It’s the very safe space in the White House exactly where presidents have gone to watch video feeds as US forces killed terrorists Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It’s exactly where President Joe Biden discovered in August that a suicide bomber killed 13 American service members in Kabul.
But the Situation Room is also a technologies throwback, with some gear that hasn’t been updated in 15 years.
Now the Pentagon has proposed shifting just about $46 million previously authorized for other applications to accelerate an ongoing overhaul, adding to about $44 million backed by Congress for the project due to the fact fiscal 2017 and $10 million requested for fiscal 2022, according to Pentagon spending budget documents.
The Situation Room is in fact a series of rooms, a command center on the reduce level of the White House’s West Wing for the president and senior administration officials to conduct safe briefings and calls.
“Sit Room” employees provide 24-hour monitoring of international developments, according to the nonprofit White House Museum. A particular person familiar with the operation, who discussed the safe facility on situation of anonymity, stated its employees also connects calls with heads of state and monitors important domestic events.
Funds are essential for renovations that will “update the security and technology” due to the fact the last renovation in 2006, which includes “audio-visual improvements to enable broadcast quality display and production capability to include flexible infrastructure for rapid upgrades,” according to a Defense Department spending budget document for fiscal 2022.
The revenue sought for improvements “will continue to upgrade and secure critical systems that support classified voice, data and video used in the White House Situation Room and throughout the National Security Council” for the president, vice president and senior employees, according to the document.
Not surprisingly, a lot of what that spending will help is classified, like the complete capabilities of the Situation Room itself.
Some of the funding would also upgrade systems utilised at places outdoors Washington, identified as “Continuity of Government” websites, that have been made in the course of the Cold War in case of a catastrophic attack on the nation’s capital.
The Pentagon request to shift funds to the Defense Information Systems Agency for the Situation Room is portion of a “reprogramming” request for unspent fiscal 2021 funds that Congress is reviewing. In addition, $10 million is getting requested as portion of the nonetheless-pending fiscal 2022 spending budget, according to agency spokesman Dillon McConnell.
Intelligence agencies also are participating in the upgrade and its funding, the particular person familiar with the project stated. The multilayered program contains gear such as servers at off-web-site places and is protected by layers of backup, encryption and hardening against physical attack, the particular person stated.
Tense Moments
The Situation Room has been the web-site of lots of tense and historical moments due to the fact it was made in May 1961 “out of frustration on the part of President Kennedy after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion,” according to the White House Museum.
During President Donald Trump’s term, the White House released an October 2019 photo of him in the Situation Room watching the commando raid that killed al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, in Syria.
It also has been the web-site of much less momentous events. In December 2017, it is exactly where Trump’s chief of employees, John Kelly, fired Trump adviser and former “Apprentice” celebrity Omarosa Manigault Newman. Despite the room’s reputation for tight safety, she secretly taped the conversation.
This year, Biden and his group have been gathering for an update on the airlift evacuation from Afghanistan when he discovered of the Aug. 26 terrorist attack at Kabul airport.
“As the president arrived in the Situation Room, one of the first updates he received, of course, was about the attacks on the ground in Kabul,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated at the time. Commanders on the ground and the area, utilizing the safe communications hyperlink to the nerve center of the White House, gave Biden briefings as updates rolled in.
Most Famous
The most renowned photo was what then-White House Photographer Pete Souza referred to as “Frame 210” taken on May 1, 2011: President Barack Obama and his National Security group watching a live drone video beamed into a laptop and listening to a satellite-radio feed of the Seal Team 6 raid that killed bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The image shows Obama and major advisers crammed collectively in a compact space.
Air Force Lieutenant General Brad Webb, who was a one-star basic and an Air Force Tech Sergeant for the secretive Joint Special Operations Command, explained in an interview how that came about.
Webb, who’s now the 3-star commander of the Air Education and Training Command, stated he was told by White House employees that he wasn’t authorized to have access to the president but “you can set up your stuff. If we have a question, we’ll come get you.” So Webb and a tech sergeant operated a laptop in a compact annex in the Situation Room complicated to monitor the raid in Pakistan.
Then “everybody kind of naturally migrated,” and “they float in over the series of the hours,” he stated. First was then-Vice President Biden, who asked “Hey General, what’s going on?”
“I kind of walked him through what he can expect,” Webb stated.
Then “it kind of got busy,” Webb stated. He stated he looked about and identified, “Whoa, everybody’s in here,” which includes Obama, who let Webb maintain his seat. Webb is seen in uniform in the center of the White House photo.
“I spent a lot of time explaining to them what was going to occur” but “as more people came in, I just unplugged” the laptop headset “so they could hear the audio.” That incorporated the now renowned “Geronimo EKIA” contact sign by a commando on the ground signaling that Bin Laden was dead.
Souza later wrote that “the president stood up to shake hands with General Webb and a few others” but “there was no cheering or fist-bumping. It was an oddly subdued reaction to a historic moment.”
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