Okay, this has to be the strangest "white powder" story that I've seen to date. This time, the alarms went off at the Department of Homeland Security's office in northwest Washington DC.
A senior official at the Department of Homeland Security set off alarms last week after she received white powder and a dead fish in the mail at home and brought them to work, sources said.
The FBI is investigating the incident, and the official, Maureen McCarthy, a career official in the department's intelligence and analysis directorate, continues to work, DHS spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said.
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McCarthy, a former Energy Department official, was assigned to collect intelligence to counter weapons of mass destruction in 2006.She received a container with the dead fish at home, sources said. According to National Journal's CongressDaily, which first reported the incident, a source disclosed that McCarthy left the fish in her car parked under a ventilation shaft in the DHS building garage and entered a secure area inside, potentially contaminating both places.
The CongressDaily article says that the package had a return address from Battelle, a well-known company heavily involved in DOD and DHS chem-bio defense research and analysis. It also points out that DHS security officials told her to bring the package into work.
"The word stupid doesn't adequately describe the situation," the source said. "The challenge you've got here is that you've got some moron at security saying bring it in."
But for her to bring the package into an office building for further analysis? Wow. Not a good career move, especially when this is supposed to be your area of expertise. She should have let the local authorities deal with it. Just a really weird story.
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