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WASHINGTON — The Pentagon put its mail under quarantine after multiple packages suspected of containing ricin were found at a Pentagon mail facility on Monday, a Defense Department spokesman said.
Pentagon authorities found the packages during screening on Monday and turned the envelopes over to the F.B.I. on Tuesday, officials said.
A Defense Department official said the packages were addressed to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations. The official was not authorized to discuss sensitive details of the continuing investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
A Pentagon spokesman, Col. Rob Manning, said the mail delivery facility is on the Pentagon grounds but not in the main building that houses the offices of the defense secretary.
Colonel Manning said all mail received at the screening facility on Monday was now under quarantine.
Ricin, which is part of the waste produced when castor oil is made, has no known antidote and can be lethal.
In 2011, four Georgia men were arrested and later sentenced to prison for plotting to spread the toxin simultaneously in five American cities, targeting federal and state officials. That same year, American counterterrorism officials said they were increasingly tracking the possibility that Al Qaeda would use ricin in attacks against the United States.
Two years later, a Mississippi man sent letters containing ricin to President Barack Obama and a Republican senator in an elaborate attempt to frame a rival. The letters were intercepted at mail-sorting facilities for the White House and the Capitol.
In 2014, Shannon Richardson, an actress, was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison for mailing letters laced with ricin to multiple people, including Mr. Obama and Michael R. Bloomberg, the mayor of New York at the time.
Emily Cochrane contributed to this report.
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