Â Cranbury Forum | Bulletin | Info Sharing Â

Post a reply

Username

Subject

Message body

Emoticons

Font colour: Font size:

Close Tags

[quote="Princeton Packet"]Anthrax case give Princeton a postal deja vu
Tuesday, August 5, 2008 7:17 AM EDT
By Lauren Otis, Staff Writer

A hazardous materials scare over a letter addressed to the Princeton Borough mayor’s office and the suicide of a prime suspect in the 7-year-old anthrax letter attacks served as unwelcome reminders last week of some tense days here in late 2001.

No connection has been established between the Borough Hall letter and the allergic reactions suffered last Tuesday by municipal employees who handled it. And media coverage of the suicide in Maryland that day by Army scientist Bruce Ivins, after learning that he might soon be charged in the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, has shed no new light on Princeton’s role in those incidents.

But the two unrelated events echoed the period immediately following the 9/11 terrorism attacks, when area residents and businesses were on edge over contamination scares involving mail and currency.

In the fall of 2001, following the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., anthrax-contaminated letters were believed to have been sent from a mailbox on the corner of Nassau and Bank streets in downtown Princeton. Letters were addressed to U.S. senators Tom Daschle, Patrick Leahy, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and the editor of the New York Post. They ultimately killed five people and sickened 17 others. Anthrax contamination forced the closing of a U.S. Postal Service regional processing facility in Hamilton for four years. In 2002, anthrax spores were found in the Princeton mailbox, which was removed as part of the investigation.

On Friday, U.S. Representative Rush Holt, who represents the 12th Congressional district which includes Princeton, called on the FBI to provide an accounting of its long-running investigation of the attacks, which he called “poorly handled” and resulting “in a trail of embarrassment and personal tragedy.” A prior suspect in the case, government scientist Steven Hatfill, successfully sued the FBI for wrongfully targeting him.
   Rep. Holt, who chairs the House Committee on Appropriations’ Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, wrote to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, requesting the accounting. “I hardly need to remind you of my strong interest in this case,” Rep. Holt said in the letter. “For months, central New Jersey residents lived in fear of a future attack and the possibility of receiving cross-contaminated mail. Mail service was delayed and people wondered whether there was a murderer at large in their midst,” he wrote. Swabbing of Congressional offices in 2001 also found anthrax spores in Rep. Holt’s Washington, D.C. office.

Few details have emerged recently as to why Mr. Ivins, or anyone else, would have chosen Princeton to mail the contaminated letters. Mr. Ivins’ father, Thomas Randall Ivins, was a 1928 graduate of Princeton University, confirmed Emily Aronson, a Princeton University media relations officer. The Associated Press reported yesterday that Mr. Ivins was obsessed with the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, whose Princeton chapter sits near the mailbox where the contaminated letters were mailed.

Mr. Ivins’ lived in Frederick, Md., near the Fort Detrick Army Medical Research Institute of Infections Diseases where he worked for many years, and conducted lab work and research on anthrax spores, including helping investigators after the 2001 anthrax letter attacks.

Princeton Borough Police Chief Anthony Federico said he couldn’t comment on the latest developments in the anthrax case. “We’re not a part of the investigation, it was done by the FBI. We cooperated with them at the time,” Mr. Federico said. “I don’t know anything about the individual who was a suspect other than what I read in the papers,” he said of Mr. Ivins.

Mr. Federico said the letter that prompted a scare at Borough Hall last week “was sent to the New Jersey state health lab and all the testing on it came back negative.”

Princeton Postmaster Ronelle Mihok said she was based in Trenton at the time of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks. Ms. Mihok directed a media inquiry to USPS spokeswoman Darlene Reid.

”It’s inappropriate for us to comment when the FBI investigation is ongoing,” Ms. Reid said.[/quote]

Options
HTML is ON
BBCode is ON
Smilies are ON

	Disable HTML in this post
	Disable BBCode in this post
	Disable Smilies in this post