WASHINGTON — The White House briefing room was evacuated Tuesday afternoon during the televised daily session with reporters after the Washington police received a bomb threat by telephone, Secret Service officials said.  The journalists returned to the room about 30 minutes later, after it had been checked for explosives. President Obama remained in the Oval Office, down a corridor from the briefing room, during the evacuation.  The bomb threat specifically concerned the briefing room, and it was cleared “as a precaution,” the Secret Service said in a statement.  Armed officers who appeared at the door while the briefing was underway told journalists and news crews to immediately leave the building. The press secretary, Josh Earnest, and his staff were told to go to his office just down the hall and stay there.  The evacuation was confined to the briefing room, though it is just down the hall from the Oval Office and not far from the residence where the president lives with his family. The Secret Service said, without elaborating, that the evacuation was limited “due to the specific nature of the threat.”  Mr. Obama’s wife and two daughters remained in the East Wing residence, Mr. Earnest said. When asked whether the family was ever in danger, he said, “Certainly not that I’m aware of.”  The episode unfolded during an otherwise uneventful afternoon at the White House, when Mr. Obama had nothing on his public schedule after a speech on health care that he had delivered at midday.  Secret Service officers at first told journalists to assemble in an area of the White House grounds known as Pebble Beach, on the periphery of the driveway where television correspondents stage their live shots. They were then escorted to West Executive Avenue, the street adjacent to the West Wing, and later told to move still farther away, to an auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, just across from the White House. Most waited instead in a tunnel entrance outside the building, in view of the White House.  News cameras inside the briefing room and just outside the West Wing were covered or pointed to the ground during the episode, preventing them from capturing what went on. Mr. Earnest offered no explanation, saying he had not been present when that occurred.  Earlier on Tuesday, multiple floors of the Dirksen Senate Office Building were also evacuated after the Capitol Police received a call reporting a suspicious package. The building was reopened shortly afterward. Around the same time, the Capitol Police responded to a report of another suspicious package at the Russell Senate Office Building, which turned out to be an unattended cooler.  “Because of the ongoing investigation,” the Secret Service said in a statement, the agency “cannot discuss any potential connection to the earlier threat at the U.S. Capitol.”  Emmarie Huetteman and Mikayla Bouchard contributed reporting.
Journalists and White House officials were evacuated by the Secret Service in the middle of the daily briefing. They were allowed back in a short time later.