WASHINGTON: The White House Situation Room – a space of great mystique and even greater secrecy – just got a $50 million facelift. Actually, “room” is a misnomer. It’s a 5,500-square-foot, highly secure complex of conference rooms and offices on the ground floor of the West Wing. These are rooms where history happens, where the president meets with national security officials to discuss secret operations and sensitive government matters.
Where President Barack Obama and his team watched the raid that took down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in 2011. Where President Donald Trump monitored the 2019 operation that killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Where President Lyndon Johnson went over Vietnam War plans.
The latest redo was no small update: The total gut renovation took a year to complete. Workers dug five feet underground to make more room and install cutting-edge technology allowing White House officials to bring together intelligence from different agencies with the push of a few buttons.
President Joe Biden got a tour on Tuesday and then received an intelligence briefing in the space, said Marc Gustafson, the Situation Room director. “He loved it, he thought the update was fantastic,” Gustafson said.
The renovated space has a modern-but-vintage vibe. Old floors, furniture, computers and other tech were stripped out and replaced with pristine mahogany panelling from Maryland, stonework from a Virginia quarry, LED lights that can change colours and flat-screen panels. See-through glass offices fade to opaque. The whole space has that new car smell. But there are still plenty of landline phones: No cellphones are allowed for security reasons.
The hush-hush complex was created in 1961 by the Kennedy administration after the Bay of Pigs invasion. President John F Kennedy believed there should be a dedicated crisis management centre where officials could coordinate intelligence faster and better. But it wasn’t exactly comfortable: Nixon administration national security adviser and then secretary of state Henry Kissinger described the space as “uncomfortable, unaesthetic and essentially oppressive”. The last renovation was in 2007.
Gustafson said visitors previously remarked that the room didn’t reflect Hollywood’s grand imagining of the space. He said they now declare: “This looks like the movies”.
Where President Barack Obama and his team watched the raid that took down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in 2011. Where President Donald Trump monitored the 2019 operation that killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Where President Lyndon Johnson went over Vietnam War plans.
The latest redo was no small update: The total gut renovation took a year to complete. Workers dug five feet underground to make more room and install cutting-edge technology allowing White House officials to bring together intelligence from different agencies with the push of a few buttons.
President Joe Biden got a tour on Tuesday and then received an intelligence briefing in the space, said Marc Gustafson, the Situation Room director. “He loved it, he thought the update was fantastic,” Gustafson said.
The renovated space has a modern-but-vintage vibe. Old floors, furniture, computers and other tech were stripped out and replaced with pristine mahogany panelling from Maryland, stonework from a Virginia quarry, LED lights that can change colours and flat-screen panels. See-through glass offices fade to opaque. The whole space has that new car smell. But there are still plenty of landline phones: No cellphones are allowed for security reasons.
The hush-hush complex was created in 1961 by the Kennedy administration after the Bay of Pigs invasion. President John F Kennedy believed there should be a dedicated crisis management centre where officials could coordinate intelligence faster and better. But it wasn’t exactly comfortable: Nixon administration national security adviser and then secretary of state Henry Kissinger described the space as “uncomfortable, unaesthetic and essentially oppressive”. The last renovation was in 2007.
Gustafson said visitors previously remarked that the room didn’t reflect Hollywood’s grand imagining of the space. He said they now declare: “This looks like the movies”.
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