When Japanese forces blew up Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Secret Service realized something difficult: If the White House were a similar attack target, the soft sandstone structure would crumble easily, and there was no action plan. for President Ferry Franklin. D. Roosevelt to safety.
Within weeks, construction work had begun on two underground projects. The first was a tunnel that connected the East Shield of the White House to a nearby (and much stronger) Financial Building, a granite fort with underground bank cellars. According to Robert Klara ‘s book The hidden White House, one or more of these vaults was converted into an 1100-square-foot shelter with 10 bedrooms, including a bedroom, a well-stocked kitchen, a comfortable leather chair and plenty of carpeting. The other was a smaller bunker under the East Wing itself. At just 40 feet by 40 feet, the two-room suite had 7-foot-thick concrete walls, a medical room, enough food and water to sustain dozens of people for days, and a diesel-powered power system.
When President Harry S. Truman undertook a major overhaul of the White House between 1948 and 1952, this bunker was expanded to become the President’s Emergency Action Center (PEOC). As Gizmodo reports, it was there that the Secret Service took out Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne; National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice; First Lady Laura Bush; and other senior officers during the attacks of 11 September 2001.
While the dimensions and shape of the entire space are kept under posts, little is known about it from photographs taken at the time, which show a bright room with television screens, a long conference table, and The seal of the President of the United States hung on one wall. Laura Bush revealed a little more detail in her 2010 memoir, Spoken from the heart:
“I was fascinated in and out of the stairs by a pair of large steel doors that closed behind me with a large hammer, forming a tight seal … We walked on an old slate floor with pipes hanging from a roof. the house and all kinds of mechanical equipment. The PEOC is designed to be an emergency command center, with televisions, telephones and communications facilities. ”
When President George Bush, who had been in Florida that day, arrived in the bunker just after 7pm, the Secret Service suggested that he and Laura must spend the night in the PEOC. . “They showed us the bed, a folded package that seemed to have been inserted during FDR’s presidency,” Laura wrote. “George and I looked at it, and we both said no.”
In 2010, workers broke ground on the White Green’s North Green for another underground project. According to the Washington Inspector, the official word was that they were upgrading electrical wiring and air conditioning in the building, but some journalists insisted that this was just for the construction of a new bunker in the White House. In his 2018 book Trump White House: Changing the rules of the game, before Washington Post journalist Ronald Kessler confirmed this theory.
Kessler said the top-secret structure was “at least five stories deep” and could “keep all West Wing staff unidentified in the event of a major weapons attack.” “It even has its own air supply, so residents would be safe from nuclear radiation. Earlier this week, he explained to him The Washington Post that the impetus for the creation of this new bunker was when he realized in 9/11 that it would not be impossible to transport White House officials to an already off-site shelter if the country was under attack. in the future – traffic would leave the city by car for too long, and air travel would be too dangerous.
And, although Kessler did not mention the furniture, it is very likely to assume that this modern shelter features something more comfortable than a few folding beds from the 1940s.
[h/t Gizmodo]