WASHINGTON (KRT) — The House of Representatives shut down Wednesday and Congress closed six office buildings after more than 30 Senate workers and Capitol Hill police officers tested positive for exposure to the deadly anthrax bacteria.
The congressional staff members exposed to anthrax included at least 23 employees of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who received a letter Friday containing anthrax, and three staffers of Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., whose office is next to Daschle’s suite in the Hart Senate Office Building. Five Capitol Hill police officers also were exposed.
The workers are taking antibiotics and are unlikely to contract the disease, officials said. The Senate remained open for business, but House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., decided to close the House on Wednesday afternoon to allow its offices to be screened. The House will return on Tuesday, Hastert said.
The extraordinary spectacle of a deadly microorganism making its way into the halls of Congress left lawmakers and their staff on edge and in a state of widespread confusion. Authorities sent mixed signals Wednesday about the threats’ severity, the virulence of the anthrax samples and the likely sophistication of those behind the episodes, to the distress of some public health experts.
Hastert, for instance, asserted early in the day that anthrax had been found in the Hart building’s ventilation system, a statement that other lawmakers and health officials spent much of the day debunking.
In the past week, anthrax has been found at the headquarters of a tabloid newspaper publisher in Florida, television networks in New York, on Capitol Hill and at New York Gov. George Pataki’s Manhattan office.
The discovery at Pataki’s office was prompted by a suspicious letter, leading authorities to conduct a series of tests, one of which showed a “probability” of anthrax in a low-traffic area of the office. The office was to be closed for the rest of the week, and the governor and his staff began taking Cipro as a precaution.
Tests continue on the anthrax contained in the letters sent to NBC News in New York and to Daschle’s office.
Investigators have found similarities between the handwriting and postmarks of letters sent to both offices. That, coupled with authorities’ conclusion that the anthrax found in Florida was of the same strain found at NBC, suggests possible links between all three episodes, officials said.
Deputy Surgeon Gen. Ken Moritsugu said initial test results from hundreds of congressional aides indicate the exposure was confined to a very specific area of the Hart building.
“There has been no evidence of spores in the ventilation system,” Moritsugu said. Authorities did, however, say that tests revealed the presence of anthrax in a Senate mail room.
Mixed signals arose when House and Senate leaders met with President Bush in the White House after breakfast and agreed to close Congress for the remainder of the week. But the full Senate did not agree with the decision of its leaders.
“Senators almost unanimously felt that it didn’t set a very good standard for the rest of the country to panic and in a sense give terrorists a victory that they had shut down the Congress of the United States,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. “It behooves us to follow the same advice the president has given the entire country to be as normal as possible.”