White House war room gets 21st century face-lift

The "situation room" -- the high-tech hub immortalized in movies as a dimly lighted conference table with decorated generals and power players in dark suits advising the president -- is getting a face lift.

Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin, who escorted small groups of reporters through the work-in-progress complex on Tuesday, said the plan is to have the new situation room open for business by January 1.

"It's ahead of schedule and under budget," said Hagin, a trusted Bush aide who has helped steer the overhaul since its conception in March 2001, months before the September 11 terrorist strikes that gave it new urgency.

What was the budget? "That's classified," Hagin said, as he marched journalists past flat-screen televisions showing US football highlights now, but perhaps Iraq, Afghanistan or some storm-hit US city in a few weeks.

The warren of rooms, measuring about 2,700 square feet (250 square meters), sits on the lower level of the West Wing, steps from the carry-out window of the White House mess, where aides can grab a sandwich and fries.

Visitors walk through its heavy door to find blue carpets still covered in plastic sheeting, and a cherry-wood receptionist's desk that would not be out of place in a dentist's office except for the multiple computer screens.

Situation room personnel once asked for cellular phones and pagers at the front door, but the new complex boasts sensors in the ceilings that detect such devices and alert security, White House officials said.

Two cylinder-shaped booths for "secure" telephones stand nearby -- wires protrude where the encoded phones will eventually go -- and technicians buzz around computer servers and fax machines and near windows.

Windows? "They're very heavy windows," said Hagin. "They have privacy screens."

The president's main room, where he typically holds national security council meetings, now boasts six flat-screen televisions with videoconference cameras, and displays that highlight the current security level of the discussion and whether the microphones are on to avoid potential slip-ups.

In another area, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and scores of national security council officials have what look like little mail slots near three fax machines labeled "unclass" -- presumably, "unclassified" -- "secret" and "classified," and what look like their corresponding paper shredders.

During the refurbishing, many of the "situation room" operations were moved into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, an imposing grey structure on the White House grounds, said Hagin.

The situation room was, in part, the result of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when then-president John F. Kennedy conceived of a secure place to meet and compile intelligence inside the presidential mansion.

That's still the mission today: On the "watch floor," which operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, duty officers will monitor a bank of computer screens that flash the latest information from around the world.

The complex has not seen such an overhaul since Kennedy's day, said Hagin, who told reporters that "we literally took it down to the bare bricks and the dirt floor" but hoped the new changes would last 30-40 years.

"We want continual improvement" of the complex's technological capabilities, and designed it so that equipment could be updated as capabilities improve, he said.

Hagin explained that the new situation room would incorporate Department of Homeland Security more than it had in the past, giving the White House a better grasp of real-time development in crises like Hurricane Katrina.

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