An official walks past a hazardous materials response team truck outside a mail sorting facility where a ricin-laced letter addressed to a U.S. Senator was found. The facility is outside of Washington in Hyattsville, Maryland. Drew Angerer/Getty Images An official walks past a hazardous materials response team truck outside a mail sorting facility where a ricin-laced letter addressed to a U.S. Senator was found. The facility is outside of Washington in Hyattsville, Maryland. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

by Julie Pace, Associated Press

Lady MJ Santos’ ‘Bigger Picture’ Musing: It is quite curious that the letter came from Memphis, Tennessee which is the hometown to the late great Elvis Presley. The twist of this is that President Barack Obama is Elvis Presley’s 9th cousin once removed. You’re not getting the real message, Mr. President. Elvis is now officially a dissident and reminding you what he said once, “TRUTH is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.” It’s a letter from the Unseen manifested as quid pro quo against your lies and murder of all the innocent lives you voluntarily (or pressured) signed. If it wasn’t, why would the writer “KC” say in the letter, “To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance.” Elvis did say, “Whatever I will become will be what God has chosen for me.” He got that wish. We pray that you listen and not succumb anymore to the Dark forces who have been controlling you. Honor your own words you gave to the world when you first got elected. Close down Guantanamo. Tell the world the TRUTH of what happened in Arabspring and Libya with Muammar Gaddafi. None of us asked for drones, more lies and propaganda, and more invasion.

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April 17, 2013 (TSR-AP) – Letters sent to President Barack Obama and a Mississippi senator that tested positive for poisonous ricin are related and both are postmarked Memphis, Tennessee, the FBI said Wednesday. A senator said police have a suspect in mind. Several other reports of suspicious mail to government officials were being checked.

In an intelligence bulletin obtained by The Associated Press, the FBI says letters to Obama and Sen. Roger Wicker both say: “To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance.” Both letters are signed, “I am KC and I approve this message.” Similar “I approve of this message” wording is often used by candidates at the end of political ads.

The activity came as tensions were high in Washington and across the country following the deadly bombings on Monday at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured more than 170. The FBI said there is no indication of a connection between the letters and the bombing. The letters to Obama and Wicker were postmarked April 8, before the marathon.

The letter scare recalls a similar spate of anthrax-laced letters sent to top government officials in the wake of the 9-11 terror attacks.

An official walks past a hazardous materials response team truck outside a mail sorting facility where a ricin-laced letter addressed to a U.S. Senator was found. The facility is outside of Washington in Hyattsville, Maryland. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Sen. Claire McCaskill said police suspect a person who “writes a lot of letters to members.” She made the comment Tuesday as she emerged from a briefing by law enforcement on the Boston bombing. Authorities declined to comment on a suspect.

In addition to the letters, U.S. Capitol police were investigating the discovery of at least three suspicious packages in Senate office buildings. Senate Sergeant at Arms Terence Gainer said in an email that packages were dropped off at the offices of two senators, and Sen. Richard Shelby said in a statement his office had received one of them.

A third package was found in an atrium on the first floor of one of the two buildings. A person who delivered at least two of the packages was being questioned, Gainer said, as Capitol police swiftly ramped up security.

Both the letters to Wicker and to Obama were intercepted at off-site mail facilities. The FBI said the letters to Obama and Wicker were undergoing further testing. Preliminary testing can be unreliable, showing false positives for ricin.

Ricin is derived from the castor plant that makes castor oil. What makes it scary is that there is no antidote and it is at its deadliest when inhaled. It is not contagious.

Of all the biological and chemical terror agents, “it is one of the least significant; it is a poison,” said University of Maryland bioterrorism expert Milt Leitenberg.

Separately, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan issued a statement saying an aide in his Saginaw, Michigan, office had received a suspicious-looking letter. “The letter was not opened, and the staffer followed the proper protocols for the situation, including alerting the authorities, who are now investigating,” Levin said in a statement.

And authorities said they were investigating two suspicious letters that were sent to the Phoenix office of U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona. Emergency crews in hazardous materials gear were seen outside the building.

U.S. Sen. John McCain has an office directly across the street, and a spokesman for him said authorities have told staff not to open any packages as authorities investigate.

The discoveries spread concern in the sprawling Capitol complex, and authorities swiftly stepped up their security presence.

In one case, police sealed off a hearing room where Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, were testifying.

In another, officers advised Sen. Joe Manchin and aides not to board an elevator because suspicious packages had been found on several floors of the Hart Office Building.

“They just told me there’s something suspicious and they’re looking into it,” Manchin said.

Ricin more a threat than a reality

The poison ricin has created far more scares than victims and is more a targeted poison — an assassin’s tool — than something with which to attack lots of people.

Ricin is derived from the castor plant that makes castor oil. What makes it scary is that there is no antidote and it is at its deadliest when inhaled. It is not contagious.

Of all the biological and chemical terror agents, “it is one of the least significant; it is a poison,” said University of Maryland bioterrorism expert Milt Leitenberg.

Leitenberg said he was hard pressed to remember any case when an initial chemical test that showed the presence of ricin actually turned out to be ricin.

Nearly every time it is a false alarm.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there’s a rapid detection test for ricin that takes 6 to 8 hours, but the more complete test — the ricin toxin test — takes about 48 hours to perform . That second test is “considered the best test for determining the presence of ricin,” the CDC said in a fact sheet on ricin..

The CDC categorizes ricin as a “Class B” threat, which is the agency’s second-highest threat level. It ranks behind anthrax, botulism, plague, smallpox, tularemia and viral hemorrhagic fevers.

People need to put things in perspective, said Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, the medical director of the Iowa Public Health Department who has served on several federal bioterrorism boards. “Making ricin into something that can be released from an envelope into the air, be the right size to be inhaled and stick in the lungs “is a lot to get right, especially if you are not a bioterrorism specialist and know how to do that. It’s not something you can do in your garage.”

“It’s harder for these things to happen than most people think,” Dr. Quinlisk said Wednesday. It isn’t as easy as popular online handbooks say it is, Leitenberg said.

“Ricin is best suited for small-scale attacks rather than mass-casualty scenarios,” the Homeland Security handbook said. It says the best “route of exposure” is injection into the bloodstream, as happened in a famous case involving a Bulgarian dissident in London.

The Homeland Security handbook also says inhaling ricin is more dangerous than eating it, but “formulating ricin powder to produce the necessary size to be efficiently disseminated via aerosol requires technical skill.”

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