In Shift, Officials Look Into Possibility Anthrax Cases Have bin Laden Ties
By DAVID JOHNSTON
ASHINGTON, Oct. 15 — Federal authorities say they are now investigating the possibility that followers of Osama bin Laden were behind the anthrax cases around the nation.
This represents a significant shift in the thinking of investigators, who had earlier speculated that the initial case in Florida was an isolated criminal act unconnected with the Sept. 11 attacks.
The shift of the investigation is based not on definitive proof but on circumstantial information drawn from cases diagnosed in recent days, like the postmarks on the letters known to contain anthrax. Each one was sent from locations near where some of the terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks lived or visited.
Two letters, the one sent to the Washington office of the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, and another to NBC in New York City, were postmarked from Trenton. Several hijackers had lived in New Jersey before boarding the United Airlines flight from Newark that slammed into a field in rural Pennsylvania.
A third letter, from Malaysia, was sent to a Microsoft office in Nevada. Khalid Almihdhar, the pilot who was aboard the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Pentagon, was spotted on a surveillance videotape in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, in January 2000. He was accompanied to a meeting of suspected members of Mr. bin Laden's group, Al Qaeda, by an unidentified man who later became a suspect in the October 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole.
Tonight, the case grew after officials said that a child of an ABC News employee in New York had tested positive for anthrax. It was not immediately clear how the child was infected or whether a letter had been found that could be tested for the spores that cause the disease.
Investigators also have not found the letter or letters believed to have that carried the substances causing the Florida anthrax cases, which so far have centered on a building in Boca Raton, Fla., occupied by American Media Inc., a publisher of supermarket tabloids. Several hijackers lived nearby, among them Mohamed Atta, who has been identified by the authorities as a ringleader of the plot.
Until late last week, F.B.I. investigators, struggling to keep up with the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks and the huge preventive effort to head off further violence, said that the incident appeared to be confined to the American Media office.
Last week, they said a careful reconstruction of mail-handling procedures at American Media suggested that the most likely explanation was that the anthrax contamination was a deliberate act committed by an individual with a grudge or other motive unrelated to terrorism.
But the additional cases in New York, Nevada and Washington have jolted the bureau, altering the investigative landscape and raising the possibility that Americans are for the first time experiencing a continuing episode of bioterrorism whose full extent is not yet known.
Some counterterrorism officials have complained that the bureau was slow to accept the possibility of terrorism. F.B.I. officials defended their actions, saying they have responded to nearly 3,000 anthrax related threats since Sept. 11, burdening investigators with a flood of hoaxes, each of which has been evaluated.
Attorney General John Ashcroft and the director of the F.B.I., Robert S. Mueller III, are said by officials to have demanded an explanation of actions by agents in New York who did not obtain an immediate analysis of the powder sent to NBC after an assistant to Tom Brokaw tested positive for the disease.
Investigators seemed to have stumbled in recent days trying to keep up with the swirl of reports of new exposure cases and trying to investigate a disease that few agents understand. The case is even more complicated because field tests may show positive results for anthrax only to be contradicted later by more elaborate tests.
Mr. Ashcroft, who has taken an aggressive role in the bureau's investigation, is said to have demanded, along with Mr. Mueller, a full investigation into whether terrorism is behind the anthrax incidents. Aides to both said that neither one had been critical of the performance of agents.
Officials, in law enforcement and intelligence agencies, said today that the government still lacks concrete evidence to explain any of the cases, nor do they have intelligence or proof that Al Qaeda are behind the exposure cases. It is still possible, the official said, that investigators will uncover other motives and perpetrators.
"The bottom line is: We don't know," the government official said. "You can't rule it out. But there isn't any information that would substantiate a bin Laden or Al Qaeda role. There is no credible information to suggest foreign involvement at this point."
Today, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, added her comments to those of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Mr. Ashcroft, who have said in recent days that they have suspicions but little evidence.
"There isn't any hard evidence of a link of any kind," she said. "But we don't want to be blind to that link. It would be hard to be blind to that link, given what happened on Sept. 11. But there isn't any hard evidence at this point."
Other letters have also been investigated. A second letter to NBC and a letter to The New York Times were postmarked from St. Petersburg, Fla. Officials said that neither letter contained anthrax but that they were being investigated because of threatening language they contained.
The officials said that they had not yet determined the strain of anthrax found in the letter sent to NBC and to the office of Mr. Daschle. They said the anthrax that killed a photo editor in Florida was a naturally occurring strain that had not been developed in a laboratory for use as a weapon.
In Newark, F.B.I. officials said the letter to Mr. Daschle had been postmarked in Trenton, but they would provide no further details. Earlier, other officials said that the letter to Mr. Brokaw had also been sent from Trenton. A postal official said the letter to Mr. Brokaw was sent in a prestamped first-class envelope, a type sold in postal vending machines.
One bureau official said that investigators were trying track down the source of the letters, but their task was complicated because the Trenton processing center handles mail from 46 post offices and nearly 300 mailboxes in central and southern New Jersey.
F.B.I. agents were reviewing videotapes from the security cameras in many post offices lobbies, hoping to identify the person who mailed the letters. But because there are no such cameras at street mailboxes, the possibility that a picture of the sender was captured is unlikely.
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