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CNN Live Today

Advance Team Enters AMI Building

Aired August 27, 2002 - 10:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: A Florida building that became an epicenter of last fall's anthrax attacks is back under the microscope. An advance team of federal investigators will go back into the American Media building, which has been sealed since an employee there was fatally infected.
CNN's Mark Potter has the story from Boca Raton, Florida -- Mark, when are they going to be going in?

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, we just learned that a small group of people will be going in, probably, this afternoon to do a survey. They are going to go inside and make sure that the maps they have of the building are correct, that the walls are where they are supposed to to be. Somebody has already gone in already to turn on the air conditioning, and so, a little bit of activity is already underway.

The schedule, we're told, is that for the next couple of days, there will be some testing and some rehearsing, and then on Friday, a group of about 90 investigators are scheduled to go in to start gathering up the anthrax samples.

The FBI says it plans to be here for two weeks. Now, the FBI also says that in recent weeks, federal authorities have developed some new techniques for gathering and processing and analyzing large amounts of anthrax, and their hope is that by using these methods, they can learn more about the possible source of the anthrax here in the building, and also any links to anthrax found in the Northeast.

The ultimate goal, though, is to try to determine, and this has not happened yet, to try determine who it was who killed photo editor Robert Stevens, the man who died here last October of inhalation anthrax. Another worker here, Ernesto Blanco was infected, but he recovered after a long hospitalization. Four others died in the Northeast.

Now, agents say that they hope that by finding anthrax concentrations and tracing it, they can determine where the anthrax entered the building and where it -- how it moved through the building. They believe the anthrax came in here by way of a letter, but that letter was never found. Now, in an affidavit for a search warrant, agents say that they have probable cause to believe that an anthrax letter may, and I underscore the word "may," still be inside the building. They are going to go looking for that. They also say that they will be going through briefcases and desk drawers and business records to try to also determine a possible target for the attack, and a reason for the attack here at the AMI building in Boca Raton -- Carol.

LIN: Mark, have they been able to establish yet any link between the anthrax in the American Media building and the letters sent to Capitol Hill last year?

POTTER: Yes, they say that the anthrax here is indistinguishable from the anthrax there, but they are looking for more points of similarity and with the new techniques and with more spores that they hope to gather up here, they hope to learn more about whether this is not just the Ames strain here as it is there, but more about whether it might come from the same batch. They are still working on that one.

LIN: Interesting, interesting. All right. Thank you very much. Mark Potter reporting live from Boca Raton.

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