Reward Set as Anthrax Cases Increase to 6

The tally of confirmed anthrax victims grew to six Thursday, including a postal worker who may have handled contaminated letters, as authorities offered a $1-million reward for information about the bioterrorists who have sent bacteria-laden envelopes to three cities.

The two new infections were confirmed in an assistant to CBS News anchor Dan Rather in New York and an unidentified postal worker near Trenton, N.J. The reported number of people exposed to the bacteria increased slightly, from 40 to 43. Health officials also said they were investigating at least three additional anthrax cases they declined to identify.

In Atlanta, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a rare warning: Doctors nationwide should watch for cases of smallpox, food poisoning and deadly viruses like Ebola. Federal health officials also confirmed that they are considering calling for a mass vaccination for smallpox, a highly contagious virus that can spread rapidly from person to person.

In the Trenton area, where at least two of the anthrax letters were mailed, health officials were trying to determine whether the infection of a postal worker indicated that others who handle the mail may have been exposed to the bacteria. Another postal employee may also be infected and is under a doctor’s care, officials said.

FBI investigators in the region were questioning pharmacists about any unusual requests for the antibiotic Cipro before Sept. 18, the postmark date on the anthrax letter sent to NBC TV news anchor Tom Brokaw.

Dr. Julie Gerberding said that the CDC had sent three dozen epidemiologists to Washington, New York and Florida to investigate and manage the response to the anthrax attacks and that more than 50 scientists in Atlanta were working around the clock to process specimens.

She said it was too early to tell if the strain of anthrax found on Capitol Hill was the same as that found in Florida and New York, or if it was a different or more virulent kind.

“There are degrees of similarity, and the more time we have to . . . characterize the strains, the more we can work to refine our understanding of how similar two strains really are,” she said.

Law enforcement authorities conceded that they were not close to arresting anyone who may have sent anthrax-contaminated letters to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and journalists in Florida and New York.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller said the $1-million bounty was prompted, in part, by their inability to quickly identify where the anthrax came from, who had mailed it and why, and whether the mailings were linked in any way to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

The Bush administration sought to begin the day on a reassuring note, assembling its new director of homeland security, Thomas J. Ridge, and top health and law enforcement officials on one stage for the first time since anthrax contaminations wrested the public’s attention away from the terrorist attacks.

For more than an hour, the nine top-ranking officials summed up what is known to date, particularly about the anthrax contamination on Capitol Hill.

Through Wednesday, they said, four people had contracted anthrax; two with cutaneous, or skin, anthrax, and two others with the more serious inhalation anthrax. One of those men, American Media Inc. employee Robert Stevens in Florida, died Oct. 5; the other remains hospitalized. Only 31 people had been exposed to anthrax in Washington, they said, and thousands more had been tested and found to have not been exposed to the virus.

Surgeon General David Satcher said all of those exposed and infected were being treated with antibiotics and were expected to fully recover.

Ridge, who had been criticized for keeping a low profile during his first nine days on the job, promised to continue to provide updates on the anthrax scare and terrorist threats.

“The greatest fear,” Ridge told reporters and a live TV audience, “is the fear of the unknown.”

Bush administration officials later said that they ordered the marathon briefing because politicians, health officials and law enforcement authorities had done little a day earlier to ease anxieties, and in fact may have heightened concerns by providing false and conflicting information about anthrax contamination on Capitol Hill.

“You didn’t have a central voice,” Ridge acknowledged at a second news conference Thursday. “The decision was made to try and encapsulate the information, get it out and have regular conferences.”

On Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives remained shut down and many offices were closed for anthrax testing. Health officials reported no new cases of exposure to anthrax there, and said there was no conclusive evidence of contamination in the ventilation system of the Hart Senate Office Building, which houses Daschle’s office several blocks from the Capitol.

Still, the FBI retrieved a letter sent to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) after an aide there said the handwriting resembled that on letters sent to Daschle and Brokaw that were found to contain the potentially deadly bacteria.

The letter, which had not been opened, had been placed in a “burn bag” used to dispose of mail, Hastert aides said.

As the day progressed, little could be determined about the source of the two new cases of anthrax infection.

New York health officials said the CBS employee had developed what was thought to be an infected bug bite, or perhaps a “slight outbreak” on her cheek, about Oct. 1. After a series of doctor visits, tests, consultations with health officials and, finally, a biopsy, she was found Thursday to have cutaneous anthrax, the form of the disease that is transmitted through broken skin.

CBS News President Andrew Heyward said the FBI and health officials had been to the building “to see if anyone else needs to be tested” and that the employee was one of several people who opened Rather’s mail. He said CBS had no specific knowledge of any suspicious letter or suspicious materials coming into the building.

Rather said his assistant was successfully being treated with antibiotics.

“She has not missed a day of work,” he said in a televised interview. “She is working today.”

Postal Worker Falls Ill With Anthrax

In New Jersey, the newest anthrax case marked the first time a postal worker has been infected with the disease, heightening concerns about how easily the bacteria can be transmitted through an envelope.

The disclosure came after days of uncertainty and fear in the small town of Hamilton, and its neighboring city, the state capital of Trenton, where the letters to Brokaw and Daschle were postmarked.

Microbiologist Barry Bloom, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, suggested that the postal worker could have been infected when microscopic anthrax particles were “blown out of the side” of an envelope that wasn’t well sealed. “So it’s almost expected if you handle enough letters, and some of them are contaminated, you’ll get this through an abrasion,” Bloom said.

At a news conference Thursday, Acting New Jersey Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco said that two employees had been exposed to anthrax--a female mail handler and a male employee who works in the post office’s equipment maintenance area.

The employees visited their personal doctors in late September, about nine days after the NBC letter had passed through the facility but before the Daschle letter was postmarked. Both workers complained of feeling feverish and lethargic, and of having skin lesions on their arms, local health and government officials said.

Officials would not say which of the two exposed employees had contracted anthrax. Test results for the other employee, as well as nearly a dozen other workers in the mail distribution center, were still pending, Hamilton Mayor Glen D. Gilmore said.

There are 950 employees at that station, and they handle 250,000 pieces of mail a day, Gilmore said.

“Both are now home and we have every indication that they will recover,” said New Jersey Health Commissioner George DiFerdinando.

The Trenton postal facility is scheduled to be closed today and possibly longer as investigators search for clues, and federal health authorities examine and clean the building.

While health officials continued their investigation, so did the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

Agents were following several productive leads in Florida, New York and Washington, said one official, but Ashcroft said there appeared to be little indication that arrests are imminent.

Investigators could not pinpoint the source of the anthrax, although scientists now believe the anthrax in the Daschle letter was “professionally” manufactured, Ashcroft told reporters. “We have ruled out neither international terrorism nor domestic terrorism,” he said.

Ashcroft said the anthrax exposure in New Jersey could provide valuable leads in identifying who sent the mailings.

Authorities said that with test results on the anthrax still coming in from government labs, they are letting scientists take the lead in the investigation.

“Everyone wants instant results,” said one FBI official, “but the way we’re working this is very methodical.”

One avenue of inquiry appeared closed as authorities concluded a suspicious letter sent from Malaysia to Nevada had tested negative for anthrax.

Late in the day, Ashcroft suggested in an MSNBC interview that the spate of anthrax infections “might be . . . a part of a unified organized effort, an effort either by a single individual or else an effort conducted in concert with someone else.”

But he said authorities could not say that the anthrax outbreak was related in any way to the suicide hijackings.

He conceded, however, that the stream of thousands of false reports and anthrax hoaxes had slowed, but not impeded, the FBI’s massive investigation into the hijackings. Indeed, the number of people detained in the investigation has risen to 803.

In other developments Thursday:

* In Florida, powder in a threatening letter sent to an abortion clinic tested negative for anthrax.

* Dozens of passengers on a Northwest Airlines flight from Detroit to Vermont earlier in the week were told to undergo antibiotic treatment after a powdery substance showed evidence of similar bacteria.

* There were other reports of anthrax letters, including one mailed from Atlanta to Africa that senior health officials in Kenya said has tested positive for anthrax. In France, Greece and China, discoveries of suspicious substances forced the shutdown of government and commercial facilities.

The tally of hoaxes grew as well.

By day’s end, authorities had indicted at least seven people in connection with suspicious mailings.

An employee of the Queen Mary in Long Beach was charged with threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction at the floating tourist attraction. Authorities said he scrawled “DANGER. DO NOT OPEN. ANTRAX” on a bucket of rotten beans and chili.

No matter their alleged motives, Ashcroft again promised to seek the longest prison terms possible for anyone convicted of sending an anthrax hoax.

Times staff writers Josh Getlin and Elizabeth Jensen in New York, Davan Maharaj in Kenya, Louis Sahagun in Long Beach, and Janet Hook, Elizabeth Shogren, Aaron Zitner in Washington contributed to this report.

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Confirmed Anthrax Cases

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