- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
FBI and CIA believe extremists in the United States, not followers of
Saudi-born
Osama bin Laden, are probably behind this month's anthrax attacks, the
Washington Post reported on Saturday.
-
- Senior officials also are increasingly concerned the
germ warfare agent attacks have diverted public attention from the larger
threat posed by bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, the paper said. They
believe the main suspect in the hijacked plane strikes on America on Sept.
11 is planning a second wave of attacks against U.S. interests at home
or abroad that could come at any time, the Post added.
-
- The FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service are
considering
a wide range of domestic possibilities, including associates of right-wing
hate groups and U.S. residents sympathetic to causes of Islamic extremists,
in the letter-borne germ attacks.
-
- "Everything seems to lean toward a domestic
source,"
a senior government official told the newspaper. "Nothing seems to
fit with an overseas terrorist type operation."
-
- In a spate of cases involving letters laced with the
anthrax spores, three people have died, at least 11 others have been
infected
and thousands more have been tested or given medicine for the rare disease.
The attacks have spooked Americans, already on edge after the plane attacks
that killed some 5,000 people shattered the nation's sense of
security.
-
- The Post reported investigators have no clear suspects
and are not even certain whether there are other undetected letters that
contain the potentially deadly microbe.
-
- So far, federal authorities have identified only one
letter in the Washington area that contained anthrax -- sent to Senate
Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat.
-
- But the detection of anthrax at an increasing number
of government mail facilities and congressional offices has raised the
possibility that one or more additional anthrax letters may have come
through
the Washington area.
-
- The Bush administration has said it does not rule out
a link between the anthrax and bin Laden, although it has found no hard
evidence.
-
- On Friday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said
investigators
had determined that the pure, concentrated and highly dangerous anthrax
delivered in a letter to Daschle "could be produced by a PhD
microbiologist
and a sophisticated laboratory."
-
- "That does not rule out that it could be
state-sponsored,"
Fleischer said at a briefing. "That does not rule out that it could
come from a foreign location. But it certainly does expand it beyond state
sponsorship or foreign locations."
-
- The Post said the anti-Israel message in anthrax letters
sent to Daschle and NBC News, and in bin Laden's statements are echoed
by U.S. extremists groups, such as Aryan Action, which praises the Sept.
11 plane attacks.
-
- FBI Director Robert Mueller warned earlier this week
additional terror attacks are a "distinct possibility."
-
- But government officials do not believe the anthrax scare
is a second wave of attacks by bin Laden, the paper said.
-
- "There is not intelligence on it and it does not
fit any (al Qaeda) pattern," a senior official told the paper.
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