A Quick Cohen Building Update
The art of the non-denial denial.
Charlie Peters (1926-2023).
Earlier this week I wrote in the New Republic about how a former General Services Administration official, Mydelle Wright, said that “the White House acting on its own and not through the GSA has solicited bids and/or is finalizing a bid package … for demolition of four historic buildings in D.C.,” including the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, the “Sistine Chapel of the New Deal,” which contains, among other things, a large mural by Ben Shahn that Shahn considered his finest work. The story of Wright’s allegation was broken by Bloomberg’s Suzanna Monyak. Flogging my New Republic piece in Backbencher, I appended to the bottom Mydelle Wright’s statement.
The following day the GSA issued something that resembled a denial, and was taken as such by several news organizations. I’ve appended that statement to the bottom of this post for your perusal. In fact, it was not a denial. What the GSA issued was what the late Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, during Watergate, termed a “non-denial denial.” It looks like a denial but when you examine it closely it isn’t one.
What Andrew Heller, acting commissioner of the GSA’s Public Buildings Service, denied was this:
I have not received any direction from the White House or the Executive Office of the President to demolish any of the four buildings in Ms. Wright’s declaration. Furthermore, I have not been in any meetings to discuss or discussions in which others discussed receiving direction from the White House or the Executive Office of the President to demolish the four buildings referenced in Ms. Wright’s declaration. In addition, I have not received any direction from the Administrator or Acting Administrator of GSA to demolish any of the buildings in question.
You see what Heller is doing there? He’s denying something that Wright never said. Wright didn’t say GSA was preparing to demolish the Cohen and three other federal buildings. Nor did she say Heller was aware of Trump’s purported plans to bypass GSA. What she said was that the Trump administration was preparing to end-run GSA by bulldozing these structures.
Why would Heller deny something Wright never said?
To demonstrate loyalty to higher-ups in the Trump White House. Heller (a lifelong civil servant and clearly expert at bureaucratic gamesmanship) is in effect saying to Russell Vought and other White House officials: Not to worry! I’m on the team! Mydelle Wright is a goddamned liar! And indeed, news organizations are treating what Heller said as an authentic denial.
But in addition to pacifying the White House, Heller is also drawing a line with the White House. He does this by pointing out that it would be illegal for the GSA (or anyone else!) to just go ahead and bulldoze these buildings. There’s the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires that the environmental effects be evaluated before a federal building is sold off or demolished. There’s the National Historic Preservation Act, relevant here because the Cohen building is on the National Register of Historic Places. (So is the headquarters of the Housing and Urban Development department, designed by Marcel Breuer, which is also one of the four.) Heller’s pointing this out (there are other laws I’ve written about that he doesn’t even mention) is a shot across the bow. If anybody’s thinking of demolishing these buildings without following legally-required procedures, please know that you will be violating federal law.
Heller is laying down that warning in the guise of disputing what Wright alleges, even as he actually doesn’t dispute what Wright says.
My mentor, the late Charlie Peters, was a connoisseur of bureaucratic strategy, and he would have enjoyed rolling Heller’s non-denial denial over his tongue to capture its full bouquet. Charlie was a great believer that to do good in this world government bureaucrats had to master the art of indirection, and he would have given Heller a tip of his hat in his Washington Monthly column, “Tilting at Windmills.” Because Charlie left us in 2023, I must perform that service on his behalf. Well played, Mr. Heller.
But please know that GSA has not denied Wright’s allegation. Nor has it confirmed it. It has merely pretended that she said something else, and made clear what the law says in these matters.
