What? Exploiting the current interest in security in order to promote an underground visitors' center in the Mall in DC? What? Bureaucrats using politics and PR to try and get something out of Congress?
Imagine that.
The most recent plan, proposed by the Park Service in 2024 and now being fleshed out by an architectural firm...The concept is generally imitative of the 1993 proposal, but a key difference can be found in the project's name: It is no longer the "Washington Monument Visitors Center Plan"; it is now part of "Washington Monument Permanent Security Improvements."
Some critics say it's a blatant attempt by the Park Service to slide through a pet project by invoking the name of national security.[...]
"As soon as you say that it's for security, any project -- however questionable -- is able to move forward because everyone is afraid that one of these great monuments might be destroyed on their watches," said Judy Scott Feldman, an art history professor at American University who chairs the National Coalition to Save Our Mall, one of several groups fighting the proposal. "But in reality, [the underground proposal] has nothing to do with security."
Source: Washington Monument Dispute Resurfaces