Years After Anthrax Attacks, Hoaxes Persist

By Chris Schneidmiller
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The anonymously angry of the world are creating serious trouble today with just a stamp, an envelope and a household product.

It takes only moments for someone to send a package containing a suspicious but ultimately harmless powder. The act, however, can force entire buildings to be locked down and tie up emergency personnel for hours. Each incident must be taken seriously in case the contents turn out to be anthrax rather than crushed aspirin, officials said.

The Australian capital of Canberra sustained a barrage of such mailings beginning June 1 to its Parliament building, Prime Minister and Cabinet Department, and the embassies of Indonesia, the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Italy and South Korea (see GSN, June 6).

Also receiving powder-filled envelopes since April: the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., the Danish embassies in Stockholm and Vienna, the New Mexico state capitol, a Slovenian government office, the office of Quebec Premier Jean Charest and a Vermont multimedia company. That’s just a partial list — an online search turned up news reports of 15 incidents in June alone.

“It seems like it’s a daily occurrence, even when it doesn’t get publicity,” said FBI spokesman Bill Carter.

The hoaxes are unpleasant, but no longer unexpected.

“These things happen periodically in Washington,” said an official at the Israeli Embassy.

An embassy employee checking mail at 5 p.m. June 16 opened one envelope that contained a small amount of a white powder, the official said. A section of the building was closed and some employees remained inside until tests indicated at 11 p.m. that the substance was benign. The letter, which reportedly contained anti-Semitic language, was traced to a man jailed in North Carolina, according to the FBI.

Six days earlier and across the continent, an employee in the collections department of Imperial Parking in Vancouver, British Columbia, opened an envelope containing a similarly suspicious white powder. Vancouver emergency services were quickly alerted.

“Around lunchtime we started seeing a lot of emergency vehicles out front, HAZMAT teams, fire trucks, police cars,” said Linda McClusky, a legal assistant in the company’s administrative office, which is located in another section of the building.

The affected section of the building was locked down — the air-conditioning system and elevators were shut off and no one was allowed to enter or leave. Twenty-five workers were quarantined for several hours until tests determined the substance was not dangerous, said Capt. Rob Jones-Cook, spokesman for the Vancouver Fire Department.

“It’s not the kind of thing that one expects to happen up here. It’s something that we read about happening in the United States,” McClusky said.

People were putting powder in the mail to scare others years before someone sent envelopes laced with anthrax that killed five people in fall 2001.

There were 22 incidents reported worldwide in 2000 involving faked biological agents, according to the Monterey Institute’s Center for Nonproliferation Studies. The count jumped to about 730 in 2001, due largely to Clayton Lee Waagner’s campaign against abortion providers (see GSN, July 8).  

Waagner was arrested late that year after sending roughly 550 powder-filled letters, and the number of biological hoaxes dropped to 70 in 2002. However, excluding his count, both 2001 and 2002 saw significant increases in such incidents from 2000, spurred by the anthrax mailings and the resulting media coverage, said Sundara Vadlamudi, research associate for the center’s WMD Terrorism Research Program.

“It’s people who see there is the opportunity for media attention,” Vadlamudi said. “It’s a really simple thing to do. All they have to do is get some white powder and put it in an envelope and write a scary note and send it off.”

The number of known hoaxes has been dropping since 2003 as news of the anthrax case dwindled. The FBI and U.S. Postal Service continue their investigation, but have made no arrests to date.

While the Monterey center has not finished researching all possible cases, there is no indication of a significant rise in incidents so far this year, Vadlamudi said.

Although certainly the most relentless, Waagner was not the first anti-abortion biological hoaxer or the last. More than 20 letters containing fake anthrax were mailed to abortion providers and abortion rights organizations in January 2002, several weeks after his arrest.

Such acts allow the perpetrators to keep their issue on the public agenda without stepping forward themselves, and can force clinics to shut down temporarily, Vadlamudi said.

“If affect the functioning. It scares the people who work there,” he said. “It tells the workers that ‘We are on the radar of anti-abortion activists.’”

Motives for anthrax hoaxes in recent years have been more likely to be unknown or based on an ideology or belief system — for example, the unidentified person who last year claimed that “god told me to send this letter” containing a white powder to a Long Beach, Calif., postal facility. 

Reasoning is not necessarily ideological. The Vancouver Fire Department’s Jones-Cook said he suspects an angry motorist sent the letter to Imperial Parking, which handles parking meter enforcement for the city.

“You can imagine, we’re a parking company, people don’t like us,” McClusky said. “But it’s usually angry letters and angry phone calls.”

Biological hoaxes are more popular than those involving mock chemical or radioactive materials, according to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. A simulated biological agent can be “easily produced and safely handled by the perpetrator,” it said in its 2002 WMD Terrorism Chronology, but can have extended consequences.

Vancouver sent 48 emergency workers and 18 pieces of equipment to the powder scare at the Imperial Parking office. Firefighters suited up in protective gear to retrieve a sample, while others managed the quarantine and organized decontamination for the hazardous materials workers. Emergency medical personnel examined firefighters before they entered the building and after they exited, and waited to see if they would have to take anyone to the hospital. Police officers handled crowd control and traffic and provided an escort when the sample was taken for further testing at a laboratory.

This occurred while the city’s emergency services were also handling a hotel fire, an injured person and the nearby appearance of the Aga Khan, spiritual leader of Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims, Jones-Cook said.

The department receives hundreds of calls each year regarding suspicious substances. Half of those involve material that came through the mail, Jones-Cook said.

“It creates all sorts of problems, but we have to err on the side of caution,” he said. “It certainly puts a strain on our equipment and personnel.”

Emergency personnel in Canberra had to decontaminate 46 staffers at the Indonesian Embassy when it appeared some form of powered toxin had been sent to the building, according to Australian media reports. Tests later indicated the substance was not dangerous (see GSN, June 2).

Prime Minister John Howard said at the time that he believed the threat was meant as retaliation for the 20-year prison sentence Australian national Schapelle Corby received in Indonesia for smuggling drugs. Such acts could damage relations between the two nations and invite retaliations against Australians in Indonesia, he said.

“This is a very serious development for our country, and I can't overstate the sense of concern I feel that such a recklessly criminal act should have been committed,” Howard said in the early hours of the crisis.

The mailings remain under investigation, said Matt Francis, spokesman for the Australian Embassy in Washington. “The incidents are being treated as serious criminal matters,” he said by e-mail.

Australian Federal Police have also asked prosecutors to sue any person convicted of sending the powders, to recoup costs from the emergency responses, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

U.S. federal authorities in fiscal 2005 have arrested 22 people for biological agent hoaxes and made 10 convictions, said Postal Inspector Paul Krenn. Charges can range from terrorism-related hoaxes to mailing threatening communications, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

Parcels containing suspicious substances are found each day at U.S. Postal Service facilities, officials said. The overwhelming percentage turn out to be innocently sent, containing anything from sand to cooking ingredients. A single phone call clears up most concerns. 

Postal inspectors are able to track more malicious mailings back to their area of origin; hints left in letters or other clues can then lead them to the perpetrators.

“Some of these folks put their home address on the letter,” Krenn said.

Hoaxers see the powder-filled letters as a way to send a message, without considering that they are committing a crime, Krenn said. The mailings are particularly popular with people in jail or prison, who are less likely to fear facing criminal charges and have few avenues for making themselves heard, he said. 

Decisive and public action by authorities against people found to be sending fake biological agents is perhaps the best way to reduce the instances of such crimes, Vadlamudi said.

“The general feeling is to hand them a tough sentence to serve as an example for future cases,” Vadlamudi said.

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