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Posted on 11/01/2001 8:51:31 AM PST by titleist975

In the face of a serious threat to the Capitol and its surrounding office buildings, the House is prepared to transfer its operations to Fort McNair at a moment's notice, according to lawmakers and staffers involved in the project.

Although there's no way to recreate the marble halls and the grand Rotunda of the Capitol, the makeshift chamber - which would be located in an undisclosed building at Fort McNair in Southwest D.C. - would provide all the necessary elements to make voting and legislative business possible.

"We tested our plans and now know that we have a system that works," said GOPConference Chairman J.C. Watts (Okla.).

Officials have secured podiums, rostrums, televisions, cameras, audio equipment and phone lines so the building would resemble the House floor in general layout and organization.

"You would be amazed to see how much this site looks like the House floor,"said one senior staffer involved in the project.

The Senate also has a contingency plan to meet at a military installation, though details of the plan have not been disclosed.

Although discussions were under way about trying to replicate the House's electronic voting system and its billboards, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the ranking member on the House Administration Committee, said lawmakers would likely vote manually with green and red cards to indicate "yes" and "no" votes.

House officials also have taken steps to make the site accessible to the media. "Press would be included," Hoyer said. "It's important to have the American people see that Congress is in session."

Aides said plans have been made to allow C-SPAN to broadcast and to allow journalists to enter the building, although it is not known whether the new location could accommodate all reporters with Capitol Hill credentials.

According to aides involved in the process, Fort McNair has long been identified as an alternative meeting place for Congress, but plans to transform the base into the House's headquarters remained loose and largely hypothetical.

Detailed planning for an alternative site began in earnest after Sept. 11. But the project shifted into overdrive when a letter containing anthrax was sent to Majority Leader Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.) and the threat of bioterrorism spread across the Hill.

Sergeant-at-Arms Bill Livingood, Clerk of the House Jeff Trandahl, Chief Administrative Officer Jay Eagen and House Administration officials formed the House Operations Recovery Team, or HORT, and furiously worked around the clock to make sure Fort McNair would be ready if lawmakers were forced to move there. Key staffers in the offices of Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) were also directly involved.

"[Trandahl] and [Eagen] have done all the work and they've kept us in the loop,"said Gephardt Chief of Staff Steve Elmendorf. "[Moving to Fort McNair] is not something that any of us were hoping we'd do, but we're glad there was a team working on it."

By the evening of Oct. 17, the day Hastert and Gephardt announced the House would shut down, the staffs of the House Administration Committee and the Sergeant-at-Arms, Clerk of the House and Chief Administrative Officer's offices were already working from Fort McNair to extend phone lines, transport podiums and make it possible for Members to vote there. Hastert and Gephardt were also under pressure to make sure there was a physical place for Members to conduct business, as the House was scheduled to meet Oct. 23.

"We had to have it ready," one senior GOP aide said. "The House would have to be televised from there, so we had to get it ready." Even when the Capitol opened to staffers and reporters Oct. 22, aides said the team of officers and staff were still working out the remaining details. At one point that evening a fire alarm went off at Fort McNair, but the group continued its business outside on the lawn with flashlights, using cell phones to participate in a bipartisan conference call updating aides about plans to relocate lawmakers' offices to the General Accounting Office.

During the call, the aides were told only that there would be an alternative site for the chamber, but not that plans were under way to move floor action to Fort McNair the next day if the House side of the Capitol wasn't open. Republicans House staffers said they were able to move quickly on plans for a different site because the House administrative officers had already been working to develop an alternative location for lawmakers to hold floor sessions years before the Capitol became a target for terrorism.

Before Sept. 11 the House Administration panel, Livingood, Trandahl and Eagen had identified two places on the Capitol campus to hold the session if lawmakers lost the use of the House floor for any reason: the expansive Ways and Means Committee chamber located in the Longworth House Office Building and the Caucus Room in the Cannon House Office Building. "After September 11 we realized our world had changed and we needed to look for an off-campus location,"said a House staffer involved in the process.

Just days after the attacks, with the Pentagon still spewing smoke, the group of officials, lawmakers and staffers started scouring the city to make sure Fort McNair was the ideal place to provide both the security and the accessibility needed to accommodate 435 Members as well as their personal and committee staffs. Union Station was among nearly a dozen sites discussed, but was discarded because of the difficulty officials would face securing such a busy hub of public transportation.

The National Building Museum near Judiciary Square also was considered until security officials decided that it "had too much glass"and that its rows of windows could cause a hazard if it were attacked.

Officials and lawmakers decided to stick with Fort McNair because it provided the meeting space and the additional office space on a military compound already fortified with gates and military police. Its proximity to Capitol Hill also makes the site easily accessible to Members. Opened in 1791, the base, which houses the National Defense University (home to the War College) was originally part of Pierre L'Enfant's plan for the city to ensure military personnel were nearby to protect the Capitol.

While the House's administrative officers focused on Fort McNair, House Administration Committee staffers struggled to find space for the the thousands of staffers who were forced out of their offices by environmental sweeps aimed at rooting out traces of anthrax.

The panel first contacted the General Services administration, which had some space available in the Crystal City section of Arlington, Va. But the call led others to consider the GAO, whose offices are located nearby.

At one point officials and staffers also considered relocating offices and staff to a downtown hotel. That idea was rejected because it would be difficult to quickly convert the rooms into office space to accommodate computers, phone lines and fax machines, according to aides involved.

In the past two weeks, lawmakers and their staffs have gradually returned to the familiar environs of their Capitol Hill offices. But the Longworth building remains closed until at least next week, and fear of an unpredictable attack on Congress remains.

For some lawmakers and staff involved in the plans at Fort McNair, just knowing that Congress can physically relocate is a source of solace.

"I was so confident that the site was ready to go that I didn't even ask where the location was,"quipped Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas.)

"It's comforting to know that if there were a need for it, we would have a functional site where actual legislative business could be conducted," added another senior aide.

In fact, Hastert was so pleased with all the emergency response efforts of the last two months that he invited everyone involved - including Ney, Livingood, Trandahl, Eagen, Architect of the Capitol Alan Hantman, U.S. Capitol Police spokesman Lt. Dan Nichols and Attending Physician John Eisold - to a closed-door leadership meeting Tuesday afternoon to thank them personally, specifically mentioning the work done at Fort McNair.

The mini-celebration included a cake with the words, "Thanks, from the House GOP leadership." "We are extremely proud of our House officers and the work of their team, as well as the cooperation between House officers and leadership and House Administration," said Ted Van Der Meid, a top Hastert aide.

John Bresnahan contributed to this report.

This is not directed at the person who started this thread.  It's directed at our leaders and the media.

Perhaps someone, anyone can explain why it's a good idea to announce any contingency plans we have, in advance.

By doing so we allow those who would do us harm to plan a course of action to attack the second location as well as the first.

As far as I am concerned, this is just futher proof that our leaders on Capital Hill are unfit to serve.
Why do we continue to elect such idiots to represent us?

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