The gripes are more than cosmetic. Engineers for the General Services Administration, which is overseeing the renovation, found asbestos in the press room and have called the area a “firetrap.” When President George W. Bush returns to D.C. from his Texas vacation, Press Secretary Tony Snow will brief reporters at Jackson Place, across the street from the White House, where the press corps will work until the rehab is complete. But like many dealings between the administration and the press, the move has been eyed with suspicion by reporters, who worry the renovation is a ruse to get them out of the White House for good. Snow has pledged that reporters will be welcomed back, but an ever-expanding construction timeline has heightened worries. The rehab was first timed at just a month but now is slated for at least nine months, leaving reporters out of the White House until next May–an eternity to reporters already concerned about access to Bush and his aides. “Now taking bets,” longtime CBS News reporter Mark Knoller wrote in an e-mail to members of the White House Correspondents Association. “We’ll be back in the press room by a) the mid-term elections, b) mission accomplished in Iraq, c) the 2008 elections, d) the next millennium or e) never.”
While no costs have been released, the renovation is set to make the briefing room as fancy as it seems in the movies: wider seats, microphones and Internet access at every seat and a plasma screen behind the press secretary’s podium. “Give us a few weeks, and it will probably be trashed again,” Mason says. “That is, if we ever come back.”
