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Anthrax found in U.S. House complex
Saturday, Oct. 20, 2001
 
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Capitol physician Dr. John Eisold tells reporters that evidence of anthrax was found in the Ford Office building, located a few blocks from the Capitol, Saturday, Oct. 20. The anthrax was found in a bundling machine that processes mail for the Longworth House Office Building.
By ALAN FRAM
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON — Authorities have discovered evidence of anthrax in a House office building that processes mail for lawmakers, congressional officials said Saturday as hazardous materials teams methodically worked their way across Capitol Hill.

The finding in the Ford Office Building, a few blocks from the Capitol, brought to three the number of facilities believed to be tainted by anthrax. It marked the first time evidence had been found on the House side of the complex.

Officials had earlier reported finding anthrax in the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, where a letter containing the bacteria was opened last Monday, and in a mail center in a building across the street.

The disclosure came as authorities said they had pinpointed the New Jersey post office sorting box from which anthrax-bearing letters were sent, advancing their investigation even as two more people were found to have the skin form of the disease.

Tom Ridge, chief of homeland security, disclosed the discovery of the mailbox Friday but provided no details. Determining which sorting box the letters were in may give authorities hints as to where the letters were sent from.

Ridge said anthrax strains that have been found in Florida, New York and Washington are "indistinguishable'' from each other and may have been from the same batch.

Eight people have now contracted the disease, including one Florida man who died, and 37 others have tested positive for exposure. The ill and exposed people are all using antibiotics and are expected to recover.

"It is terrorizing people, and Americans are not ready to live with this,'' Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.

In his weekly radio Saturday, President Bush said investigators still do not know who sent the anthrax and have no evidence linking it to the al-Qaida network of terrorists, whom American officials have blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We do know that anyone who deliberately delivers anthrax is engaged in a crime and an act of terror, a hateful attempt to harm innocent people and frighten citizens,'' said Bush, in China for an economic summit. "These attacks once again reveal the evil at the heart of terrorism, the evil we must fight.''

On Friday, Argentine Health Minister Hector Lombardo held a nationally televised news conference to announce that a travel brochure mailed from Florida to a house in Buenos Aires tested positive for anthrax spores. The recipient of the brochure was not infected.

In Washington, Ridge told reporters the anthrax analyzed in the United States had not been "weaponized,'' meaning it had not been manipulated to facilitate inhalation by potential victims.

Even so, one participant in a conference call for lawmakers said Robert Gibbs, a Defense Department official, reported the anthrax was of "relative high quality'' and that "there is an effort to downplay and not promote the abilities of the people doing this.'' The participant spoke on condition of anonymity.

Congress recessed until Tuesday so hazardous materials teams could check the Capitol and House and Senate office buildings for evidence that anthrax spores had spread.

Officials said three of 31 people had been removed from a list of employees who earlier tested positive for exposure to the bacteria, citing more complete tests. That was out of 1,400 people for whom nasal swab results were completed. Test results remain incomplete for 2,500 more people.

The 28 people who tested positive for exposure were six Capitol police officers, 20 aides to Daschle, D-S.D., and two staff members who work for Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis. He is in the office suite next to Daschle's.

Feingold's aides have said they were not in Daschle's suite Monday, when the letter was opened. Officials said for the first time that meant the anthrax-laden powder had escaped the confines of the Daschle's offices.

Dr. John Eisold, the Capitol physician, said at least 120 people had been placed on a 60-day regimen of Cipro, an antibiotic.

One of the two new reported anthrax victims was Johanna Huden, 30, an assistant to the editorial page editor of the New York Post, Bob McManus. McManus said Huden had recovered and was working Friday.

The other, a mail sorter at a Hamilton, N.J., postal facility, was infected with cutaneous, or skin, anthrax, a much milder form of the disease than the inhaled form that killed a Florida man Oct. 5.

The 35-year-old Levittown, Pa., man was in stable condition at a hospital and is expected to recover, Pennsylvania Department of Health spokesman Richard McGarvey said.

A letter carrier who works at the West Trenton, N.J., post office had already been diagnosed with the skin form of the disease. The carrier may have handled the letters that were mailed to Daschle and to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw. FBI investigators are interviewing people who live and work in the carrier's Ewing Township route to try tracing the source of the tainted letters.

The West Trenton post office feeds mail to the Hamilton facility.

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