Rumsfeld Praises Pilots, Crews
Govt: Anthrax in NY, Fla. Similar
By DAVID ESPO
AP Special Correspondent
WASHINGTON (AP) _ The anthrax strains surfacing with terrifying impact in Florida, New York and Washington are all similar, Bush administration officials said Friday, likely indicating a single source. "We obviously are preparing for more," said homeland security chief Tom Ridge.
Two weeks into the nation's bioterrorism scare, Ridge also said the FBI had traced two anthrax-tainted letters to a single mailbox in New Jersey.
Authorities disclosed two more cases of the skin form of the disease during the day, a New York newspaper employee and a New Jersey-area postal worker. That pushed the total to eight victims.
Capitol Hill was largely deserted during the day, save for hazardous materials teams checking the sprawling office buildings for evidence that spores had spread. Officials said they had not found any of the bacteria beyond previously known locations, including Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office and a central Senate mailroom. Three of 31 people were removed from the list of employees who earlier tested positive for exposure to the bacteria.
At a White House news conference, Ridge announced that after extensive lab tests, officials had concluded that all three strains of the bacteria "are indistinguishable. They are similar."
"It does appear it may have been from the same batch," he added, "But it may have been distributed to different individuals to infect and descend into different communities."
Ridge's statement that letters to NBC newsman Tom Brokaw and Daschle had been traced to a single mailbox appeared to catch other officials off guard. But White House spokeswoman Claire Buchen later said the mailbox was "a lead that's being strongly pursued" in connection with the two letters.
Ridge also told reporters the anthrax had not been "weaponized," meaning it had not been manipulated to facilitate inhalation by potential victims.
In private, other officials said it plenty potent, just the same.
One participant in a conference call for members of Congress said that Robert Gibbs, a Defense Department official, referred to the anthrax as of "relative high quality." He added, There is an effort to downplay and not promote the abilities of the people doing this," said this participant, who declined to be identified by name.
The tally in the nation's grim experience with bioterror included one death and one other case of the inhalation form of the disease, both in Florida, and six less severe skin infections, all involving individuals who have connections to the news media or handle the mail.
Anthrax-spiked letters have turned up at Daschle's office and in Brokaw's office. Officials have not been able to determine the source of infections traced to ABC and CBS _ or the New York Post, which disclosed during the day that it, too, had been touched by the scare.
Newspaper officials in New York said the editorial page assistant who had become ill, Johanna Huden, 30, had already recovered. City health officials circulated a reassuring memo to the paper's staff, saying it was unlikely anyone else was at risk for developing an infection.
"It is likely that the employee may have been infected while opening mail," the memo said.
The letter carrier, a 35-year-old Levittown, Pa., man whose name was not released, sorts and loads mail at a regional center in Hamilton, N.J., that handled the letters sent to Brokaw and Daschle. He was reported in stable condition at a local hospital, receiving antibiotics. His condition "isn't life threatening in any way," said Richard McGarvey, a spokesman for the state health department.
In Washington, Capitol police issued an alert declaring the Senate Hart and Dirksen office buildings each to be a "warm zone," meaning no one was permitted to enter without "personal protection equipment." A spokesman, Dan Nichols, said that was a routine designation in cases in which hazardous materials testing was planned.
In the Capitol, officials said that 3,900 nasal swabs had been conducted earlier in the week. With 1,400 results in hand, 28 were positive for exposure. That represented a reduction of three cases that Deputy Surgeon General Ken Moritsugu said had falsely tested positive.
The 28 include six members of the Capitol police force, 20 aides to Daschle and two staff members who work for Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., who occupies the office suite next to the majority leader.
Feingold's aides have said they were not in Daschle's suite on Monday, when the letter was opened. Officials conceded for the first time that meant the anthrax had escaped the confines of the majority leader's offices.
"With doors opening and closing ... it is not unusual ... some of these things may be moving back and forth," said Moritsugu.
Dr. John Eisold, the Capitol physician, said at least 120 people had been placed on a 60-day regiment of Cipro, a drug used to treat those at risk or affected by the disease.
At the end of a week often marked by confusing or conflicting government statements, there were fresh illustrations of the difficulties of assembling up-to-the-minute information.
Shortly after New York officials announced the infection of the Post reporter, Surgeon General David Satcher told a news conference his latest information was that the woman had tested negative.
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