FBI agents find suspected anthrax letter
FBI detectives believe they have found the anthrax-laced letter which infected a worker at the New York Post newspaper, it was revealed today.
The letter emerged as investigators sorted through piles of mail at the newspaper’s offices after it was confirmed that editorial page assistant Johanna Huden, 30, had contracted the infection.
It has been sent to laboratories in Maryland where two other letters used to deliver the potentially deadly spores are already being examined.
The other letters were sent to Tom Brokaw, an NBC newsreader whose assistant Erin O’Connor, 38, also became infected, and to Tom Daschle, leader of the majority Democrats in the Senate, where 28 people tested positive for exposure to the spores.
And the New York Post revealed the letter sent to it was similar to the other two, as it was postmarked in Trenton, New Jersey, on September 18, the same place and date as the letter to Mr Brokaw.
It also has block capital letters slanting to the right which the letters to Mr Brokaw and Mr Daschle had, and which investigators have said they believe were written by the same person.
Today Miss Huden told the newspaper she remembered the letter, which was addressed to ‘‘Editor, New York Post’’, but had thought nothing of it.
The worker said she remembered opening the top of the letter but left its contents inside and put it in a box of letters to the editor.
The FBI said the letter appeared to have powdery granules inside, which are to be tested to see if they are anthrax spores.
But detectives are still to find the source of the spores which infected Claire Fletcher, the 27-year-old British assistant to CBS newsreader Dan Rather, and the anthrax which infected the seven-month-old son of an ABC producer.
The hunt is also under way for a source for the anthrax which killed Bob Stevens, the British-born picture editor of The Sun news magazine in Boca Raton, Florida, and has left Ernesto Blanco, 73, a mailroom worker at the same offices, fighting the infection.
The anthrax scare and new security measures are slowing down mail deliveries across the nation, while an extra burden is being put on postal workers who now are being issued with gloves and masks.
Airmail deliveries, vital because of America’s continental mass, have been slashed from 25% of all post to just 10%, because the postal service cannot guarantee scanning all packages before they are loaded on to the holds of passenger flights in line with new regulations.
Many packages are being taken off passenger flights and put on cargo-only planes to meet the rules, while extra trucks are being called in and more post is taking to the rails, moves which increase delivery times.
In New York, the loss of a whole zip code area the equivalent of a UK post code - with the collapse of the World Trade Centre, has left thousands of packages piled up at a central depot.
Workers are trying to deliver mail to businesses with new addresses, while new letters are continuing to arrive addressed to the twin towers.
And later this week, the already stretched service will deliver 135m postcards to homes and businesses across America telling people what to do if they receive a suspicious package, and how to recognise one.
