Vt. Paper's Anthrax Scare Leads to Lockdown, and Maybe Legal Action

By: Joe Strupp When an editor at The Times Argus of Barre, Vt., opened a threatening letter containing a white powder late Monday, fears of anthrax sparked a lockdown at the paper that lasted several hours and eventually delayed delivery of the Tuesday edition.

The unknown white substance -- which later was found to be harmless -- also prompted the paper to consider legal action against the Vermont State Police for refusing to reveal the contents of the letter to reporters. In addition, editors are planning a follow-up story on the state's Hazardous Materials Response Team, which took more than two hours to respond to the scare.

"It has been crazy," said Editor Maria Archangelo, who was off Monday but quickly learned of the incident from Deputy Editor Andrew Nemethy. "We were in the middle of a real scare."

The incident began late Monday afternoon when Nemethy was opening mail and came across a letter "addressed in barely legible crude handwriting." When he opened it, the powder spilled on to his pants, Archangelo said. "He called police and he never opened the letter to read it," she added.

Police did not evacuate the building, but they allowed no one in or out for several hours. "That affected copy editors and people on the press crews who could not get in," Archangelo told E&P. "We ended up delaying our press run for about an hour and Tuesday's papers were about an hour late."

More than four hours after the incident began, the powder was ruled out as either arsenic, cyanide, or anthrax and determined to be a non-hazardous sodium substance by the Vermont Hazardous Materials Response Team, the paper said.

State Police Lieutenant David Harrington, who was on scene, said the state and federal authorities, including the FBI, were investigating the incident, the paper reported.

Although no Times Argus staffers read the letter, Archangelo said reporters were able to find out some of its contents, reporting that the person who sent it threatened the paper in some way for listing a bankruptcy in its regular public notices. The paper routinely runs such legal advertisements on Sunday, averaging about 25 per week.

Harrington told the paper the handwritten letter indicated the "nonspecific threat" may continue and advised the Times Argus and its sister paper, the Rutland Herald, to be cautious about mail handling procedures.

"The threat is probably ongoing. You may receive another package," Harrington told reporters.

Archangelo said the paper was considering legal action against police for refusing to disclose the full contents of the letter. "I'm talking to our lawyers about what we can do," she told E&P. "That letter was addressed to me, and we have a right to know what is in it. I view it as our mail."

Harrington told E&P the letter had to be withheld as evidence. "It is still a criminal investigation, and we were hoping the contents could remain confidential," he added. "We did give them information that it did no specify an individual and that the threat was ongoing."

The paper also plans to investigate why the state hazmat team took so long to respond to the incident.

During the investigation some 25-30 employees were not allowed to leave the Times Argus building. The incident occurred about three years after a wave of anthrax mailings sparked fear nationwide, including a letter containing anthrax spores mailed to Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont that was discovered on Nov. 16, 2001.