Senators Return to Hart Senate Office Building
WASHINGTON, Jan. 22–The Hart Senate Office Building reopened yesterday for the first time since mid-October, and most of the 50 Senators who have offices there, including Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, were prepared to return to their familiar haunts. Officials from the Centers for Disease Control closed the building on Oct. 17 after anthrax spores were found in a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota), whose office is in Hart.
“I come back with confidence,” Lieberman said as he returned to the building, “but I honestly said a prayer.”
Shortly after 2 p.m., Lieberman entered the almost-vacant building accompanied by his legislative director, Bill Bonvillian, and two security guards. Lieberman said he was relieved to return to his spacious seventh-floor digs.
Lieberman said Senators and their staffs should have few health concerns as the building re-opens.
“Risk is a part of life,” he said, but those in charge of the cleanup “have really reduced the risk as much as humanly possible.”
Senate staffs were scattered about Capitol Hill for the past three months, with Lieberman’s staff of 35 squeezed into the office of the Governmental Affairs Committee, which the Senator chairs.. The committee’s office is on the third floor of the neighboring Dirksen Senate Office Building. “I’m fortunate because I’m a committee chair,” Lieberman said. The committee, he added, has “a fine office.”
Lieberman told a small gathering of reporters that he was relieved to find his bibles “untouched, sturdy.” He was also pleased to find a model plane and model submarine in his office in good condition, and was delighted to hold a doll that his daughter Hannah had given to him. “It’s good to be home,” he said.
Lieberman’s staff spent the afternoon moving files from the temporary office in the Dirksen Building into his suite in the Hart Building. The office was scheduled to re-open to the public today at 9 a.m.
Written for the New Bedford Standard-Times in New Bedford, Mass.
