Envelope tests positive for ricin at Washington mail facilit

[Grand Moff Tim]

Link

Washington (CNN) -- An envelope that tested positive for the deadly poison ricin was intercepted Tuesday afternoon at the U.S. Capitol's off-site mail facility in Washington, congressional and law enforcement sources tell CNN.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he was told the letter was addressed to the office of Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi. A laboratory in Maryland confirmed the presence of ricin after an initial field tests indicated the poison was present, Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance Gainer said.

The letter had a Memphis, Tennessee, postmark and no return address, Gainer wrote in an e-mail to senators and aides.

Sen. Claire McCaskill told reporters after a briefing for lawmakers that a suspect has already been identified in the incident, but a knowledgeable source said no one was in custody Tuesday night.

Wicker, the junior senator from Mississippi, has been assigned a protective detail, according to a law enforcement source.

A primer on ricin

Postal workers started handling mail at a site off Capitol Hill after the 2001 anthrax attacks that targeted then-Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, among others. Senators were told those offices would be temporarily shut down "to make sure they get everything squared away," McCaskill, D-Missouri, said Tuesday afternoon.

"The bottom line is, the process we have in place worked," she said. Members will be warning their home-state offices to look out for similar letters, she added.

A previous ricin scare hit the Capitol in 2004, when tests identified a letter in a Senate mailroom 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.

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 held elected office as a U.S. representative in the House from 1995 to 2007. Before that, he served in the Mississippi Senate.

[DieselJester]

Update: Letter addressed to President Obama also had it:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/poli ... e/2090465/

So does this qualify as an assassination attempt?

[Broomstick]

Arguably, yes. Of course, from day one Obama has held the recorded for threats against his life while US President.

Wouldn't surprise me if we find more of these.

[DieselJester]

Scary. Good thing that politicians have people screening their mail then.

[Flagg]

Ricin false positives are apparently pretty common in the field tests. I'd wait until the FBI says that their labs detected ricin. Incidentally you can get a false positive from ground up castor beans. The more you know! *

[Broomstick]

You can also get a false-positive for ricin from RC model airplane fuel which often contains castor oil which comes from the same plant. There's actually a number of ways to get a false-positive, hence the need for follow-up confirmation. The field tests are a crude screening tool, nothing more.

[Flagg]

You can also get a false-positive for ricin from RC model airplane fuel which often contains castor oil which comes from the same plant. There's actually a number of ways to get a false-positive, hence the need for follow-up confirmation. The field tests are a crude screening tool, nothing more.

Which is why I'm not very happy with the media for already describing them as "ricin laden". It could easily be false positives only on the radar due to Boston.

[Broomstick]

I would expect ANY ricin detection would be reported, along with a blurb that confirmation tests are being performed. But the newsies are all excited already so they're more breathless than usual.

I'm currently siding with the theory that it isn't related to the Boston bombs, but another sadsack shithead also wanted attention this week. Of course, as always, opinion subject to change with more information.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'm going to split the difference and say, ricin or a fake, these are from a sovereign citizen, and the bombings in Boston were a self-radicalized member of the al-Qaeda fanboy brigade. But we'll see.

[Meest]

My initial thought was somebody finally caught up with Breaking Bad season dvds and got the idea.