Posted on 10/13/2001 9:03:35 PM PDT by OKCSubmariner
EXCERPTED:
A broadening national bioterrorism investigation turned toward St. Petersburg late Friday after NBC officials disclosed that a New York employee has contracted anthrax.
A woman who opens the mail for news anchor Tom Brokaw was diagnosed with a skin form of anthrax several days after she opened a letter that contained white powder and was postmarked from St. Petersburg.
The New York Times on Friday received a letter with a white powder and the St. Petersburg Times received one earlier in the week. All three letters were postmarked in St. Petersburg.
Federal law enforcement officials said late Friday that all three letters postmarked St. Petersburg tested negatively for anthrax.
[However, the test for the letter sent from St. Petersburg to the Brokaw aide must have been unsuccessful (too small a sample size?) because the aide in fact did contract Anthrax. This point was made by Ted Kopel on ABC Nightline last night. This calls into question the negative test results for the other two letters since they were also sent from St. Petersburg and may not have had inadequate sample size].
• An assistant to NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw contracted the skin-based form of anthrax after opening a "threatening" letter to her boss.
Officials quickly said there was no known link to either the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or the more serious inhaled form of anthrax that killed a supermarket tabloid editor in Florida last week. The 38-year-old NBC employee was being treated with antibiotics and is expected to recover. The letter was postmarked in St. Petersburg on Sept. 20 and opened Sept. 25, authorities said.
St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler opened his letter at his desk Tuesday. As he did so, a white powdery substance, resembling sugar or salt, spilled out.
Troxler stopped opening the letter. Authorities were called to the newspaper's offices in downtown St. Petersburg. Police put the envelope in an airtight container and drove it to a state health lab in Tampa for analysis. Firefighters covered Troxler's desk with a plastic sheet and yellow emergency-scene tape reading "caution."
Health officials found no signs of anthrax or bacteria in the powder. The envelope and a letter inside also tested negative.
The letter had no return address and was postmarked St. Petersburg. It bears a code 337, then a space, then 1.
Anything that is mailed in Seminole, Largo, Bay Pines, Gulfport, Pinellas Park or any St. Petersburg neighborhood goes through the main post office on First Avenue N and is stamped with a 337. [Actual envelop shown in article and the zip code is visible as 33701 and the postmark can be made out as early (“0?”) October 2001 for St. Petersburg]
The cryptic letter misspelled Troxler's name and had little punctuation. It said:
"Howard Toxler ... 1st case of disease now blow away this dust so you see how the real thing flys. OKLAHOMA-RYDER TRUCK! Skyway bridge-18 wheels." [Oklahoma-Ryder Truck capitalized for emphasis by FR poster, original version did not use capital letters]
There have to be more qualifiers on that record. Maybe you mean the 2nd longest suspension bridge. The bridge over Lake Pontchatrain near New Ortleans is 26 miles long. I don't even think that is the longest.
A person who has not mastered writing in upper and lower case would do something similar. That is a possibility. that indicates to me someone who hasn't learned English writing beyond a very early stage. Someone with perhaps 1 year of learning writing. Perhaps even self-taught. The pen strokes on the letters are not very advanced either.
If it was domestic, it is either a child of 6 or an adult who is either illiterate or doing a fine job of pretending to be illiterate. Anyone doing that fine of a job of pretending to write so primitively is much too intelligent and would have spent way too much time to just be a jokester. More analysis later.
It's really great though that there is very little panic in the US. I used to read about WWII and listen to my grandma talking about life back then and I thought "Jeeze, how did our people stay sane and make it through such a time." But I guess it's easier when we take it one day at a time and have great, competent leaders that we can trust a bit.
WAY TO GO!!!!!! I'm proud of ya! And this morning I picked my only, very precious, son up from an airport, and will be putting him back on a plane Wednesday morning. You terrorists stink. You're losers. You're not worthy of the air we NORMAL people breathe. You have NO CLUE what you've begun......
They would have also hated this as most Arabic, Farsi and other Islamic writing styles rely on intricate cursive handwriting, that mastery of is something every muslim takes pride in.
President Bush asked those involved in making films in Hollywood to think of every kind of attack they could imagine. He is using them to help think of what terrorists might do because of their great imaginations.
For a muslim to write using his left hand is very offensive, but a sick bastard terrorist would take purverse pleasure in the irrony of doing so to commit this type of bio-terrorist attack.
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