New Anthrax Threat Found at the Capitol

The expanding anthrax scare on Saturday reached another corner of Capitol Hill, as investigators found traces of the bacteria in the mail room of an office building that serves the House of Representatives.

The discovery was the first sign of anthrax spores on the House side of the Capitol complex. It came five days after an aide to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) opened a letter laced with anthrax, exposing at least 28 individuals to the bacteria and prompting an unprecedented congressional shutdown.

Authorities said they had not determined the source of the spores found at the Ford House Office Building, an annex about three blocks from the Capitol.

But Lt. Dan Nichols, a spokesman for the U.S. Capitol Police, said the finding “was not an unexpected situation,” given the building’s central role in the Capitol’s vast mail-processing system.

Nichols did not rule out the possibility that another anthrax letter might have caused the contamination. But he suggested that the spores found Saturday also could have been residue from other pieces of mail that might have brushed up against the Daschle letter.

Anthrax generally is found in diseased animals and their environs, and scientists consider it highly unlikely that it would occur naturally in an office setting.

The anthrax counteroffensive intensified on other fronts Saturday. In New Jersey, FBI agents continued to canvass residents living in the area served by a letter carrier who became infected with anthrax. Authorities have said the spores found in Washington, New York and Florida genetically are “indistinguishable,” and probably came from the same source.

Washington Postal Worker Hospitalized

President Bush, in his weekly radio address, said the United States does not have any evidence linking the anthrax outbreak to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network, accused of carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“We do know that anyone who deliberately delivers anthrax is engaged in a crime and an act of terror,” Bush said. “These attacks once again reveal the evil at the heart of terrorism, the evil we must fight.”

No new confirmed cases of anthrax were reported Saturday, but officials in Washington said a local postal worker had been hospitalized with what might become the ninth case of the disease nationwide in recent weeks.

Washington Mayor Anthony Williams said tests were being done to determine whether the man has anthrax. The man was reported Saturday to be in stable condition.

“There’s reason to believe, because this gentleman is from the Brentwood mail handling facility [in Washington], that there is a threat there that has to be managed. My understanding from the postal folks is that tests are already underway there,” William said.

Anthrax already has been detected in postal facilities in Florida and New Jersey. At least one other postal worker is being treated for the skin form of anthrax, along with several TV network assistants who handled incoming mail. To date, there has been only one fatality: Bob Stevens, an employee of American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, Fla., who died Oct. 5.

Authorities said employees at the House mail room linked to anthrax would be tested, and probably will begin taking precautionary doses of the antibiotic Cipro.

Dr. John Eisold, the House’s attending physician, said the anthrax was confined to a single piece of equipment in the mail room. He said other areas of the Ford building, including a child-care facility, tested clean.

“There is no recommendation at the present time to conduct testing beyond the mail room,” Eisold said. He added that, of more than 4,000 individuals screened for anthrax this week, 28 had tested positive for exposure--meaning spores were detected in their nasal passages--but none had developed symptoms of the disease.

FBI officials spoke with Capitol Hill police about the discovery at the Ford office building. But it was unclear whether the Justice Department might recommend that the Capitol stay shuttered past Tuesday, or that broader steps be taken in response to the new detection, officials said.

A spokesman for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said the House would reconvene Tuesday as scheduled. House leaders have identified an alternate, undisclosed location to meet in case the Capitol is contaminated, but sources said results of tests performed inside the building in recent days have been negative.

The Senate is scheduled to reconvene Monday.

Findings Spawn Number of False Alarms

The discovery in the Ford office building marks at least the 12th incident in which anthrax has been detected in the last two weeks. Virtually all have involved media targets, government officials or postal employees who handled their mail.

There also have been a number of false alarms. Suspicious material found in the offices of New York Gov. George Pataki, for example, apparently did not contain anthrax, tests showed.

The FBI investigation into the anthrax outbreak has focused on the Trenton, N.J., area because at least two of the letters in which the substance was mailed--those to Daschle and NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw--were postmarked there.

The letters were mailed more than three weeks apart, but the handwriting on the envelopes was similar, and both included notes with anti-American threats and references to Allah, officials said. FBI profilers are looking closely at the notes to develop leads as to who might have sent them.

Authorities confiscated at least one mailbox Friday in Ewing, N.J., to determine whether the letters might have been dropped there. But officials said Saturday they still were awaiting test results for anthrax and fingerprints.

“We have no results yet,” New Jersey FBI spokeswoman Linda Vizi said. “We’re looking at some things, but I’m not giving out specifics. These tests take a few days. . . . We’re no closer [to determining how the material was sent], but we’re working on it.”

In Washington, anthrax has been found at four locations: the Ford building, the Senate Hart building where Daschle’s office is located, the Dirksen office building where Senate mail is sorted, and at a facility 15 blocks south of the Capitol where all congressional mail is screened by the U.S. Capitol Police.

The Ford building is not part of the main Capitol Hill complex, and does not contain offices of any members of Congress. It is used by congressional support staff, but may be best known in Washington as the site where Clinton impeachment files were stored, and where members of Congress went to read lurid details of then-President Clinton’s involvement with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.

Trace Amounts Confined to Mail Room

Employees who work in the Ford building reacted calmly to the news, in contrast to the widespread panic on Capitol Hill earlier in the week when thousands lined up for screening tests and House leaders closed the chamber for the first time in history in response to a health or military threat.

Among the occupants of the building are 19 employees of the government reform subcommittee chaired by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles). Phil Schiliro, a spokesman for Waxman, said he had called all of those employees and found that “people aren’t particularly worried.”

“From everything we’re being told, it’s in the mail room and it’s a trace amount,” Schiliro said. “I haven’t heard anything indicating any new risk of exposure, let alone illness.”

Even so, the mood could change if the newly discovered spores lead investigators to other, unopened anthrax letters. The affected machine was used to bundle mail for the Longworth building, one of three main House office structures. House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri is among dozens of members who have office space in the building.

Erik Smith, a spokesman for the Democratic leader, said he did not know whether Gephardt’s office had been tested. Other congressional sources said biochemical experts combing House and Senate office buildings this weekend were primarily examining ventilation systems, and were not inspecting individual offices or their contents.

Even if the Senate and House reconvene on schedule this week, it is unclear whether office buildings will be ready. Physician Eisold acknowledged that the Hart building, where the Daschle letter was opened, will require extensive decontamination work.

And results of other routine tests being performed could take days. Nichols, the Capitol Police spokesman, said the spores found Saturday were on a swab sample taken Wednesday from mail room equipment.

Meanwhile, officials at Bayer Group, the German-based company that makes the Cipro antibiotic for treatment of inhaled anthrax, said Saturday they had tripled production of the medication in response to what they called the biggest surge in demand in pharmaceutical history.

The company expects to ship 200 million Cipro tablets in the next three months--a rate four times the drug’s normal production, executives said in a conference call with reporters.

Bayer’s response to the anthrax crisis has been criticized as inadequate in some quarters. Drugstores in New York and Florida have been left with shelves empty of Cipro, and the Canadian government has taken the unusual step of overriding Bayer’s patent and ordering 1 million tablets from a generic manufacturer.