Category: News

WASHINGTON — The contractor that renovated the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has told the Trump administration that errors in its own work and flaws in the repair plan, not vandalism, caused the pool’s new blue liner to peel and break loose, according to government documents reviewed by the New York Times.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly blamed vandals wielding knives or box cutters for damage to the pool’s “American flag blue” liner, even after the Justice Department dropped charges that it had brought against people accused of vandalizing the national landmark.

But the documents, which have not previously been reported, make clear that the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, found problems in the design and the execution of the renovation. The documents include Atlantic’s reports to the government as well as daily progress updates from the National Park Service over the past two months.

Atlantic blamed its own errors in a report dated Aug. 14 and then provided more detail Sept. 2, the documents show. The Justice Department, which had charged several people with vandalizing the pool in early July, began moving to dismiss the cases July 31.

Because of “human oversight,” workers in some areas did not spray enough of the primer that made the layers of the liner stick together, Atlantic said in the documents. But the bigger problem, the company said, was that the repair plan laid out in the contract called for the layers of liner to include two chemicals that turned out to be incompatible.

The chemical on top reached a temperature hotter than what the compound underneath could withstand, and the heat caused the bottom layer to blister and come loose, the documents show. The contractor said it had not expected that outcome because it was very uncommon to mix the two products in that way.

The failure illustrates the consequences of the Trump administration’s rushed effort to renovate the pool this spring. In a hurry to finish the work before the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, the government bypassed competition and gave Atlantic a no-bid contract to carry out an untested approach designed in part by the general manager of one of Trump’s golf clubs.

The government has agreed to pay Atlantic $14.7 million for its work. The contractor has said it will repair the pool, which is under warranty, again.

Katie Martin, a spokesperson for the Interior Department, did not directly address questions about the contractor’s findings but issued a statement that appeared to continue blaming vandals for the damage, saying that they had “repeatedly reached into the pool and ripped at the coating.”

Martin said Atlantic was now “well on its way” to repairing the pool. She did not say when it would be refilled.

Representatives for Atlantic did not respond to requests for comment.

The pool is still drained, and repairs appear to be ongoing: On Thursday, the pool was full of workers. Some were seen tearing up large strips of the blue lining, while another sprayed a new layer of coating as a man in a shirt reading “Atlantic Coating Inspection” watched.

The documents show that, to redo the repairs, Atlantic said it would use a smaller team of workers that would be closely supervised, and that it would consult an adviser from the manufacturer of the compounds used in the liner.

The manufacturer, Rhino Linings, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Its CEO, Pierre Gagnon, said in a June statement that the peeling liner was “limited to isolated areas” of the pool.

The documents also show that Atlantic did blame vandals for cuts in the caulking around the pool’s edge that National Park Service workers had previously reported to the police. But the company did not link those cuts to the peeling of the blue liner on the pool’s floor, which Trump repeatedly blamed on “sick people” wielding knives or razors.

Federal prosecutors acted on the president’s claims on July 2, when they announced the indictment of David Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist accused of pulling up a piece of the liner, on a felony vandalism charge.

But in a remarkable reversal a few weeks later, prosecutors sought to dismiss the charges against Hearn and three others accused of vandalizing the landmark. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, wrote that the Interior Department had misled her staff about the extent to which the damage had stemmed from vandalism rather than a “botched installation.”

Trump continued to blame vandals for the damage even after that, though he conceded in a social media post Aug. 9 that “there is no video or proof.”

“There was also some contractor error done by rushing the job for a July 4th opening,” Trump said in that post. “But it was a very small area of this massive Pool, and was relatively inconsequential.”

Trump said then that the pool would reopen “shortly.” But it remains drained a month later. The documents reviewed by the Times help explain why. They show that repairing the pool has been a challenging and involved task.

On Aug. 13, the contractor began power-washing the pool to remove loose chunks of blue liner, according to the documents. By the end of the next day, workers had filled one large trash bag, but many more bits of liner remained stuck to the pool’s concrete slabs and would need to be removed later with razor blades, hammers, and crowbars.

After removing the loose pieces, the documents show, Atlantic sought to reapply the blue coating, only to encounter the same problems as before: Blisters would appear under the surface, between layers of the lining. Early this month, the company concluded that the problem was the interaction between the two compounds and stopped layering the hotter one on top, the documents show.

That reduced the blisters, the documents show. But it did not stop them completely.

Also early this month, the contractor identified a new potential culprit: sweat. It said that a worker, wearing a protective suit under the hot Washington sun, was leaving droplets of sweat on the coating, which were then trapped when new layers were sprayed on top.

To try to solve that problem, the documents show, the man then opened the top part of his protective suit and wrapped cloth around his head and wrists to contain the sweat. The documents reviewed by the Times do not say if that stopped the blisters.

A National Park Service employee had notified workers Aug. 14 that Trump would be flying over the pool on Marine One that day, according to the documents. Gregory Wischer, a political appointee at the Interior Department, also visited the reflecting pool that day to personally supervise this work, the documents show.

Wischer, a former executive at a metal processing company, originally joined the Trump administration last year to work on critical minerals policy. But he has since shifted his focus to the Reflecting Pool renovation and the president’s other pet projects in Washington.

In March, Wischer met with David Schutzenhofer, the manager of a Trump Organization golf club in New Jersey who helped plan the pool’s renovations, according to Interior Department visitor logs. And Monday, Trump wrote on social media that Wischer had updated him on work to clean and wax statues of Italian poet Dante Alighieri and French hero Joan of Arc in a park in Northwest Washington.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

BEIRUT — A huge explosion sent shock waves across southern Lebanon overnight, as the Israeli military said it had destroyed an underground Hezbollah base in a strategically significant area of Israel’s conflict with the Iran-backed militia.

The blast lit up the sky with a sudden orange flash and tore through the Ali al-Taher ridge, a commanding hilltop about 6 miles from the border between Israel and Lebanon that Israeli forces captured this month.

Lebanese and Israeli officials say Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia supported by Iran, established a major underground installation beneath the ridge. Israel says the complex had for years served as a command center for planning and launching attacks against it. The ridge overlooks much of southeastern Lebanon, including Nabatiyeh, one of the country’s largest cities.

“The explosion caused massive sounds in Nabatiyeh,” Abbas Fakhereddine, the city’s mayor, said Friday. “We felt the buildings shake.”

The explosion generated ground waves that were likened to an earthquake measuring 4.2 on the Richter scale, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported, citing the country’s National Center for Geophysics. Videos shared on social media showed the explosion lighting up the night late Thursday.

The Israeli destruction of the underground base at the ridge fueled concerns among residents about a deepening Israeli military presence and an expansion of military operations in southern Lebanon. Israel has in recent days and weeks carried out strikes and widespread demolitions of buildings and civilian infrastructure across southern Lebanon, according to local officials and human rights groups.

The Israeli military said in a statement Thursday that it had located dozens of rockets, missiles, drones, machine guns, and explosive devices inside the underground base. The complex also included a Hezbollah command center, weapons storage rooms, and living quarters, the military said.

On Friday, Hezbollah officials disputed the significance of the ridge and accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel of exaggerating the importance of the operation for political gain before elections next month.

A Hezbollah media official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, downplayed the site’s importance to the group and rejected claims that the facility contained advanced missiles or significant military infrastructure.

Under a U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement reached in June, Israel is expected to gradually pull its forces back from areas it occupies in southern Lebanon, with the Lebanese armed forces deploying there to establish security and enable displaced residents to return. That arrangement is closely linked to the Lebanese government’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah, a process that is likely to prove difficult, given the government’s limited ability to control the powerful militia.

On Friday, Lebanon’s General Directorate of State Security said in a statement it was resuming government patrols and reestablishing checkpoints in Nabatiyeh, in coordination with other security agencies and the Lebanese army, to protect the city and strengthen public confidence and safety.

Some residents of southern Lebanon, along with political and security observers, have expressed anger that Hezbollah did not hand over the ridge to the Lebanese army and security services, arguing that the group had allowed a strategic position to be lost to Israel rather than place it under Lebanese state control.

Moustafa Bayram, a former labor minister aligned with Hezbollah, said Israel’s decision to destroy the site was “an attempt to terrorize us and escalate the war.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.