Situation Room (photograph) facts for kids
Situation Room is a photograph taken by Pete Souza, Chief Official White House Photographer, at 4:05 p.m. on May 1, 2011. The photograph shows U.S. president Barack Obama and his national security team in the White House Situation Room receiving live updates from Operation Neptune Spear, which led to the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Background
Air Force Brigadier General Brad Webb was sitting at the table monitoring the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound when Michael Leiter, then director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center, entered the room. Leiter does not appear in the photograph, but was followed by Robert Gates, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and others. Soon the president entered the room, commenting "I need to watch this," and sat down next to General Webb. According to journalist Peter Bergen, the group was watching a live feed from an unmanned drone flying overhead. Leon Panetta said that Obama did not see bin Laden being killed. Clinton said: "We could see or hear nothing when [the SEALs] went into the house. There was no communication or feedback coming so it was during that time period everyone was particularly focused on just trying to keep calm and keep prepared as to what would happen."
The picture was taken at 4:05 pm local time in Washington (16:05 EDT), which was 12:35 am local time in Afghanistan. President Obama later said he believed the picture was taken about the time the room's occupants were informed or realized that one of the raid's helicopters had crashed.
White House photographer Pete Souza commented on this photograph for Time in late 2012, writing:
Much has been made of this photograph that shows the President and Vice President and the national security team monitoring in real time the mission against Osama bin Laden, May 1, 2011. Some more background on the photograph: The White House Situation Room is actually comprised of several different conference rooms. The majority of the time, the President convenes meetings in the large conference room with assigned seats. But to monitor this mission, the group moved into the much smaller conference room. The President chose to sit next to Brigadier General Marshall B. 'Brad' Webb, Assistant Commanding General of Joint Special Operations Command, who was point man for the communications taking place. With so few chairs, others just stood at the back of the room. I was jammed into a corner of the room with no room to move. During the mission itself, I made approximately 100 photographs, almost all from this cramped spot in the corner. Please note: a classified document seen in front of Sec. Clinton has been obscured.
People
The following people are pictured, from left to right:
Seated
- Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States
- Barack Obama, President of the United States
- Brigadier General Marshall B. "Brad" Webb, Assistant Commanding General of the Joint Special Operations Command
- Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Advisor
- Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State
- Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense
Standing
- Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
- Tom Donilon, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
- William M. Daley, White House Chief of Staff
- Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President
- Audrey Tomason, Director for Counterterrorism for the National Security Council
- An unidentified person in a beige shirt behind Tomason (only a fragment of the person's shoulder is visible)
- John O. Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism
- James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence
- A man in a black suit with a white tie. Though his head is out of frame, he has been identified as a CIA analyst, publicly known only as "John", who was "the first to put in writing [in summer 2010] that the CIA might have a legitimate lead on finding bin Laden."
Alteration in Hasidic newspapers
Di Tzeitung (The Journal), a Satmar Hasidic newspaper from Brooklyn, edited the image to remove Clinton and Tomason due to its policy of not running photographs with women because of modesty laws. The newspaper apologized for altering the image in breach of the terms of its release. The Washington Post issued a correction, noting that Di Tzeitung had not violated any White House copyright because the photograph was "in the public domain from the moment of inception". In addition, Dee Voch (The Week), a weekly Hasidic magazine from Brooklyn, also edited out the women.
The editing of images of women out of photographs is a common practice of Haredi newspapers. While some interpreted this practice as a result of inequality to women's rights in Hasidic Judaism, Di Tzeitung, in its statement, said it was done only because of modesty reasons, and should in no way be seen as degrading of women.
Other uses
The photograph was used satirically on the cover of the May 13, 2011 issue of Private Eye magazine, suggesting that the people present were witnessing a massacre of the Liberal Democrats party in British local elections.
In the 2017 season five finale of the Netflix TV show House of Cards, fictional President Claire Underwood and her cabinet conduct a military operation in the White House Situation Room. The angle of the camera shot, placement of actors in the scene, their clothing, and even the placement of computers and coffee cups on the table, directly mimic Souza's photograph. The photograph was also mimicked in a shot in Bong Joon-ho's 2017 film Okja, only with a corporation taking the place of the U.S. government.
See also
- List of photographs considered the most important
