Really? In other news, 20 packages of Ricin are sent to the White House every week. What makes this one so different would be real news.
Except when it is. We were living in the DC Metro area back when it happened years ago. Note the bolded & italicized sentence below, those affected postal workers might have a different viewpoint (although it was anthrax at that time, the method of delivery appeared to be the same):
Senate shuts down its three office buildings, disrupting work of lawmakers and thousands of their aides, after powder identified as deadly poison ricin is found in Majority Leader Bill Frist's office; no illnesses are reported; Capitol itself remains open; Frist, opening Senate session, sees act...
www.nytimes.com
RICIN ON CAPITOL HILL: THE OVERVIEW
RICIN ON CAPITOL HILL: THE OVERVIEW; Finding of Deadly Poison in Office Disrupts the Senate
By
David Johnston and
Carl Hulse
The Senate shut down its three office buildings on Tuesday, disrupting the work of lawmakers and thousands of their aides, after a powder identified as the deadly poison ricin was found in the office suite of the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist.
No illnesses were reported, but Dr. Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said in opening Tuesday's Senate session that the presence of ricin represented an act of terrorism. ''Somebody in all likelihood manufactured this with intent to harm,'' he said. There is no known antidote for ricin, and a speck can be deadly if it is swallowed or injected.
The discovery of the powdery substance on Monday afternoon created turmoil on Capitol Hill, as law enforcement officials sealed off Dr. Frist's offices. Senate leaders ordered closings of Senate offices adjacent to the Capitol as a precaution, locking up buildings that are normally teeming with staff members.
The Capitol itself remained open on Tuesday, with senators continuing to debate a highway bill. But Senate officials said that the three sealed buildings might remain closed for the rest of the week, forcing some senators to set up temporary offices. Some hearings were being moved to House office buildings.
For senators and thousands of Senate employees on Capitol Hill, the finding of ricin stirred memories of the deadly -- and still unsolved -- anthrax mail attacks in 2001.
In that case, two letters containing deadly spores were sent to two Senate Democratic leaders, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Tom Daschle of South Dakota.
Two postal workers who handled the letters died, several others were sickened and one Senate office building was quarantined for more than three months.
Law enforcement officials said they had no suspects in the current case. But they were carefully re-examining leads from a case last fall involving two letters contaminated with ricin, which were discovered in Washington and South Carolina. One envelope, addressed to the White House, was intercepted at a military mail sorting office, officials said.
That typewritten letter and a similar letter, discovered at an airport mail office in Greenville, S.C., threatened to contaminate public water supplies with ricin. The letters warned that the threat would be carried out unless the government rescinded a federal trucking regulation limiting the number of hours that a driver could remain on the road.
Both letters were signed ''Fallen Angel,'' according to documents posted on the F.B.I.'s Web site. The federal authorities have no suspects, but have announced a $100,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in the case.
In the latest case, several dozen employees were in the vicinity of Dr. Frist's offices when the powder was discovered on a letter-opening machine, but John Eisold, the Capitol physician, said no one had shown symptoms that might be associated with exposure.
Officials said about two dozen Congressional workers who were in the area of the ricin underwent decontamination showers, left behind their clothes and other belongings and went home in police-provided jumpsuits early on Tuesday.
''Although we have no evidence that anybody has received a significant exposure to make them sick at this 12-to-24-hour mark, we remain vigilant,'' Dr. Eisold said.
At a news conference, Dr. Frist said he did not know the toxicity of the ricin powder. Other officials said tests of air filters showed that the poison lacked floating properties and had not circulated through ventilation systems.
With chemical tests confirming that the substance was ricin, the F.B.I., the United States Postal Service and the Capitol Police began a criminal inquiry to determine who sent the material. The investigation focused initially on a search for an envelope or package in which the ricin was believed to have been sent, officials said.
On Tuesday, Terrance Gainer, the chief of the Capitol Police, said all the materials in the mailroom had been seized. Investigators have not yet identified how the substance, first noticed by an intern, was delivered into the room.
''There was nothing on first blush to lead us to believe there was any visible threat,'' Chief Gainer told reporters. ''But we still have a lot of investigative work to do on the things that are yet in that office and that we've confiscated from the office.''
The white powder was found near a pile of recently opened envelopes that has been quarantined, officials said. Investigators hoped to find the contaminated envelope in the stack of opened mail, but so far they have searched with painstaking caution to avoid disturbing even minute quantities of evidence.
But that meticulous approach seemed to be slowing the inquiry. As a result, the authorities have been unable to determine precisely where the material originated or how it was delivered to the Senate.
While there have been reports that terrorist groups like Al Qaeda could be interested in ricin and that ricin was used in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980's, it has been used mainly as an assassination weapon.
In 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian journalist living in London, died after he was attacked by a man with an umbrella that had a tip carrying a device that injected a small ricin pellet.
Ricin operates by getting inside the cells of a victim's body. The poison prevents the cells from making proteins, resulting in cell breakdown and eventually death. Death could take place within 36 to 72 hours, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As the authorities began their search for the source of the ricin in Dr. Frist's offices, investigators began a broader search of each senator's office to determine whether there might be other packages contaminated with the poisonous material. Thus far, those searches have provided no indication that the material was sent to any other senator.
At the same time, investigators began backtracking through the postal system, looking for traces of ricin from correspondence sent through the mail or by package delivery services. Other investigators began a review of Dr. Frist's correspondence, asking whether anyone might have sent any threatening mail to his offices in the Capitol or in Tennessee.
With little evidence to go on, investigators expressed interest in a mysterious envelope that turned up at a post office in Wallingford, Conn., that contained an unidentified powder and was addressed to the Republican National Committee. But later on Tuesday, the authorities said the powder was found not to be ricin.
At the Capitol, the impression of a professional and orderly approach to the ricin discovery was contradicted by accounts of some Senate employees who described the hours after the find as confused and chaotic. Some employees near Dr. Frist's office went home without any medical screening after the substance was found, and others went about their activities without being advised to seek decontamination.
The authorities said the substance was first seen about 3 p.m. on Monday, when a hazardous-materials team was dispatched to Dr. Frist's offices, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. After preliminary tests proved negative, an all-clear was given. Such an occurrence is not unusual for Congressional offices, which frequently receive suspect mail that turns out to be harmless.
But when follow-up tests detected the presence of ricin, the Capitol Police returned and began evacuating people to another area of the Dirksen building. By that time, staff members who were present said, many people had left for the day.
''It was a little haphazard,'' said one Congressional aide who ended up being quarantined.
After further testing of the material, those who had been in the vicinity and remained in the building were directed to shower at a decontamination tent erected in a hallway between the Dirksen building and the adjacent Hart Senate Office Building. There they were interviewed by the police and allowed to go home.
Senate officials said they would review their mail handling system to determine whether changes could prevent another occurrence. Mail sent to Congressional officials is sent to a separate facility to be irradiated to kill toxins and then returned to the Senate to be opened and distributed.
''We have a pretty good process, but this makes you look at how we can do a better job,'' said William Pickle, the Senate sergeant-at-arms. One Senate official said that under current procedures, a corner of each package is clipped off and that each envelope is placed on a tray and shaken over a table covered by an exhaust hood so that any powder inside would be removed. But in this case, the official said the consistency of the material may have prevented it from spilling out.
Still, with Senate offices vacant and ''closed'' signs on some office doors, several senators complained that they did not learn of the ricin until they watched morning news reports on Tuesday and were not advised of the gravity of the threat posed by the ricin found in Dr. Frist's offices.
''That was a breakdown, but how important it was I don't know,'' said Senator John B. Breaux, Democrat of Louisiana.
It was not until Tuesday, when a sample of the ricin was analyzed at a Maryland lab, that there was an authoritative finding that the material was ricin. Senate officials acknowledged some slips in procedure but said the system set in place after the anthrax attacks was working.
''Things are going very well,'' Dr. Frist said. ''Not perfectly, but very, very well.''
wtop.com
:strip_exif(true):strip_icc(true):no_upscale(true):quality(65)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gmg/WRGYYPYM6JA2RNHKMDEBGHVOB4.jpg "An American flag flies at half-staff over the White House in Washington, Saturday, Sept. 19, 2020, the morning after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)")
