Bioterrorism Jitters Close Subway Stop, IRS Center

An apparently unstable man shut down parts of a main subway line here Tuesday, snarling commuter traffic and forcing evacuations when he shot at a transit police officer and spilled the contents of a plastic spray jar of unidentified liquid.

In Covington, Ky., about 1,000 people were “locked down” inside an Internal Revenue Service center and seven employees were rushed to the hospital after a package containing white powder was found in the mail room, authorities there said.

In both cases, authorities feared terrorism--but later concluded that the incidents were false alarms; the liquid was a cleaning solution and the powder was benign. Both, however, spread panic as a jittery public wondered if either event might be the bioterrorism attack that authorities have raised concerns about since the Sept. 11 hijackings.

Experts predicted that such scenarios will be repeated many times throughout the nation in the coming months as people work through anxiety resulting from the hijackings, the warnings of more attacks and the anthrax exposure that has killed one man and is still unfolding in Florida.

“This is all part of getting used to living in a new world,” said Amy Sands, manager of the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) Terrorism Database Project at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. “It is something, unfortunately, that we are all going to have to get used to.”

Just outside Washington, a subway transit officer approached the still-unidentified assailant on the system’s Green Line near the Washington-Maryland border about 11:20 a.m. Tuesday, to ask him whether he had paid his fare. The two scuffled, the man fired a shot at the officer that missed, and some of the clear liquid spilled onto the subway car and platform, said Lisa Farbstein, a spokeswoman for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

A hazardous materials team that was called in shut down the Southern Avenue station, kept about 15 passengers on the Metro subway platform or in the car itself, and prohibited trains from passing through, she said. The substance was found to be some kind of cleaning solution, she said.

In Kentucky, a hazardous materials team locked down the IRS building for several hours after an employee noticed a “suspicious package.” The seven workers were washed down, rushed to a hospital and found to have suffered no contamination, authorities said.