Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Federal officials said Tuesday they believe an anthrax-filled letter that has yet to be found sickened a State Department mail handler, a theory bolstered by traces of anthrax in eight spots in the building where he worked.
The State Department said it would begin hunting through three weeks’ worth of unopened mail to search for a letter that could advance the anthrax investigation.
Test results, Boucher said, "support the theory that there is a letter like the one sent to Senator Daschle that has moved through our mail system." The letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle contained 2 grams of highly concentrated anthrax.
More than two weeks ago, Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said it was a virtual certainty that another letter was lurking undiscovered. But on Tuesday, the State Department said it didn’t begin looking sooner for another letter because officials weren’t yet convinced one existed.
For its part, the FBI said it didn’t press for a quicker search because it doubts that a letter will be found even once they start looking, an assumption disputed by both the State Department and the CDC.
No new cases of anthrax infection have been reported for more than two weeks, though traces of the bacteria have continued to turn up.
There was more concern after anthrax was detected in eight spots in the State Department’s Sterling, Va., mail facility. Six of them were on a single automated mail sorter, suggesting that a letter containing a substantial amount of anthrax passed through it, Boucher said Tuesday.
In related developments:
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