More than 20 in Daschle's office test positive for anthrax

AP Special CorrespondentWASHINGTON (AP) -- More than 20 people in Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office have tested positive for exposure to anthrax, sources said Wednesday.

The tests were conducted after a letter sent to Daschle's office was found to contain a highly refined form of anthrax, suggesting it was produced by experts.

One official with direct knowledge of the test results said 22 Daschle staffers had tested positive for exposure to anthrax. All of them are taking the antibiotic Cipro. Another source said that more than 20 had tested positive. Both sources insisted on anonymity.

Elsewhere in the country, four people are known to have contracted anthrax and nine others have tested positive for the bacteria.

The FBI is investigating strong similarities in handwriting and style, including identical anti-American language, between the letter sent to Daschle in Washington and a letter with anthrax sent to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw in New York.

Hundreds of people were tested Tuesday after the suspicious letter was opened in Daschle's office Monday. Nasal swabs were used on the staffers to see if there were any anthrax spores in their noses. A positive finding does not mean the person has the disease or will get the disease.

About 8,000 spores must be inhaled for a person to develop inhalation anthrax.

In an effort to jog the public's memory and gain new leads, the Justice Department released photocopies of the envelopes to Daschle and Brokaw, showing identical block letters and addresses written slanting to the right.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, appearing on morning TV shows, sought to reassure a nervous public but added: "There's no question that right now we are in a period of the unknown."

He told NBC's "Today" show: "We are prepared to respond and we have been able to respond." He said the government was working to strengthen local and state public health systems, and to stockpile more antibiotics.

"Bioterrorism has never hit America like it has in the last couple of weeks and what we're trying to do is we're trying to calm down the American public, tell them we can respond to a bioterrorism attack," he said on CBS' "The Early Show."

While hundreds of people who may have been exposed to anthrax took precautionary antibiotics, Daschle said the letter sent to his office contained "a very potent form of anthrax that clearly was produced by someone who knew what he or she was doing."

Three government sources, all speaking on condition of anonymity, said preliminary testing indicated the anthrax had been refined enough so that it could be easily dispersed through the air. One law enforcement official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the anthrax was in a purified form that could be used as a weapon.

Additional testing was being done.

The photocopies of the Daschle and Brokaw envelopes showed both letters were postmarked from Trenton, N.J., and both appeared to have the same type postage.

The two letters contained similar anti-American and anti-Israeli language and a pro-Muslim statement, and both made references about recipients needing medicine, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

On Capitol Hill, security officials closed an entire wing of an eight-story Senate building as the testing for anthrax contamination continued.

Elsewhere on Tuesday:

--A Florida man lay ill in a hospital with the inhalation form of anthrax, less than two weeks after a co-worker died of the same illness.

--In New York, officials said they expected full recoveries for two people infected with a less lethal, skin form of the disease. They are an NBC News employee and the 7-month-old son of an ABC producer.

Investigators were piecing together possible connections between the anthrax found in Washington and New York and a contamination -- the first in the two-week-old scare -- in Florida that claimed the life of one man.

Post office facilities in New Jersey and Florida were being scrutinized and authorities were questioning research labs that have access to anthrax.

Postmaster General Jack Potts, interviewed on NBC, said the risks to the general public of receiving tainted mail were "infinitisemally small. ... If people just use prudent judgment, use common sense, there is nothing to fear."

Tests also were under way to determine whether the anthrax found in New York and in Florida were from the same strain, said Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

No links between the anthrax letters and terrorism groups, including the 19 hijackers responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, have yet turned up, FBI officials said.

"While organized terrorism has not been ruled out, so far we have found no direct link to organized terrorism," FBI Director Robert Mueller said. "There are, however, certain similarities between letters sent to NBC in New York and to Senator Daschle's office."

But connections that indirectly link the hijackers to the anthrax attacks are being investigated. For instance, some of the hijackers lived in Florida, where the first exposures surfaced. Other suspected hijackers lived in New Jersey, where the Washington and New York letters were postmarked.

A letter possibly containing anthrax that turned up at a Microsoft company in Reno, Nev., was sent from Malaysia, where one of the suspected hijackers had been caught on surveillance videotape meeting with a suspected associate of Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The letter first had been sent from the Microsoft company to a vendor in Malaysia and was sent back from Malaysia to Microsoft.