Capitol Reopens; Offices Stay Closed
By LARRY MARGASAK
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress returned to work in the Capitol Tuesday after shutting down last week because anthrax was found in a Senate office. House and Senate office buildings remained closed for anthrax testing.
It remained unclear when the office buildings - three for each chamber - would reopen. Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said he believed some could begin reopening Tuesday, but others said there could be a longer delay on the Senate side, where a letter containing anthrax was received Oct. 15 by the office of Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D.
Capitol Police declared a second-floor room just outside the Senate chamber to be safe, following earlier reports that there had been preliminary positive tests for anthrax in three places in that room. As they do each week, Senate Democrats prepared to have lunch together in the room, which is named for former President Lyndon B. Johnson.
"The LBJ Room has been exhaustively tested and there is no evidence of anthrax contamination," U.S. Capitol Police spokesman Lt. Dan Nichols said in a written statement.
Daschle aides who tested positive for anthrax exposure had deposited their clothes in the room last week at the request of the FBI. Nichols said the FBI later decided the clothes were of no evidentiary value.
House and Senate leaders were expected to make decisions later Tuesday on whether office buildings could reopen Wednesday. The Senate buildings could take longer to reopen because of the time it will take to clean areas where anthrax was discovered, a process that some officials speaking on condition of anonymity said might take two weeks.
Amid suspicions that mail with anthrax may have made its way to the Longworth House Office Building, all the mail in that building _ which is now closed _ may be burned as a precaution, said two congressional officials speaking on condition of anonymity.
Over the weekend, officials said a machine in another House office building that bundles mail for Longworth was found to contain anthrax. Officials have not found the source of the contamination, but they are concerned that it would take too many resources and be too time-consuming to go through all the mail now in that building.
When the Senate convened, lawmakers immediately headed to the chamber to vote, with Republicans blocking consideration of a foreign aid appropriations bill in the Democratic-controlled Senate to protest the number of President Bush's judicial nominees considered by the Senate.
But the closings because of the anthrax scare slowed legislative work. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., asked Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who chairs the Judiciary Committee, about the status of two U.S. attorney nominees from his state that are pending on the Senate calendar.
"I normally would be able to tell you, but the committee room is over in Dirksen, which is still closed, and my files are in my office, which is in Russell, which is still closed," Leahy replied.
Some 5,000 nasal swabs of congressional employees have turned up no new anthrax exposure beyond 28 cases found last week and none of the 28 has tested as having contracted the ailment, Nichols said Monday.
The House, which recessed Wednesday as the concerns about anthrax engulfed Capitol Hill, was scheduled Tuesday to vote on measures aimed at curbing bioterrorism and re-establishing war bonds. The Senate, out since Thursday, hoped to address a foreign aid package and possibly other spending measures this week.
By the end of the week, lawmakers also hoped to send President Bush legislation giving law enforcement expanded authority to search for suspected terrorists with new wiretapping, search and Internet monitoring powers.
Most of the 28 people who were exposed to anthrax worked in the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, where a letter containing highly refined anthrax spores was opened on Oct. 15. The others included six Capitol Police personnel and two aides to Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., whose office is near the majority leader's.
Nichols would provide information only on what he said were conclusive test results of anthrax contamination. One of them is the area of the Hart Senate Office Building where Daschle has his personal office. The three other locations were a congressional mail-sorting facility several blocks from the Capitol; the mailroom of the Ford House Office Building; and the mailroom in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.
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