An analysis of the Daschle and Leahy anthrax mailing addresses


By Richard M. Smith of www.ComputerBytesMan.com
December 14, 2001

This article will do a line-by-line analysis of the addresses used on the Daschle and Leahy anthrax letters.  The goal is to see what clues the addresses may provide to investigators about the sender of the letters.  Both letters were mailed from the Trenton, New Jersey area on October 9, 2001.  The two addresses use the same format with many distinct features.

 

The common return address on the two envelopes was analyzed in an earlier article.  Click here.

 

Here are the FBI photos of the two envelopes:

 

http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/102301.htm

 

               

 

 

The addresses on the two envelopes are:

 

Senator Daschle

509 Hart Senate Office

Building

Washington D.C. 205XX-XXXX   (X = Smudged digits)

 

Senator Leahy

433 Russell Senate Office

Building

Washington D.C. 20510-4502

 

What is clear immediately is that both addresses use the same format and probably came from the same directory of Senate mailing addresses.

 

The first line of both addresses start with the names of the two Senators.  What is interesting however is the sender only uses the titles and last names of the Senators.  The convention in the United States is to include a person’s first and last name in a mailing address.  The sender appears to be more informal by only using last names.  This same informal approach is also used in news articles and in Congressional hearings after a Senator’s full name has been given.

 

The next two lines of the addresses give the room numbers for the two offices of the Senators.  On the envelopes, there is not enough space for the word “Building” so it is moved to its own line.  It is interesting that the sender did not abbreviate “Building” as “Bldg.” to make everything fit on one line.  Some people have speculated that the sender is not a native English speaker and therefore is not familiar with how “Building” is suppose to be abbreviated.  This seems like a pretty weak argument.  The sender might just have been a very carefully copier.

 

On the last lines of both addresses, the first thing that stands out is the District of Columbia is abbreviated with periods: “D.C.”.  In all other addresses on the anthrax letters, the sender does not include periods in the abbreviation of the names of states.  One possible explanation is the sender is use to putting periods in “D.C.”.  A second possibility is that the sender simply copied the periods from the original directory.

 

The sender also does not put a comma between "Washington" and "D.C." which is a bit unusual.

 

The most interesting part of the addresses comes next.  In both addresses, the sender uses 9-digit Zip codes instead of the more common 5-digits Zip codes.  Each member of Congress has their own unique 9-digit Zip code, while all congressional offices share the same 5-digit Zip code. 

 

In the Leahy letter, all 9-digits are visible and they are correct.  They sender must have copied them right from a directory.  However, the sorting equipment at the Post Office was not able to properly read the hand-written Zip code.  The “1” in “20510-4502” was changed to a “2” by the sorting equipment as can be seen in the printed Post Office Zip code to the left of the Leahy address.  The result of this mistake was that the letter was misdirected to Sterling, Virginia.

 

On the Daschle letter, only the first 3 digits of the Zip code are readable.  The envelope apparently got wet at some point and the remaining digits of the Zip code have been blotted out.  However, it is clear that a 9-digit Zip code was used in the address.  The Post Office sorting machines were however able to recognize the Daschle address and the correct 9-digit Zip code is printed to the left of the address.  It is unknown if the sorting equipment was able to read the 9-digit Zip code from the address or was able to derive it from Daschle’s room number and the fact the envelope was going to Washington, DC.

 

In the 9-digit Zip code on the Daschle envelope printed by the Post Office, a slash (/) is used to separate the first 5 digits of the Zip code from the last 4 digits.  However, on the Leahy envelope a plus sign (+) is used instead.  It is unclear why there is a difference.

 

In order to send out the two letters, the sender had to look up the addresses of the two Senators some place.  Here are some possible sources of the addresses:

 

The use of 9-digit Zip code is an excellent marker that may help locate which directory the sender actually used.  For example, the Google search engine finds that only about 10% of the addresses on the Internet for the two Senators use 9-digit Zip codes.  The remaining 90% of the addresses use 5-digit Zip codes. 

 

Here are some examples of online directories for members of Congress that uses 9-digit Zip codes:

 

These Congressional directories, on the other hand, use 5-digit Zip codes:

 

The Google search engine finds many different variations of addresses for U.S. Senators.  Here is a list of the major variations:

 

If the sender of the anthrax letters accurately copied the two addresses from a directory, these variations in the addresses may act as markers to locate directory he may have used.  Investigators should probably put more weight on the use of the 9-digit Zip code, the format of the room number line, and the lack of a street than how “District of Columbia” is abbreviated and the lack of “United States Senate” line.


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