President Barack Obama will be breaking with tradition this fall by choosing not to stay at the famed Waldorf Astoria hotel during his trip to New York City, and the reason has to do with the insurance company that now owns the operation.
The State Department announced late last week that it will no longer use the Waldorf during the September United Nations General Assembly. The White House is also expected to snub the hotel, though officials are declining to comment explicitly.
“I don’t have any details about the president’s accommodations when he travels to New York later this year,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters. “But as we get more details on that, we’ll let you know.”
Presidents and US diplomats have stayed at the Waldorf during UN operations for decades, securing two floors for meetings and living quarters. Though officials declined to give a reason for the change, it is largely attributed to the sale of the hotel to a Chinese insurance company.
Beijing-based Anbang Insurance Group bought the Waldorf Astoria from Hilton Worldwide last year in a $1.95 billion sale. Terms of the sale allow Hilton to run the hotel for the next 100 years, but also stipulate a “major renovation” that officials believe may be worrisome.
According to an Associated Press report, government security personnel are particularly concerned over the possibility of Chinese eavesdropping and cyber espionage.
The decision regarding the hotel stay comes after a massive hack of the US government, which officials believe was orchestrated in China. The June breach of the Office of Personnel Management compromised the records of more than 4 million people who had been investigated for a security clearance for former, current or potential employment with the government.
The White House put the number of records believed to have been breached between 9 million and 14 million, going back to the 1980s.
The White House confirmed that the hackers were tied to China, which could compromise the victims’ ability to continue in their positions.
“[The Chinese hack] makes it very hard for any of those people to function as an intelligence officer,” Joel Brenner, a former US counterintelligence official told the Associated Press. “The database also tells the Chinese an enormous amount of information about almost everyone with a security clearance. That’s a gold mine. It helps you approach and recruit spies.”
