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CNN Live Today

Officials to Enter Attacked AMI Building

Aired August 27, 2002 - 12:07   ET

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


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Today, an FBI team will go into the American Media building for the first time since it was sealed during last fall's anthrax attacks. Today's survey is the first step in a two-week reinvestigation of the site of that first anthrax attack.
CNN's Mark Potter joins us now with the latest from Boca Raton, Florida -- Mark.

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kyra.

The preparations, indeed, are under way. You might see behind me that they're setting up a little bit of a tent city there, including some decontamination tents. And as you say, a small survey team will, indeed, be going in this afternoon to look over the site, to map it out and maybe to take some pictures.

A spokesman for the FBI says that a team -- there will be some rehearsals for the next couple of days and some testing. And then, a team of about 90 investigators will go in on Friday -- that's the schedule now, on Friday -- to start gathering some of the anthrax samples.

The FBI says it will be here for a couple of weeks, as part of its national criminal investigation.

Now, federal authorities say that just in the last few weeks, they have developed some new techniques for gathering and processing and analyzing large amounts of anthrax. They hope that these methods can be used to help finally determine the source of the anthrax here, and also, to determine links to the other anthrax cases in the northeast.

The plan here is to locate concentrations of anthrax, and then to follow those concentrations through the building, to trace them through the building. The hope is that by doing that, they can determine exactly where the anthrax came into the building, and where it spread. The belief has always been that anthrax came in by way of a letter, but that letter has never been found, at least not yet, and that's one of the things that the agents will be looking for when they get inside.

They'll also be going through briefcases, desk drawers, packages and business records, in an attempt to also determine why someone may have targeted AMI -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Mark, you mentioned they will be rehearsing for a couple of days. Will you explain what exactly that means, and why they need to do that?

POTTER: Well, they've got people here from different agencies -- the CDC, another group, the FBI -- and they need to figure out how to work together in this critical area. They need to work carefully. They have a plan for how they're going to go through the building, and they want to work that out before they actually get inside.

PHILLIPS: Mark Potter, thank you so much. We'll check in with you next hour.

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