Posted on 11/11/2001 12:10:05 PM PST by boris
You might try it.
Or, if you don't, what date did you hear the story in Tustin? At least we'd know that the incident was no later than that date.
However, no one has ever said anything about these letters again. I wonder if they got mailed.
Do you remember the approximate date you heard this, or the date it is supposed to have happened?
She immediately took the letter to the police department, who asked her what she wanted them to do about it!
The enclosed letter requested "detailed" maps of the Grand Cayman Island.
She "thinks" the FBI now has that letter. The CI postal workers are "now" wearing gloves and masks, but my daughter was never told whether the envelope had been tested for anthrax.
The FBI was contacted and subsequently, all letters placed in postal collection boxes throughout Southern California were checked one by one, (a very laborious process) before being processed by USPS mail processing centers. They were looking for letters hand-addressed to hospitals, no return address, with Liberty stamps.
I have not heard what resulted from this search, but I do know that it went on for several days. I don't know why the man took them to a clerk in the first place, as they already had postage on them and could have just been put in a collection box anywhere in the area. You are right, though...the clerk who thought the letters were suspect should have just taken them and then called the FBI.
A copy of the article appears below.
NBC4.TV
TUSTIN, Nov. 2 - Postal workers in Tustin and elsewhere remained on heightened alert today for a stack of letters an "Iranian gentleman" snatched back this week when questions were raised about them.
The letters had no return addresses, were hand-written and were cold to the touch, as though they had been taken out of a refrigerator, said Pamela Prince of the U.S. Postal Inspector's Office in Pasadena.
The man who brought the half dozen or so letters into a mail contracting facility in Tustin on Wednesday -- they were addressed to hospitals and medical facilities on the East Coast -- got upset when the worker asked him to write in a return address, Prince said.
He left, and it was unknown if the letters -- which had 34-cent Statue of Liberty stamps on them -- were ever mailed.
But the incident raised enough suspicion that postal workers throughout California were asked to be on the lookout for any of the letters, Prince said.
"We'd asked all postal employees to be on the look out for any suspicious mail since the anthrax scare first surfaced," Prince said. "Our employees and customers have reported over 600, close to 700." But "the alert was heightened after this."
Phillip Capuano, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, Branch 737, called the suspect "an Iranian gentleman," but said the worker was unable to provide a good description of him or get the license plate number.
Prince said that "ideally, we would have been able to retain custody" of the letters. But "the No. 1 concern is to maintain safety. All we can ask of people is to follow their best judgment. I think the clerk did a great job" in alerting authorities.
"I understand the clerk was seen for treatment," she added.
Investigators are still unsure whether the letters were cold enough to indicate they had been in a refrigerator, or might just have been left out in the cold morning air, Prince said.
Charles Miller, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, Branch 1100, said postal workers looking lor the suspicious letters "literally went through the mail, piece-by-piece" at the dozen or so general mail facilities in Southern California.
"You've got to understand the magnitude of the mail," Miller said.
"We measure mail by feet, with large companies getting 2-3 feet a day. We deal with thousands of feet a day, and it's like looking for a needle in a haystack."
I had to go back and look. She died on Oct. 30
This could add weight to another FReeper's theory that medical supplies may be a target of contamination.
Undermining Americans' confidence in their hospitals and medical system could be the tactic.
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