19 February 2006

In the Attic

I was up in the attic again this week, though not the way you normally think about. I was not there to visit a crazy relative or stash away the Christmas decorations. This is the attic of a special building, and visiting is always a matter of some sensitivity.

There is a sky-light over one of the cubicles inside the little office warren where I was going where you can watch the workman running flags up the little flagpole by the flank of the great dome. The flags are run up and stay at the top for about a second.

Yep, they flew over the nation's capital, just like the little note card from your Congressman says. It just wasn't the big pole in the middle, and it wasn't there very long. “Close enough for Government work,” as we used to say.

I confess I got a little misty sitting in the hard-backed chair under the television that the guard watches to pass the time. I worked on a crossword puzzle, waiting for the young staffer to come and get me. Time is a funny thing in the attic, very elastic, and I always want to be prepared with something to read or work on.

Back in the day, I had  had a Staff badge that certified me as a functionary of the 105th Congress, and permitted twenty-four hour access to the Capitol in the event of a legislative emergency. It was pretty cool, but it still did not grant me unlimited access to the Committee chambers.

Downstairs, I think they had metal detectors at the doors in those days, but that was about the extent of security. The point was that the place was supposed to be open to the people.

For my purposes, the easiest way to get to the Committee spaces in the Attic was through the Statuary Hall entrance, on the House side of the big white building. Some of the Appropriations staffers had offices up there, too, in the narrow corridor under the edge of the dome that led toward the Senate side of the building

Times have changed. There is construction everywhere on the grounds of the capitol, and the vehicle barriers are permanent. Bollards protrude from the grass along the driveways so there is no change for an unauthorized vehicle to get lose.

I got quizzed a couple times yesterday just approaching the vast building- the Capitol Police Presence is huge. There are more people in body armor and blue than there are concerned citizens like me in expensive three-button suits.

The approaches to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are not welcoming. The carpet is dirty and the walls need paint. It is really looking shabby up there- the Committee spaces originally were the home of the House Committee on Atomic Energy, and if you know the right people, they will let you see where the plaque used to be in the hearing room.

I talked to the majority Staff Director a couple weeks ago, and he told me they were scheduled to move to new offices in the Visitor's Center whenever they complete the work on it.

They should have been gone already, except for construction delays, and the Architect of the Capitol has put all but minor maintenance on hold for the current space, which the Committee has occupied since is establishment back in the late 1970s.

Consequently, the place looks awful. When they move out, no humans will replace them. The space will be used for air handlers or some other ventilation equipment. It is either going to be air conditioning or chem-bio filters. Only the Architect of the Capitol knows for sure.

It still amazes me that I can just walk up to the door, loftily announce that I have an appointment with someone-or-other and get a sticker that gives me unrestricted access to the building.

In the old days, with my Staff badge, I could roam from the House Rayburn Building to the Senate Hart Office building, all underground, taking those cool little trolleys with the courteous conductors, and then the little automated trains on the Senate side if I didn't feel like walking. There was a scandal about the cost overruns on the trains back in the day, but no one remembers that now.

The tunnels were the first things that got secured after the deranged man shot his way past the staff entrance near Statuary hall in 1998. I used that door once in a while, and that is where Officer Chestnut died, shot in the back while he was writing directions for some tourists. Detective Gibson was killed protecting the office of Majority Whip Tom Delay while the Congressman and his staff hid in the private bathroom inside.

The killing of the officers was enough to convince Congress that something needed to be done, but it was going to be expensive, and the lawmakers are always a little skittish about things that make us realize how expensive they are. I think the project was budgeted at around $175 million, but in the general panic after 9/11 they decided to just go ahead and fortify the capitol. After the Long War was declared, cost was no object.

This week the halls were packed with the usual assortment of citizens; just as they were on the day when Chestnut and Gibson were killed, or the day long ago when the Puerto Ricans stormed the building and began to shoot at the Members on the floor.

Today there were Hassidic Jews in hats, and groups of chipper lobbyists with name-tags doing the rounds.

Walking briskly own Statuary hall, past the statue of Phil Farnsworth, inventor of the cathode ray tube, I saw that Wyoming had finally contributed it's second statue to the Capitol collection.

According to Public Law, every State is entitled to have two larger-than-life statues on display. Wyoming had one, right near the entrance. it was of the remarkable Woman suffrage leader Esther Hobart Morris, who emigrated to a gold rush camp at South Pass City, Wyoming Territory, and got women the vote. She was the first woman to hold judicial office in the modern world.

This new statue caught my eye. It is a remarkably detailed and larger than life sculpture of Chief Washakie, the noted Shoshone warrior, statesman, and peacemaker.

He now stands next to one of my favorite statues, the astronaut  "Jack" Swigert, who was on the "Houston, we have a problem," Apollo mission, and later got elected to Congress. He died before he could take his seat, but his statue is something !
else.

Times being what they are, I think Wyoming was lucky they didn't send something from Brokeback Mountain.

It might not be too late, though. Some states are trying to figure out if they can replace the statues of those who are already there. There are a bunch of Confederates who should be looking over their marble shoulders, if they could.

There was a photo crew camped out in The Crypt by the official elevator. They know how to wait. They had books and coolers and seemed quite content to spend the day doing nothing.

I always get a kick out of stepping over the velvet rope with the sign saying “official business only. They displayed absolutely no interest in me. I assumed they were trying to get a shot of the CIA Director or a Big Dog from Fort Meade as they left the closed hearings they have been having over the eavesdropping program.

In back of them was a big model of what Capitol Hill is going to look like when they get done with all the construction. The entrance to the complex is going to be on the East side of the Hill, on the other side from the National Mall.

There will be a glass roof over an auditorium with a view of the Dome, an exhibition gallery, orientation theater for tour groups, a 600-seat cafeteria, gift shops, and restrooms. Plus more offices, of course, to handle the burgeoning hoard of Hill Staffers who appear to be growing like locusts.

A little sign on the model said the center would shelter visitor from the unpredictable D.C. weather, but I think it is pretty apparent that the center is going to focus and control people. The thing is huge. the information on the model said it was the largest project in the Capitol's two hundred year history, and is approximately three quarters the size of the Capitol itself. The entire facility is located underground so it will not detract from the appearance of the Capitol, or disrupt the landscape architecture of Frederick Law Olmsted, completed in 1874.

It will also enable them to close up all the doors on the building, and enable them to screen everything in a controlled environment. Think of it as I.M. Pei's Louvre courtyard, where everything is now underground.

My appointment had been made at the request of the Staff Director, who thought what I had to say was interesting enough to bear repetition. I took out my crossword puzzle after I turned in my cell phone, and waited long enough to chew the fat with the Capitol Hill Policeman who mans the desk outside the heavy door.

Somebody's security detail was there too, and we were all accustomed to waiting on the ponderous affairs of the Congress. Eventually the staff came and got me, and signed the log permitting access. .She walked me back through the warren of offices that surround the large and small conference rooms.

In the old days, the Democrats were in the majority, and I would sneak back here to the office Siberia where they had placed the few Republican staffers.

That had all changed, of course, and there must be twice as many staffers as there used to be. We jammed ourselves into a cubical, which we reached by walking through someone else's. They really are all stacked on top of one another. A young Asian-American  woman was sitting diagonally from me, peering intently into her screen. I was not introduced.

When we had occupied the two chairs in the cubical we just about filled it up. I outlined the current status of the things that were of interest, and offered to provide any additional information that might be useful.

She was gracious, in that way that a young person can be when talking to someone older. She said there might be an opportunity to talk further, after the budget hearings were over, and of course she could talk, peer-to-peer, with other staffers on other committees if the occasion required.

I said that would be swell, and she escorted me back out again. I took the elevator down and the camera crew was still there. I looked at the model of the new Capitol, and then walked down the long corridor with the Confederates and Indians and Astronauts.

It was nice outside, and I think I started to whistle on the walk to the Metro.

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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