Anthrax Forces Supreme Court to Close
W A S H I N G T O N, Oct. 29, 2001 -- The number of known anthrax "hot spots" in the nation's capital climbed today as authorities announced the discovery of the bacteria at the Supreme Court, the State Department and a Health and Human Services building.
MORE ANTHRAX-RELATED NEWS:
• Anthrax Found at State Department, HHS
• New Case of Infection in New Jersey
• Eighth Inhalation Case Confirmed
For the first time since it opened 66 years ago, the Supreme Court building was closed on a business day after anthrax was detected in the basement mailroom a day earlier.
"Based upon the positive testing in the mailroom, additional testing is being conducted," said Kathy Arberg, a spokeswoman for the court, adding that the building would remain closed at least through Tuesday.
A sweep of the historic structure was prompted by the discovery last week of anthrax spores at an off-site inspection warehouse that handles mail sent to the high court. All 400 court employees, including the nine justices, were tested and given antibiotics as a precaution.
The nation's highest court has not convened outside the Supreme Court building since it was constructed in 1935, but the justices heard oral arguments today at a nearby U.S. District courthouse.
As he gaveled the court to order at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist made a brief statement, noting the unprecedented displacement and thanking staff "whose hard work made it possible to hear arguments."
The court staff brought Rehnquist's gavel, the justices' black robes and set up the lighting system used by the court to inform lawyers when their allotted time is used up. A seat cushion for Rehnquist, who suffers from back problems, was also brought from the Supreme Court.
Security outside the courtroom was so tight that even Solicitor General Ted Olson was asked to walk through a magnetometer and searched by a court officer.
• Anthrax Found at State Department, HHS
Federal authorities announced today that trace amounts of anthrax have been detected at the State Department mailroom and at a Health and Human Services office building.
Anthrax was discovered last week at an off-site facility that handles the State Department's mail and officials said today the bacteria has also been found in two of the mailrooms at the State Department building, and on mail pouches found at a diplomatic security annex and at the U.S. Embassy in Lima, Peru.
"All our mailrooms have been closed off; mail distribution has been shut down," spokesman Richard Boucher said at a press briefing. "It's all locked off and it won't be opened up until it's cleaned up."
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said today that trace amounts of anthrax were found at the Cohen Building, which houses offices for HHS, the Food and Drug Administration and the Voice of America.
Anthrax has also been found at mail processing facilities that handle mail sent to the White House and the Department of Justice and the CIA and in the mailroom at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md.
The contaminated sites receive mail that is first processed at a central postal facility in the Brentwood area of Washington, which processed an anthrax-laced letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office on Capitol Hill.
"We think probably, in most cases, it's mail that was processed at the same time as the Daschle letter that was cross-contaminated by it," said Dr. Pat Meehan, director of Centers for Disease Control emergency environmental services.
But other top Bush administration officials said the FBI was trying to determine whether additional letters laced with anthrax may have been processed at the Brentwood facility and cross-contaminated other mail.
"Clearly that is a theory that investigators have — that it may be more than one letter," said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.
On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, two of the half-dozen House and Senate office buildings in the Capitol complex remain closed following the detection of anthrax at various locations there. Authorities announced today they intended to reopen the Hart Senate Office Building, where the contaminated letter was opened, on Nov. 13.
• New Case of Infection in New Jersey
State officials disclosed today that a resident of Hamilton Township has contracted cutaneous anthrax, a highly treatable skin infection.
Three postal workers in the state have been diagnosed with cutaneous and two have been diagnosed with the more serious inhalation form of the disease. But the resident, a woman, is the first person in New Jersey to be diagnosed with anthrax who does not work for the Postal Service.
She does, however, handle mail at her job. Acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco said the woman worked at a business near the Hamilton mail processing center, which has been shut down because of anthrax contamination and is known to have processed at least three letters tainted with the potentially deadly bacteria.
The woman has been successfully treated and released from the hospital.
• Eighth Inhalation Case Confirmed
With a New Jersey postal worker also diagnosed with inhalation anthrax, the number of people confirmed to have the potentially fatal bacterial infection now stands at eight.
The woman works at a regional mail processing center in Hamilton Township, where anthrax-laced letters sent to Daschle, NBC News headquarters in New York and the New York Post are known to have been processed.
Two postal workers from the Brentwood facility who were killed by the bacterial infection were buried this weekend. A photo editor at American Media Inc., a tabloid publishing company in Boca Raton, Fla., died after inhaling anthrax spores.
A Miami postal workers union sued USPS today for speedy arbitration of anthrax-related issues, including demands to close, test and clean 10 to 12 facilities from Boca Raton to Miami.
Kathy Huggins, a U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman in Orlando, said she couldn't comment on the lawsuit because the agency's attorneys had not yet reviewed it.
And with traces of anthrax found on four mail-sorting machine's in New York's giant Morgan processing center, New York's postal workers union went to court today in an effort to get the entire facility shut down.