Anthrax Notes Bear Similarities

As the FBI chased down hundreds of scares and hoaxes across the nation, authorities said Tuesday they found similarities between an anthrax letter at NBC in New York and one that turned up in the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, which bore very refined and highly dangerous spores.

“It was a very strong form of anthrax,” said Daschle (D-S.D.), “a very potent form of anthrax that clearly was produced by somebody who knew what he or she was doing.”

Nonetheless, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said agents “have found no direct link” between any anthrax cases and organized terrorism. Although the agency has received more than 2,300 reports of incidents of suspected anthrax or other dangerous substances since Oct. 1, most by far have been hoaxes.

At least three people--two in Connecticut and one in Utah--were arrested in anthrax deceptions, authorities said. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and other law enforcement officials vowed that they would not treat any bioterrorism hoax as a joke.

The developments did little, however, to calm a nation in its second week of anthrax contaminations. A Florida man, Bob Stevens, who worked at tabloid publisher American Media in Boca Raton, died after inhaling anthrax. Ernesto Blanco, 73, who worked in the publisher’s mail room, lay ill in a hospital, classified as a possible case. His prognosis was good.

Two people in New York, including an NBC employee and the 7-month-old son of an ABC producer, have been infected, the child apparently as he attended a birthday party at his mother’s place of work. The prognosis for both of those victims also was good. The baby was treated at a New York hospital for an anthrax infection of the skin and released.

Meanwhile, anthrax triggered panic and hoaxes worldwide, although there were no confirmed cases of the spores being sent through the mail outside the United States. Among nations touched by alarms and deceptions were Britain, Poland, the Czech Republic, France, Sweden, Germany and Australia. Police took most of the incidents seriously.

In Washington, investigators said the Oct. 8 letter to Sen. Daschle and one sent Sept. 18 to NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw--both contaminated with anthrax--were postmarked in Trenton, N.J., and bore what FBI Director Mueller described as “certain similarities” in handwriting.

They reportedly also contained similar, threatening messages filled with anti-American, anti-Israeli and pro-Muslim sentiments. The anthrax on the letter to Daschle was “very refined, very pure,” Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) told reporters after attending a secret briefing.

Because it was highly refined, it could be dispersed easily through the air. Some reports said it could be used as a weapon.

The investigators sought fingerprints and DNA samples and analyzed other features of the letters--including the wording on notes found inside that apparently referred to anthrax. They also compared the anthrax on the letters to that found at American Media.

Authorities closed an entire wing of the eight-floor Hart Office Building where Daschle’s office is located.

Hundreds of Capitol employees lined up at a medical facility to be tested for anthrax. They were given Cipro, an antibiotic. Some questioned why the building was not closed until a full day after the powder was discovered. But congressional officials said that every necessary precaution was taken and that the threat was minimal.

According to sources briefed on the episode, a young woman in Daschle’s office who opened the anthrax envelope limited the chances of sending the spores into the air by immediately putting the envelope back on her desk. The aide then dropped to her hands and knees and crawled away from the desk.

Moreover, Daschle said, the ventilating system was cut off half an hour after the letter was opened, and medical treatment was provided promptly to his staff.

“The risk is almost negligible,” Daschle said. “The antibiotics are so effective that there is virtually no risk if we can treat those who are exposed quickly enough. That’s what happened yesterday, and that’s why our level of confidence is so high.”

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Tuesday that federal health officials have more than enough Cipro and other antibiotics to combat anthrax.

“The supply is plentiful,” he said. “The United States government has some two million antibiotics available in the case of treating anthrax symptoms . . . and you’ve seen at most several thousand people--at most--who have even been tested for possible exposure.”

Because no preliminary connection can be found to terrorists who attacked New York and the Pentagon on Sept. 11 with hijacked airliners, people should be less fearful of a biochemical attack inspired by Osama bin Laden, officials said.

But this also raised other, perhaps equally troubling questions, such as how someone without a solid terrorist pedigree could get their hands on highly refined anthrax and capitalize on the public anxiety surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks.

“It’s almost as if these people with access to anthrax were just waiting for the right moment to unleash it to get their jollies,” said one FBI investigator.

Ashcroft said anthrax contaminations should be considered a serious threat. “Make no mistake about it,” he told reporters, “when people send anthrax through the mail to hurt people and to invoke terror, it’s a terrorist act.”

Two of the first prosecutions in hoax anthrax cases came in Connecticut.

Fred C. Forcellina was arrested Tuesday for making threats of terrorism and threats of the use of weapons of mass destruction. In phone calls he allegedly had made just hours earlier, he threatened to use biological agents against several courthouses, railroad stations and schools, according to an FBI affidavit.

The person on the recorded phone call said: “We have gotten together and we are disgusted with how the United States is doing things, and this is no idle talk. I have been well educated in your country. My people have been bombed. Now we are doing a silent warfare. This is not a hoax.”

Authorities also announced the arrest of Joseph Faryniarz in Bridgeport, Conn., who was charged with intentionally making false statements to the FBI concerning an anthrax threat.

Faryniarz, of Coventry, Conn., knew that a report of an anthrax contamination at the state Department of Environmental Protection was false but did not tell FBI investigators, according to an FBI affidavit.

Faryniarz, an employee at the facility, had told department security that when he arrived at work on Oct. 11, he found a yellowish-white, powdery substance on a paper towel at his computer station, which also misspelled the word anthrax, said FBI agent Samuel J. DiPasquale III. After Faryniarz told security guards and state police about the powder, some 800 employees were evacuated from the building and 12 underwent decontamination procedures, DiPasquale said.

Faryniarz ultimately confirmed that he knew it was a hoax but that he wouldn’t divulge who perpetrated it because the person pleaded with Faryniarz not to get him fired, DiPasquale said.

Faryniarz could face up to five years in prison and $3 million in fines if convicted of the felony offense, according to Ashcroft, who decried such “grotesque transgressions of the public trust” and the high cost to taxpayers.

In Salt Lake City, the FBI arrested Terry Olson, 29, of Price, Utah, who reported over the weekend that he had received a letter from New Jersey containing a brownish-white powder in a baggie.

Olson then waved the substance around in front of neighbors, saying it was anthrax, prompting police and a hazardous-material team to respond, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard Lambert.

He said Olson later admitted it was a hoax and that he had combined some cocoa powder and confectioner’s sugar and placed it in an envelope he had received from New Jersey. He too faces a maximum five years in prison and $250,000 in fines, Lambert said, and potentially more charges when he appears before a federal grand jury next week.

At ABC News in New York, where the baby boy contracted the skin form of anthrax, interviews and environmental tests were nearly complete, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said. He said no ABC employees had developed symptoms since the incident was reported Monday night, but it could be days before the environmental results are known.

Investigators have been unable to identify any suspicious letter at ABC that could have contained the bacteria, Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said.

Some ABC staffers were moved out of their offices as a precaution. One employee said most of the staff appeared to be taking the incident calmly, although a few asked why all ABC employees were not being routinely tested, as they were at NBC.

Last week, investigators reported that an assistant to Brokaw was infected with cutaneous anthrax after receiving a letter with a powdery substance. The assistant reportedly was recovering after being treated with antibiotics.

Jittery New Yorkers sent police scrambling to examine letters, packages and any traces of powder. The scares happened in a variety of places, ranging from offices to rest rooms. Teams of police and firefighters responded to more than 50 calls--all negative. They picked up 11 packages and took them to laboratories for analysis.

”. . . I anticipate the majority of what we’re getting is going to be hoaxes,” Kerik said.

In Florida, authorities said a certain diagnosis of anthrax in the case of Blanco, the mail room worker at American Media, had been premature. He had already been hospitalized for pneumonia.

On Tuesday, Dr. John Agwunobi, the state health secretary, said: “We are classifying Mr. Blanco as a possible case. “We haven’t been able to locate the germ itself in his body.”

American Media had said seven employees, including Blanco, tested positive for exposure to anthrax. But Agwunobi said there were only three cases of concern: Stevens, 63, the employee who died, Blanco and fellow mail room worker Stephanie Dailey, who has been receiving antibiotics.

Testing on other employees, Agwunobi said, was inconclusive. All 300 of American Media’s employees were scheduled to undergo a second round of blood tests today.

Investigative teams combing the offices of American Media, which publishes many of the country’s most popular supermarket tabloids, have found anthrax spores in the mail room and on Stevens’ computer keyboard. But FBI officials said the letter that may have infected Stevens and the others was thrown out with the garbage and has been burned.

Many American Media employees expressed fear about returning to their building, which has been quarantined since Oct. 7. The company said Tuesday it would seek alternative office space for the employees’ “emotional well-being.”

The bacteria was detected on equipment at a post office that handled American Media’s mail, U.S. Postal Service officials said. It was disinfected overnight by the Environmental Protection Agency and the facility reopened Tuesday.

Judy Johnson of the Postal Workers Union called on authorities to warn seven other companies in the Boca Raton area that their mail might have been tainted with anthrax because they shared mail-sorting slots with American Media.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s brother, warned residents that false anthrax alerts could lead to 15 years in prison. “If people are caught, they are going to be prosecuted,” Bush said, “and if they are prosecuted, they are going to serve long prison sentences.”

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Contributing to this report were Times staff writers James Gerstenzang and Marisa Schultz in Washington, John J. Goldman and Elizabeth Jensen in New York, John-Thor Dahlburg in Miami, Marjorie Miller in London, David Holley in Warsaw, researcher Anna M. Virtue in Miami and special correspondent Iva Drapalova in Prague.