UNITED STATES:An already jittery nation was badly frightened by the anthrax attacks in 2001, writes Doyle McManusin Washington
IT ARRIVED in a plain white prepaid postage envelope, one that looked normal except for the eccentric lettering - a block letter "R" that looked like an "A" - and the cellophane tape that sealed it.
Inside were deadly spores that drifted into the air as soon as the envelope was opened.
Now, almost seven years later, it is difficult to recall how quickly fear spread across the United States as mail-borne anthrax killed five people from Florida to Connecticut in the autumn of 2001.
It began at a time when the nation was already jittery with fear, only 24 days after the terrorist attacks of September 11th against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. First an editor at The Sun, a supermarket tabloid in Boca Raton, Florida, died of anthrax inhalation. Then anthrax turned up at NBC News in New York, in an envelope addressed to television anchor Tom Brokaw. Then at the Washington office of Democratic senator Tom Daschle, then the Senate majority leader.
The letter to Daschle was dated 09-11-01. "We have this anthrax. You die now," it said. "Allah is great."
President George Bush said the letters might have been sent by accomplices of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born terrorist who launched the September 11th attacks, although he admitted that he had no direct evidence.
Bush told the nation that its government was on the case. "We are taking strong precautions, we are vigilant, we are determined," he said. But there was not much evidence that the government could protect anyone. A 61-year-old hospital worker in New York died, and then - inexplicably - a 94-year-old widow in a rural Connecticut town.
Equally frightening was an epidemic of suspected anthrax traces, many of them in the vast machinery of the nation's postal system, followed by waves of hoaxes and false alarms.
Traces of what appeared to be anthrax were detected at post offices in California cities Huntington Beach, Tustin and Santa Rosa; at New York governor George Pataki's office in Manhattan; at German chancellor Gerhard Schröder's office in Berlin; and at mail centres from Reno, Nevada, to Kansas City.
"It's getting closer," fretted Bruce Uppendahl, a farm supply store owner in Cheney, Kansas, a small town three hours from Kansas City.
Even children worried. "I'm always looking out for white powder," said Dave Lannon-Gunn of Riverside, California, then 11. "Better safe than sorry."
There were ugly hoaxes. Hundreds of Planned Parenthood clinics received threatening letters with a white powder inside. On December 5th, federal marshals arrested a suspect at a Kinko's photocopy store in a Cincinnati suburb.
"The most wanted man in America is behind bars," crowed Benigno Reyna, director of the US Marshals Service. But he was only a hoax artist. The most wanted man in America was still at large.
Over time, the FBI concluded that the anthrax poisoner was probably a US government scientist, not a foreign terrorist as Bush had guessed.
The last known victim, Ottilie Lundgren (94), of Connecticut, died on November 21st, 2001. The attacks had stopped. No one knew why, any more than anyone - except the perpetrator - knew why they had started.
And in time - not much time, in fact - Americans stopped looking at their mail with suspicion.
- (LA Times-Washington Post service)