More anthrax found in House postal machine

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Anthrax was found in a House postal facility, officials said Saturday, as 150 FBI agents and postal inspectors swarmed a New Jersey postal route searching for the mailbox where someone may have dropped anthrax-laced letters.

It capped a week that threw Congress into the middle of the anthrax-by-letter scare and more than doubled the number of Americans infected with the potentially deadly bacteria.

President Bush vowed to fight the “act of terror” that has killed one person, sickened seven others, forced thousands to undergo preventive treatment and frightened millions more.

The latest anthrax discovery came in the Ford House Office Building a few blocks from the Capitol. It was found in a bundling machine that processes mail for the Longworth House Office Building.

Hazardous materials teams have methodically worked their way across Capitol Hill since anthrax was discovered in a letter sent to Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

“This is not an unexpected situation,” said Lt. Dan Nichols, spokesman for the U.S. Capitol Police. “It is exactly why we have been performing sampling throughout the Capitol complex.”

Mail for the House and Senate pass through a common postal facility before being separated and forwarded to each chamber’s facilities. Nichols said it was possible the newly found anthrax came from a letter that had touched the Daschle letter. It was also possible that the anthrax came from another letter that has not yet surfaced, he said.

Also Saturday, local health officials in Washington, D.C., said a man who works in the city’s central mail handling facility, which processed the Daschle letter, was hospitalized with symptoms that suggest anthrax, though doctors do not yet know if he has the disease.

City health director Ivan Walks would not identify the man or his symptoms but said, “His clinical picture makes us suspicious.”

Speaking from China, Bush said there was no evidence that the anthrax letters were linked to the Sept. 11 attacks. But he vowed to fight whoever is behind them.

“Anyone who deliberately delivers anthrax is engaged in a crime and an act of terror, a hateful attempt to harm innocent people and frighten citizens,” Bush said in his weekly radio address.

Last week, the tainted Daschle letter and the discovery that it had exposed more than two dozen people to anthrax threw both houses of Congress into turmoil. For the first time in history, the House shut down its half of the Capitol, closing all its offices until Tuesday.

On Saturday, House leaders said they would reconvene as scheduled, even if they are forced to meet at an alternate location off Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, investigators focused their work on Trenton, N.J., where the letters to Daschle and NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw were mailed.

More than 150 FBI agents and postal inspectors were on the scene, Postal Inspection Service official Dan Mihalko said in Washington.

While investigators still do not know whether the anthrax letters are related to Osama bin Laden, the public suspects they are. Nearly two-thirds of people surveyed by Newsweek magazine said they think Bin Laden’s network is probably responsible.

Also Saturday, the maker of Cipro, the primary antibiotic used to treat anthrax, took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, seeking to assure Americans that there was plenty of its drug to serve the need. The ad from the Bayer Corp. comes amid pressure on lawmakers to allow generic versions of the drug.