My darling husband recently read George Stephanopoulos's new book. He is a huge history buff and he really appreciates government history so my mother recommended the book after seeing George talk about it on Good Morning, America. I asked him to do a review, so here it is for your reading pleasure.
“An issue ignored is a crisis invited.” – Henry Kissinger, Former United States Secretary of State
In his recently published book The Situation Room, The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis, George Stephanopoulos, with co-author Lisa Dickey offers a “warts and all” history of the White House Situation Room, laden with intimate details from the founding of the Situation Room itself just after the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961, up to the current crises in the Biden Administration, not including (obviously) classified details that will remain that way until their legal status changes.
This is a tremendous volume with over 100 interviews conducted by the authors, and research assistants over time and they paint some flattering and less than flattering portraits of behaviors of Commanders-in-Chiefs over the past 63 years that will explain much of what we have seen in this country and abroad during our lifetimes.
Every major crisis in each administration, all of the information gatherers, decision makers, and leaders, as well as their decision-making processes are reviewed, including many of the equipment updates and reconfigurations of the White House basement that became the Situation Room that, as President Kennedy described it, was a “pigsty” in 1961.
Among the many stories and interviews related in the book, are the stories of key figures who were missing or, when they were desperately needed in the Situation Room, were nowhere near the location, preferring to have information relayed to them from below.
Where Lyndon Johnson micromanaged the Vietnam War from the Situation Room during his administration, Richard Nixon was described as such an introvert that he could hardly stand to be in the spaces at all. He preferred to take work, and a bottle of scotch whiskey with him to Room 180 at the Old Executive Office Building across the street. Some staff interviewed said that in his last weeks in office during the Watergate scandal, he was fairly inebriated all the time.
Not to give away all the juicy stories, of which there are many, but there are also tremendous stories of courage, and strength in the face if great evil. Such as the Ford Administration’s handling of the Saigon withdrawal at the end of Vietnam, and the disastrous handling of the attempt to free the American hostages in Iran at the end of the Carter Administration.
Such was the case at many times in recent history that are revealed in these pages. Many lessons were learned and applied from previous crises that avoided worse ones, when the right people were on hand to exercise the calls that had to made. This happened often as many of us watched the collapse of the Soviet Union and its client states 34 years ago. Events, as this book showed, don’t happen by accident.
There are a great many highs detailed. From the aforementioned “Tear Down This Wall!” moment by President Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate to the actual fall of the Berlin Wall in George H.W. Bush’s Administration to the terrible lows of 9/11, The Iraq/Afghanistan War, and WMD intelligence failings, then back to the elimination of Osama bin Laden. Included in this are lessons in leadership, or style over substance as we see how decisions were made during the Covid Crisis and various Trump-era situations.
Stephanopoulos’s time as White House Communications Director allowed him a certain level of access and trust with the people that were interviewed for the book that is unprecedented, in recent memory. Even though he hasn’t worked in the White House in over 30 years, his level of expertise, and even-handed approach go a long way to accomplishing a detailed and forthright history of current events from the most important office in the world.
With that, this reviewer highly encourage anyone with a sense of why the world is the way it is to read this book soon. It’s current, excellent, and thorough. The supporting documentation of each chapter is well done and complete, also.
Get your copy of The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis by clicking on the book cover.
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