US EditionWhite House Secretly Rebuilds Bunker Under East Wing Demolition Site
The 1940s-era Presidential Emergency Operations Center is being replaced with a secure underground facility while a new $400 million ballroom is constructed above, officials said.
- Recently, President Donald Trump removed the World War II-era Presidential Emergency Operations Center beneath the White House East Wing as demolition made way for a massive new ballroom above while dismantling the subterranean facility.
- Built in 1941 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center evolved from a bomb shelter into a hardened command center to survive nuclear strikes.
- During crises, the PEOC functioned as a self-contained 'submarine' with separate power, water, and air filtration, used on Sept. 11, 2001, when Dick Cheney was evacuated.
- Last week, the White House defended underground work without NCPC approval, arguing halting it would 'endanger national security' while President Donald Trump said ballroom costs rose from $200 million to $400 million, excluding subterranean expenses paid by U.S. taxpayers.
- Amid tight secrecy, sources say the replacement involves U.S. military, U.S. Secret Service, Clark Construction, Shalom Baranes Architects, and uses emerging technologies with redundancies in place.
18 Articles
18 Articles
While Donald Trump has a pompous $400 million ballroom built above ground, a secret project runs simultaneously in the depths of the White House. The government deliberately circumvented the required approval.
In the fall, the US president had the east wing of the White House demolished, where a ballroom is to be built. But what happens to the historic bunker underneath?
President Donald Trump discreetly named this week four new members of the Fine Arts Commission, one of the two federal panels reviewing his plan to build a ballroom at the White House. The Republican president has talked about building a ballroom at the White House for years, and completing the proposed expansion of 8,400 square meters would not only forever alter the public face of the mansion, but would remain for decades as a lasting legacy f…
By Betsy Klein, CNN. The US president secretly ordered the construction of a secure underground facility at the White House and built a new extension to the East Wing on top of it. It was 1941, and Franklin D. Roosevelt had been encouraged to build an air-raid shelter at the White House following the attack on Pearl Harbor. At the time, “there was no public acknowledgment that an air-raid shelter was being built, only the East Wing,” according t…
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- 57% of the sources are Center
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