RELAX:

Ricin investigation takes puzzling turn: Absence of ‘hot letter’ forces exploration of new theories (The Associated Press, Feb. 06, 2004)

Unable to find a piece of mail connected to the Senate ricin scare, investigators say they are expanding their probe to include the possibility that someone placed the poison in Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s mailroom or that it arrived in an older envelope or package.

“We are taking a look at every possible angle,” Michael Mason, chief of the FBI’s Washington field office, said late Thursday.

The ricin was discovered on a mail-sorting machine in Frist’s office on Monday. But law enforcement officials say no letter or note has been found indicating how it got there, who was behind it and whether the Tennessee Republican was the target.

“We have not found a hot letter,” Mason said.

Investigators now must consider if the ricin was placed on the machine by someone or if it had spilled out of an older letter and been there for a long time. If so, investigators would have to trace the paths of these older letters, some of which may have been destroyed.

I've got some really good news about these incidents of domestic terrorism--the substances aren't ricin and anthrax. After all, we've had command and control of America for over two hundred years and have yet to find where someone might have these putative WMD agents hidden, so they clearly don't exist. It's just more bad intelligence.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 11, 2004 1:01 PM