The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis

“The Cold War with the Soviet Union was a different kind of struggle from World Wars I and II. But Kennedy understood that it would require just as much attention, planning, monitoring, and strategizing as the hot wars of years gone by.”

In Chapter 1, Stephanopoulos describes the creation of the Situation Room in 1961. He explains that it came from a recommendation made by military researchers who were concerned about the threat of communism, reflecting The Evolution of National Security Practices. The Situation Room’s creation thus reflected the changing geopolitical situation of the time.

“A good Sit Room officer must be focused, organized, intelligent, judicious, apolitical, a fast reader, a critical thinker and cool under pressure. These skills are as disparate as they are valuable, and it’s the rare person who possesses them all.”

Originally, Situation Room duty officers were drawn exclusively from the CIA, but by the 1980s, more began coming from the State Department, National Security Agency, and Defense Intelligence Agency. In describing the qualities necessary for a Sit Room officer, Stephanopoulos emphasizes the responsibility and pressures faced by those who are involved in The Nature of Presidential Decision-Making.

“Presidential phone calls haven’t been recorded since the Nixon tapes sunk his presidency. But during Johnson’s administration, these analog machines captured LBJ’s questions and rumination—the agony of a commander in chief trapped by a war he didn’t start but couldn’t quit.”

In Chapter 2, Stephanopoulos examines the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson and how he used the Situation Room compared to his predecessor, Kennedy, and his successor, Nixon. He explains the reasoning for Johnson’s near-constant presence as a President who was obsessed with American progress and casualties in the Vietnam War. Staying in the Situation Room was a way for Johnson to absorb as much information about Vietnam as possible.

“The pace was hectic and the room was the heartbeat of the Johnson administration—which, when it came to Vietnam, might have been part of the problem. No information the Sit Room could provide would salvage a flawed strategy. Data was not a substitute for judgement. It could not tell us who exactly we were fighting, how to win, or even why we needed to defeat them.”

Johnson had been accused of “micromanaging” both the White House and the war because of his insistence on having as much information as possible, at all times. When it came to Vietnam, however, his micromanaging was fruitless because of the flawed strategy and flawed reasons for being involved. Johnson inherited the Vietnam War from his predecessor, but still paid the price for its failures.

“Richard Nixon hated the Situation Room. During five and a half years as president, he almost never set foot in there.”

In Chapter 3, Stephanopoulos compares the way in which Nixon used the Situation Room to how Johnson did. While Johnson was there constantly, trying to gather as much information as possible about the Vietnam War, Nixon rarely ever even entered. The reason for this is that Nixon was obsessed with his domestic scandals, Watergate, and the looming resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew.

“Henry Kissinger was a central figure in the Nixon White House—by late 1973, arguable as central as the president himself. He often carried briefs personally to Nixon to discuss them. And he, rather than the president, led Sit Room meetings in which advisers charted the United States’ course of action.”

In the Nixon administration, Kissinger served as both the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor. Given this responsibility, Nixon trusted Kissinger to carry the load, but he also delegated such responsibility because he was consumed with the Watergate affair and his possible impeachment.

“Like Nixon, President Ford almost never used the Situation Room for meetings. Yet his reasons for avoiding it were different from Nixon’s, who felt paranoid that the Sit Room was the NSC’s domain. It’s possible, as Ford biographer Richard Norton Smith speculates, that Ford preferred working in the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room as a way to establish legitimacy as president.”

In referring to Ford’s dislike of using the Sit Room, Stephanopoulos argues that his reasons might have been related to his unique place in history as the only man to serve as president who was not voted in either as president or vice president. Ford was elevated to the role of vice president after Spiro Agnew resigned following a fraud scandal and then elevated to the presidency when Nixon resigned during the Watergate scandal.

“The failure of Desert One effectively ended Carter’s presidency. It would also haunt the Situation Room for decades to come, hovering like a specter over planning sessions for later military missions.”

The failure of Desert One, the 1980 rescue attempt under Carter during the Iran Hostage Crisis, was humiliating for the American public. The mission failed for reasons beyond Carter’s control, but he ultimately paid the electoral price for the failure in the 1980 Presidential Election.

“Whether you believe that parapsychology is real or imagined, there’s no debating the fact that the U.S. government invested real resources into it for many years.”

Stephanopoulos is referring to Operation Grill Flame, a top-secret project launched in 1978 that explored the use of parapsychology to gather intelligence (89). Desperate after Iran had held American hostages for more than a year and the Desert One rescue mission had failed, Carter hosted an NCS staffer who had worked on the project and asked him if his work could do anything to help the crisis.

“Instantly, an ordinary Monday turned into a day of confusion and panic, not just at the scene of the shooting, but in the White House, too. And more specifically—and unusually—in the Situation Room.”

Stephanopoulos discusses the confusion that set in after President Reagan was shot in 1981. At the time, Vice President Bush was on a flight back to Washington and Secretary of State Alexander Haig incorrectly told the press that he was in charge until the vice president arrived.

“It’s difficult to remember in these times of TikTok, YouTube, multiple streaming outlets and hundreds of cable channels, but in 1983 the release of a made-for-TV movie on one of the ‘big three’ broadcast networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) could dominate the national conversation.”

In 1983, 100 million people out of a total US population of 233 million watched the movie The Day After. The movie depicted America after a Soviet nuclear attack and had a profound effect not only on American viewers but also on President Reagan, which in turn inspired The Evolution of National Security Practices. The movie also was instrumental in raising awareness of nuclear war with the general population.

“Some of Iran-Contra’s peripheral aspects were also unprecedented. The first administration in history to use email became the first to suffer an email scandal.”

The Iran-Contra scandal was, in essence, “an arms-for-hostages deal with a twist” (138). National Security Advisor John Poindexter and NCS staffer Oliver North began covertly and illegally selling weapons to a terrorist group associated with Iran for the return of American hostages. The exposure of the scandal through the men’s emails reflects The Role of Technology in Governance.

“Just two years after President Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate and challenged Gorbachev to ‘tear down this wall,’ the Germans were doing it themselves.”

The presidency of George H.W. Bush was most notable for the seismic international events that took place during those years, namely the fall of the Berlin Wall. Amidst a number of democratic revolutions taking place in the Eastern Bloc in 1989, an East German communist party leader mistakenly announced that citizens would immediately be free to travel from the East to the West. This led to citizens on both sides of the wall to start breaking it apart.

“The Bush 41 team was tight-knit, efficient and superb at handling foreign policy. Yet they learned the same lesson handed to Winston Churchill after World War II: Leaders don’t always get rewarded politically for winning a war.”

Stephanopoulos is referring to the upset win by Bill Clinton in the 1992 Presidential Election. After the Gulf War and the US-led Operation Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait, Bush’s poll numbers were soaring and his re-election looked imminent, but the economy took a fall during his final year in office.

“To this day, none of the calls between heads of state are recorded. Instead, three Sit Room staffers listen in on headsets, typing furiously as the two parties talk. When the call is finished, they compare notes and try to compile as accurate a document as possible.”

Stephanopoulos explains that the document is called the memcon, and “creating it is a stressful, thankless job” (194). While some argue that the calls are not recorded because it is not gentlemanly, others argue that it is because all presidents want plausible deniability if something controversial is said.

“Like the firefighters in New York who rushed toward the burning towers, Sit Room staffers rushed toward the White House.”

In Chapter 9, Stephanopoulos describes the events of 9/11, when terrorists attacked America and the White House was a primary target. Although the White House was evacuated, staffers of the Situation Room refused to leave because they knew that the president would have trouble communicating without them.

“The images of Card whispering to the president became famous, as did the words he said: ‘A second plane hit the tower. America is under attack.’ What most people don’t realize, though, is that those words originated in the Situation Room, coming from Rob Hargis, through Deb Loewer, to Andy Card, to the president.”

On the morning of 9/11, President Bush was at an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida. He had traveled there with Card, his Chief of Staff, and Deb Loewer, the director of the Situation Room. When news reports came that a second plane had hit the tower, Loewer was on the phone with Rob Hargis, a senior Sit Room duty officer. Loewer then relayed the message to Card, who decided to interrupt the president, creating the now-famous image.

“It was like a football team playing together an entire season, then rolling into the Super Bowl at peak performance. There was a shared language, a familiarity and trust that helped the process run smoothly, and the experience of being in the Sit Room helped strengthen the decision-making muscle.”

Stephanopoulos argues that the fact that the bin Laden raid did not take place in the first year of Obama’s presidency made a difference in the effective planning and execution, aiding The Nature of Presidential Decision-Making. All the principals involved had long been fixtures in Obama’s Sit Room meetings and had developed trust with one another. This was especially true for Vice Admiral William McRaven, who conducted the raid. He had been a regular at Obama’s weekly meetings focused only on counterterrorism.

“This is the Situation Room at its best: a place of sober discussion, informed thinking, apolitical attitudes and an absence of grandstanding. The men and women in the room that day understood their roles and appreciated the gravity of what they were being asked to decide. The give-and-take in the room was genuine, and the scale of it—specifically, the inclusion of the non-principals—unprecedented.”

Stephanopoulos is referring to the careful planning and decision-making that went into the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. Obama famously used the Situation Room to conduct top-secret meetings with his team and took the extraordinary step of soliciting everyone’s opinion, even the advisors and aides who accompanied the principals.

“Whatever you think about Barack Obama, it’s difficult to dispute that he did the job the right way. On the big questions, he was methodical and he was prepared. And with regard to the Situation Room, he utilized it in the most efficient, productive way possible. He respected history, he took all viewpoints into account, and he acted decisively.”

One of the most important aspects of the Sit Room meetings concerning the bin Laden raid was how similar it was to the failed Desert One mission in 1980 to rescue American hostages in Iran. A few of the principals involved were also involved in the 1980 debacle, so Obama carefully considered what went wrong 31 years earlier.

“This book examines crisis management in the modern presidency. During the Trump administration, the president was the crisis to be managed.”

In calling Trump “the crisis to be managed,” Stephanopoulos suggests that The Situation Room once again functioned as a microcosm of the nature of a particular presidency. Stephanopoulos implies that Trump’s chaotic style of governance was reflected in how The Situation Room had to respond to Trump as the source of the problem.

“White House protocols have been honed over decades. Every rule is in place for a reason, whether for security, or recordkeeping, or to keep checks and balances on the executive branch. But Donald Trump is a man who bristles at rules. He wanted to do things his own way, and he had no patience for the conventions and behavioral codes expected of a president.”

Much of Stephanopoulos’s discussion concerning the presidency of Donald Trump deals with his flouting of not only typical norms and standards practiced by presidents but also the simple rules. Stephanopoulos uses anecdotes to describe various instances, such as Trump continually using unsecured phone lines and spreading misinformation and disinformation to the public.

“So much has changed in the sixty-plus years since the Situation Room was established. And yet, the Cold War conditions that led to its creation have come full circle. Once again, the United States and Russia are adversaries. We’re again engaged in a tense and dangerous conflict over another people’s land. History is, in some ways, repeating itself. The difference is now we live in a world where information flow is instantaneous, technology is ubiquitous and timelines are compressed.”

In his final chapter, Stephanopoulos examines a major crisis faced by the Biden administration in the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This crisis was unique for a number of reasons, but primarily because the reason that the Situation Room was created in 1961 was because of military concerns about the Soviet Union and the spread of communism. In speaking of how “technology is ubiquitous,” Stephanopoulos once again highlights The Role of Technology in Governance.