April 2, 2004
By Timothy W. Maier
© 2004 Insight/News World Communications Inc.

U.S. Postal Service workers thought to have processed tainted mail were told to keep working long after tests confirmed the presence of ricin in the Capitol.

For postal service employees the story is all too familiar. When a deadly white powder was discovered Feb. 2 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill employees immediately were quarantined, evacuated and sent to decontamination showers. Dirksen and the Hart and Russell Senate office buildings were closed for precautionary measures.

Meanwhile, postal employees working at the V Street Post Office facility believed to have processed the tainted mail were told to shut up, to keep working and to finish their shifts.

This 2004 drama well could have been a deadly rerun of the 2001 anthrax attack that left two postal workers dead and more questions than answers after letters containing deadly spores were mailed to two Senate Democratic leaders, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

The difference is that this time the powder was not anthrax but ricin, a deadly poison easily manufactured from the castor bean, Ricinus communis, which is legal to grow. The castor oil from the plant has been used safely in products ranging from laxatives and patent medicines to lubricants for high-performing engines, but ricin is a killer.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classify ricin as a "B" weapon, or moderate threat, because it is considered more likely to be used by an assassin bent on murder than by terrorists. It does not reproduce like bacteria, and the illnesses that it causes are not contagious, so mass casualties are unlikely.

But if colorless and odorless ricin were dropped into a food or water supply, or even applied to door handles, it could cause many deaths and result in a terror panic. Ricin can be spread as an aerosol, injected, or mixed with a powerful solvent and absorbed through the skin. Exposure leads to respiratory distress, fever, cough, nausea, severe dehydration, circulatory collapse – and death within three days. There is no antidote.

Contamination by ricin produces a slow and painful death. So does anthrax poisoning, as evident in the 2001 outbreak that claimed five lives, including postal workers Joseph Curseen Jr. and Thomas Morris Jr.

Both men were employed at the processing and distribution center on Brentwood Road in Northwest Washington. And evidence reported by Insight indicates managers there had knowledge that the facility tested positive for anthrax when they required employees to work an additional three days in a contaminated building.

In fact, after the facility at last was shut down and declared a crime scene, senior postal managers defied police orders and ordered a handful of employees to return to the facility in the middle of the night to retrieve several tons of mail that could have been contaminated.

Though postal managers insist they acted properly in the ricin attack, the evidence again casts doubt.

In fact, Insight has learned, postal workers at the V Street facility were required to grind out an additional nine-and-one-half hours of laborious processing after the ricin was discovered at 3 p.m. in the mail room of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.

Postal employees report they were not evacuated until 12:30 a.m., long after tests confirmed ricin in the Dirksen building. Postal workers say their supervisors claimed ignorance about the ricin attack despite the fact it had been the lead news story all day.

Why weren't these employees evacuated immediately? "I don't know," says U.S. Postal Service spokesman Bob Anderson, who nonetheless insists it wasn't clear that the ricin had been sent to the mail room through the mail because no "smoking gun" letter was found.

The facility was shut down the next day, at which time tests for ricin there proved to be negative, and, besides, no one got sick and died, he says.

Why not err, if need be, on the side of caution?

"I don't know," Anderson says, putting any blame for the late call on the U.S. Capitol Police and the CDC.

Did the U.S. Capitol Police make that call not to check the postal route for poison?

"It wasn't us," says a spokesman at the U.S. Capitol Police.

CDC spokeswoman Kathy Harben says it has no regulatory authority to shut the facility under any circumstance.

"We simply provide advice," she says. "We were in conference with the U.S. Postal Service and the Senate and Capitol Police," she notes.

What did the CDC advise?

"Evacuate," she answers. "We advised them to evacuate."

The Senate did so immediately, but the USPS temporized.

In attempting again to explain the delay, Anderson says: "I don't know why we didn't do it right away. It may have taken that long to formulate what path the letter had taken - assuming that there was a letter."

He assures that there were "stand ups" at which senior managers provided information to employees about the ricin attack, but some employees tell Insight they were provided with no such information.

Meanwhile, the careful treatment afforded the contaminated Senate office of Majority Leader Frist may reflect his knowledge and training as a physician. After the incident, Frist told the public that processes had been put in place following the anthrax scare that now were "working very well," including irradiation of envelopes and clipping a corner of each envelope so that it could be shaken at an off-site U.S. postal facility before being carried to the Capitol.

Frist did note that irradiation likely would have no effect on ricin because it is neither a virus nor a bacterium.

Nearly two dozen Senate employees who were in the vicinity of Frist's office when the powder was discovered on a letter-opening machine immediately were isolated. They stripped and underwent decontamination showers in a special tent set up by a hazardous-materials, or HAZMAT team.

They left behind their clothes and other belongings for testing and were sent home in jumpsuits provided by police. About a dozen Capitol Hill police officers also were decontaminated. Employees who had gone home earlier were contacted and told to collect all materials and clothing they wore or were carrying and place them in a decontamination bag, which subsequently was collected by HAZMAT workers.

But for postal workers there were no tents or decontamination showers, nor did a HAZMAT collection team knock on the door.

"Unbelievable," says an angry and frustrated Caroline Boyd, who works as a postal clerk at the V Street facility, which processes the mail for the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

"We were sent home to die and not even told about it. They don't care. They didn't offer us anything. They did nothing but say, 'Go back to work!'"

Boyd hopes this latest incident adds more ammunition to the case of Judicial Watch, the feisty conservative watchdog group that is representing 2,300 Brentwood employees in a class-action lawsuit that charges racial discrimination as an explanation for the different treatment afforded postal workers during the 2001 anthrax outbreak.

Indeed, when the ricin was discovered, USPS officials did a "Brentwood instant replay," says Chris Farrell, director of legal investigations and research for Judicial Watch.

"The managers and supervisors denied knowing anything and told everyone to shut up and get back to work," he said. "At the same time, the Senate offices were correctly evacuated and staff given medical screening and precautionary emergency procedures. The USPS has learned nothing and is still endangering its employees."

After the V Street facility closed on Feb. 3 at 12:30 a.m., Boyd says workers there were given the option to use their personal leave time or go back to work at the former Brentwood facility, since renamed for Morris and Curseen to honor the two fallen postal workers.

She says infuriated employees still are reluctant to work at the Brentwood facility despite assurances from the government that it is "safe enough" and has been decontaminated.

This reluctance is understandable. For example, after the ricin news story broke, the White House dropped a surprising bombshell. There had been a ricin attack by mail against the White House on Nov. 6, 2003, that had been kept from the public for three months.

In fact, the White House, the FBI and the USPS were not notified about the ricin threat until Nov. 12, although some news reports have suggested at least some agencies were not informed until several weeks later.

"What is happening?" asks Farrell. "Do more have to die before they do something?"

The ricin-laced letter that almost reached the White House through the mail carrying a Chattanooga, Tenn., postmark fortunately was intercepted at a mail-sorting office in Washington run by the military, according to the U.S. Secret Service.

The letter resembled a typewritten letter discovered at an airport mail office in Greenville, S.C., on Oct. 15, 2003. Both letters contained ricin sealed in a small metal vial, and both threatened to contaminate public water supplies unless the government rescinded a Jan. 4, 2003, federal trucking regulation limiting the number of hours that a driver could remain on the road.

"I have easy access to castor pulp," the writer warned in the South Carolina letter. "If my demand is dismissed, I'm capable of making ricin. If the rules remain unchanged, I will start dumping."

The letters were signed by someone calling himself "Fallen Angel," a euphemism for Satan, and claiming to be a "fleet owner of a tanker company."

The FBI is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to a conviction, but the case seems to have hit a dead end – in part, say law-enforcement agencies, because the Secret Service failed immediately to communicate the threat to other law-enforcement authorities.

Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., never one to fail to seize a political opportunity, says the Bush administration did a "disservice" by not making others aware of the threat. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., called it a "serious mistake" not to have notified postal workers, mail handlers and Congress.

But Frist downplayed the White House incident, explaining that the White House receives thousands of threats and that it can hardly notify Congress about every one of them.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan insisted there was no public-health threat since a CDC analysis had characterized the poison as low grade. McClellan nonetheless conceded that the White House has implemented new procedures to eliminate such delays in the future.

Postal employees tell Insight they hope that these new procedures include keeping them informed of discovery of mail attacks so they immediately can evacuate contaminated facilities.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37847