Anthrax source baffling as ever

WASHINGTON -- The anthrax that killed five people appears to have been produced in the United States, the White House said Monday, but investigators still don't know who mailed it. On Capitol Hill, a second attempt to sanitize a contaminated Senate office building failed.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the evidence on the anthrax sent to Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is increasingly "looking like it was a domestic source."

At the State Department, the FBI was called to examine a white powder found in an envelope addressed to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. The envelope moved through the regular U.S. mail system and officials assumed that it had been irradiated, said Lynn Cassel, a department spokeswoman.

Technicians, meanwhile, ran into more problems trying to sanitize a Senate office building contaminated by lingering anthrax spores from the letter sent to Daschle in mid-October.

Attempts to pump poisonous gas into the Hart Senate Office Building's ventilation system to kill any remaining spores failed early Monday, said Lt. Dan Nichols, Capitol Police spokesman.

He said a mechanical problem kept the gas from reaching the saturation point needed to kill the anthrax. Technicians worked from 9 p.m Sunday to 3 a.m. Monday before they abandoned the effort.

He said he did not know what caused the problem, which did not show up the first time they used the gas on the building.

The Hart building has remained closed since Oct. 17, two days after an anthrax-filled letter was received in Daschle's office.

In New Mexico, officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, who have been conducting research in the anthrax investigation, acknowledged that they received a sample of viable, or living, anthrax, despite telling area residents that its research was limited to inactive spores.

Los Alamos, which has been analyzing the genetic content of the anthrax used in the attacks, thought it was receiving dead spores from Northern Arizona University. But after the paperwork was filled out, the university discovered that the spores were alive and able to grow.

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