts were called in to investigate a mysterious powdery substance. This time it was found in a mailroom on the seventh floor, the level for the secretary of state’s office suite and offices of other top department officials.
The mailroom, which is in a separate wing from Secretary of State Colin Powell’s office, was sealed off pending an investigation, which quickly found the substance to be harmless.
The NBC employee, a 38-year-old woman, contracted cutaneous anthrax, the least dangerous form of the disease. It develops after anthrax spores–dormant bacteria–invade the skin through cuts or other wounds.
Brokaw: `So unfair’
At the end of his evening news broadcast Friday, Brokaw thanked viewers for their concern and then spoke of his colleague, who is expected to recover.
“She has been, as she always is, a rock. She’s been an inspiration to us all,” he said. “But this is so unfair and so outrageous and so maddening, it’s beyond my ability to express it in socially acceptable terms. So we’ll just reserve our thoughts and our prayers for our friend and her family.”
Initial tests on the powder sent to NBC proved negative for anthrax, said Giuliani.
While the diagnosis of the NBC employee was not made until Friday morning, Giuliani said the woman opened the suspicious envelope on Sept. 25. It was postmarked in St. Petersburg on Sept. 20, according to Barry Mawn, head of the FBI’s New York office.
By Sept. 28, the woman had developed a fever and a rash on her chest, symptoms of cutaneous anthrax, officials said.
On Oct. 1, the woman visited her doctor, who put her on a course of the antibiotic Cipro. Around Tuesday or Wednesday, Giuliani said, a biopsy was done on the woman’s skinby the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The results confirmed anthrax.
Officials could not explain why the tests on the letter were negative yet the woman developed anthrax.
In Florida, health officials said they had received results of 965 of the roughly 1,000 nasal swabs taken from employees and recent visitors to American Media Inc., where three people who were exposed to anthrax worked and where additional traces of the bacteria have been found. Robert Stevens, an editor, died a week ago of inhalation anthrax, the first such case in the U.S. in 25 years.
All those tested have been given antibiotics and are having their blood tested. Results of the blood tests could take weeks to complete, officials said.
Making anthrax into a dangerous form that could be mailed and successfully infect a few people takes some skill, but not too much.
“Someone with a rudimentary microbiology background could acquire and grow anthrax, make spores and crudely prepare them for dissemination,” said Calvin Chue, a research scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies.
It would take far more expertise and resources to create an aerosol of anthrax spores that could spread in the air and cause widespread damage in a city, experts said.
Research labs
One possible source of anthrax would be laboratories that do research on the bacteria. But such labs do not keep or ship spores that would be readily put into the mail, said Raymond Zilinskas, senior scientist with the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.
“It would never be in the right quantity or form to be used directly as a weapon,” he said.
The anthrax spores that cause skin infection such as that diagnosed in the NBC employee are the same kind that can cause the far more dangerous inhaled variety of anthrax, experts said.
Cutaneous anthrax can occur when spores enter the skin through a small scratch, said Philip Hanna, an anthrax researcher at the University of Michigan. A person with such a small cut who opened a package containing anthrax could get infected, he said.
Inhalation anthrax has a high death rate if untreated, but relatively few victims of cutaneous anthrax die. With antibiotics, death is rare.
“Even without treatment, most people clear the skin lesions by themselves,” Hanna said.
Such lesions typically are painless and heal without scarring. Their black color and coal-like texture give anthrax its name: The Greek word anthrakis means coal.
