Suspicious Package (Stuffed Animal?) Outside Senate Buildings Causes Evacuation

Tuesday, February 3, 2004 | Kristinn

[kristinn]

Local Channel 5 in D.C. is reporting the Capitol Police have ordered the streets around the Senate office buildings evacuated after a suspicious package was found. The item is reported to be a stuffed toy animal.

[CygnusXI]

"Expert on MSNBC claims this is a copycat......and is domestic terrorism....not foreign. The coverup begins..

Thanks MSNBC!! We can all relax now, cause even if it IS domestic terrorism, apparently MSNBC infers that type of terrorism is harmless. [/sarc]

[bonfire]

Fox will be talking about this after the commercial break.

[Dog]

FOX: ALL Senate offices are CLOSED for the day....all committee hearings are cancelled.

[prairiebreeze]

Yes I heard that too. By FoxNews "expert". Getting the story straight I suppose....

Prairie

[demlosers]

Expert on MSNBC claims this is a copycat......and is domestic terrorism....not foreign.

Premature...

[Monty22]

For as big a deal as it is.. MSNBC still has their 'Kerry stomping the world' stuff as main 'news'.

Ridiculous

[prairiebreeze]

Her mail, BTW, came through the NJ Hamilton facility.

yikes, that would have been even scarier.

Prairie

[prairiebreeze]

Bill Frist on TV now saying air sampling is negative

[Professional Engineer]

Poor Elmo. The cold cruel world just didn't understand him.

[OXENinFLA]

Senator FRIST is talking about the RICIN right now on the Senate Floor.Senate Coverage(2-2 to 2-6-04)

Dashole is just got up to squeek.

[Monty22]

I wouldn't think it would get out in the air, it's much more of a contact or oral injestion poison from what I hear.

[prairiebreeze]

I dunno. Bio expert on FNC was saying that inhaling it causes pulmonary edema and death within hours. No cure.

If it's mixed in a solution and gets on the skin that's bad too.

Ingesting it, he said, caused severe diarrhea but not necessarily death.

??

Prairie

[Quilla]

Check out this report from Reuters (specifically the last paragraph). I completely missed the news of the October ricin find. (Source: http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=451284&section=news )

A white powder found in a U.S. Senate office building on Monday was shown in early tests to be the deadly poison ricin, police say, disrupting work in Congress and stirring memories of a 2001 anthrax attack.

Also on Monday a suspicious powder was found at a postal facility in Wallingford, Connecticut, where anthrax spores were found in the 2001 anthrax-mailings, which killed five people in different parts of the eastern United States.

No illnesses have been reported in connection with either of Monday's incidents.

Preliminary tests showed the substance found in a Senate mail handling room on Monday was ricin and a federal law enforcement official said definitive testing results from the Army's Fort Detrick were expected this afternoon.

The official said the Capitol Police and the FBI were investigating in the belief that a potential crime may have been committed, but awaited the definitive test results.

U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrence Gainer said late on Monday, "We have had several confirmations that it is ricin."

U.S. security services are on alert for possible attacks in America by extremists as President George W. Bush pursues a war on terrorism, but there was no immediate indication who was behind this incident.

Several airlines cancelled flights to the United States, including to Washington, over the weekend due to security concerns.

CONGRESS DISRUPTED

Congressional testimony by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was cancelled on Monday as some Senate buildings were closed, Pentagon officials said. Some other hearings were also put off.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a physician, joined Gainer at the late night news conference and urged calm.

He said that the powder that was found could theoretically have been inhaled but there was no evidence of that by any of the people who had been in the office or on the floor where the substance was found.

The three U.S. Senate office buildings, the Hart, Dirksen and Russell buildings, remained closed while unopened mail was collected and removed. The Capitol was open on Tuesday, but all tours were cancelled, said Bob Stevenson, a spokesman for Frist.

In 2001 letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to the Washington offices of two senators and to news media offices in New York and Florida. Five people died, including two postal workers. The culprit has not been found.

The discovery caused ripples on world financial markets, with the euro gaining overnight against the dollar after news of the discovery and U.S. Treasury prices gaining in Asia on safe-haven dealing after the poison rekindled worries about indiscriminate attacks on U.S. institutions.

"The ricin story is definitely helping Treasuries at a time when the dollar is suffering a bit but ... no one is going to want to overdo their reaction to this news," said a trader in Helsinki.

Gainer said the U.S. Capitol Police department was notified a suspicious white powder in a mailroom shortly after 3 p.m. (8 p.m. British time) on Monday. He said it was not immediately clear what package or what letter may have held the powder.

Ricin is a poison derived from the pulp left over when castor beans are processed to make castor oil. There is no antidote for ricin, which can kill within 36 to 72 hours of exposure to significant amounts, according to the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

A vial of ricin was delivered to a postal distribution centre in Greenville, South Carolina on October 15 in an envelope with a letter threatening to widely release the deadly poison unless new rules for commercial truck drivers were changed. U.S. authorities in January offered a $100,000 (54,500 pounds) reward for information leading to the arrest of whoever sent the toxin.

[American_Centurion]

Gee, funny how important stuff like this doesn't make headlines until it's one of the "important" people threatened.

Never heard one peep about the October mailing.

[John H K]

Check out this report from Reuters (specifically the last paragraph). I completely missed the news of the October ricin find.

Actually, I'm fairly confident it was posted on FR (haven't done a search) but since the note wasn't very Islamic or AQish, FR, of course, had no interest in the story.

[John H K]

How many letters were sent the last time? I can remember four confirmed to the Senate, another to Florida, four or five to news media in NYC, the one to CT. I'm sure there were more--and the USPS had better be on alert.

There were only 2 letters to the senate and none to Connecticut. Lundgren was killed by cross-contamination.

[Quilla]

Here we go:


After ricin scare, FBI polygraphs postal workers
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1016602/posts

[Quilla]

Actually, I'm fairly confident it was posted on FR (haven't done a search) but since the note wasn't very Islamic or AQish, FR, of course, had no interest in the story.

How could I have forgotten? Mad truckers must have piloted planes into the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon killing 3,000 Americans.

[Starboard]

MSNBC still has their 'Kerry stomping the world' stuff as main 'news'

Yes, the saturation coverage continues. Aside from the Kerry phenomenon on MSNBC, the liberal media just loves the Dem primaries because they provide a convenient vehicle for non-stop Bush bashing. There's no way a field of Republican candidates would ever receive this amount of coverage.

[FourPeas]

I always knew there was something suspicious about that rag head, like he was the puppet of something insidious.