By Paul Duggan and Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 27, 2006; A01
A report of possible gunshots in the parking garage of the Rayburn House Office Building yesterday prompted a massive response by law enforcement authorities, who locked down the 2.4 million-square-foot building next to the Capitol and conducted an extensive search that turned up nothing suspicious, officials said.
U.S. Capitol Police said late yesterday that they believe construction work inside the building caused noise that was mistaken for gunfire by a member of Congress and reported to police about 10:30 a.m. The report touched off about five hours of disruption in a building in which 168 House members have offices.
The concerns prompted the District to lock down public schools not just on Capitol Hill but throughout the city, said schools spokeswoman Leonie Campbell. Because school officials were unsure of the seriousness of the emergency, Campbell said, "we decided to err on the side of caution."
Throughout the day, authorities said they were not certain who reported the gunfire. Rep. Jim Saxton (R-N.J.) later revealed that he was the one who heard the sounds.
He said he heard what he "thought sounded like a 9mm handgun" when he stepped out of an elevator in the parking garage of the Rayburn building yesterday morning. "I dove back into the elevator, waited for the doors to close, pushed the button to go back to my floor" and returned to his office, where, he said, "I told my chief of staff to call the Capitol Police and tell them what I heard."
Describing himself as someone who "grew up with firearms" and has served 18 years on the Armed Services Committee, Saxton said, "I am very familiar with weapons."
He said in an interview last night from New Jersey that he later learned that the sounds "came from a pneumatic hammer."
Authorities reacted swiftly. In e-mail alerts, police ordered people to "shelter in place" or "quickly move into the nearest interior office space or interior hallway and away from windows." Scores of officers, many heavily armed, searched hundreds of rooms on the building's six floors, as well as three garage levels. Ambulances and firetrucks, including one labeled "mass casualty unit," were positioned on the street. At 3:18 p.m., an "all-clear" message was sent.
By then, the tension level among those locked inside had diminished considerably, replaced by hunger and a desire to get moving. At midday, in a third-story window of the Rayburn building, at Independence Avenue and First Street SW, a sign appeared: "HELP. SEND PIZZA NOW."
A woman who works for Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) was in the Rayburn building's gym when the lockdown began. She was taken to a hospital by ambulance, said Kingston's spokesman, David All, who described her as "just a little shaken up under the circumstances. . . . We have talked with our colleague, and she's doing well."
Capitol Police officers told D.C. police commanders within 30 minutes of the report that they thought construction workers probably made the noise, according to a D.C. police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because his department was not in charge of the search. Despite their doubts about a gunman in the building, Capitol Police felt they needed to search thoroughly out of an abundance of caution, he said.
"In doing their routine duties, [construction workers] made some sort of noise that sounded like shots fired," said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, a Capitol Police spokeswoman, who described the report from Saxton's office as "a valid call."
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."
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.
