I'll never forget the day my office became the target of an anthrax attack. It was October 2001, a few weeks after 9/11, and I was working in the New York bureau of The Times — which, back then, consisted of a few cubicles in the mail room of our sister newspaper, The New York Post.

Like other media outlets, the Post was one of the primary targets of the anthrax mailer, and the tainted letters he (or she) sent to the newspaper ended up sitting a few feet away from my desk.

One of them, which carried a New Jersey postmark, read: “09-11-01, THIS IS NEXT, TAKE PENACILIN NOW, DEATH TO AMERICA, DEATH TO ISRAEL, ALLAH IS GREAT.”

I avoided infection, but the poor bloke who sat next to me, William Monagas, wasn't so lucky: he contracted the cutaneous form of the disease in his finger, from which he thankfully made a full recovery.

Two other Post employees, Mark Cunningham and Johanna Huden, also contracted non-lethal anthrax infections.

Perhaps the most bizarre expenses claim I've ever made during my newspaper career was for an anthrax test, which involved a doctor taking cultures of my nasal bacteria and sending them away to be analysed in a bioweapons lab.

It cost $100 (£50). I also remember being severely tempted to buy a jar of anti-anthrax Cipro tablets on the internet for $400. Instead I began to iron all my mail, which I was told would help to kill any anthrax spores.

Meanwhile, Post mail workers started turning up for work in home-made bio-hazard suits, while the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) practically destroyed my desk as part of a decontamination sweep.

These days I can laugh about how terrifying it was. But it infuriates me to think that whoever was responsible for murdering five innocent people — not to mention terrorising millions — now might never be brought to justice.

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