October 16, 2001	Tuesday	Rajab 28, 1422

NEW YORK, Oct 15: The bio-terrorism fear continued to grip the United States in the wake of letters laced with Anthrax virus received by several media outlets in the United States, from Boca Raton (Florida), Reno (Nevada) to New York City.

Although the US law enforcement officials have not labelled the outbreak of anthrax-laced letters as an act of Osama bin Laden’s terror network, they have not ruled it out either.

They have also cautioned Americans not to let the fears impact their daily lives.

But the appeals have not had a stabilizing impact so far as there is a run on the anthrax antibiotic, Cipro, in New York City.

The United States health secretary has asked the US Congress to release half-a-billion dollars to meet the Anthrax threat by securing enough antibiotic Cipro to treat 12 million Americans.

The anthrax-laced letters were first received in the mailroom of the American Media Inc in Boca Raton, Florida, where one photographer died and four others were found infected by the virus. The organization publishes the tabloids, “The Globe” and “The National Enquirer”.

A week later NBC news headquarters in New York received such letters where one employee tested positive after opening a letter. Three other persons, one police officer and two Laboratory technicians were found infected by Anthrax. One such letter was also sent to the offices of the New York Times which turned out to be a hoax.

In Reno, Nevada, Microsoft offices received a letter from Malaysia laced with Anthrax but it has not infected any employee.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed said in a statement on Monday that he is still awaiting any message from the American officials on the letter received by Microsoft in Reno from Malaysia.

Many commentators here noted if the idea was to get attention, the individuals who sent anthrax into the mailrooms of two American media companies could hardly have done better.

Others say if the idea was to increase the jitters in a grieving, nervous population, the people who dispatched the anthrax- carrying mail and those who sent the frightening copycat letters containing what appeared to be harmless white powder also succeeded.

In a related report the New York Times said that whatever the purpose and whoever the culprits, the scattershot attacks on national and regional news companies were an unusual tactic. Even groups who profess hatred of the media use it to raise their profile.

Individual reporters are attacked and even killed by criminal organizations in Colombia, radicals in Algeria or armed insurgents in Sierra Leone. But news company headquarters, both in the United States and around the world, are accustomed to verbal assaults, not physical ones.

That has all changed. Just as one group of terrorists brought mass killing to American soil, turning local reporters into war correspondents, that group or other groups or individuals turned the news offices into battlefields of biological or psychological warfare.

The choice of media companies as targets guarantees maximum impact for anyone spreading fear. “It’s brilliant,” said Jessica Eve Stern, a lecturer on terrorism at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard was quoted as saying by the Times. “What better way to guarantee that you’re going to get attention than to attack the media directly?”

Aside from the confirmed cases of anthrax at NBC and American Media, there were scares at least four other news companies. Early last week, a columnist for The St. Petersburg Times in Florida opened an envelope postmarked in St. Petersburg on October 5 containing a light granular substance, which tests determined was benign.

The accompanying letter threatened a local bridge. NBC, which received one letter postmarked from Trenton on September 17, apparently containing anthrax, later received a second letter with a St. Petersburg postmark that contained powder that tests showed was benign.

On Friday, a New York Times expert on bio-terrorism, the reporter Judith Miller, received a letter with a St. Petersburg postmark containing a white powder and making threats on the Sears Tower in Chicago. Like the other letters from St. Petersburg, it contained a powder that early tests indicated was nontoxic.

Fox News last week also received a threatening letter containing a white powder that was tested and found benign.