On Tuesday morning, seven National Park Service employees were
seen erecting and tending to a barricade around the World War II
memorial in Washington, D.C. One NPS employee was operating a forklift.
There usually aren't any NPS employees working at the World War II
memorial.
A couple hours later, when an Honor Flight of World War II veterans arrived, accompanied by Democratic and Republican members of Congress, the fences blocking the memorial were easily moved away, allowing the veterans to enter.
But the barriers are still at the memorial, and they've been reinforced. This morning, I walked by the memorial and noticed that wires had been used to tie the fences together:
Meanwhile, the barricade in front of a memorial to World War I veterans a couple blocks away still looks like this:
Who is ordering the National Park Service to go to such great lengths
to shut down the open-air World War II memorial that is usually
unguarded? On Tuesday, Carol Johnson of the National Park Service told
me that the White House's Office of Management and Budget "sends
everything down to all other departments. We are part of the Interior.
Interior gives us our instructions."A couple hours later, when an Honor Flight of World War II veterans arrived, accompanied by Democratic and Republican members of Congress, the fences blocking the memorial were easily moved away, allowing the veterans to enter.
But the barriers are still at the memorial, and they've been reinforced. This morning, I walked by the memorial and noticed that wires had been used to tie the fences together:
Meanwhile, the barricade in front of a memorial to World War I veterans a couple blocks away still looks like this:
UPDATE: We've discovered that the barrier pictured above is fully owned by the National Park Service and not the company whose tags still remain on the barrier.