Wednesday October 17, 2001

WASHINGTON - Authorities closed an entire wing of an eight-story Senate office building yesterday and began testing and treating hundreds of people for possible exposure to anthrax after overnight results confirmed the presence of spores in mail addressed to Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

FBI Director Robert Mueller, whose agency is investigating the incident, said there appears to be a link between the letter opened in Daschle's office on Monday and one sent to an employee of NBC in New York last week.

Both carried a Trenton, N.J. postmark. In addition, the letters to Daschle and NBC contained similar markings and a similar, threatening message, said people speaking on condition of anonymity who attended a briefing authorities gave to senators.

Mueller said that "so far we have found no direct link to organized terrorism'' in the Washington or other anthrax cases across the country.

In one note, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said the strain of anthrax found in the letter to Daschle was "very refined, very pure." Another participant in the Senate briefings said this led law enforcement officials to believe that "this isn't a bunch of amateurs."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer ruled out that any government stockpile of anthrax may have been involved. Any U.S. stockpile intended for offensive purposes was destroyed under a 1972 treaty and "any other supplies that may be available for bio-defense purposes are all accounted for," he said.

Daschle said he wasn't certain of a direct connection between a rash of anthrax scares and Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed thousands in New York and Washington. "I'm not at all sure that all of this is related directly" to him, he said on ABC. "I wouldn't be surprised if others are getting into the act as well," he said. He declined to elaborate.

"There will be several hundred people that will be screened today," said Dr. John Eisold, the attending physician at the Capitol. All of them will receive enough antibiotics to protect them until test results are known.

At a news conference outside the Capitol, police spokesman Dan Nichols repeated numerous times that the only "positive" identification of anthrax spores had come on the mail itself.

But Eisold said that as a precaution, staff, police, cleaning crews, visitors and anyone else who had been in the corner of the building that houses Daschle's office were being urged to undergo nasal-swab testing.

He said officials decided "to draw up the net as widely as possible and err on the

conservative side and test and treat."

Nichols said the closure in the Hart building involved the offices of 12 senators, Daschle's among them. The majority leader maintains a separate office in the Capitol that was not affected.

The police spokesman said that all mail delivery had been suspended in the Capitol complex while authorities put new security procedures in place. He announced on Monday that all public tours of the Capitol had been suspended indefinitely, although he said that was unrelated to the delivery of anthrax-tainted mail.

Daschle said earlier in the day that so far, test results have been negative for the 50 or so people who were checked on Monday, when an employee opened a piece of mail that contained a white powdery substance.

The letter, postmarked in New Jersey, tested positive for anthrax in two quick field tests. It was then sent to Fort Detrick, Md., for more sophisticated tests, and Nichols told reporters that results late Monday confirmed the results.

In an interview on NBC's "Today," Daschle said the letter was taped in a fashion designed to keep electronic detectors from picking up the anthrax. As U.S. warplanes hit Afghanistan with the heaviest daytime strikes yet on Monday, President Bush said there may be some possible link between the recent spate of

anthrax incidents and Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York City and Washington. But the president said there was no hard evidence.

Even though the letter incident, now under investigation by the FBI, provoked jittery nerves at the Capitol, the Senate went into session as scheduled Tuesday and Daschle vowed that its work would go on.

"We're not functioning on all eight cylinders at this point," Daschle said yesterday. "But we are functioning and we will continue to do so. It's ... important for us to assure that Congress goes on, that the Congress functions as best as it can."

But it was hardly business as usual.

With congressional officials having cautioned lawmakers' offices last week to be on alert, Capitol Police officials said they were responding all day to repeated reports of suspicious mail. Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, said his aides reported a suspicious letter Monday afternoon and were told by police that their report was the 12th of the day.

Apparently, all but the one to Daschle's office proved false.

The incident came on a day when a second employee of a tabloid based in Florida and the 7-month-old son of an ABC News producer in New York City became the latest people found to have anthrax. Both were being treated and were expected to recover, officials said.

So far, more than a dozen people in Florida, New York, New Jersey and Nevada have been found to either have the disease or have been exposed to the spores that can cause it. One has died.