A Long, Long Moving Day in Salt Lake City

Moving to a new home is nearly always a trying experience. But the saga of the General Services Administration's misfortunes as it attempted to move a historic Salt Lake City building to make way for a new federal courthouse is a true nightmare. The endeavor is now well over its $5.9 million budget, more than a year behind schedule and stalled in federal court itself.

Everyone knew it would not be easy to move the Odd Fellows Hall -- a three-story, 5 million-pound, 118-year-old unreinforced structure -- across Market Street to make way for expansion of the Frank E. Moss Federal Courthouse.

But local press reports, beginning in March 2008, sounded optimistic, predicting that the building could be lifted and begin a slow journey across the street by June 8 of that year. The GSA, which owns the building, said it planned to sell it once the move was complete.

By October, a Utah contractor and an Oregon subcontractor experienced in difficult moves had jacked up the building eight feet above its foundation. It appeared ready to roll.

Then the bad news. It was unclear whether the route to the new location could handle the load. By the end of the year, the cost was up to $6.7 million. Winter snow and wet soil conditions, and then cracking in the building, caused constant re-assessments.

And now, as it starts its final move from a staging area across the street to its final location, the building is still in the air atop beams and dollies, stalled by a federal lawsuit between the contractors. Construction on the new, as-yet-unnamed courthouse annex ("Orrin G. Hatch" sounds catchy, no?) -- a $110 million proposal -- is stalled. The three federal judges in the old courthouse, who would be directly affected by the litigation, have recused themselves, and the case has been assigned to a district judge in Wyoming.

Get your bids in now on the historic hall, assuming the building survives.

OFFICE POLITICS

The joke making the rounds at the State Department these days is that Special Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke is about to emulate Saddam Hussein's lightning move into Kuwait in 1990 and annex the first-floor office space next door to his suite. The offices had been used by Dennis Ross, senior adviser for a region that includes Iran, who has just moved over to the National Security Council.

Actually, it turns out that was no joke. Just after Ross's departure was made public, Holbrooke was overheard responding to a joking question about making a move on Ross's vacant domain by saying in all seriousness that he had plans for how that space could be used.

Ross had about eight veteran staffers working for him at Foggy Bottom, and it's not considered likely that many of them will move to the White House with him. Some have moved up to other offices in the State Department, and it's believed the old Ross team may become part of a new outfit focusing on Iran matters.

THE OTHER KIND OF HACK

We were certain at first that the North Koreans had somehow hacked into the Justice Department e-mail system. How else to explain the unusual wording on the subject line of a routine DOJ news release at 6:49 p.m. Wednesday regarding the indictment of a North Carolina youth for making Internet bomb threats?

The subject line said: "FEDERAL GRAND JURY RETURNS INDICTMENT ON INTERNET BOMB THREATS -- good luck, this one sucked." Many reporters found this language most puzzling. Then, after a 16-minute gap, a corrected version, minus the odd language, was transmitted.

Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler told the Associated Press it was an "unfortunate comment" inserted by a junior press aide, referring not to the text of the announcement but to some technical difficulties that folks were encountering in formatting the release.

STRATEGIC INDEED

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) is trying his best to ensure continued production of the F-22 fighter -- the planes are assembled at Lockheed Martin's plant in Georgia -- despite a veto threat by President Obama that would halt production at 187 planes. So Chambliss has put his "additional views" into the 2010 defense authorization bill, pending in the Senate, calling on the secretary of the Air Force to place an additional jet in each of seven states for use by the Air National Guard. They would be "based at strategic coastal locations in the United States, specifically Massachusetts, California, Oregon, Louisiana and Florida, as well as in Alaska and Hawaii."

Oddly enough, some of these appear to be the home states of key members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, such as Democrats Daniel Inouye (Hawaii), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Mary Landrieu (La.) and of a few big-state governors.

Chambliss also got an endorsement of this move from the head of the Air National Guard, Lt. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, who recently wrote Chambliss. "I believe the current and future asymmetric threats to our nation," Wyatt said, "particularly from seaborne cruise missiles, requires a fighter platform" such as the F-22.

Some countries may have or are possibly working on seaborne cruise missile programs, but we'd heard that the asymmetric crowd, such as al-Qaeda, has a ways to go on that.