FYI.
– Obama letter possibly laced with ricin similar to contaminated Bloomberg letters, Secret Service says (CBS News, May 30, 2013):
A letter addressed to President Obama that may have been contaminated with the deadly toxin ricin is similar to two ricin-laced letters recently sent to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the U.S. Secret Service said Thursday.
A screening facility for mail sent to the White House intercepted the recent letter addressed to Mr. Obama, Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan said. The letter has been turned over to the FBI’s joint terrorism task force for testing and investigation.
CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports that the letter was postmarked from Shreveport, La.Shreveport was also the postmark for the two contaminated letters sent to Bloomberg in New York and his gun-control group in Washington. All three letters were postmarked May 20.
Orr reported Thursday that, according to two sources, the letter sent to Bloomberg carried the following threat:
“You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns. Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional, God-given right and I will exercise that right till the day I die. What’s in this letter is nothing compared to what I’ve got planned for you.”
Law enforcement sources say the ricin is crudely made and of poor quality.
Authorities say the three responding officers who came into contact with the letter in New York suffered some minor symptoms. No one was seriously hurt, but the joint terrorism task force, which includes the FBI and the NYPD, is also investigating that case.
Bloomberg spoke with reporters shortly after the threats against him became public Wednesday evening.”No, I’m not angry,” said Bloomberg. “There are people who, I would argue, do things that may be irrational, do things that are wrong, but it’s a very complex world out there, and we just have to deal with that.”