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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (8386)	10/23/2001 11:45:27 AM
From: Frederick Langford	Respond to of 27700

Congressional Leaders, White House: Anthrax Likely Linked to Terrorist Attacks washingtonpost.com By Dana Milbank Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, October 23, 2001; 11:00 AM Government leaders agreed this morning that the anthrax cases in Washington, New York and Florida that have killed one man and perhaps two others are probably linked to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. "I don't think there's a way to prove that but I think we all suspect that," House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) said this morning after a meeting between President Bush and congressional leaders. Gephardt also labeled as "weapons grade" the anthrax bacterium that has been found in the recent episodes. "I think we've got to stop parsing words and trying to be anything other than accurate about what this is," he said. "This is weapons grade material" that has been finely milled. Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, declined to second Gephardt's description. "That's a scientific definition," he said this morning, asking for time to review Gephardt's remarks. Asked about a link between the anthrax and the Sept. 11 strikes, Fleischer agreed with Gephardt's view of linkage. "That's been the operating suspicion of the White House," he said. Bush and CIA Director George Tenet met with the four House and Senate leaders this morning at the White House. They discussed a range of issues: anthrax, the American strikes in Afghanistan, aviation security, counterterrorism legislation, an economic stimulus package, appropriations bills and judicial nominees. Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres today, and Bush will meet with top legislators from the international relations and appropriations committees this afternoon. In his morning briefing, Fleischer said that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is receiving updates from American hospitals every eight hours about suspicious illnesses, an effort to monitor any other cases of anthrax or bioterrorism. Bush met in the Oval Office yesterday with the postmaster general and head of the postal workers' union, but Fleischer said the government has not yet decided on a protocol for how the postal system would respond to further anthrax episodes. Fleischer said the government is grappling with "an uncomfortable and bad set of facts" in the anthrax cases. © 2001 The Washington Post Company