[Infowarrior] - Overhaul Moves White House Data Center Into Modern Era

[Richard Forno]

December 19, 2006
Overhaul Moves White House Data Center Into Modern Era
By JIM RUTENBERG and DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/washington/19bush.html?ei=5094&en=4a7c657a
600fa66b&hp=&ex=1166590800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 ‹ Perhaps no corner of the White House has starred in
more movies and television shows than the Situation Room, the presidential
decision center under the West Wing that Hollywood imagines as a high-tech
beehive of activity, where presidents command covert operations around the
world.

In reality, it was something of a low-tech dungeon.

Until it closed for its biggest overhaul since John F. Kennedy settled into
its wood-paneled conference room, most of the room¹s monitors used ‹ get
this ‹ picture tubes. Communications were often by fax. The computers and
telephones looked like the best technology available, in 1985. There was a
small kitchen, but it had no sink.

On Dec. 27 the new Situation Room is to open formally, the result of
planning that reaches back to before the Sept. 11 attacks but took on added
urgency afterward. The White House offered a preview to two reporters on
Monday, days before its new data center is pumped full of classified
information and its doors are sealed to outsiders.

Even in its new incarnation, it is not quite up to the standards of ³24.²
But it is getting closer. For starters, Mr. Bush¹s new main conference room,
just underneath the main floor of the West Wing, has six flat-screen
televisions for secure video conferences, and the technology linking them to
generals and prime ministers around the globe makes it less likely that the
encrypted voices and images will go black. (That happened regularly in
connections to Baghdad, an event one former administration official said had
been known to ³prompt a presidential outburst.²)

The screens also have what Joe Hagin, the deputy White House chief of staff,
described in a tour as ³John Madden telestrators,² the ability to perform
on-screen drawings.

(White House technologists settled on NEC plasma flat-screens for the
president¹s main conference room and LCD screens, made by LG, in the
remainder of the chamber.)

The watch officers, who were previously seated so they stared at walls
rather than each other, are now arrayed on two tiers of curved computer
terminals that can be fed both classified and unclassified data from around
the country and the world. That ends a problem that most multi-national
companies solved years ago, an inability to merge different kinds of data
without effectively having to cut and paste.

The Situation Room was largely an outgrowth of the Cuban missile crisis, an
event that made President Kennedy and his aides realize that they needed a
central hub for information during crises.

Since then, it has been the site of critical decisions: Lyndon Johnson spent
long nights picking bombing targets there; Bill Clinton used it to handle
Bosnia and the Asian financial crisis. Over the years, the technology became
a patchwork of fixes, as Wang word processors were replaced by personal
computers, and then for portable secure video. The 9/11 commission found
that on the day of the 2001 attacks, communications frayed, making it hard
for Mr. Bush, flying around on Air Force One, to get a picture of what was
going on.

Mr. Hagin, a trusted aide who handles much of the behind-the-scenes work of
the White House, said officials decided a complete overhaul was desperately
needed almost as soon as they saw it.

³We were all underwhelmed the first time we walked into the Situation Room,²
he said in an interview at the White House on Monday, an assessment shared
by others.

But, Mr. Hagin said, after the Sept. 11 attacks the project took on added
importance, as officials came to realize that the room, created in the cold
war, was not set up to gather both international and domestic information.

Among the most important changes, Mr. Hagin said, was the expansion of its
use beyond the National Security Council to also include the Homeland
Security Council and the White House chief of staff¹s office.

Officials found the old room¹s wood-paneled walls too noisy, making it hard
to hear for those listening in via video or telephone. The new room has less
mahogany and more of what Mr. Hagin described as 21st century whisper wall.

And, where the old Situation Room suite had only two secure video rooms, the
new one has five and a direct, secure feed to Air Force One, a better fit
for Mr. Bush personally.

³This president wants to look you in the eye while you¹re answering his
questions,² said Phil Lago, executive secretary of the security council who
is also planning the renovation.