WASHINGTON, Oct 25: Former US president Bill Clinton received vials in the mail tainted by salmonella, but authorities said on Thursday they saw no connection to a string of anthrax attacks in New York, Washington and Florida.

At no time did Clinton come into contact with the substance, Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin said.

The Secret Service, which is charged with protecting current and former presidents, said Clinton’s office in New York received a package on Oct 6 or 7 that contained between 12 and 15 vials.

Tests showed that two of those vials contained salmonella, which can prove deadly for young children and people with weakened immune systems.

Mackin said the salmonella was not lab cultured, suggesting it may have occurred due to spoilage rather than placed in the vials as part of an orchestrated attack on the former president.

“Certainly it is unusual and we will run it down. But there’s nothing that links this to the (anthrax) letters,” Mackin said.

Anthrax-tainted letters have killed three people since the Sept. 11 hijack attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that left more than 5,000 people dead.

Clinton’s staff believed the package was sent by a crank unrelated to the anthrax attacks, CNN reported.

Nearly 1.4 million cases of salmonella poisoning occur in the United States each year from eating contaminated beef, pork, poultry, eggs and milk.

Until the recent string of anthrax attacks in the United States, the only known biological attack on U.S. soil was in September 1984, when followers of free-love guru Baghwan Sri Rajneesh laced restaurant salad bars in Oregon with salmonella, making more than 750 people sick with food poisoning. They were trying to keep voters away from the polls to influence a local election.—Reuters