There was no anthrax letter mailed from Florida. All the anthrax letters were mailed from New Jersey - some probably from Princeton, although all got a Trenton postmark.
There were two mailings. The first - postmarked September 18, 2001, - apparently consisted of 5 letters addressed to the media: Peter Jennings at ABC, Dan Rather at CBS, Tom Brokaw at NBC, The New York Post and The National Enquirer in Lantana, FL. The second mailing - postmarked Oct. 9, 2001, - consisted of two letters addressed to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. The letters to the Post, Brokaw, Daschle and Leahy have been recovered. The letters to ABC, CBS and The National Enquirer were not recovered.
The J-Lo letter has nothing to do with the anthrax attacks. It arrived at the AMI building on September 19, 2001, and contained NO anthrax. It was opened and passed around on the 3rd floor, and the third floor was the least contaminated floor in the building. Moreover, one of the people who tested positive for exposure to anthrax was Stephanie Dailey who was on vacation at that time. She opened the real anthrax letter on September 25, 2001, at her desk. The entire area around her desk is the most thoroughly contaminated area in the AMI building. She was resposible for opening letters addressed to newspapers other than the Sun, and, since The National Enquirer offices in Lantana had been closed down a year earlier, the letter was forwarded to Boca Raton and she opened it when she returned from her vacation.
There are charts on my web site which show how the 3 floors at the AMI building were contaminated. Just click HERE.
There is a great deal of bad information out there because the first anthrax case diagnosed was Bob Stevens in Florida. In reality, however, SEVEN people got anthrax before Stevens. There's a chart of all the cases HERE.
Instead of just working from memory, you might consider checking www.anthraxinvestigation.com . The facts are all there.
Ed
Ed, I appreciate the very considerable effort you clearly put into researching the anthrax case and formulating your opinions as to what may have happened. I did go to your site. For the first link I wanted to look at, I chose "Three Mailings?" Then I scrolled down from there.
There is no reason for me to doubt the facts you put up, such as that chart that shows when each victim became ill. On the other hand, much of the information is your assessment — opinion — as to what all the facts you gathered mean. There's nothing I can do to challenge your viewpoint, nor do I want to. However, there are other facts that may or may not be covered on your site. (Don't know as I post this since I haven't had time to look at it in depth.)
The Florida case was the first to make news. It initially was thought to be an isolated incident. In fact, it didn't even make much national news early on due to the then very immediate 9/11 coverage. The gentleman who passed away initially was thought to have been exposed while on a trip out of state. Early news reports from Florida media did say that AMI employees recalled that a letter containing a brownish white powder arrived sometime around 9/8/01. Perhaps their memories were faulty (understandly given all that was going on then). Or perhaps that was not THE letter that contained the anthrax. But the fact remains that early reports pointed to it as the source.
It is also a fact (actually a series of facts) that Atta and one or more hijackers rented an apartment from the real-estate-agent wife of the head of AMI. That Atta had looked into taking flying lessons in a crop duster at a local airport in the Boca vicinity. That Atta and one other hijacker went to a pharmacist seeking something to treat what appeared to be chemical burns. That another hijacker had gone to a physician in South Florida for a black lesion on his leg, and that the physician believes it was an anthrax lesion. That Zacarias Moussoui also was to have taken crop-duster lessions, and that he has admitted in court that he was supposed to either carry out or participate in a second wave of attacks, the nature of which he has not specified.
How can anyone say with certitude that the AMI letter(s) was postmarked on 9/18 when it was never recovered? Or that there was definitely a letter sent to Peter Jennings when none were recovered there and (if I recall correctly) no one remembered receiving a letter at ABC. Or that the Dan Rather letter was mailed on the 18th when it was never recovered?
There are still many more questions than answers as regards the anthrax case. Perhaps we will never discover what happened. But with so many questions still unanswered, it seems to me to be poor investigative technique to close one's mind to all possible scenarios.
