WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM: A RESULT OF THE BAY OF PIGS
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) Jim Rasenberger writes that the White House Situation Room*, created in May 1961, was a direct result of the Bay of Pigs.
The space was chosen by newly appointed National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy**. It had been a bowling alley located under the West Wing.
Bundy insisted that President John F. Kennedy needed "to commit to regular time slots for national security meetings" and recommended the new Situation Room. The meetings were intended to provide the president with "more of the raw data" during a crisis to make "more informed and better decisions."
Rasenberger writes...
"It remade the presidency itself, asserting and expanding the command and control of the chief executive."
*White House Situation Room, a.k.a. John F. Kennedy Conference Room, is a 5,525 sq. ft. intelligence management room located in the White House basement. It was built in May 1961 and remodeled in 2006-07. The WHSR is equipped with secure communications and hidden audio/video systems.
**McGeorge Bundy (1919-1996) was born in Boston, MA to a prosperous Republican family. He graduated from Yale (1940) & served as an intelligence officer in WWII. After the war, he became a professor of government at Harvard & Dean of Faculty of Arts & Sciences in 1953.
SOURCE
"Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs," by Jim Rasenberger, Scribner, New York, 2011.
White House Situation Room
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) Jim Rasenberger writes that the White House Situation Room*, created in May 1961, was a direct result of the Bay of Pigs.
The space was chosen by newly appointed National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy**. It had been a bowling alley located under the West Wing.
Bundy insisted that President John F. Kennedy needed "to commit to regular time slots for national security meetings" and recommended the new Situation Room. The meetings were intended to provide the president with "more of the raw data" during a crisis to make "more informed and better decisions."
Rasenberger writes...
"It remade the presidency itself, asserting and expanding the command and control of the chief executive."
*White House Situation Room, a.k.a. John F. Kennedy Conference Room, is a 5,525 sq. ft. intelligence management room located in the White House basement. It was built in May 1961 and remodeled in 2006-07. The WHSR is equipped with secure communications and hidden audio/video systems.
**McGeorge Bundy (1919-1996) was born in Boston, MA to a prosperous Republican family. He graduated from Yale (1940) & served as an intelligence officer in WWII. After the war, he became a professor of government at Harvard & Dean of Faculty of Arts & Sciences in 1953.
SOURCE
"Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs," by Jim Rasenberger, Scribner, New York, 2011.
White House Situation Room
Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony
May 18, 2007
Photo by David Bohrer
