CNN news 2013-06-03 加文本

cnn news 2013-06-03

Two potentially lethal letters. One of themsent to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Early testing pointing toward both containingone of the deadliest toxins known to man, ricin.

Deb Feyerick is on that breaking story. Shejoins us now.

So, what do investigators know about theletters?

Well, Anderson, right now, what they knowis that they believe both of the letters were sent by the same person. Thepostmark was the same, they contained the same kind of substance, and they alsoboth threatened Mayor Michael Bloomberg for his position on guns, specificallythose illegal guns. The Mayor reacted just a short time ago.

Let me tell you, we're confident at theNYPD and the FBI, and their procedures. We take a lot of security measures, asyou know. The men and the women that opened the mail, for example, even they'rewell trained. We have procedures for something like this. This is not the firstletter that was ever sent to anybody.

In terms of why they've done this, I don'tknow. The letter was obviously referred to our anti-gun efforts. But there is12,000 people gonna get killed this year with guns, and 19,000 are gonna commitsuicide with guns. We are not gonna walk away from those efforts.

And Anderson, the police spokesman tells usthat in fact the two letters contain sort of the pink orange oily substance.And in initial tests on the substance, initially they were negative; then thesecond test found, was found to be positive. So now, that substances have beenanalyzed by the National Biofriends Analyst Center in Maryland, and the resultsof those tests should be definitive(最后的；权威的) in the next day or two, Anderson.

Was anyone actually exposed we know about?

There are a couple of people that wereexposed. The mayor was not one of them, one of them in New York went to a mailfacility, the one in Washington went to its organization, Mayors AgainstIllegal Guns. New York Emergency Services Unit, the police who responded tothat they did initially tests, develops some symptoms, some intestinalsymptoms. But after about a day or so, those went away and cleared, they'rebeing monitored just protectively. Anderson.

And obviously they're gonna be looking theletter's for DNA evidence or trace evidence that maybe there.

Yeah, absolutely. Right now, investigatorsfrom both the FBI JTTF, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, as well as the NYPD.They're looking at the very specific location. The postmark that was on thoseletters clearly giving them some indications as to where the person who sentthem might live. Anderson.

All right. Deb, we appreciate it. Joins usnow is national security analyst and former George W. Bush homeland securityadvisor, Fran Townsend. She currently assists on the CIA and the DHS externaladvisor panels. Also on the phone, chief medical correspondent Dr. SanjayGupta.

So Fran, we have a report of the lettersmentioned the gun control debate over Joint Terrorism Task Force investigating.It could be more of a political threat than a terror threat, really?

That's right, Anderson. But as you'vementioned, that's not really at the moment the most relevant piece to theinvestigators, they don't much care about motive at the moment, they wanna knowwho. And so to determine the who, they'll look for the forensics, they'll lookfor the things like slight of the hair, finger prints on the letter or on theenvelop. They'll analyze automatically the handwriting.

But all these things take time which is whythe first thing they're gonna focus on is one the lab analysis, you heard DebFeyerick, the first field test was negative, the second was positive.Oftentimes, these field tests are wrong which is why they're getting a realthorough lab result.

That'll take a little bit of time. But thatwill tell them something, they'll understand the strength in the component, howcompetently it was mixed. They'll analyze whether the two letters, whether theywere from the same batch of mixture of the component of ricin.

All those things will help investigatorslead down the path to who. And once you determine the who, you will be able tounderstand the why.