News of Disastrous Flight Stuns Commerce Department

Ever since the Clinton presidency began, the Commerce Department has been a center of hectic activity, as members of the staff of 39,000 were dispatched on major overseas trade missions, fought for survival against congressional budget cutters and fended off a wave of controversies. But nothing prepared them for Wednesday.

As word spread through the massive downtown Washington office complex that a military transport plane carrying Secretary Ronald H. Brown and his delegation had crashed in the Balkans, nearly all activity in the building ground to a halt.

Tom Welch, who works in the department’s International Trade Administration, stood in the columned lobby of the Herbert C. Hoover Building watching one of two television monitors showing President Clinton’s address to Commerce Department staff members.

“This is incredible,” Welch said, looking past sobbing and glassy-eyed co-workers as the president confirmed the crash late in the afternoon. “I just can’t believe something as horrible as this has happened.”

The same stunned incredulity was replayed over and over during the day in offices throughout Washington and the nation. In addition to Commerce employees, there were business leaders, a journalist, military crew members and possibly some State Department officials among the 33 people on board the flight. Most of their names were not released Wednesday night.

The New York Times’ Frankfurt bureau chief, Nathaniel Nash, was on the plane. “Tragedy is too easy a word for Nathaniel’s death,” said a letter from New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. “Not only have we all lost a friend and colleague known as much for his gentleness of spirit as for his keen journalistic abilities, but his wife, Elizabeth, and their three children have lost a wonderful husband and father.”

Others known to be on board were Bill Morton, Brown’s executive assistant; Carol Hamilton, the secretary’s chief spokeswoman; and Charles Meissner, a Commerce assistant secretary for international economics who is married to Immigration and Naturalization Commissioner Doris Meissner.

Both Morton and Hamilton worked with Brown during Democratic campaigns. Meissner, a former World Bank manager, developed foreign markets for American products.

Information came slowly during the day.

At first, a handful of Commerce Department workers learned of the tragedy from radios as they worked. Many others got the news from fellow employees, then watched early television reports.

The breadth of the tragedy remained unclear as many left for home at the end of the workday.

“We haven’t done any work since 11:30 this morning,” said a downcast Peggy Yeates, a worker’s compensation specialist in the secretary’s office. “I heard about [the plane crash] on the radio in my office. I didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that something like this had happened.”

Yeates, who so admired Brown that she keeps his photograph on her desk at work and on her bedroom dresser at home, said that her friends in Washington began calling to ask: “Is it true? Is Ron Brown really dead?”

“I told most of them I didn’t know,” she said, shaking her head from side to side. “I’ve been running from radio to television to try and get some understanding of what has happened.”

Government officials did not have much information to share, leaving Commerce workers to exchange rumors on the department’s e-mail system.

“We don’t know anything to tell them,” said Maria Cardona, an official in the department’s public relations office.

Some Commerce officials, however, tried to find ways to comfort a building filled with confused and stunned workers. A man who described himself as a clinical psychologist said that he was called to the building to counsel distraught employees. But the man, who did not give his name, said that everyone seemed too stunned to talk, and department officials had yet to set up an office or procedure for him to begin counseling.

Shortly after 2 p.m., department officials sent e-mail messages to workers, asking them to report to a second-floor auditorium for a briefing. Mary Goode, a Commerce undersecretary, addressed the overflow crowd, telling them that nothing had been confirmed and offering vague hope that Brown and his delegation might still be alive.

“I kept hoping and hoping that he would turn up alive,” said Marsha Bishop, a secretary in Brown’s office.

That view was echoed by Yeates, who wiped away tears as she recalled one chance meeting with Brown.

“He was passing me in the hall and asked where I worked,” she said. “I said, ‘I work for you.’ He just laughed and laughed at that. He was such a personable man in that way. I couldn’t just think of him as the boss.”