[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 11 (Tuesday, February 3, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Page S383]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, under a previous order, we will be in 
morning business until 10:30 a.m., as mentioned. At 10:30 we will begin 
the highway bill. As mentioned yesterday, it will be very important to 
address this bill and spend the appropriate time this week and through 
next week with the objective of completing this bill by the end of next 
week. It is a very important bill in terms of supporting our 
infrastructure throughout this country, in terms of providing that 
infrastructure to support our economy, and also to create jobs. It is a 
very important bill.
  The relevant committees met yesterday. Some of those committee 
meetings will be affected by the closure of the office buildings today, 
but we will have further announcements on the committee meetings a 
little bit later this morning.
  We will be here today, and I do encourage Members to make their 
opening statements today. We will have a comment shortly on the policy 
luncheons today within the next several minutes after I speak with the 
Democratic leader.


                             ricin finding

  I will comment very quickly--because there are a lot of questions and 
a lot of news reports--as most people know, in midafternoon yesterday, 
a powder that was ultimately determined to be ricin was found in my 
personal office building. Everything was handled in a very appropriate 
way in terms of the screening tests that have been established, and 
ultimately, after a series of tests of what are called specificity and 
sensitivity tests, confirmatory results came back last night at around 
9:30 that this was ricin.

  There will be a lot of discussion in the news and around here as to 
what ricin is. As I mentioned last night, it is a type of what we call 
a toxin or a poison. It is not a virus, and it is not a bacteria, so a 
lot of people say it is not biological, but it is made from a castor 
bean. Somebody, in all likelihood, manufactured this with an intent to 
harm, and this is a criminal investigation that will be underway.
  As everyone knows by now--or we hope they know--we made a decision, 
based on the procedures that are quite thorough and comprehensive, to 
close the three Senate office buildings today. Meetings have continued 
through the night and today over the course of this morning thus far. 
Further decisions will be made about reopening those buildings. The 
real purpose of that is that the mail be addressed in an appropriate 
way in those buildings.
  Let me also say that all air sampling and all environmental studies 
today are negative with the exception of what was found in that single 
office at that site.
  With that, I think I will stop to say we will have our activity here 
on the floor of the Senate. The Capitol Building is open today, and 
individual committee chairmen will be announcing what the plans are 
with hearings that were scheduled today in the Senate office buildings. 
Most of those will be closed.
  At this time I will turn to the Democratic leader. We will likely be 
making other announcements over the course of the morning.

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