Lawmakers take anthrax threat in stride

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2001 | 9:29 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The scene might have seemed surreal in the days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and recent anthrax scares: a grim Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle announcing Monday that someone apparently mailed him the bacteria.

It was a grave revelation -- the first anthrax alert in a government office. But the business of government continued relatively uninterrupted in the nation's capital Monday, including in the offices of Nevada's four congressional lawmakers. Those offices received no suspicious mailings Monday.

In these days of tightened security in Washington, with increased police patrols and congressional hearings on bioterrorism, people seemed to take the news in stride.

"Look around, folks here are not in a panic," Nathan Naylor, spokesman for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday afternoon as roughly 40 staffers in Reid's office went about their work.

Down the hall from Reid's office suite on the fifth floor in the Hart Senate Office Building, Capitol Police had quarantined Daschle's office, Daschle told reporters. The Senate's top Democrat couldn't get in; his staffers couldn't leave.

Today Capitol Police closed offices on the first through eighth floors in the southeast corner of the Hart building to check ventilation systems as a precaution. Reid's office remained open.

In most offices Monday the only disruption was to mail service, suspended indefinitely. Nevada lawmakers typically get at least 100 pieces of mail a day.

In Reid's office, the timing of the scare was uncanny. About an hour before news of anthrax in Daschle's office surfaced Monday morning, Reid's Deputy Chief of Staff David McCallum had assembled a weekly meeting with about 10 office workers, including two who handle mail. This week's topic: a briefing on new mail security measures, including tips on what kinds of packages to watch for.

And on Saturday, Senate Sergeant at Arms Alfonso Lenhardt sent Senate office managers a memo explaining that mail would be delayed a day for additional screening. Capitol Police X-ray mail before it is distributed to offices.

Lawmakers said the anthrax scare on Capitol Hill hit close to home, but wasn't unexpected. Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said he was angry that anthrax mailers were targeting congressional staffers, often interns.

"These people are totally innocent," Gibbons said. "It just shows how cowardly these terrorists are."

Gibbons' press secretary Amy Spanbauer said she had spoken with her worried mother in the afternoon, but other than that she had a routine Monday. House staffers are still confident about their safety, she said.

"We're a lot safer than we were Sept. 10," Spanbauer said. "We're more vigilant now."

Numerous congressional offices have reported suspicious packages in recent days.

In the office of Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., Eric Wortman, who sorts and distributes some office mail, said the news was a little unnerving but hardly scaring him from his job. Wortman last week started to open a suspiciously marked package that appeared to have a plastic baggie inside containing white material. He called Capitol Police who determined it was just tissue.

"Considering everything that was going on, it wasn't something I wanted to touch," Wortman said.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.