It "certainly resembled" a group of letters received by governors' offices around the country Thursday and yesterday, a local FBI agent said.

The white, letter-sized envelope with the handwritten address "Executive Chambers, State Capitol, Honolulu, Hawaii," was discovered by Klompus shortly before 8 a.m. yesterday in the Capitol's fifth-floor conference room/mailroom.

Late Thursday, the local FBI office alerted Lingle's staff to be on the lookout for a certain type of mail after governor's offices in six western states received similar letters with a return address from the Ely State Prison, a maximum security facility in Nevada.

Federal and state investigators in Nevada are questioning inmates there about letters found rigged with a match to ignite when the envelope is torn open. None of the envelopes contained any message.

Besides the governors' offices, a Nevada prison official received a similar letter.

In other states, the match flared when three of the letters were opened, but no one has been injured in any of the incidents.

Some of the letters were intercepted during screening or because of the alert issued by Homeland Security officials.

One of two Ely inmates was listed as the sender of the letters, but authorities aren't sure if either inmate was involved, said Glen Whorton, assistant director for the Nevada Corrections Department.

He would not identify the inmates being questioned or details of their crimes. The investigation is focusing on Ely as the origin of the letters, although other places are not being excluded, he said.

"We're not assuming the names on the envelopes are simply the end of the matter," Whorton said. "Investigators are not just talking to the two inmates."

Whorton said the envelope didn't look unusual, so it wouldn't have been checked or opened before leaving the Ely prison — if that's where it came from.

Letters also were sent to governors in Montana, New York, Texas, Massachusetts, Idaho, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Nevada and Arizona. In some cases, the letters were intercepted in the mail stream before arriving at the governor's office.

The Montana Capitol was partly evacuated Thursday when the match burned the letter opened there, but it did not cause further damage.

The back of the envelope that Klompus found contained a stamp that said "ELY STATE PRISON" and the date Sept. 6, 2004.

Walking by the mailroom yesterday morning, Klompus said, he remembered the FBI warning and decided to go through the mail. Two other office staffers were in the room when he noticed the white envelope. "I looked and it said 'Ely, Nevada,' and I said 'This is it.' "

Upon finding the letter, he immediately "picked it up by its corner," went to his office, placed it in a plastic bag, and then called FBI agents, who removed the still unopened envelope from the Capitol shortly thereafter.

Klompus said "it wasn't as thin as a letter inside, but it wasn't anything you would be cautious about."

FBI spokesman Arnold Laanui said he could not comment on the contents or status of the letter, other than to confirm that "the letter certainly resembles one received by other gubernatorial offices."

Citing security reasons, Klompus declined to discuss the specific safety procedures followed by the governor's staff for opening mail addressed to the governor's office.