Senate starts getting back to business

WASHINGTON -- A Senate rattled by a ricin attack began returning to regular business Wednesday, and the lack of any reported illnesses prompted plans to reopen buildings.

Even so, officials continued to say they did not know how the powdery poison arrived Monday in the mailroom of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. Frist said he assumed it came in the mail because the powder was found on the tray of a machine his aides use to cut open envelopes.

"There's been no smoking letter information that helps tie this thing together," U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer told reporters.

As lawmakers awaited the results of tests measuring the ricin's potency, officials said none of the several dozen workers who were potentially exposed seemed ill.

Senators, voting for the first time this week, acted on a judgeship nomination, and at least three Senate committees went ahead with hearings, though they were held in House office buildings.

"I am not following anybody with any symptoms that would be consistent with a toxic exposure," said John Eisold, the U.S. Capitol attending physician.

The Postal Service said all tests for ricin at its District of Columbia facility that processes congressional mail were negative. The station, closed as a precaution, was to reopen Wednesday evening.

On Wednesday night, a white powder was found on the first floor of the Capitol, but tests for hazardous substances were negative. The building was not evacuated.

Bowing to growing complaints, Senate leaders were even letting senators and aides briefly re-enter their offices to remove needed documents and equipment. That included the fourth-floor corridor in the Dirksen Senate office building where the deadly toxin was discovered in Frist's mailroom.

"It's completely normal in there," said Laurie Schultz Heim, an aide to Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., who said she spent less than 10 minutes removing items from his offices, which are next to Frist's.

Yet with the entire Capitol complex subject to continuous air sampling and all congressional mail being collected and examined, no one was willing to say the threat was over.

Although ricin inhaled or injected can kill quickly, the incident -- so far -- seemed to be causing less tension than the anthrax letters sent to Capitol Hill in October 2001.

Lawmakers and aides said that was because being targeted by a biochemical substance is no longer novel for Congress and because initial indications were that the ricin had not spread into the air.

The FBI, Environmental Protection Agency, and 100 Marines from the corps' Chemical Biological Incident Response Force were among those investigating or removing mail for examination.

Officials said they had not yet found a link Wednesday between the ricin in Frist's office and ricin-laden letters found last fall in mail facilities serving the White House and the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport in South Carolina.

Gainer said no one had claimed credit for the ricin attack on Frist. And Frist said officials "have no earthly idea" if it may have been the work of international terrorists.

Frist said barring new problems, the Senate's two other office buildings would reopen this week. The Russell building was to reopen Thursday and the Hart building on Friday.

Dirksen was to reopen Monday.