Other investigators and politicians tried to pin the blame on Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq. It couldn't have been made in a cave in Afghanistan. Weaponized anthrax capable of causing infections through the lungs is a sophisticated substance requiring advanced laboratories and highly specialized scientific skills. With a mid-term election only weeks away, officials in the Bush White House pressured FBI director Robert Mueller to publicly blame Osama bin Laden. Smithsonian magazine's then-editor Carey Winfrey had to reassure readers: "Fear not," he wrote in 2002, "the magazine itself is mailed to subscribers directly from our printing plant in Effingham, Illinois." Businesses and government agencies purchased glove boxes to allow employees to open mail without contacting the contents. For many people and businesses that had resisted the cultural shift to email, this was the moment that pushed them online.Įven once the mail started moving again, many Americans were too afraid to open an envelope with a return address they didn't recognize. Checks, bills, letters and packages simply stopped arriving. Large volumes of mail were quarantined by the United States Postal Service as some postal employees became infected. Now that it was undeniable that terroristic anthrax attacks were underway, a mild panic set in. But a total of 22 people did get sick with anthrax and five died. She was treated with antibiotics and did not become sick. Leslie was the first victim to see a more highly refined version of the powdered anthrax that could easily be inhaled. “It looked like baby powder,” Leslie said in an interview on the PBS program, “Frontline.” “I was wearing a dark gray skirt and black shoes, and you could see it, just vividly, on the dark colors.” The letter to Daschle was opened on October 15 by intern Grant Leslie, who is now the managing director of a lobbying firm. The question of terrorism was settled beyond a doubt when a second mailing of anthrax envelopes was addressed to the pair of senators, including then-majority-leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) with a terse, hand-written letter that famously included the line, “we have this anthrax.” and Thomas Morris, Jr., were fatally infected. The museum also displays the mail collection box that the terrorist placed the letters in as well as an American flag which had hung in a mail processing and distribution center where two postal workers, Joseph Curseen, Jr. “Because of their extremely fragile condition we have them in a special case that only lights up when a visitor activates it and are only displaying one at a time.” “We have letters to Senators Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle and Tom Brokaw (envelopes & letters) on loan from the FBI,” says Nancy Pope, head curator of the museum's history department. and are on view in the exhibition, "Behind the Badge: The U.S. After a thorough decontamination process, several of the letters have been loaned to the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. Surprisingly, the original anthrax letters were not destroyed. What if it was scattered over a city? Blown into the ventilation system of a skyscraper? Talk swirled about the possibility of a large-scale anthrax attack. People began stockpiling Cipro, an antibiotic that is typically recommended for the treatment of anthrax. Government officials stuck to this position even as anthrax panic swept a nation that was (and perhaps still is) waiting for a second shoe to drop after 9/11. “Anthrax happens,” said a spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. Thompson, then Secretary of Health and Human Services, at a White House briefing on October 4. “It is an isolated case and it is not contagious,” said Tommy G. Government officials played down the possibility that this was the work of a terrorist. It wasn't until early October that the first victim, Robert Stevens, a photo editor from the company that owned the Enquirer, was hospitalized and diagnosed with anthrax.Īt first, nobody connected the strange contents of the envelopes with illness. NBC, CBS, ABC, The New York Post and The National Enquirer all seem to have initially ignored the strange deliveries. Those envelopes with their payloads of granular brown anthrax would take days to arrive at the addresses of the major news outlets. The first five contaminated letters were dropped in a mailbox in Trenton, New Jersey, on September 18, 2001. Mail, fueled such a complex FBI investigation and resulted in such a confusing outcome that many Americans have lost track of the details. But there was another terrorist attack against the United States that began later that month, the anthrax attacks that spread through the U.S. “Never forget,” read the bumper stickers and T-shirts after September 11, 2001.
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