He named no service. No official. No paper.
Sunday morning you opened a story. The arch “will be converted.” It “will double as” a military complex. “This change … was at the request of the U.S. military.” One story said the triumphal arch “being built” will be converted.
The Pentagon said it had no information beyond the president’s statement. A spokesperson had “nothing additional to provide beyond the post.”
People working on the project told CNN the announcement caught them by surprise. The Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission received drawings that did not include drones, snipers, or ammunition. Ed Stierli, of the National Parks Conservation Association, called it “a completely different” plan. No one released a new model.
Judge Tanya Chutkan told the government, on September 4, to give forty-eight hours’ notice before any Memorial Circle work besides the archaeology she allowed. If the government builds or demolishes before the Park Service gives final authorization, it violates her order. The week before this post she refused to lift that rule. She has not decided whether Congress must authorize the arch.
The arch would be about two hundred fifty feet tall, at Memorial Circle, between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. The planning commission has not given final approval. CNN reported that observers had not seen crews on the site.
Rep. Pat Ryan, a combat veteran in Congress, said, “Certainly, the military is not requesting this.” Rep. Don Beyer called the national-security language a “pretext to argue that the arch is tied to national security.” Robert Weissman Sansone of Public Citizen said the “new justification … does nothing to cure its fundamental illegality.” Those are arguments from people who oppose the project.
I have read the Sunday post. The Pentagon did not confirm a request that day. Nobody approved a conversion.