It is a huge hole in one of the world's most famous gardens - but nobody knows what it is for.
Workmen have torn up an enormous section of the lawn in front of the White House for a mysterious, top secret project. The hole by the West Wing is roughly 100ft by 100ft in size and has for the first time in living memory left the ground and pipes beneath the Oval office exposed to the elements.
A White House official quote by by the New York Times could only say that the general idea was an expansion of the emergency base of operations. 'It is security-related construction. Even we don't know exactly what,' he said.
Built between 1792 and 1800, the White House has seen a string of amendments and additions to its main building and the grounds over the years. During World War II a bomb shelter was constructed under the East Wing, although this was later converted into an operations room. The White House already has a number of tunnels — the exact number is, of course, classified.
The most well known is the underground corridor that leads to the President's Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), a supposedly nuclear-proof bunker located six stories under the East Wing. It was to this bunker and its adjacent Executive Briefing Room that Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, among others, directed Government operations [to destroy the WTC buildings] on September 11, 2001.
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