Ricin Confirmed at U.S. Senate; Offices to Remain Closed for Days

U.S. Senate office buildings are expected to remain closed for several additional days while authorities investigate the discovery of ricin inside a suite of offices used by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), officials said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 3).

Frist said during a press conference yesterday that several tests had determined that the recovered substance was ricin, pronouncing the results “definitive” (Mike Nartker, GSN, Feb. 4).

“Indeed, this is ricin,” Frist said. “This is an insult, an assault on the Senate side of the United States Capitol. We are in a world where things like ricin, that we never had to think about, we do have to think about,” he said.

The powdered ricin was discovered Monday afternoon in Frist’s office suite in the Dirksen Senate Office Building by an intern, according to the Washington Post. An FBI official said the intern noticed dust on a mail-sorting machine located in a small mailroom attached to Frist’s office. It is still unknown exactly how the ricin entered the mailroom, law enforcement sources said, adding that they suspected it had been mailed.

No personnel have reported suffering any suspicious symptoms yet, the Post reported (Morello/Hsu, Washington Post, Feb. 4).

The U.S. Postal Service late Monday night closed a Washington postal facility located on V St. that processes government mail, according to the Post. Sixty samples were taken from the facility and sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing, with results likely to become available today, postal spokeswoman Irene Lericos said (Fernandez/Weisman, Washington Post, Feb. 4).

While Frist yesterday described the incident as an act of terrorism, law enforcement officials only said that terrorism had not yet been ruled out.

“We know that this was sent specifically to the United States Senate, to an individual,” Frist said. “Because it is a poison, a toxic chemical that we know is deadly, that we know there is no treatment for that, the assumption is the intent to harm,” he added (Morello/Hsu, Washington Post).

A spokesman for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., said the facility would probably compare samples of the ricin discovered at the Senate with other ricin samples collected in the past. The U.S. military has recovered ricin samples from al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer (Borenstein/Chatterjee, Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 4).

Law enforcement sources said yesterday that the U.S. Secret Service intercepted in November a letter containing a vial of ricin addressed to the White House, but never made the incident public, according to the Post.

The White House letter was nearly identical to one discovered in October at a South Carolina mail-sorting facility that also contained a vial of ricin, sources said. Both letters were signed “Fallen Angel” and complained of new trucking regulations (see GSN, Nov. 25, 2003).

The White House letter was discovered in November at an “offsite mail facility” used by the White House and contained “a fine powdery substance” that tested positive for ricin, an administration law enforcement official said.

“It was … determined that there was no public health risk because of the low potency and granular form of the substance,” the official said (Dan Eggen, Washington Post, Feb. 4).

In addition, investigators are also looking at whether the Senate ricin incident is connected to the 2001 anthrax attacks, which targeted two senators, including then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), according to the Post (see GSN, Jan. 27).

“That is obviously one of the main lines of inquiry that we’re pursuing,” an FBI official said. “There are a lot of similarities that certainly raise the possibility of a connection,” the official added (Eggen/Leonnig, Washington Post, Feb. 4).

Meanwhile, U.S. Postal Service officials said the Senate ricin incident would help strengthen their request to Congress to include more funding for biological detection equipment in the agency’s fiscal 2005 budget, according to the Post. The Postal Service had asked the White House to include in its budget request about $780 million for additional biological detection equipment, but the request was denied, postal spokesman Mark Saunders said (Fernandez/Weisman, Washington Post).

The ricin incident could also increase support among members of Congress for a developmental system to replace paper mail they receive with electronic copies, according to the Associated Press.

The project, which began in February 2003 with 12 lawmakers participating, involves letters being sent to a facility in Leesburg, Va., where they are then electronically scanned into “PDF” files and delivered to lawmakers on a CD-ROM, AP reported. The House Administration Committee, which oversees the project, plans to expand it to include 25 lawmakers by next month.

“It’s another second step of security,” committee Chairman Bob Ney (R-Ohio) said.

Ney also said the ricin incident could lead to the system’s use by all lawmakers.

“It makes the discussion of digital mail pop right up to the top,” he said (Malia Rulon, Associated Press/Washington Post, Feb. 4).

Back to top
About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines © Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.