WASHINGTON -- Virtually every day for several weeks, the FBI has heard about an anthrax threat somewhere in America. So far, they have all been hoaxes, but the bureau responds seriously to every one.
"My personal fear is that someday there will be a real anthrax threat, and American society will react by saying, 'There's another hoax'," Neil J. Gallagher, FBI assistant director in charge of the national security division, said Tuesday.
Sporadic threats of contamination with the potentially lethal anthrax bacterium date back several years. But beginning last fall and accelerating in the past few weeks, the FBI has seen a spate of letters, containing a sticky substance or dark powder and the ominous warning: You've been contaminated by anthrax.
The letters have been received in almost every region of the nation. They often arrive in bunches, at 10 or 15 similar targets in a city. The targets have been quite varied: Abortion clinics, Catholic schools, nightclubs, department stores, hospitals, post offices, courthouses, news media offices, FBI offices and even the Old Executive Office Building beside the White House.
"Not a day goes by without us hearing from somewhere in the United States about an anthrax threat," Gallagher said.
"Anthrax threats have become what bomb threats once were or product tampering threats in the 1980s" after the Tylenol poisoning in Illinois, said FBI spokesman Bill Carter.
"The only way to slow this down is for us to prosecute someone," said Gallagher's deputy Dale L. Watson. "So we are diligently investigating" the hoaxes.
Even the hoaxes are federal felonies.
Mailing a threat to injure someone is punishable by up to six years in prison. Threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction, including a biological agent like anthrax, can bring life in prison.
Los Angeles accountant Harvey Craig Spelkin, 53, was charged in 1998 with such a biological threat. Federal prosecutors allege he tried to avoid a Dec. 18 appearance in U.S. Bankruptcy Court by telephoning the courthouse with a warning that anthrax might be in the air conditioning system.
Another man was charged in January with telephoning anthrax threats to a Los Angeles area hospital and is undergoing psychiatric tests.
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