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CNN Saturday Morning News

Suspicious Letter to Leahy Stirs Capitol

Aired November 17, 2001 - 08:01   ET

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

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: On the home front, the FBI still testing a letter addressed to Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. But authorities say preliminary testing does show it was tainted by anthrax. Like the anthrax laden letter to Senator Tom Daschle, the Leahy letter is postmarked Trenton, New Jersey and it was dated October 9. But unlike the Daschle letter, authorities say it has never been opened and it has been in a batch of quarantined mail for the past five weeks.

The Hart Senate Office Building is still closed for decontamination. Now, two other Senate buildings, the Russell and the Dirksen, will be closed and checked for anthrax, although doctors doubt the Leahy letter presents any new danger.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. GREG MARTIN, U.S. NAVY: We feel very confident that there will be no incidents of disease from this exposure. We have a number of reasons to base that opinion. We've done extensive nasal swabbing. Over 6,000 people have been done all over the Capitol, including people from every office building and every floor in the entire Capitol complex and we have had no positive nasal cultures outside of the initial zone in the Hart Building.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: Dr. Martin says in the case of the Leahy letter, the incubation period for anthrax has passed with no new cases reported.

Discovery of the letter to Senator Leahy is the latest major anthrax development in several days.

And joining us now from Washington to talk about it is Javed Ali, our bioterrorism analyst. Good morning to you.

JAVED ALI, CNN BIOTERRORISM ANALYST: Good morning, Martin.

SAVIDGE: Give us the significance of this latest discovery.

ALI: In a sense, it's, to me, it's not that shocking. When the Daschle letter went out early October, myself and other sort of outside or independent experts, and even people maybe even inside the government were sort of questioning, could there be more letters that were out there? So this letter that was postmarked October 9 from Trenton, New Jersey to Senator Leahy's office is probably just another -- or is another indication that there were more than just one letter that was sent to the Hill.

SAVIDGE: Is there any benefit to the investigation of the fact that this was unopened?

ALI: In the sense that -- I mean it's a positive development in the sense that the material didn't get out to a greater extent if it was opened, like what happened in Senator Daschle's office, but I think what the Brentwood incident showed, the Brentwood mail processing incident showed is that even if the letter is not opened and it does contain anthrax material, that there is the potential for that material to escape if that letter is somehow undergoing some high stress mechanical process.

SAVIDGE: The fact that this letter obviously was postmarked some time ago, does it indicate that perhaps this wave of anthrax, for the time being, has ended?

ALI: There is that potential, but there's also the potential that there could be other letters that are circulating out there that have not yet been found. And the bottom line is the fact that the perpetrator or perpetrators behind these incidents still haven't been caught. So they may just be lying low waiting to deliver either another round of letters, or they could actually even try -- and we don't know if they have that capability, but to try to employ anthrax material in a sort of a better, with a better delivery system.

SAVIDGE: The anthrax that was discovered in Daschle's office was said to be of a particularly lethal variety. Do we know anything about the Leahy letter, whether it contained the same sort of anthrax?

ALI: There's nothing right now to indicate what the sort of, the quality of that material was. But if it was the same quality of the material that was in the Daschle letter, if it was finely ground, highly concentrated, a virulent strain, no electrostatic charge, all those properties that were apparently in the Daschle material, it would again suggest that the person or the group that was behind these incidents knew exactly what they were doing when they manufactured this material.

SAVIDGE: There seems to be variety in the sense of lethality and how dangerous this anthrax can be. Why would a group or, if it's an individual, fluctuate between what seemed to be several types of anthrax as far as its potential strength?

ALI: One possible explanation is that they were conducting multiple test runs or multiple batches of material, because they themselves didn't know how to actually make the material at a higher quality the first time or first couple times they actually engaged in the manufacture of the material. So that's one possible explanation.

The other explanation is that the group or the individual that is responsible for these incidents may have received this material from another source. So it's not even clear whether the group that's sponsoring the incidents actually manufactured the material themselves.

SAVIDGE: All right, well, we hope that this latest letter may offer more insight in the investigation.

Javed Ali, thank you very much for joining us this morning.

ALI: Thank you.

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