White House unveils spiffy new Situation Room weeks after cocaine find

The White House on Friday released photos of the refurbished Situation Room — giving a glimpse into the highly secure area near where a small amount of cocaine was found over the summer. The photos show the complex of specially wired rooms on the ground floor of the West Wing both upon their completion on Aug. 16 and during a subsequent presidential ribbon-cutting Sept. 5. The main conference room’s drab beige walls and unremarkable wooden board room table were replaced with dramatic dark wood wall panels and an ornate chevron-patterned board table with light and dark bands. The reworked conference room — where presidents have monitored world crises and daring missions such as the 2011 assassination of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden — also features new black leather seats with matching table placemats and TV screens on the walls. A dimly lit operations center adjacent to the main room is shown with two rows of desks with computers and phones. Dramatic deep-blue ceiling lighting and backlit images of the nation’s Great Seal on walls resemble the staging of command centers in homeland-security-themed TV shows. Biden was pictured cutting a ribbon following a one-year total renovation of the roughly 5,500-square-foot area created in 1961 on the orders of John F. Kennedy following the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Read more at https://nypost.com/2023/09/08/white-house-unveils-new-situation-room-after-cocaine-find/ #whitehouse #situationroom #joebiden The New York Post is your source for breaking news, news about New York, sports, business, entertainment, opinion, real estate, culture, fashion, and more. Subscribe to New York Post Sports: https://www.youtube.com/c/nypostsports Catch the latest news here: https://nypost.com/ Follow The New York Post on: Twitter - https://twitter.com/nypost Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/NYPost