NEW YORK, Oct 16: The targeting of US media with envelopes containing mysterious powders, some with traces of anthrax, has successfully sown panic across the United States for the price of a few postage stamps.

The jittery nation was already glued to its television sets and newspapers following the Sept 11 attacks when the unmarked hate letters started appearing at media outlets.

Several weeks later four people linked to media companies contracted anthrax, nine others were exposed to the bacteria, and several thousand newspaper and television employees were taking antibiotics as a precaution.

Ann Cooper, executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, said the spate of anthrax-laced packages and other hoax letters appeared to be an unprecedented attack on the US media.

“This is absolutely something we have never seen before in the United States, somebody is definitely trying to send some kind of message and it has been very effective,” Cooper told AFP.

She noted the campaign had targetted some of the most high-profile names in US journalism, such as NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw and New York Times reporter Judith Miller, a Middle East expert and author on bioterrorism.

Miller’s package turned out to be benign, but the package sent to NBC infected Brokaw’s assistant Erin O’Connor.

Hate letters filled with powder have also been sent to CBS, Fox News and American Media Inc. in Florida where a 63-year-old photo editor on the Sun tabloid died from respiratory anthrax and another employee was diagnosed with the disease Monday.

O’Connor is recovering from the milder skin form of the disease, while the fourth case, the baby son of an ABC News producer, is believed to have contracted the illness during a brief visit ABC headquarters here.

Reflecting the fear gripping the media, which in turn has been passed onto viewers and readers, New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik ordered special testing teams into major media organisations in the city.

The dramatic pictures of the teams dressed in hazmat “moon suits”, yellow boots and neon-blue rubber gloves taking swabs from keyboards, wastepaper baskets and mail rooms are unlikely to reassure a nervous population.

Judith Miller noted that whoever was behind the low-tech campaign was succeeding in stirring up enormous fear on a shoestring budget.

“Maybe there was anthrax in my letter, or maybe there wasn’t. It almost didn’t matter,” she wrote several days after being showered with white powder — from an abusive letter — which clung to her face and clothes.

“What did matter was that this was a relatively inexpensive way to spread maximum terror without having to solve the technical challenges of spreading the disease widely.”

Preliminary tests showed no signs of anthrax in the powder, but Miller and many colleagues are now taking the antibiotic ciprofloxacin as a precaution.

US Attorney General John Ashcroft, while insisting there was no proof to point the finger at Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, says there are “deep suspicions” over his involvement.

And he has also suggested a motive: the hate of freedom which the press in a democracy symbolizes. But CPJ director Cooper, whose organisation monitors attacks on journalists around the world, cautioned against jumping to conclusions.

“I know of no examples where bin Laden or his organisation has gone after journalists, either here or in the Arab world,” she said.—AFP