Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of Washington Secrets. Today, we take a look at the Situation Room. Is it possible that someone could record and then leak sensitive discussions? And how do White House background briefings work?The Situation Room is meant to be the most secure place in the White House, where classified raids to kill terrorists are planned and monitored. It is where the most sensitive information is handled.Which is why it was used by top officials last year to discuss how to best handle awkward revelations from the Epstein files.
So could two New York Times reporters really have obtained audio recordings of those discussions for their forthcoming book?
“I used to run the SitRoom,” posted Larry Pfeiffer, executive director of the Hayden Center at George Mason University. “Could meetings there really be recorded? Short answer: yes.”
In a thread, Pfeiffer explained that it famously happened during President Donald Trump’s first term, when former Celebrity Apprentice contestant Omarosa Manigault Newman covertly recorded then-chief of staff John Kelly firing her in the high-security Situation Room using a recorder pen.
“Easy to hide, hard to detect,” he wrote.
