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Politics : Homeland Security -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Snowshoe who wrote (660)	11/28/2001 1:22:06 AM
From: Snowshoe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 827

New FBI Team Tackles Anthrax: Two Women's 'Mystery' Cases of Infection to Be Reviewed washingtonpost.com By Jim McGee and Susan Schmidt Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, November 28, 2001; Page A13 The FBI is also consulting with outside scientists to produce a list of labs known to have grown the Ames strain of anthrax, which investigators have identified in the five anthrax deaths so far. The FBI is assembling lists of current and former lab employees, seeking people who had access to the anthrax spores and the sophisticated knowledge required to mill them down to a fine, easily inhalable powder. Officials now believe no more than a few hundred people in this country, at most, would fit that description, the sources said. The FBI is also compiling information on the equipment needed in the milling process, such as centrifuges and fermenters.

To: Snowshoe who wrote (660)	11/28/2001 7:13:05 AM
From: RocketMan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 827

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.