Federal officials, trucker talk-radio shows, Web chat sites and trucking groups are working together to help identify “Fallen Angel” – the writer of ricin-laden letters destined for the U.S. Department of Transportation and the White House who claims to be a “fleet owner of a tanker company.”
In addition, law-enforcement officials say they are scouring trucking company rosters nationwide, trying to develop leads from a flimsy set of clues, The Washington Post reported.
In a typed note left along with a small vial of ricin at a mail facility in Greenville, SC, in mid-October, the perpetrator claimed to have "easy access to castor pulp," from which the deadly poison ricin is made.
A second letter, retrieved Nov. 6 from a mail facility that serves the White House, contained an identical letter and a similar vial of ricin powder. Authorities revealed that information after ricin was discovered in the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-TN.
Talk shows aid federal effort
At the request of the FBI and the Department of Transportation, Dale Sommers, Cincinnati-based host of the popular "Truckin' Bozo" radio show, spent three nights appealing to the person who planted the ricin package in the facility near the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport, which was addressed to the DOT.
Sommers told The Post he was contacted by FBI agents in Greenville and by the Transportation Department's inspector general's office in Washington, who asked that he broadcast information about a $100,000 reward posted for information leading to an arrest.
Tom O'Neill, a spokesman for the FBI office in Columbia, SC, said agents have been following trucker Web sites and trucker-oriented radio programs, including Sommers' show and another popular radio show hosted by "Satellite Cowboy" Bill Mack.
Mack's producer, Ken Johnson, said the show had mentioned the ricin matter but had not focused discussions on it, The Post reported.
Transportation officials have estimated that the new HOS regulations, which are designed to give truckers more rest time, will save 75 lives and prevent 1,326 fatigue-related injuries each year, as well as cut down on property losses.
Although the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has said the rules are being well received by truckers and will lead to significant safety improvements, Sommers said the federal agency "is far out of touch with the American trucker. They really have no idea what's going on out there," he told The Post.
In his broadcasts, Sommers urged the ricin mailer to turn himself in before anyone is killed by the poison.
"I tried to tell him or her to turn yourself in – that the longer they have to look for you, the angrier they'll be," Sommers said. He said he is worried that the White House letter was the act of a "copycat" who read about the events in Greenville.
Sommers' show attracts 12 million to 15 million listeners nightly. He gained attention in the Washington, DC, area sniper case of 2002, when he broadcast details that helped a trucker at a Frederick County, MD, rest stop identify the snipers' vehicle.
"It would be a mistake for investigators, or anybody, to immediately make the assumption it's a trucker. It wasn't that long ago that anthrax was being mailed to leaders in Washington," said Todd Spencer, OOIDA's executive vice president. "There's a lot of people angry at some of the things that are going on in Washington right now. Claiming to be an irate trucker upset over the new hours-of-rules may simply be a convenient cover."
Spencer pointed out that truckers know it was the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration at DOT, not the nation's elected officials, who created the controversial new regulations.
