Despite the letters sent to Mr Brokaw in New York and to Tom Daschle, the Senate majority leader in Washington, calling for "death to America" and praising Allah, agents are quick to point out the messages do not mean anything. The letters could have been sent by a right-winger, trying to stir up racial tension in the wake of 11 September and using the hijackings as cover.
Mind you, I get the feeling that 99% of the anthrax scares after the initial attacks will turn out to be copycat actions by disparate disturbed individuals.
Much has been made of the timing of the attacks, that coming so soon after 11 September they must be linked. But anthrax terrorism is not a new phenomenon, especially in the US. For the last four years, the country has been in the grip of anthrax. It is an American phenomenon: in 1999, the latest year for which records are available, there were 83 criminal incidents worldwide where a quantity of anthrax was actually present, of which 81 were in the US.