Powder-Laced Letters Sent to Dallas Federal Buildings

Powder-Laced Letters Sent to Dallas Federal Buildings

www.myfoxdfw.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- At least 30 letters containing suspicious powder have been mailed to Dallas federal buildings and Chase banks in eight other cities cities but so far appear to be harmless, authorities said Tuesday.
The FBI said it was investigating "a series of letters sent to banks around the country."
In Dallas, a hazardous materials response team was sent to the office of the FDIC on Bryan Street in downtown Dallas. The Office of Thrift Supervision on John Carpenter Freeway in Irving also received a letter with a mysterious powder inside.

"These threat letters contain a powder substance," the FBI said in a statement. "At this point, field tests on the powder have been negative. Additional testing will be completed. Even sending a hoax letter is a serious crime."

(visit the link for the full news article)

This was just on our local news
It says it was harmless also says tested negative but it does not say if they found out exactly what it was ..
[At this point, field tests on the powder have been negative. ]
I could not find another link so this is all I have on it .
Letters went to 8 other cities around the states
[A law enforcement official said the letters were mailed to Chase bank branches in or near Atlanta; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; Denver; Newark, N.J.; New York City; Oklahoma City; and Washington.]
So I wonder what this was all about does anyone think this is someone out to cause fear again especially right before the Elections (we have been here before now a few other times so no surprise there ) Who would want to stress a point that terrorism is still happening and we need someone in Office who would not be sympathetic to them (We have all heard that one havent we ?) ..

Anyone have any guesses on what this was all about ?



www.myfoxdfw.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

news.yahoo.com...

another link for you. the powder has been tested and its calcium. Looks like someone is pissed about something Chase has done and is not happy about the financial crisis

reply to post by Mercenary2007



Thanks for the Link ..oops missed seeing that it was Calcium.
So you think it has something to do with the financial mess and someone with a vengence eh ? Ok thats something to consider that I had not really thought about .Thanks for contributing to the thread ..
If that was the case why just a threat ? Why didnt he just send something serious ? Or is there something else on its way from that person ?
Just thinking on possibilities ...

[edit on 21-10-2008 by Simplynoone]

I'm glad it's just calcium but I'm not ready to let this story get too buried - since FEMA declared a State of Emergency recently over the "possiblility" of another anthrax or other bio-weapon attack.

blog.wired.com...

Not a single case of human anthrax has been reported in the United States this year, but the nation is now officially in a state of anthrax emergency.

The emergency was declared earlier this month by the Department of Health and Human Services, and will last until 2015. Whether it will protect public health is debatable, but it will certainly protect makers of faulty anthrax vaccines.

Emergency exemption from legal liability is granted to vaccine manufacturers by the Public Readiness and Preparedness Act, passed in 2005 to protect against paralyzing lawsuits during outbreaks of anthrax, avian influenza or other potentially pandemic diseases.

The act is supposed to be invoked when the Secretary of Homeland Security has determined "that there is a domestic emergency, or a significant potential for a domestic emergency, involving a heightened risk of attack with a specified biological, chemical, radiological, or nuclear agent or agents."

But as Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff explains in a letter to the DHHS, none of these conditions are met: there's neither emergency nor heightened risk of attack nor "credible information indicating an imminent threat of an attack." But that doesn't matter.

"These findings are not necessary to make a determination," Chertoff wrote. It's enough that anthrax was declared a threat four years ago, and that "were the government to determine in the future that there is a heightened risk of an anthrax attack ... that determination would almost certainly result in a domestic emergency."

In other words, there could be an emergency someday — so we might as well declare an emergency now.

What an Orwellian world we are living in...I wonder which biologist they will frame this time?

[edit on 21/10/2008 by kosmicjack]

Closing down several branches of the same bank chain would, in theory, prevent the depositors access from their money.

I doubt that the perpatrator of this was trying to prevent a bank run on Chase, but it certainly had that effect.

I doubt it does any good for the price of Chase shares though.

What is the "The Office of Thrift Supervision"? I have never even heard of that 'office', so the perp must have had a good reason to target them.

This doesn't sound like a pissed off individual to me, the more I think about it, the choices of targets are very strange...
DocMoreau

Just heard a news preview from a San Antonio,TX station stating that there might be a link to that city or area.

I suppose the other news services will pick up on it soon if this is true.

[edit on 10/21/2008 by roadgravel]

JPMorgan Chase & Co. banks were the primary targets in what might be an extreme backlash to the nation’s economic crisis. Investigators believe Atlanta’s mailing — which contained an apparently harmless substance — was connected to other mailings around the country, FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett said Tuesday evening. “All of these incidents are considered related, based on what we’re looking at,” Emmett said.

www.ajc.com... s/2008/10/21/atlanta_bank_threats.html

Something about this just doesn't sit right with me. I am not sure whether is the timing, the hatred for the banking system, or what but kinda strange. I am currently doing a biology report about anthrax and I hope to find out a bit more as this goes along.

Thanks for all the input ..I am with yall something fishy going on .
And it reminded me of the last ordeal with Anthrax ..maybe it is just another scare tactic to get us all alert again to the homegrown terrorist part of the War on Terror ...maybe they are about to get real serious with the Patriot Act and do some rounding up of supposed homegrown terrorists (or in their eyes the Activists prior to elections) .

Hmm This one says the powder has not yet been identified .

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At least 30 Chase bank offices in nine U.S. states have been targeted by threatening letters, many of them containing an unidentified powder, an FBI spokesman said on Tuesday.
www.reuters.com...

Looks like someone has gone psycho again at the Biowarfare lab at Fort Detrick.

Let's have scientists hurry up and do a DNA test, so they can link it with Fort Detrick, and then it will all go away, and no one will remember it.

Hey, it worked once before.

[edit on 22-10-2008 by sir_chancealot]

reply to post by sir_chancealot


Doubtful.

Unless those same biotech scientists are losing their mortgage and 401k help at Chase or something.

Your comment does make one wonder why Bruce Ivins would have sent Anthrax to the National Enquirer for posting pictures of the drunken Bush twins.... I think they may have chosen the wrong guy at Fort Detrick and the perpetrators are on the loose! Worse yet... They have a brand new state of the art labs to work in....

Huge New Biodefense Lab Is Dedicated at Fort Detrick

Thursday, October 23, 2008
The Department of Homeland Security dedicated a massive biodefense laboratory in Frederick yesterday, moving toward the facility's opening despite questions raised about the risks of deadly pathogens to be studied there.

When the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center at Fort Detrick is fully operational in March, about 150 scientists in the lab will be tasked with protecting the country from a bioterrorist attack through prevention or containment. Another goal is to allow investigators to fingerprint biological agents such as viruses and bacteria, quickly tracing their source and catching the offender.

From 2008:
Bogus Anthrax 'State of Emergency' Protects Drugmakers, Not Public

Not a single case of human anthrax has been reported in the United States this year, but the nation is now officially in a state of anthrax emergency.
The emergency was declared earlier this month by the Department of Health and Human Services, and will last until 2015. Whether it will protect public health is debatable, but it will certainly protect makers of faulty anthrax vaccines.

Investigators 'confident' Ivins was anthrax attacker

US federal law officials have released a catalogue of evidence they say points to Bruce Ivins, a senior anthrax researcher for the US army, as the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks. It depends crucially on genetic matches between the posted anthrax and bacteria in a lab where Ivins worked, but no scientific details were released.

In a press briefing just after the release, Jeffrey Taylor, US attorney for the District of Columbia, admitted the evidence was circumstantial, but says had Ivins gone to trial, "we would have proved him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."

Ivins worked on anthrax for the Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Because of his death on 29 July, which was ruled a suicide, the case will not now come to trial.

From 2001 & 2002:
Science reveals much about spores, except attacker

The scientific analysis of the anthrax spores sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle eventually will tell investigators who developed the technique that made the spores so lethal. Different techniques for drying anthrax spores and enhancing the airborne qualities that transform them into an aerosol were developed by the bioweapons programs in the USA and the former Soviet Union. Scientists say they are clearly identifiable. U.N. weapons inspectors say that Iraqi techniques are likewise identifiable. Still, it's a long leap from identifying the recipe for refining anthrax powder to identifying the culprits who mailed the anthrax to Daschle.

Anthrax attack bug "identical" to army strain

The DNA sequence of the anthrax sent through the US mail in 2001 has been revealed and confirms suspicions that the bacteria originally came from a US military laboratory.

The data released uses codenames for the reference strains against which the attack strain was compared. But New Scientist can reveal that the two reference strains that appear identical to the attack strain most likely originated at the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick (USAMRIID), Maryland.

The new work also shows that substantial genetic differences can emerge in two samples of an anthrax culture separated for only three years. This means the attacker's anthrax was not separated from its ancestors at USAMRIID for many generations.

I am not sure why it took 6 years to finger Ivins... I wonder if it will be as long before the perps of the white powder sent to Chase come to justice.
DocMoreau


[edit on 23/10/2008 by DocMoreau]