Situation Room in White House gets $50 million gut renovation. Here's how it turned out.
CBSN
The White House Situation Room, where the president works through major national security crises with top national security officials, just underwent a $50 million gut renovation, and the revamped secret complex was just unveiled Friday morning.
The "room," which is in fact a 5,500-square-foot highly secure complex of conference rooms and offices on the ground floor of the West Wing, is generally shrouded in secrecy. History happens here — it's where President Barack Obama and his team, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, watched the raid that took down al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011. In 2019, President Donald Trump monitored the operation that killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. President Lyndon Johnson went over Vietnam War plans here, too.
Presidents also use the room to discuss sensitive government matters and converse with foreign leaders.