WASHINGTON, Oct 25 (AFP) - A chemical additive in the anthrax spores mailed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle made them more lethal and involved sophisticated technology thought to be available in only three countries, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
"The amount of energy needed to disperse the spores (simply by opening an envelope) was trivial, which is virtually diagnostic of achieving the appropriate coating ," Alan Zelicoff of Sandia National Laboratories' Center for National Security and Arms Control told the Post.
Richard Spertzel, who served on the United Nations team assigned to uncover and dismantle Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program in the wake of the Gulf War, said determining the method used to treat the bacteria could help investigators identify its origin.
Researchers said the discovery of the chemical additive, which was confirmed Wednesday by an unnamed source close to the investigation, points strongly toward the possibility that the spores were not produced in a university or makeshift laboratory or collected from natural sources, but rather that they came from a state-sponsored lab.
Meanwhile, investigators Wednesday found traces of the deadly anthrax bacteria in a fifth site around the US Capitol, an elevator bank in a Senate office building, the US Capitol Police said.
Traces of anthrax were found in the first-floor freight elevators of the Hart Senate Office Building, one of two Senate buildings which remain closed, according to Capitol Police Lieutenant Dan Nichols.
Anthrax spores have also been found in four other locations on Capitol Hill. Officials said 28 people there tested positive for anthrax exposure but none had developed the disease.
Top US health officials Wednesday mounted a firm defense of their handling of the bioterror scare but admitted they were "wrong" last week not to immediately treat workers at a Washington mail depot where two men later died of anthrax .
"We were wrong. We were wrong," Surgeon General David Satcher said on ABC television, after he was asked why postal workers were not offered anthrax screening and treatment after a tainted letter was processed through their facility.
"The assumptions had been that people could not be exposed," he said, adding that authorities had initially concluded that no anthrax had been released into the air at the Brentwood mail depot in Washington.
In addition to the two workers at the depot who died, identified as Joseph Curseen and Thomas Morris, two others are in hospital in Virginia fighting inhalation anthrax -- the most dangerous form of the disease.
Eleven mail workers are undergoing tests to rule out the disease and 20 others are sick, but with what are most likely not anthrax - related symptoms, officials said.
The New York Post, meanwhile, said it feared that a second employee had contracted skin anthrax , the least serious manifestation of the disease.
Up to 13 people have been infected with anthrax in the United States, spread in a spate of poisoned letters from individuals whom officials have described as unidentified "terrorists." Three people have died.
Preliminary tests on 120 White House mail workers have come back negative for anthrax , the White House said Wednesday, a day after announcing that a remote military site used to sort President George W. Bush's mail had tested positive for anthrax bacteria.
"No positive tests have come back," spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
US authorities have so far not been able to link the anthrax attacks with the September 11 terror strikes on New York and Washington which killed more than 5,000 people and which Washington has blamed on Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network.
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David Satcher, Freepers may remember, is the clinton appointee who repeatedly lied about the number of abortions he was involved with, after the previous Surgeon General was fired for instructing teenagers how to have sex in the back seats of their cars. Why do we still have a Surgeon General whose main interest is promoting condoms, abortions, and sex education in our schools?