Anthrax fear widens

By Larry McShane

Associated Press

NEW YORK – An assistant to NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw contracted the skin form of anthrax after opening a “threatening” letter to her boss that contained a suspicious powder, authorities and the network said Friday.

Officials quickly said there was no known link to either the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or the far more serious inhaled form of anthrax that killed a supermarket tabloid editor in Florida last week. The 38-year-old NBC employee was being treated with antibiotics and is expected to recover.

The letter was postmarked Sept. 20 and opened Sept. 25, authorities said.

Meanwhile, a letter containing pornographic material that was sent from Malaysia to a Microsoft office in Reno, Nev., has tentatively tested positive for anthrax, state officials said Friday.

No one has tested positive for the disease or become ill, officials said.

Additional tests were being conducted at a state Health Division laboratory to confirm whether anthrax is present in the material, and health teams were contacting Microsoft employees to determine who might have handled the letter.

A federal criminal investigation was launched to find the source of the anthrax in New York, and health officials scrambled to retest the powder to see if contained the bacteria. Initial tests had been negative, but authorities said the sample was so small they were reluctant to interpret the results.

The letter to NBC and a letter containing an unknown powder received Friday by The New York Times both were postmarked from St. Petersburg, Fla., said Barry Mawn, head of the FBI office in New York. The Times’ letter was postmarked Oct. 5.

There was some similarity in the handwriting on both letters, Mawn said, declining to discuss the contents. Both were anonymous letters with no return address.

President Bush said the government was doing all it could to protect the public.

“The American people need to go about their lives. We cannot let terrorists lock our country down,” Bush said, addressing the anthrax case at a White House event celebrating Hispanic heritage. “They will not take this country down.”

The anthrax case – the nation’s fourth in a week – was reported early Friday by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after tests were completed on a skin sample from the victim. Further tests on the envelope and its contents were under way.

“The most likely explanation is it was linked to this particular letter,” said Dr. Steven Ostroff of the CDC. “It makes sense.”

The CDC said it was possible the NBC employee was contaminated by something other than the envelope. NBC News reported that the envelope also contained a threatening letter.

At the end of his “Nightly News” broadcast, Brokaw, who has appeared on NBC’s evening newscasts for the last 18 years, thanked viewers for their concern and then spoke of his colleague.

“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.”

Later, in an interview on “Dateline NBC,” Brokaw said he would protectively take the anthrax antibiotic Cipro, and believed most of his staff would, too.

“The chances of anyone else contracting this are very low,” Brokaw said Friday night. “But this is the ultimate nightmare. We just have to stay focused on what we know and not what we don’t know.”

A few blocks away, one floor of The New York Times building was cleared after Judith Miller, a reporter who co-wrote a recent bestseller on bioterrorism, opened a letter containing a powdery substance a spokeswoman said smelled like talcum powder.

In a story on the Times’ Web site, Miller was quoted as saying the letter “contained future threats against the United States.”

Last Friday, a photo editor for The Sun supermarket tabloid in Boca Raton, Fla., died of the more serious inhaled form of anthrax. The American Media building where Bob Stevens, 63, worked was sealed off after anthrax was found on his keyboard.

Traces of anthrax were later found in the mailroom. Two other employees turned out to have anthrax in their nasal passages, but neither has developed the disease. Both are taking antibiotics, and one has returned to work.