Police point ricin probe at trucker discontent

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Officials also disclosed that the package contained no postmark or address, suggesting it may have been hand delivered to the center, which is not open to the public.

The package, with the words "caution - Ricin - poison" on the outside, was noticed by postal workers in the early morning hours of Oct. 15. Samples from the vial tested positive for the poison on Tuesday, State Law Enforcement Division officials said. The discovery triggered investigations by the FBI and the state's Joint Terrorism Task Force and resulted in the temporary closure of the facility.

SLED Chief Robert Stewart said officials consider the package an extortion attempt but not international terrorism. He declined Thursday to comment on details of the investigation.

State and federal officials said that the postal center was not contaminated by the poison after taking more than 70 samples from inside the facility.

The facility was closed Wednesday afternoon, but will reopen today, according to the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.

If the employees had been exposed, they would be sick by now, said Dr. Michael Allswede of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

There was no need to close the facility because there are more threats than actual cases, he said.

"You wouldn't want to shut down a postal facility every time someone mailed in a kooky threat," Allswede said. "The best is to wait."

It was also a good idea to close it after the chemical tested positive to make sure the building was secure, he said.

"You found the ricin, so what else is there?" he said. "What has been missed?"

Ricin can be a powder or liquid, but needs to be inhaled or ingested in order to get into a person's system, Allswede said.

It's unknown how the package, with no postage or address, ended up in the building, said Dan Mihalko, the service's Inspector in Charge of Public Affairs.

Mihalko said the item was found around 2:30 a.m. Oct. 15, but a supervisor wasn't told about it until 8 a.m. He said officials are investigating why.

Priest Brock, the airport facility's manager, said he examined the package before 8 a.m Oct. 15. Brock said he called law enforcement soon afterward, but wouldn't specify when.

"We followed the normal procedures," he said.

He said all employees were told about the event that day.

The building was evacuated for 20 minutes after the package was found, said Bill Brown, a Charlotte-based Postal Service spokesman.

A week later, tests proved the vial contained ricin, but no traces were found on the envelope or outside the vial, according to a postal service statement.

Greenville County Sheriff Steve Loftis said the FBI is focusing on how the package got into the mail center since it came without any postmark or address. A spokesman for the postal service said independent truckers use the center.

U.S. Rep. James DeMint said he was told by federal Homeland Security Department officials that the sender of the package was considered a "discontent."

"What we know right now is that it was a person discontent with some(trucking) regulation," DeMint said. "The quality of the ricin indicates that it was something done in a small facility. They do not believe there is any reason for alarm. At the same time, they are taking this very seriously."

DeMint said it appeared the type of ricin was not the type that could be carried by air.

Larry Jackson, a spokesman for Homeland Security, confirmed what DeMint was told but did not release any additional information.

The poison was confirmed in tests Tuesday, after samples from the package were sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Gov. Mark Sanford said Tuesday in a conference call from China, where he is on a trade mission, that he spoke by phone with Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, who told him he saw no connection to terrorism in the post office incident.

"He assured me that every precaution was being taken, and that they're going hrough fairly great detail in trying to get to the bottom of the situation," Sanford said, adding that the incident is more likely "somebody very strange doing something very strange."

Sanford declined further comment.

Ricin comes from the castor bean plant, is relatively easy to make and can be deadly in small doses. When inhaled or ingested, fever, cough, shortness of breath, chest tightness and low blood pressure can occur within eight hours. Death can come between 36 and 72 hours after exposure. There is no antidote.

The ricin incident comes two years after a still-at-large terrorist laced several letters with the anthrax bacteria, sending them to the Washington office of Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, the New York Post, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw the offices of American Media, Inc., publisher of several supermarket tabloids, including The National Enquirer.

Written on Daschle's letter were the words: "Death To America. Death to Israel. Allah is Great."

Five people were killed and 17 sickened. A postal facility in Washington,D.C. has not reopened and neither has The American Media headquarters in Boca Raton. The first death occurred on Oct. 5, 2001, just weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Anthrax is a naturally occurring bacteria that kills one in five victims that become infected in the most common way by it entering through a cut in the skin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

The difference between the two cases was officials believed the ricin, a poison 30 times deadlier than nerve gas, found in Greenville did not escape a vial in the package found in a processing center off Pelham Road Oct. 15, Brown said.

"It was a completely sealed envelope," he said. "If it had leaked, we would have gone through the evacuation proceedings."

Brown said the general public wasn't told because the package was sealed and there was no threat to the public.

"There was no threat of anything being contaminated," he said.

South Carolina postal facilities received dozens of suspicious packages that turned out to be hoaxes in the last year, Brown said. There have been 20,000 postal shut downs since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"You can't close the doors each time there is a suspicious package," Brown said. In addition, officials waited almost a full day after the substance tested positive for ricin to tell almost 900 employees at other offices, because they wanted to get information first, he said.

"We had to make sure we were telling them the right thing," Brown said. "We told them as soon as we knew everything we needed to know."

Words typed on the Greenville envelope indicated it contained ricin. Brown could not say how many of the 32 employees were exposed, but none are showing symptoms which also can include bloody diarrhea, vomiting and sores.

Agency rules dictate employees isolate the package, notify the supervisor and if necessary authorities, Brown said.