it is one of the most critical intelligence gathering centers in the world located in the west
wing just below the oval office the situation room serves as an advanced communications headquarters
where america's commander-in-chief can monitor and control u.s military forces around the world
one of the subjects brought up with every president-elect as soon as he becomes elected as
part of his briefings is the situation room and how it works and the information that comes in
mr obama for instance on his first day on office went down to the sit room
and participated in a conversation with some of his military people
there's a huge misperception in the general public about what goes on down there
they think it's just a meeting room but it really is more than room it's it's an intelligence center
measuring approximately five thousand square feet the situation room's technological capabilities
are for now top secret today the president could not do his job without the white house
situation room first and foremost the situation room is the president's alert center their most
important responsibility is to make sure the president knows what's going on around the world
secondly it's a meeting room a place where he can go either in crisis or meet with his advisors in a
secure safe place thirdly it's his communication center and whether it's dedicated communications
between the president and the prime minister in great britain or whether it's a connection to the
cia's communication systems or dods it's all the same
but while it is officially called the situation room
white house insiders know it by another more secret name one of nixon's aides who later became
a national security adviser to president clinton tony lake alexander haig said come on
you want to go with me to the situation room henry kissinger is going to take the cia to the woodshed
lake thought the room was the woodshed so it ended up getting getting that name
shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile
launch from cuba against any nation in the western hemisphere as an attack
it was the disastrous bay of pigs invasion in 1961 that prompted president john f kennedy to
create the situation room as a way to improve real-time communications current intelligence
and crisis support previous presidents had been hostage to the state department or defense or
intelligence for information and he realized during the cuban missile crisis that he couldn't
really run the government unless he had a more rapid arrival of information at the white house
so he arranged to build a facility on the ground floor of the white house
and they called it the international situation room and it was shortened to the situation room
national security advisor mcgeorge bundy equipped the center with state-of-the-art technology
including a hotline to the russian kremlin
but contrary to popular belief the famous hotline was not in fact a telephone
the hotline to the kremlin was a teletype device i think it allowed for more security of the of the
information that was flowing across it someone felt that by not being a voice
connection eliminated confusion from translation and it was easier to
communicate very precisely which would be needed in an emergency that degree
of precision was increased by having a written word versus a spoken word
but during the cold war few knew that the white house installed another secret phone system
the state department established what was called the warm link as an alternative to the hot link
in order to foster more routine communications but it was an alternative because people wanted to
keep the hotline for crises only and not diminish its circumstance in fact carter went against that
grain and used it for routine communication and brzezinski warned him not to do it because
it would perhaps undercut the importance of of it during crises
like the rest of the white house the situation room has been renovated and rebuilt
and has grown in size scope and strategic importance following 911 and during a period
of war the situation room really proved inadequate in terms of its capabilities we made the decision
that the facility needed to be modernized we needed more conference rooms to have classified
conversations in and then the facility was really taken down to the brick and the dirt floor
it was totally gutted top to bottom and in the process of doing that we exposed
a lot of very old wiring and it's a miracle that the west wing's not burned to the ground
today the situation room or sit room is composed of approximately 30 personnel organized around
five watch teams that monitor both domestic and international events the situation room of course
is on duty 24 hours a day seven days a week with a staff of people on duty there and these telegrams
come in from state from defense or cia constantly in the situation room if there's anything that is
significant for the president they'll wake him up right away there are no levers that the president
reaches over and pulls or twists knobs or pushes buttons to launch missiles and all that sort of
thing what happens is he meets with the people that he trusts in that room and then they go
off to their places and that's where they push the buttons and pull the levers several times each day
the teams distill the latest real-time information into reports that are prepared for the president
the cia the director national intelligence and the cia sends down that once daily
president's daily brief which has the most sensitive information available
to the and gives it to the president but right next to it in the folder is the situation room
daily summary which goes out three times a day and that covers everything else and
so the president keeps track of things on a daily basis through the help of the situation
this is the watch floor of the white house situation room and watch floors commodity
is situational awareness we're a fusion center meaning that we fuse approximately 2
000 pieces of information every day one of the cool features of this particular room in the white
house situation room is the opportunity to provide privacy for the president if he's making a head of
state phone call from the situation room itself what we'll do is we'll be able to fog the windows
to give him that level of privacy now the president can engage in face-to-face
top-secret teleconference conversations with other leaders of the world
he's got that equipment for instance with the chancellor of germany
with the prime minister of the united kingdom and with military people like general petraeus
there's the famous picture in the situation room of president obama
and secretary clinton and the staff during the mission that went after osama bin laden
the capability certainly exists within the situation room to watch live broadcasts
i don't believe any other leader in the world has the
communications and technology capabilities that are available to the president of the
united states and that's the way it has to be but as much as the situation room can help the
president function during a national crisis just how safe is the white house from a physical attack
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