Ricin Letter Sent to Obama Intercepted; Suspect Held

Police have reportedly detained a suspect in the envelopes that contained poisonous ricin and that have sent Capitol Hill into a frenzy, according to The Washington Times.

An envelope addressed to President Barack Obama that indicated the presence of ricin was intercepted Wednesday. It is being tested further.

The letter to the president comes one day after officials said a letter sent to Sen. Roger Wicker tested positive for ricin.

Meanwhile, parts of the U.S. Capitol were being checked after authorities announced there were suspicious packages on the first and third floors of the Hart Senate Office Building and a suspicious envelope in the Russell Senate Office Building at the office of GOP Sen. Richard Shelby, 78, of Alabama.

“The Capitol Police have given us the all clear,” said Jonathan Graffeo, spokesman for Shelby, according to CNN.  “Sen. Shelby and staff are unharmed.”

Earlier, Capitol Hill police were investigating a man with a backpack in the area of the Hart office building. The man raised suspicion with the content of his backpack and how he responded to police questions, two Capitol Hill police officers said. The man’s backpack contained more sealed envelopes, one of the officers said.

One of the Capitol Hill police officers on the scene said the backpack is being X-rayed.

The letter to Obama is undergoing further testing because preliminary field tests can be unreliable, creating false positives. The letter was intercepted at a facility away from the White House.

The letter to Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, tested positive in a routine test and in two other subsequent tests, law enforcement officials tell CNN. The letter was intercepted at a Senate mail facility just outside Washington; the building has been closed for more testing.

“[The Wicker letter] was caught in the screening facility. That's why we have an off-site screening facility for mail,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill, Democrat from Missouri, to CNN.

Senators were told Tuesday the mail facility would be temporarily shut down “to make sure they get everything squared away,” McCaskill told reporters.

“The bottom line is, the process we have in place worked,” she said, adding that members of Congress will be warning their home-state offices to look for similar letters.The FBI says there is no indication of a connection to the bombing at Monday’s Boston Marathon.

The facility where the second letter was received — the one addressed to Obama — is remote and not located near the White House itself, spokesman Edwin Donovan said in a statement. 

“This facility routinely identifies letters or parcels that require secondary screening or scientific testing before delivery,” Donovan said. “The Secret Service is working closely with the U.S. Capitol Police and the FBI in this investigation.”

The envelope further heightened security concerns at a time when Congress is considering politically volatile legislation to toughen gun laws and reform the immigration system.

“Monday’s attack in Boston reminded us that terrorism can still strike anywhere at any time,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday. “And as yesterday’s news of an attempt to send ricin to the Capitol reminds us, it is as important as ever to take the steps necessary to protect Americans from those who would do us harm.”

Tensions have been high in Washington and across the country since the deadly bombings on Monday at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured more than 170.

Postal workers started handling mail at a site off Capitol Hill after the 2001 anthrax attacks that targeted then-Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, killing five people and infecting 17 others.

McConnell also praised authorities for “preventing this threat before it even reached the Capitol.”

“They proved that the proactive measures we put in place do, in fact, work,” he said.

In 2004, tests identified a letter in a Senate mail room that served then-Majority Leader Bill Frist’s office. The discovery forced 16 employees to go through decontamination procedures, but no one reported any ill effects afterward, Frist said.

Ricin is a highly toxic substance derived from castor beans. As little as 500 micrograms — an amount the size of the head of a pin — can kill an adult. There is no specific test for exposure and no antidote once exposed. But it usually needs to be injected to be fatal, experts say.

It can be produced easily and cheaply, and authorities in several countries have investigated links between suspect extremists and ricin. But experts say it is more effective on individuals than as a weapon of mass destruction.

Ricin was used in the 1978 assassination of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov. The author, who had defected nine years earlier, was jabbed by the tip of an umbrella while waiting for a bus in London and died four days later.

Wicker, 61, was first appointed by former Republican Gov. Haley Barbour to the U.S. Senate in December 2007 after the resignation of then-Sen. Trent Lott. He was then elected to the seat in 2008 and won re-election in 2012 to a second term.

Before joining the Senate, he was a U.S. representative in the House from 1995 to 2007. Before that, he served in the Mississippi Senate.

 

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