A federal grand jury has subpoenaed work records for nine truck drivers employed by a Little Rock company that transports mail for the U.S. Postal Service, part of an effort to determine who might have delivered the first ricin-packed letter last year to a South Carolina postal processing center.
Officials of Mail Contractors of America Inc. say that a subpoena received in late November sought driver logs and time sheets, cell phone and telephone records, delivery receipts and expenses. Eight of the truckers make deliveries to the facility near the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport, where a vial of the toxin was discovered in October, and the other driver is a former employee, said Amy Bunch, a spokeswoman for the firm.
The subpoena came about a month after FBI agents visited Mail Contractors of America to review drivers' records at its Jacksonville, Fla., terminal, including those of Daniel S. Somerson, a former employee who has become a truck safety activist, and a trucker friend who still works for the company. FBI terrorism investigators have interviewed both men. Somerson said he is innocent of any involvement in the letters and believes he is being harassed because he has criticized the trucking industry and Mail Contractors of America.
In recent weeks, attempts to solve three ricin incidents, including one at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, have evolved into a geographic mystery. In the Greenville case, authorities have speculated that on Oct. 14 or 15, someone -- possibly a driver -- dropped a package with a vial of ricin enclosed. The package was left near the Greenville-Spartanburg airport. At the time, Mail Contractors of America had the contract for delivering third-class mail to the facility.
A second letter addressed to the White House and retrieved from a Bolling Air Force Base mail-sorting facility bore a postmark from Chattanooga, and FBI officials there have been trying to track the mailing. The Greenville and White House mailings were sent by someone using the name "Fallen Angel," who threatens in a letter to use ricin unless changes are made to federal rules governing truckers' hours of service.
Authorities say they have found no letter in connection with a small amount of ricin found Feb. 2 in the Dirksen mailroom used by the staff members of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).
The Mail Contractors' subpoena comes as investigators sort through the drivers involved in trucker relay systems that are used to transport mail across the country. A rig packed with cartons of third-class mail might be handed off to several drivers before it reaches its final destination.
Mail Contractors of America, which transports more than 90 percent of the nation's third-class mail and has 1,400 employees, most of them truckers, is cooperating with the federal investigation, said board Chairman James R. Malone.
In an interview, Malone said the packaging system the company uses for its bulk-mail shipments, combined with high-security measures at the postal facilities, leaves little opportunity for drivers to slip unauthorized mail into their deliveries. "I suppose it's possible," he said, "but I've got to believe it would be a hell of a lot easier to just go to a mail box and drop it in."
The FBI has posted signs offering a $100,000 reward at truck stops and weigh stations along the East Coast and has appealed for help on trucker radio shows whose late-night chatter has included discussion of the cases.