A Capitol Tour, Part IV: Bombs Detonate
Violence came to the US Capitol long before January 6th, including from two leftist domestic terror groups, the Weather Underground and the all-female May 19th group
Miss the first three installments? Here go you: I, II, and III.
To hear the laments of many in Congress and especially the media, January 6th, 2021, was the most violent day in the US Capitol’s history. Or, as Joe Biden called it during his first address to the largely vacant, masked, and socially-distant Joint Session of Congress to commemorate his first 100 days in office, “The worst attack on our democracy since the civil war.”
That alone was profoundly ignorant, but given that the now-80-year-old president was around when the Capitol was last bombed, it made him and his speechwriters look foolish. Many others correctly point out far more severe “attacks on our democracy,” starting with 9/11 and Pearl Harbor.
But suppose you consider the US Capitol Building the iconic symbol of our democratic Republic. I do. In that case, there is another event or two that I always point out on my tours, especially as we leave the Senate’s chamber, walk past my former office, and into the “Ohio clock” area that is best known today for weekly press conferences by the Senate’s respective floor leaders.
The Secretary’s office during my time was located in S-208 of the Capitol, just off the Chamber floor, until shortly after I left office in 1997. It belongs now to the Assistant Republican Leader (John Thune, R-SD). The main office is a suite of three rooms known as the John F. Kennedy Room. That’s because after Kennedy was elected President, his vice president-elect, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, assigned him an office smaller than his for the transition. Johnson was still “Master of the Senate” for a few more weeks, and he wanted Kennedy to know that. The office was initially designed to house the official reporters of debate. It would later become the Senate Majority Leader’s office as Mike Mansfield and, later, Robert C. Byrd assumed the title. In past tours, during recesses, when the office is open, I’ll obtain permission to visit my old office, which still features the Oklahoma State Seal. Other secretaries who have occupied that office also added their home state seals over time.
A favorite story. Late one evening, while at my desk in S-208, someone knocked at the rear door near the Senate’s main east-front entrance. It was not uncommon to have tourists meander by to get a glimpse of an apparently famous room behind a closed door. It could be irritating at times. “Yes!” I blurted, inconvenienced, as I was wrapping up to go home.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) quietly opened the door, leaned in, and politely asked if he could show his son, freshman Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), his brother’s old office. “Of course, Senator, be my guest.” They didn’t stay long, but I always appreciated the late Senator Kennedy’s unfailing politeness and appreciation of history. He was a genuine institutionalist who always welcomed new officers and Senators with kindness, including this former GOP campaign warrior from Oklahoma who actually did a little work for his 1994 reelection campaign opponent, now-Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT). Romney lost handily to Kennedy in 1994 but would later serve a single term as Massachusetts Governor before winning the GOP nomination for President in 2012.
Another favorite story. I made a point of meeting with as many of my predecessors as I could during my early days as Secretary since I was profoundly ignorant of the position but eager to learn. That included lunch with the oldest surviving Secretary of the Senate, Frank Valeo, who served with Mansfield. Upon walking into my office, he noticed a squatty, ugly brown chair near the rear door. “Oh, I see you still have the Churchill chair,” Valeo told me. It seems that when the former Prime Minister, in his later years, came calling on the Senate Majority Leader, he preferred to sit in that chair. That chair won newfound respect. Suppose those walls and that chair could talk. I occasionally sat on that chair, hoping for a transfusion of wisdom. Most who know me will acknowledge that it didn’t work.
Prior Secretaries, including Stan Kimmitt and Joe Stewart, were invaluable resources. And even the most innocuous furniture pieces could be historic. Sadly, the last I checked, the Churchill chair was no longer in that room.
I’m often asked how one becomes Secretary of the Senate. It used to be popularly elected by the majority caucus - there was an open primary for the job. That changed shortly after Byrd because the majority leader following the 1976 elections and his caucus chose Kimmitt over his recommendation for the job. The irritated Byrd quietly cut a deal with Republican leader Howard Baker that, in the future, Secretaries would be nominated to the full Senate by the Majority Leader. But Baker would first use that new power after the GOP won control of the Senate in the 1980 election, nominating Bill Hildebrand. When Robert J. Dole succeeded Baker, he nominated the first woman Secretary of the Senate, JoAnne Coe. Byrd would finally name Stewart when the Democrats won control in 1986. The deal also included switching offices. The Democratic leader now has a suite overlooking the west front. Unlike the House Speaker’s offices, they do not change with party control. Baker and his successors were happy with their historic suite in the Capitol’s original section, also looking west.
When Republicans won control of the Senate in 1994, Dole finally settled on me as Secretary. I was not his first choice. Washington Post reporter and author Bob Woodward wrote how I won the job in his 1997 book “The Choice.” I wrote about it in my tribute to the late Sen. Dole upon his passing. I am forever in his debt.
But S-208 has had its brush with violence, too.
It was late in the evening of November 7, 1981. The Senate had adjourned just a short while ago. Sometime earlier in the day, someone dropped off a satchel in the storage space underneath the seat of a bench between Senate Democratic Leader Byrd’s office and the Mansfield Room. The stately, wood-paneled Mansfield meeting room was added as part of a 1961 expansion of the Capitol’s east front. I told the story in a blog post after the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
That satchel contained an explosive device. Its detonation, attributed to the female-led “May 19th” group, while resulting in no casualties, caused extensive damage. President Clinton pardoned one of the perpetrators, Susan Rosenberg, who now raises money for Black Lives Matter. It severely damaged a historical portrait of Daniel Webster and gave a bust of Theodore Roosevelt a black eye. It blew the door off Byrd’s office and destroyed an original glass window featuring the official Senate seal. It has since been replaced. Magnetometers and increased security became a permanent feature.
That bombing wasn’t the first or the second to occur in the Capitol. The first would occur on July 2, 1915, when a German professor at Harvard planted three sticks of dynamite just outside the Senate’s reception room that knocked a guard out of his chair. The second occurred on March 1, 1971, when the Marxist Weather Underground also bombed the Senate side of the Capitol in protest of the invasion of Laos during the Vietnam War.
The Capitol has experienced its share of violence, including in 1890, 1954, 1997, and 2021. All of which we cover as we tour where those events largely happened. Each was tragic, but all part of the American fabric. They likely won’t be the last.
As we move past the site of the 1983 bombing and turn down the hallway to our left, I always stop for visitors to see the terrific views to the west as we look over the Robert J. Dole Balcony. This outdoor patio was frequently used by Sen. Dole and remains under the jurisdiction of the Republican Leader (Mitch McConnell). Today, staff use it primarily for outdoor meetings on balmy days and, of course, to watch the National Symphony perform on the Capitol’s west lawn every Independence Day, followed by fireworks near the Washington monument.
I frequently spotted Sen. Dole, never breaking a sweat, on the patio, often working on speech while working on his famous tan.
Before walking past the GOP Leader’s office towards the “mini” or Small Senate Rotunda, I always point to the change in the floor, which drops slightly from the Minton tile floors of the 1865 expansion to the Mosaic floor laid before the building originally opened in late 1800, even as some rooms on the third floor were unfinished. The British burned the Capitol in 1814, which resulted in the new construction of an expanded Senate chamber, conversion of the original Senate chamber on the first floor into the Supreme Court chamber, and a “new” House chamber, known today as Statuary Hall.
A quiz.
As we pass by the GOP Leaders office to our right and the old Senate Chamber to our left, we come across a small but stunning small Senate Rotunda including a majestic chandelier surrounded by columns adorned at the top with odd-looking leaves.
What was the prominent American cash crop honored and featured atop those columns?
If you guessed tobacco leaves, you’re correct. The chandelier is not original to the Senate. It was obtained in 1965 from a Capitol Hill Methodist Church on Seward Square in southeast Washington that was being razed. Its origins trace to 1903 and the Maryland Theater in Baltimore.
Our next stop on Part V, the Capitol Rotunda, as we wave goodbye to the Senate. For now.