Efforts to beef up security at news media facilities took on new urgency Monday with word that Bob Stevens, the photographer for The Sun tabloid who died from a rare form of anthrax Friday, may have been infected with the disease from a soapy substance he had discovered in a letter that he received a few days before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Traces of the anthrax bacteria were also reportedly found on the keyboard of his computer at the offices of American Media in Boca Raton, FL, which also publishes the National Enquirer, Globe and Star. A worker in the company’s mailroom who may have delivered the letter to Stevens had also reportedly contracted the disease but had been successfully treated for it. On NBC’s Dateline Monday night, bioterrorism expert Neil Livingstone suggested that workers at the tabloid may have been targeted in order to further terrorize the U.S. population.
