Liberal Repercussion

It is just my opinion, but I think the ricin scare is complete horseshit, a plant or fabricated crisis. It was whomped up so that a Republican crew of "plumbers" could go in and eradicate the evidence linking Frist's office to the cyber-burgalary of the Democrat offices. (See Manuel Miranda, below.)

Just a hunch, so I'll record it here and call it a theory. Let time prove me right or wrong.


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,110243,00.html

Tuesday, February 03, 2004

WASHINGTON — Three Senate buildings will be closed Tuesday following "several confirmations" that a white, powdery substance found Monday in the Dirksen Senate Office Building (search) is the deadly poison ricin, Capitol Police said.

The powder was found by a Senate postal worker shortly after 3 p.m. Monday near the office of Sen. Bill Frist (search), R-Tenn. Initial tests resulted in one positive and one negative for ricin (search). The substance was then transported by the Capitol Police Hazardous Device Unit to a laboratory, where two out of three tests came out positive for ricin.

"There are several confirmations the substance is ricin," U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terry Gainer said in a press conference late Monday night.



According to a government official, the substance has been taken to Fort Detrick in Maryland for more definitive testing. Gainer, who would not confirm the testing location, said results of the tests would be announced Tuesday morning.

Also speaking at the late-night press conference was majority leader Frist, who urged calm.

"Nobody is sick, we don't expect anybody to get sick," he said. A surgeon before his election to the Senate, he explained that if symptoms of ricin poisoning have not surfaced in about eight hours, contamination is unlikely.

But, he later added, "The mailroom was in my office .... This is a terrorist activity."

The Homeland Security Department (search) had earlier said that it was monitoring the situation, and an FBI official said the bureau was awaiting the result of tests at the Fort Detrick laboratory before deciding whether to get more fully involved in the case.

Gainer said it was not clear what letter or package the substance had come from.


http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/nation/7860185.htm

Capitol Police evacuated the fourth floor of the Senate Office building and shut down its air circulation units after the hazardous team was alerted, Gainer said.

"Nobody has been hurt and everybody is fine," said Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist, Tenn., who is also a surgeon. The symptoms of exposure include shortness of breath, chest tightening and coughing.

During the testing, senators and their staffs continued to consider legislation in the Senate Finance Committee room, also located in that building. The decision not to evacuate them is likely to be scrutinized in the coming days.

Should final test results confirm that the powder is ricin, it would be the third bioterrorism attack on Congress. In 2001, terrorists targeted two U.S. senators with deadly anthrax, a deadly biological agent. The anthrax-laden letters, addressed to Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., shut down a Senate building for months, forced thousands of congressional aides and postal employees onto medication and killed at least two postal workers who likely handled the envelopes.

It is unclear how the powder came into the building.

____________

But the next day....


Senate Routine Returns After Ricin Scare
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3709508,00.html

Wednesday February 4, 2004 10:16 PM

By ALAN FRAM

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Senate rattled by a ricin attack began returning to normalcy Wednesday, and the lack of any reported illnesses prompted leaders to plan to reopen shuttered office buildings.

As lawmakers awaited the results of tests measuring the potency of the powdery poison, officials said none of the several dozen workers who were potentially exposed seemed ill. Senators voted - for the first time this week - on a judgeship nomination, and at least three Senate committees held hearings, though they borrowed rooms in House office buildings to do so.

``Everybody's doing great,'' Frist told reporters. ``We're outside the window where you'd expect to see symptoms at all, and it seems well contained.''

Bowing to growing complaints, Senate leaders were even letting senators and aides briefly re-enter their offices to remove needed documents and equipment. That included the very fourth-floor corridor in the Dirksen Senate office building where the deadly toxin was discovered Monday in the mailroom of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.

``It's completely normal in there,'' said Laurie Schultz Heim, an aide to Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., who said she spent less than 10 minutes removing items from his offices, which are next to Frist's.

She said she had worn no protective clothes and noticed nothing unusual other than two machines in the hallway that seemed to be filtering air.

Among those expressing irritation was Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

He said he is ``livid'' about how ``one terrorist spreading rat poison can bring the government to half mast.''

(Carol's note: Arlen, is this another one of your coded messages? Are they using ricin to poison rats these days? Do you mean us Democrat "RATS"? Or is this a hoax. Arlen always tells us what he thinks, in code. Ask me about that magic bullet theory sometime, or his "Not Proven" vote on impeachment.)

Yet with the entire Capitol complex subject to continuous air sampling and all congressional mail being collected and examined, no one was willing to say the threat was over.

``You never know in the next hour what you will find,'' Frist said.

Although ricin inhaled or injected can kill quickly, the incident - so far - seemed to be causing less tension than the anthrax letters sent to Capitol Hill in October 2001. Lawmakers and aides said that was because being targeted by a biochemical substance is no longer novel for Congress, and because initial indications were t hat the ricin hadn't spread into the air.

``There isn't quite the same sense of anxiety,'' said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., whose office was hit by the first anthrax attack.

The FBI and 100 Marines from the corps' Chemical Biological Incident Response Force were investigating.

Among other things, investigators were seeking a link Wednesday between the ricin in Frist's office and ricin-laden letters found last fall in mail facilities serving the White House and the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport in South Carolina.

So far, they said, they had found no such connection. They also said they had yet to find precisely how the ricin had made it to Frist's mailroom, said U.S. Capitol police chief Terrance Gainer.

``There's been no smoking letter information that helps tie this thing together,'' Gainer told reporters.

Frist announced that barring new problems, the Senate's two other office buildings, on either side of Dirksen, would reopen this week. The Russell building was to reopen Thursday and the Hart building on Friday.

Dirksen itself was to reopen Monday morning, Frist said.

posted by Rei Toei @ 7:11 p.m.