A storied part of the White House complex — the Situation Room — has emerged from a $50 million makeover, with President Joe Biden taking part in a ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this week to mark the occasion.
The White House Situation Room is actually a highly secure complex of rooms on the West Wing’s ground floor, including a reception area, a main conference room known as the “JFK room,” a smaller conference room, breakout rooms and a 24-7 operations center called the “watch floor.”
The operations room is shown in the photo above, while the main conference room is shown in the photo below.
The main conference room for the White House Situation Room is shown here.
White House handout
Biden shared a video on Friday that shows the ribbon-cutting ceremony and his tour of the revamped facility, writing in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that it’s “incredible.”
The renovation involved digging 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. The goal is to never need a complete renovation again, as now panels can be removed and updated and new technology swapped in.
The Situation Room’s yearlong renovation came up in July when cocaine was found in a heavily traveled part of West Wing. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, criticized what he described as “questionable reporting” on the room’s connection to the incident.
“The Situation Room is not in use and has not been in use for months because it is currently under construction. We are using an alternate Situation Room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building,” Sullivan told reporters in July. “There was no issue with the Situation Room relative to this. “
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
