The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis

The Berlin Wall was a concrete barrier that separated West Germany from East Germany from 1961 until 1989. Originally constructed to prevent East German citizens from escaping to the West, the Berlin Wall came to symbolize the “Iron Curtain” that separated capitalist countries of the West from the communist Eastern Bloc of the USSR. In 1987, President Reagan delivered a speech at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate which included the line, “Mr. Gorbachev: tear down this wall” (143-44). Although most of the NSC had used the Situation Room to try to rework the speech because they thought the line was too confrontational, Reagan disagreed with the NSC and kept the line.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a respiratory illness that began in China in late 2019 and spread across the world in 2020. It was declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization and resulted in social and economic disruption worldwide. In Chapter 11, Stephanopoulos writes that “COVID-19 brought its own unique chaos to the Situation Room” (280). The chaos was largely due to the way that the crisis was handled by the Trump administration and by Trump himself. While Sit Room staff wore face masks all the time inside the complex, the administration wanted them to not wear them outside because of the “optics of fear” (281). According to Stephanopoulos, “wearing a mask anywhere outside the Sit Room itself was cause for dismissal” (281).

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union which lasted for 13 days in October 1962, nearly instigating a nuclear war. After a US Air Force pilot photographed ballistic missile launch sites in Cuba, only 300 miles from Miami, the Situation Room was used to get the information to President Kennedy and his top advisors. Ultimately, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev responded to Kennedy’s requests and decided to remove the missiles. This was the first major crisis to be dealt with in the Sit Room, and it largely worked as intended because it allowed the president to get information more quickly: Stephanopoulos argues that “if the Sit Room had not yet existed, Khrushchev’s overture would have taken longer to arrive, and the Cuban Missile Crisis might have taken a much darker turn” (24).

Desert One, also known as Operation Eagle Claw, was a 1980 military operation to rescue Americans who were being held hostage in Iran by Islamic militants. Knowing that military action against Iran would likely result in the deaths of the hostages, Carter attempted to use diplomatic channels to get the hostages back, but the militants refused to negotiate. After more than five months, Carter decided to attempt the rescue mission. According to Stephanopoulos, “the mission went sideways right from the start” (103). Although eight helicopters were sent in, only six made it safely to the designated staging spot and another was deemed unsafe to fly, so the mission was aborted. As the helicopters were withdrawing, one crashed, resulting in the deaths of eight servicemembers.

The Iran-Contra Affair was a scandal that involved senior Reagan administration officials who secretly and illegally sold weapons to Iran. The officials then funneled the proceeds to the Contras, an anti-communist group in Nicaragua attempting to overthrow the Sandinista government, which was also illegal. In Chapter 6, Stephanopoulos explains that “the Iran-Contra Affair was, in essence, an arms-for-hostages deal with a twist” (138). Hezbollah, an Islamist group with ties to Iran, was holding seven Americans hostage in Lebanon, so the plan was to secure their release in exchange for circumventing the Iran arms embargo. National Security Advisor John Poindexter and Colonel Oliver North, an NSC staffer, were regular fixtures in the Situation Room and the primary plotters of the initiative. North also famously used the Sit Room’s shredder to destroy incriminating documents.

The Mayaguez Incident was a conflict between the Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia and the United States in May 1975. Only 12 days after the fall of Saigon and the close of the Vietnam War, a US-flagged cargo ship, the S.S. Mayaguez, was fired upon and boarded by Cambodian forces in the Gulf of Siam. The ship was towed to a Cambodian port and its crew was held hostage. US marines attacked the island of Koh Tang, where the crew members were believed to be, and were able to recapture the ship, but 38 marines were killed in the fighting and three others were captured and later executed. The incident plays a critical role in the history of the Situation Room in that President Ford relied on the technological advances available in the complex to communicate directly with fighter pilots before making important decisions.