White House's High-Security Situation Room’s $50 Million Renovation is Finally Complete
White House staff are seen seated in a part of the newly renovated White House Situation Room complex, in the basement of the White House’s West Wing on August 16, 2023 (Official White House Photo by Carlos Fyfe).
The focal point of the nation’s most secure meetings has undergone a major transformation, but the cost of the yearlong process was extremely expensive, to say the least.
Article by Isabel Cantor, Associate White House Reporter
WASHINGTON - After a yearlong renovation of the White House Situation Room, the high-security complex said to be the most secure part of the federal government, the 5,500-square-foot space is now complete and ready to be used.
Over the years, the Situation Room has served as the location where meetings of sensitive and secure information take place. To prevent any spying, the complex is now decked out with elaborate, state of the art technology. Aesthetically speaking, the space now has a very modern and futuristic look.
Everyone who worked on the renovation was required to get some degree of security clearance, due to the sensitivity of the information they were working with.
As a result of wear-and-tear since its last renovation in 2007, the decision for a full gut renovation to take place was made. The one room that was not renovated was the room where former president Barack Obama observed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. Due to the history that occurred in this room, it was completely preserved, and will soon be sent to the Obama Presidential Center and Library.
Michael D. Shear, New York Times’s White House correspondent, had the rare opportunity to visit the Situation Room, and he said that it “feels a bit like entering the set of a Hollywood thriller. In the windowless basement, one floor down from the Oval Office, the president’s oversize swivel chair faces three huge screens that he can consult while overseeing covert operations around the world.”
The history behind the Situation Room is that it was created in 1961, shortly after the Bay of Pigs Invasion, under the Kennedy Administration. For this reason, the main conference room in the large-scale complex was named the JFK Conference Room after former president John F. Kennedy.
During the renovation process, parts of the West Wing, as well as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, were used by national security officials to make important calls with foreign
leaders. Other communications involving national security took place at either of these temporary locations over the past year.
President Joe Biden already used the Situation Room for an intelligence briefing, and he “loved it,” but according to Marc Gustafson, the space should be “fully operational for calls with heads of state in the coming days.”
Since millions of dollars went into the renovation, and everything from the ceilings to the floors were highly thought out, Gustafson says that in the future “we should not have to do another gut renovation.”