Lethal ricin detected in D.C. office

Jesse Holland and Eileen Putman

Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2004 | 11:09 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said today that a white powder found in his office tested positive for the deadly poison ricin, forcing closure of Senate office buildings and close scrutiny of congressional mail. It was the second such scare from a lethal toxin to hit the nation's capital.

Between 40 and 50 Capitol employees were quarantined briefly in the ricin scare and decontaminated, according to several Senate aides who spoke on condition of anonymity -- considerably more than originally thought.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meanwhile, said officials were somewhat reassured because none of the people who were quarantined and went through decontamination had turned up sick from exposure to ricin.

One Senate aide said up to 50 people, including 10 police officers, were quarantined around 3:30 p.m. PST Monday in a room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, and decontaminated. Other aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, also confirmed that dozens of employees went through the process.

CDC officials said they were encouraged that no one had yet become sick.

"As each minute ticks by, we are less and less concerned about the health effects," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, the CDC director. If the ricin were pure, she said, "We would expect very early onset. The fact that we haven't seen that is reassuring."

President Bush was briefed on the situation, and the administration established an interagency team to investigate what Frist told colleagues was a chilling crime.

On Capitol Hill, buildings were eerily quiet, underscoring the sense that the area has essentially been under a terrorism threat since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Police told lawmakers not to open any mail. Mail to congressional offices has been irradiated since the 2001 anthrax attack, but radiation would not have an effect on ricin, Frist said.

A Senate aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the quarantined people included members of Frist's staff, Sen. Jim Jeffords' staff and staff employees of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. All were in the same corridor as the Frist office where the substance was discovered, said another Senate source.

Later today police briefly closed an area on the first floor of the Capitol because of what police said was a suspicious package.

A simple "Closed" sign was tacked onto one of the main, ornate doors of the Dirksen office building. Through a window of the Dirksen building a pile of red, plastic bags could be seen in the hallway. Yellow sheets were erected to cordon off areas off the hall. Elsewhere, a Senate staffer carried plastic bags from the building.

Some staff of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., were able to work out of his leadership office inside the Capitol building, which was not affected while staff of Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., were not in their office in the Senate Russell Building this morning until further notice, according to aides.

"There's sort of an odd sense of deja vu with the anthrax and that this is happening again," said Tessa Hafen, a spokeswoman for Reid. "But people here are working."

Other senators also opened temporary work areas in the Capitol. Staffers for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., retreated to a room in the Capitol basement known as the "hideaway." They had used it during the anthrax scare in 2001.

A senior government investigator, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said the powdery substance was found in an area where mail is opened in Frist's office but has not yet been traced to any specific piece of mail.

"The assumption is it must have come from mail but we can't say for sure it is from mail," the investigator told AP.

The investigator said both field tests and some lab tests had confirmed the substance was ricin but more sophisticated tests are being done to determine how potent the particular substance is.

Another U.S. government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that although ricin is a harmful toxin, the situation in the Frist's office does not bear the marks of international terrorism.

A federal law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said no threatening letter or note linked to the powder has been found.

Gerberding said that although several tests have indicated the substance is ricin, laboratories at the CDC in Atlanta and in Washington are conducting "gold standard" tests that involve inoculating lab animals to confirm initial results.

Officials shut down tours of the Capitol, closed Senate restaurants and gave Senate pages the day off. But the Senate mounted a show of business as usual, turning to a highway spending bill, although its hearings were canceled.

"Somebody in all likelihood manufactured this with intent to harm," Frist told his colleagues at the opening of the Senate session. He said "all air sampling and all environmental studies today are negative with the exception of what was found in that single office at that site," which Frist said "was ultimately determined to be ricin."

Across from the Capitol, officials at the Supreme Court ordered an "additional level of review" of mail, spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said.

In 2001, an anthrax-laced letter shut down Congress briefly and closed the Hart Senate Office Building for months of expensive cleaning. Five people were killed and 17 sickened nationwide after coming into contact with letters with anthrax.