WASHINGTON – Anthrax spores were found at a Justice Department mail facility – the latest in a growing list of federal offices contaminated by the microbe, officials said last night.
The Landover, Md., off-site processing center tested positive for the bacteria in several locations, including those that handle mail for Attorney General John Ashcroft and his deputy, Larry Thompson.
The agency’s mail handlers told to obtain antibiotics as a precaution, while officials awaited test results from mailrooms in the Justice Department building.
Anthrax has also been found at mail facilities for the White House, the CIA, the Supreme Court and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, along with several Senate offices, media outlets and a host of post offices around the country.
Federal officials confirmed that another New Jersey postal worker with a suspected case of has inhalation anthrax does have the most serious form of the disease – which has killed three people so far.
The middle-aged woman, who works as a mail handler near Trenton, is improving. A co-worker with inhalation anthrax has been discharged from the hospital.
Five New Jersey postal workers have suspected or confirmed cases of inhalation anthrax or the less serious skin form.
Tainted letters sent to Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and to the media passed through the Trenton facility and the Brentwood plant in Washington.
Two Washington postal employees have died from inhalation anthrax and 10,000 mail workers are on antibiotics.
The Bush administration defended its handling of the crisis, even as a key official admitted more spores might be out there.
White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said that the anthrax danger remains very real, given that “there may be other letters that are stuck in the system.”
Moreover, “some of those letters may have contaminated the machinery in the postal facilities that handle a large volume of mail,” Card told “Fox News Sunday.”
Meanwhile, Deputy Postmaster John Nolan denied D.C. postal workers were treated differently from congressional staffers.
“Knowing what we knew then, knowing what the experts knew about anthrax, we thought we made the best judgments we could,” he told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
When congressional leaders learned about the risk of anthrax infecting their staff, lawmakers ordered buildings closed and sent workers home for four days during testing and decontamination.
By contrast, workers at the Brentwood facility, which handles mail destined for Congress, were not immediately advised to take any precautions and get tested.
“The early days of any battle introduce what’s called the fog of war, and we’re still looking through that fog to find the truth,” said Card.