Members Ready to Return
WASHINGTON – New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg was meeting in his Capitol office with First Lady Laura Bush on early childhood development issues yesterday when a hijacked aircraft plunged into the Pentagon.
“The Secret Service first tried to move Mrs. Bush,” Gregg said. “She stayed in my office with Senator Edward Kennedy.” But when the Secret Service determined that the White House was not safe, the President’s wife left for an undetermined destination, and, Gregg said, he left for his Virginia home when the Capitol was evacuated.
Gregg, like other New Hampshire delegates and staff members, was stunned by the chain of terrorist attacks in New York and Washington that forced evacuation of the Capitol. Despite the chaos and an overriding sense of disbelief, members said, the key to recovery is to return to business as usual as soon as possible and not to let these acts of terrorism disrupt American life.
“That would be the terrorists’ biggest wish, I think,” said Rep. Charles Bass, (R. N.H.). “They’re going to be sadly disappointed. The demeanor in Washington has been excellent.”
Gregg said Americans are concerned for the people who were injured and who died as well as for the emergency personnel and also want to know as soon as possible who is responsible for this horrible attack.
“This is a seminal event,” Gregg said. “Nothing like this has happened since Pearl Harbor.” Gregg said that the terrorist attacks show that we need to change our culture and take a hard look at how we approach issues of terrorism.
“The mood was one of incredulity,” Bass said. “We were trying to understand something unbelievable.”
Bass said he was working in his office when the planes slammed into New York City’s World Trade Center. Moments later, an aircraft crashed into the Pentagon.
Bass and his staff heard an alarm and evacuated the building. “It was surreal as we were walking away,” Bass’s press secretary Sally Tibbetts said. “Like something out of a movie.”
They went to a staff member’s apartment about four blocks from the Capitol. On the way there, Tibbetts said, they were ready to turn around and go back to work, because they heard that the airspace over the Capitol was safe. But another member of Congress informed them the Capital had been shut down.
Gregg was also working in his office when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center. “I saw the second explosion, and it was clearly a terrorist event,” Gregg said.
Representative John Sununu evacuated the Capitol along with everyone else. He said Members of Congress already knew it was a “tense situation,” even before the Pentagon was hit.
“We have had various security threats on Capital Hill before,” Sununu said. “We move quickly. It was understood that this [the evacuation] was necessary.”
Sununu was back at his office by early afternoon, after a noon security briefing. He said he hoped the next step for the members would be to get back to business.
“We should not allow this kind of a terrorist act to succeed in disrupting the operation of the government,” Sununu said.
Sununu said that every member’s focus is on the victims and their families and making sure that everything is being done to rescue potential survivors.
