A letter mailed to a Microsoft office in Reno, Nevada, from Malaysia last week that was believed to contain anthrax did not, in fact, contain the potentially deadly bacteria, a spokesman for Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn says.

Spokesman Gary Bortolin says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined that the letter did not contain the potential germ warfare agent even though two of three earlier tests had been positive for the anthrax. Further testing by the CDC determined no anthrax was present, Bortolin says. He declined to say what the letter actually contained.

"All I can say is they tested negative for anthrax," Bortolin says. "What the CDC lab found is that it wasn't anthrax."

The test results bring a little good news to a jittery nation on edge following a spate of reported anthrax cases since the Sept. 11 hijack attacks in New York and Washington area that killed nearly 5,400 people.

The news also comes amid reports on Friday that an employee of the New York Post newspaper tested positive for skin anthrax. The tabloid would be the fourth media organization in New York to be hit with the disease that has killed one man, a tabloid newspaper photo editor, in Florida.

The suspected anthrax case in Nevada centered around a suspicious letter from Malaysia that contained pornographic materials. Officials initially thought they had discovered anthrax on one of the clippings.

While preliminary results showed the letter contained anthrax, tests of six employees exposed to the envelope came back negative for exposure to the disease. None of the individuals have developed signs or symptoms of the disease and are not receiving antibiotics, state officials say.

Dee Brown, director of the State Health Laboratory, says state officials used a low-threshold test that showed there was cause for concern and acted on the side of caution.

"The national lab network was designed in exactly this fashion so that it may rule on the side of calling something positive when it may later be determined to be negative," Brown said in a statement. "The determination of a negative finding is more conclusive than a positive result."

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