Secret offices a Senate tradition

Hideaway hijinks
Hideaway "spaces were highly coveted by the powerful, and particularly by the playful," Bobby Baker, an aide to Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, wrote in his book, "Wheeling and Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator." Johnson served in the Senate from 1949 until he was sworn in as vice president in 1961.

Johnson - and others - used their hideaways for more than legislative affairs, said another former LBJ aide.

"He frequently turned his hideaway into a love nest," Robert Parker said in his memoir, "Capitol Hill in Black and White." "He would invite a woman there at the end of the day to 'take dictation.'"

Parker, who eventually became the Senate Dining Room's head waiter, had keys to all the hideaways in use at the time. He would check the "escape rooms" before lunch to make sure they were stocked with wine and cocktail glasses, ice, fresh flowers and whatever else he thought senators wanted or needed.

Parker said senators' wives often asked him where their husband's hideaways were.

He said he would smile politely and feign ignorance. But "we both knew her husband was using his hideaway for more than lunch. So were a lot of other senators."

Location, location
By definition, hideaways are hard to find. Many are down closed-off hallways or behind unmarked, nondescript doors marked only with an "S" or an "H," for Senate or House, and a number.

"There's no sign on the door saying, 'This is senator so-and-so's hideaway,'" said Senate historian Betty Koed.

So sensitive are senators about their hideaways that nearly 20 either declined requests to visit them or their offices did not respond.

Capitol Police officers help keep reporters and tourists away, too.

"You know that a specific room is a senator's hideaway, because you see him going in there, but you don't tell anybody that, particularly the press," Leonard Ballard, a former Capitol Police inspector, said in a 1983 oral history interview.

He wouldn't point a senator to another's hideaway, either.

"The senator will say, 'Well, if he'll show somebody that one, he'll show mine,'" Ballard said. "So you just don't. That's his little kingdom."

Amenities
Many hideaways are cramped and windowless - with room enough for the basic desk and chair. Some are downright palatial by comparison, with working fireplaces and grand views of the Mall and its monuments.

With a hideaway, senators can hold meetings or talk on the phone in absolute privacy. They can save the time they'd spend going between the Capitol and their Senate offices for votes. They can even catch a nap on a late night.

"The more senior the senator, the finer the room," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., explained in her novel "Born to Run," in which the main character is like her, a Democratic senator from California.

Boxer, a third-term senator, has a hideaway, but her office declined to show it to The Associated Press.

Johnson had a Murphy bed and a kitchen with a bar, a refrigerator and a stove hidden behind panels in his suite of hideaways, according to Parker. Johnson ultimately had snatched so many hideaways for himself on two floors that his spread became known as "Johnson's Ranch East."

Hideaway history
Louisiana Sen. Allan Ellender served samples of his Creole cooking at luncheons in his third-floor hideaway. Five U.S. presidents partook, including LBJ, who one day followed his nose and dropped in, uninvited, for some of the Democrat's famous shrimp gumbo.

Vice President Harry S. Truman had just arrived at House Speaker Sam Rayburn's hideaway on April 12, 1945, for a late-afternoon swig of bourbon when he got a message to call the White House. Franklin D. Roosevelt was dead.

Rayburn's hideaway was known as the "Board of Education" because he and his colleagues would meet there over drinks at the end of the day to swap stories and plot strategy.

New Hampshire's Gordon Humphrey, the former pilot, would retreat to his hideaway and pretend he was back in the cockpit. Staff called it the "3C" center - military speak for command, control and communications.

Daniel Webster's ghost is said to have haunted his former hideaway, once occupied by Leahy. Webster had stored his wine collection in the vaulted, third-floor room. Leahy subsequently renamed the office after the Massachusetts senator and invited his ghost to the dedication.

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