Justice Department Releases Photo of Anthrax-Tainted Letters
The Associated Press published a photo of the envelopes from two anthrax-tainted letters. A couple of issues with these envelopes obviously stand out:
- Return address errors on letter to Senator Daschle. There is no Greendale School in Franklin Park, NJ. The Franklin Park zip code is 08823, not 08852.
- Envelopes bought at a Post Office. The envelopes in the picture are on sale a Post Offices throughout the United States. Many post offices have cameras in the customer service counter areas. According to other news accounts, between 40 and 50 post offices feed their outgoing mail through the Trenton Regional Postal Service Center. So, any video tapes at those post offices ought to be reviewed.
- Handwriting looks the same on both envelopes. Handwriting analysts ought to have a field day with these envelopes. There are attributes of the handwriting that look unique (address printed in block and small block letters, strange angle to the lines of text, etc.).
You may say that the address errors would be difficult to catch in places like a Senator's office, due to mail volume. But, the zip code error is easy to spot, if you are matching 5 digit zip codes to cities. If CTDATA was likely to be targetted by terrorists, we'd perform checks like this.