After 2-Day Scare, Tests Show No Anthrax at Mail Facilities

A two-day anthrax scare that disrupted federal mail and prompted 700 Pentagon workers to take antibiotics ended Tuesday when federal officials said traces of a material detected by a Pentagon mail screening device apparently were not the deadly substance.

Dozens of tests at two Pentagon mail facilities found no anthrax, William Winkenwerder, the assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs, said Tuesday. More than 70 tests were undertaken, including swabs on a filter from a chemical and biological testing device that had tested positive in an earlier check for anthrax.

“All test results, subsequent test results, that have been performed have been negative,” Winkenwerder said. “We have no evidence that there was anthrax material in the mail.”

Winkenwerder said additional tests should provide an even more definitive answer as early as today.

Three postal facilities serving the government -- the two Pentagon facilities and a U.S. Postal Service facility in northeast Washington -- were shuttered. And hundreds of postal workers were offered antibiotics and tips on preventive care. Hospitals were told to be on the lookout for the flu-like symptoms that could signal exposure to anthrax.

But nobody reported symptoms of the disease, and officials said the chances of becoming ill were low because the mail had been irradiated.

Nonetheless, the scare evoked memories of the October 2001 attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 others, and put bioterrorism teams in the Washington suburbs on alert.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said detecting anthrax was “still a priority” for the Bush administration.

The mobilization effort began Monday after tests indicated the presence of the deadly bacterium at two military mail facilities. The simultaneous alarms have yet to be explained.

The three postal facilities were all due to open as soon as this morning. As the ordeal wound down, workers clad in protective gear continued to ferry small boxes of mail -- a portion of the 8,000 items that had been labeled suspicious earlier in the day -- across an inner Pentagon courtyard.

“Based on all of this, we would say at this time that the probability is low to very low that we are dealing with a true health threat,” Winkenwerder said.

At the Pentagon mail and supply facility, outside the main Pentagon building, results of a routine sample had indicated Monday that a filter had come into contact with anthrax.

Hours after the facility was evacuated Monday, a biological-agent detection system sounded an alarm at a separate satellite mail facility in Fairfax County, Va., touching off a lockdown in which employees were required to stay inside their buildings for several hours.

The alarm that went off at the Fairfax County site signaled that a dangerous compound might have been present in the air. Authorities said such devices occasionally give false indications of dangerous materials. The site did not test positive for anthrax.

In the case of the Pentagon, Winkenwerder said, the sample that triggered the initial anthrax scare could have been contaminated in the lab, in an accident known as cross-contamination.

“We cannot rule out cross-contamination,” Winkenwerder said. “We are not ready to conclude that that may explain the situation. There are some additional tests that are being performed that will help elaborate on the situation.”

In what they said was an abundance of caution, officials closed a third mail facility Tuesday in the District of Columbia that processes Defense Department and other government mail, and recommended antibiotics for about 200 workers.

The 2001 anthrax attack remains unsolved and under investigation, with squads of FBI agents still mining the case for possible leads more than three years after letters laced with the deadly spores coursed through the nation’s mail system.

A former Army bioterrorism expert, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, once identified as a “person of interest” in the case by then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, is suing Ashcroft and the government, claiming they violated his privacy and maligned his reputation.

Times staff writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in Washington and Charles Piller in San Francisco contributed to this report.