U.S. Now Calls Anthrax Incidents Bioterrorism

Three more cases of exposure to anthrax were reported in New York on Sunday, as the Bush administration took to the airwaves to calm Americans in what it is now calling a clear case of bioterrorism.

“There’s no question that it’s bioterrorism,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said. “But whether or not it’s connected to Al Qaeda, we can’t say that conclusively.”

The latest reports bring to 12 the number of people known to have been exposed to anthrax in two states, New York and Florida. Pornographic material mailed from Malaysia to a Microsoft office in Nevada was confirmed Saturday to contain anthrax, but none of the six people tested there has yet tested positive for exposure.

Two people have been infected with anthrax, a rare disease that is usually fatal if it gets into a person’s respiratory system. Robert Stevens, an employee of American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, Fla., died Oct. 5 after inhaling anthrax. NBC News employee Erin O’Connor contracted anthrax through a cut in her skin when she handled a contaminated letter addressed to her boss, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw. The letter, postmarked Sept. 18 in Trenton, N.J., tested positive for anthrax Saturday. Another letter, postmarked in St. Petersburg, Fla., was first suspected as the source, but it tested negative. O’Connor is expected to recover.

Other employees at American Media Inc. and NBC News who have been exposed to anthrax are now taking antibiotics and have little chance of developing infections, experts said.

With the number of anthrax exposures increasing, Thompson and other officials Sunday answered questions at length on several television news shows, trying to reassure nervous Americans.

Thompson said there is no proof that there will be an “extensive bioterrorism attack” on America, and even if there is one, the government has enough medicine to treat the exposure of up to 2 million people for six months. He said he planned to appeal to Congress this week for funding for enough medicine to treat 10 million additional cases.

“I know people are afraid,” Thompson told CNN. “But I want to reassure them that the federal government, working with the state and local governments, [is] able to respond.”

Thompson, who also appeared on ABC and Fox news shows, stressed that there is a “big difference” between being exposed to anthrax spores and contracting anthrax.

There are three ways a person can be infected with anthrax--by eating food tainted with it, by exposure to it through an open wound or by inhaling it. The latter poses the greatest health risk, yet thousands of spores must be inhaled to get the disease.

New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said Sunday that a police officer who retrieved the tainted letter from NBC News offices in Rockefeller Center and two lab technicians who also handled it tested positive for anthrax exposure. All are being treated with antibiotics.

Experts in bioterrorism and anthrax said the officer and technicians likely failed to take adequate safety precautions, such as wearing masks and gloves.

“It suggests they didn’t treat the powdered material seriously, because there are definitely ways to secure a suspicious package,” said Raymond Zilinskas, a senior scientist at the Monterey Institute of International Studies who specializes in biological weapons.

Bush administration officials’ efforts to calm the public were complicated by the fact that the officials seemed to know almost nothing about the source of the anthrax.

“All we know is that it is a terrorist act, because anybody that would do this is trying to create terror, trying to create fear in the American public, and that of course is not acceptable,” Thompson said.

Federal officials say there is no evidence linking any of the anthrax incidents to one another--or to alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Thompson pointed out: “It could be a domestic source. It could be somebody holding a grudge, it could be somebody saying, ‘You know I’ve waited all this time, now I’m going to be able to do something, you know, really radical.’ ”

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that although there was no conclusive evidence linking Bin Laden, “we certainly cannot rule that out.”

The officials seemed to walk a delicate line between acknowledging the seriousness of the anthrax incidents and trying to prevent public panic. Thompson’s message was that the government is ready for whatever happens.

“We have 7,000 medical professionals throughout this country, divided up in 90 medical assistance teams, ready to go in to any particular state or locality in order to assist the state and local health officials,” he said on ABC. “We have 400 tons of medical supplies that we can move that are strategically located throughout the United States in eight sites that we can move into a particular site within 12 hours.”

Experts in anthrax and bioterrorism said the government was right to try to assuage concerns because the risk to Americans seems to be small--so far.

The circumstances of the anthrax incidents suggest that those behind them do not have a very effective method of dispersing the bacterium, experts say.

“People have to calm down,” said Jeanne Guillemin, author of a book on a deadly outbreak of anthrax in Sverdlovsk, Russia. “If you inhale spores, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get the disease. It isn’t sarin gas,” she added, referring to the highly toxic nerve gas that a Japanese cult used in the Tokyo subways, killing 12 people and injuring thousands.

Between 5,000 and 10,000 spores must be inhaled into the lungs for spores to initiate the disease process.

There are six possible sources of the anthrax used in the last weeks’ incidents, according to Zilinskas. The bacteria could have been harvested from infected animals and manufactured; stolen from a U.S. lab; taken from a cell culture collection, 46 of which are outside the U.S.; supplied by a country with a biological warfare program; bought or taken from facilities in the former Soviet Union, which used to operate biological weapon programs, or acquired in the U.S. before 1996, when strict security requirements for such substances were enacted.

The recent episodes do not trouble Zilinskas deeply. But he does have one concern.

“There’s only one difficult step between inefficient dispersal and efficient dispersal. That’s what I worry about,” he said. “If whoever has this source figures out how to do a more efficient dispersal and actually does it, then the whole calculation changes as far as what kind of threat we’re facing.”

The threat already seemed real to workers of American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, where one of their co-workers died.

The news Saturday that five additional employees tested positive for exposure to anthrax caused concern among workers at the country’s largest publisher of supermarket tabloids.

“Every time you get a little sniffle now, you wonder,” said Reginald Fitz, a senior reporter for the National Enquirer who frequently writes on medical issues.

Inhaling spores of the bacterium can cause initial symptoms akin to those of the common cold, followed within several days by severe breathing problems and shock.

Company spokesman Gerald McKelvey said Sunday that at last report, the five American Media employees were in good health and reporting to work as usual.

“They have been taking their medication since this first happened,” McKelvey said. “They had some sort of exposure; they do not have [the disease of] anthrax.”

In Reno, Washoe County health officials announced Sunday that nasal swabs taken from four Microsoft employees who work at the computer giant’s office have tested negative for anthrax exposure.

Washoe County health official Barbara Hunt said preliminary tests conducted on another employee and a family member of one of the workers also came back negative, but their final test results are not expected back until today. Hunt said she was very optimistic that “we’ll see no cases of human anthrax.”

The six people were tested after anthrax was discovered in a letter sent to Microsoft’s Reno office. Hunt said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has yet to determine whether anthrax found in the letter is a disease-causing strain.

Hunt said Sunday that “very, very little anthrax was found” on one of five pornographic photographs that came with the letter. She said the anthrax was embedded into the fibers of one of the photos and indicated that the small amount raised the question of whether the anthrax was perhaps a contaminant from soil rather than a deliberate attempt to harm someone.

News of the exposures has caused jitters around the world, with a number of false or pending cases reported over the weekend. Among them:

* In Hawaii, hazardous-materials teams were called to Lihue Airport after passengers on a flight from Los Angeles discovered a white powder on their luggage after they arrived. Tests were being conducted on the powder.

* In England, several hundred people were evacuated from Canterbury Cathedral after a worker said he saw a man dropping a white powder in one of the chapels. Workers wearing chemical protection suits cleared up the powder and took samples for analysis.

Ashcroft discouraged would-be copycats from taking advantage of the situation.

“This is not a joking matter,” Ashcroft said on CBS. “Our resources should not be disrupted and diverted.”

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Times staff writers Julie Tamaki in Reno, John-Thor Dahlburg in Miami and Thomas S. Mulligan in New York and Associated Press contributed to this report.