© Reuters/Noah Berger
Facebook facility, Menlo Park, California
Facebook facility, Menlo Park, California
"At 11:00 AM PDT this morning, a package delivered to one of our mail rooms was deemed suspicious," Facebook said in a statement. "We evacuated four buildings and are conducting a thorough investigation in coordination with local authorities."
The company added that while authorities have not yet identified the substance, they have cleared three of the four evacuated buildings for repopulation. The FBI confirmed to the Associated Press that federal agents were assisting on the scene.
The Menlo Park Fire Marshal reported that two Facebook employees may have come in contact with the nerve agent. "We have two possible exposures but right now they are not exhibiting any signs or symptoms," said Menlo Park Fire Marshall Jon Johnston.
The machine used to detect dangerous substances at the mail processing center reportedly identified sarin on the package on two out of three tests, but it is unclear whether they were false positives.
Comment: If Russia hadn't came to the Syrian government's assistance, attacks like this would be a much more regular occurrence in Russia. The IS-aligned Caucasus Emirate migrated to Syria to join in the Islamist revolution there. And that's where most of them died.
That said, you can't always trust SITE, or IS sources. While many of the attacks they claim are later verified (especially the ones in Syria and Iraq, where they had a substantial presence), many are not, and could simply be opportunistic PR moves.
For more background on the Islamist scene in Russia, see SOTT's interview with Gordon Hahn: