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Report Of Gunfire Causes Hill Lockdown
Authorities in the past decade have dealt with several deadly threats and frightening false alarms at the Capitol and the congressional office buildings around it, including a gunman who killed two officers, anthrax spores in the mail and small planes inadvertently encroaching in restricted airspace. Schneider said yesterday's response was warranted.
"What the Capitol Police are doing is ensuring that every single person in the Rayburn building belongs in the Rayburn building," Schneider said during the search. "That means doing it the old-fashioned way. We're going to door-to-door, floor by floor, every square inch. . . . We are taking every precaution. We want to make sure that life safety is preserved."
  U.S. Capitol Police, seen through a glass door, search the Rayburn House Office Building after a congressman reported hearing gunshots in the building's basement garage. The building was locked down for five hours. (By Jay Mallin -- Bloomberg News) |
The Capitol building itself was locked down for a while, then reopened, then locked down and reopened again, without official explanations. During the lockdowns, employees and others could not leave the offices they were in, even to go to the basement snack bar.
The House was not in session yesterday, but the Senate conducted business for much of the morning and part of the afternoon. Although most senators had left for the holiday weekend, Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) delivered floor speeches on various topics while police were swarming over the Rayburn building across the street.
"The cops are doing what they have to," said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), speaking by phone from her Rayburn office during the lockdown. "They are not only being cautious, but precautionary."
Rep. William D. Delahunt (D-Mass.) praised police for doing "an extraordinary job. . . . I didn't see any confusion at all."
But not everyone was pleased.
Miles away, at Lincoln Multicultural Middle School in the Columbia Heights section of Northwest Washington, pupils were bored and annoyed with being stuck indoors. The lockdown ended about 1 p.m.
"The Capitol?" said Jose Espinara, 13. "Over there, and we're over here? . . . It ain't prison, so why are we locked down?"
When news of the gunshot report reached Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), he was conducting a House Intelligence Committee hearing. He interrupted a witness to tell those in the hearing room that they should not leave and that the doors were being closed. "It's a little unsettling to get a BlackBerry message put in front of you that says there's gunfire in the building," Hoekstra said.
About a half-dozen workers in the offices of Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) answered calls and carried on with work as usual, said legislative assistant Heath Bumgardner. "People were concerned, but we go through a lot of alarms here, some real, some false," Bumgardner said.
Warnings continued throughout the day. An intercom announcement at noon told everyone to stay put. And at 1:57 p.m., an e-mail alert told people what to expect as the search continued: "Police officers will knock three times on each office door, announce, 'United States Capitol Police,' knock three additional times, and then voice the code word."
The code word: "baseball." Then: "Unlock and open your office doors for the police and cooperate with all police instructions," the alert said.
And finally, at 3:18 p.m., came this announcement: "All persons in the Rayburn building may resume their normal routines and are able to move about freely, retrieve their cars from the garage, etc. . . . Police express their most sincere appreciation to all concerned for their understanding."
Staff writers Charles Babington, Stephen Barr, Bill Brubaker, D'Vera Cohn, Karen DeYoung, Zachary A. Goldfarb, V. Dion Haynes, Theola S. Labbe, Dana Priest, Nikita Stewart, Elissa Silverman and Martin Weil contributed to this report.
