Saturday Morning Post - Life in Washington DC

When I first moved in Washington DC, my office was so close to the White House, that I signed a release for my information to be shared with White House security. We were inside the exclusion zone for inaugurations, as in the Secret Service locked our building and told us when we could return after the inauguration. The office moved a few blocks away a few years ago.

12 years ago there was a construction fence very much like this, in front of the west wing, the area of the executive offices. The official answer was it was underground utilities work, that took about three years and several hundred thousands of cubic yards of concrete. When the new bunker was finished, there was a discrete announcement that the second half would be started in a couple of years.

I was in the office recently and took a nice lunch time walk. I hadn't spent much time around the White House over the past five years, for four of those the sight of the building often caused spewing of obscenities, and for a couple of years it was surrounded by a fortress, to keep people in or keep people out I am not sure which, but it looked like a prison.

The iron fence is taller than it was before, a painful need, we have had a few people jump the fence and run for the door. The new construction fence, I suspect is going to be there for a couple of years - and lots of concrete will be involved.

A few years ago, one of former President Ford's daughters mentioned that the secret service would sneak here in and out for dates, through a long tunnel that emerged in a vault in the basement of a bank a few blocks away, the tunnel had been there since the 1860's. Several truckloads of concrete were sent out immediately. The bank building has finally been remodeled. (It was not the building my office was in it was a couple of blocks farther away.)

It is nice to be able to walk to the White House and feel comfortable again.

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