I figured the gas-mask brigade was just another sign of a jittery nation, another false anthrax scare. I dialed my lunch dates on my cell phone and one of them confirmed that hunch: the congressional Sergeant at Arms had issued new guidelines for handling suspicious mail. A Gephardt aide found something that fit the bill–a letter with a handwritten address, an international postmark and no return address. The Capitol police arrived and placed the office in “lockdown.” No one was supposed to enter or leave. According to a Gephardt aide, police determined that the letter contained nothing suspicious. The police found a second suspicious piece of mail but they determined that it, too, posed no threat.
But on the other side of Capitol Hill, there seemed to be no false alarm. Around 10:30 a.m., a staffer in Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s South Dakota office had opened a letter containing suspicious powder. Capitol police arrived at the office, located not in the Capitol itself, but on the fifth floor of the nearby Hart Senate office building. Two field tests suggested the letter contained anthrax, according to the Capitol police. Daschle’s satellite office was quickly closed and staffers there were quarantined, tested for possible exposure to the dangerous bacteria and treated with the antibiotic Cipro as a preventive measure. Capitol police said the suspicious mail was being whisked to an Army facility in Maryland for further analysis. President Bush, appearing at the White House with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, first broke the news of the incident. Daschle himself spoke to reporters later at an outdoor news conference. “I am very, very disappointed and angered,” he said. Daschle declined to offer further details about the letter, saying there was now an ongoing investigation.
By midday on a dazzling fall afternoon, all mail service to the Capitol complex had been suspended. Public tours were halted. And workers continued adding new fencing and concrete barriers around the increasingly fortified Capitol building. Tense Capitol police clustered in the hallways whispering about anthrax testing and triple checking ID badges at every bend in the hallway. The Hill had the jitters already. Traffic around the Capitol had already been restricted with trucks banned within a 40-block area. Perhaps the most pessimistic sign was a constitutional amendment offered by Washington state Rep. Brian Baird: it would allow governors to name replacements if more than 25 percent of the 435 House members were killed.
Still, there were moves to keep panic in check too. Congressional aides phoned their worried parents to let them know everything was OK. And Daschle himself vowed not to be swayed by the apparent terrorism. “We have to recognize that the risk is higher than it was a few weeks ago, but we have to live our lives,” he said. “We have to conduct our business here in the Congress and across this country, and we intend to do that.” President Bush plans to suggest that Congress allocate another $1.5 billion to the Department of Health and Human Services for the fight against bioterrorism. As the anthrax scare hits home, few in Congress are likely to disagree.
