Attorney General Janet Reno on November 9 announced the creation of a Justice Department task force to target abortion clinic violence.

At the news conference Ms. Reno also offered a $500,000 reward for the arrest of the sniper who killed Dr. Barnett Slepian, the abortionist who was killed by a sniper in his Amherst, New York, home on October

Reno called the slaying 'just one more act of violence in a series of savage attacks against providers of reproductive health care.'

Declaring that the National Clinic Violence Task Force was a response to the wave of recent violence, Reno cited several attacks on abortion doctors and more than 30 incidents at clinics involving putrid butyric acid, bomb and arson threats, and letters claiming to contain deadly biological spores.

In addition to gathering evidence, the new task force will help train local law enforcement and abortion providers in attack response and prevention. A national database of clinic violence will be established and shared with local police and working groups already in place. At-risk clinics will also be identified and security systems improved.

The Justice Department has been under pressure from abortion rights groups to take action. The American Medical Association also pressed top Justice Department officials to protect doctors from anti-abortion violence.

The task force will be modeled after an earlier Justice Department task force that investigated whether a nationwide conspiracy was behind abortion-clinic violence. That task force's investigation, from 1994 through 1996, found no direct evidence of a nationwide conspiracy.

On the same day as Reno's press conference, letters warning the recipients they had been exposed to anthrax were received at St. Matthew Catholic School in Indianapolis, the Queen of the Martyrs Catholic Church in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, and the headquarters of the Pro-Life Action League in Chicago.

Anthrax is a disease that usually affects animals, but humans who inhale the spores can be infected. The disease can be treated with antibiotics.

Eight abortion clinics had received similar threatening letters within the two prior weeks. FBI officials in Indiana said the letter received at St. Matthew was nearly identical to a phony anthrax threat sent to five abortion clinics in Midwest states.