Inside the renovated White House Situation Room: Cutting-edge tech, mahogany and that new car smell

By COLLEEN LONG
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House Situation Room — a space of great mystique and even higher secrecy — just got a $50 million facelift. The 5,500-square-foot, highly secure complex of conference rooms and offices in the West Wing has undergone a gut renovation that took a year to complete. This is where the president meets with national security officials to discuss sensitive government matters, speaks with foreign leaders and works through major national security crises. President Joe Biden got a tour this week of the reworked space and then received an intelligence briefing in the hush-hush complex, which was created in 1961 by the Kennedy administration after the Bay of Pigs invasion as a dedicated crisis management center.