The pediatrician in Santiago, Chile, who received the letter says he became suspicious because the envelope bore a Zurich postmark and a Florida return address. But Mosby's overseas mailings are routinely sent by DHL through Swiss Post, which regularly sends mail overseas -- with a Zurich postmark -- for businesses that use it to save money.
This increases my skepticism about why Banfi would suspect that letter was unusual, and then have anthrax found in it. He must have received many other letters processed the same way, with a Swiss postmark. I wouldn't be surprised if they later decided it was a false positive, and the letter was clean, as the WSJ suggests. OTOH, if it did contain anthrax, this will raise a lot of questions about Banfi, why he suspected that particular letter and not others.
The discovery seemed to rule out that a new foreign source of anthrax contamination had been found; all anthrax-contaminated letters found so far had originated in the U.S.
What about the anthrax found at the Habib AG Zurich bank in Karachi, Pakistan? Are they saying that was mailed from the US, or are they ignoring it?
As you say, though, it is not a convincing report, maybe that also was a false positive. I haven't heard any further reports on it. |
