By Nicholas Ferrell
A mid-2011 late evening found me living next to the White House, mapping out what would become my business mixed with study for graduate finals. The news switched to a live White House feed, announcing President Obama would momentarily give a Presidential Address – I had just finished a White House Situation Room (WHSR) tour and knew this wasn’t normal, so I set up in front of the TV. On my wrist was a 1990s TAG Heuer Aquaracer, a college graduation gift from my father. The President approached the podium to announce the killing of the man responsible for the September 11 attacks, al-Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden (UBL), “We got him.”
In the months before my WHSR departure, I recalled an increase in atypical meetings, with black clothes oddly thrown over conference room cameras we used to identify which National Security Council (NSC) Principals were attending meetings (the better to slip in to discreetly provide messages of breaking news of interest), WHSR meetings that oddly didn’t list attendees and purpose (stating only “Sensitive Meeting” and chaired by Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism – and later Director of the CIA – John Brennan), and an increase in already high NSC secrecy.
I shot emails to two NSC officials – Brennan and NSC Chief of Staff (now Secretary of Veterans Affairs) Dennis McDonough – I had kept in contact with (both are in the subsequently-released photo of WH seniors watching in WHSR the UBL raid unfold, with blurred out satellite imagery from my agency at the time, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) to offer my gratitude. McDonough, true to his congenial nature, responded the same night after 1 AM with, “Thanks for the nice note. We miss you around here.” I realized, by sheer luck, the Aquaracer on my wrist was the same I had worn studying Arabic at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, when an NYC friend approached me with news of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center tower – I had come full circle with this watch over the past ten years.
WHSR is housed in the White House’s West Wing, where office location translates into influence – it’s a 24/7 watch center with shifts of several small teams of Duty Officers (DOs) monitoring a steady stream of classified, unclassified open-source intelligence (OSINT), social media, and news information. First and foremost, it’s the President’s alert center. Comprised of officers from throughout Federal Government agencies – FBI, State, CIA (and the wider Intelligence Community), DHS, every USMIL branch – a handful of DOs form each watch team, working 12-hour shifts to monitor all-source intelligence on terrorism, wars, coups, natural disasters, and events worldwide that impact U.S. national security.
(Photo Credit: The White House)
Being in the White House daily, I noticed the watches others wore – as I had come to expect in the Federal Government, most wore reliable but unremarkable timepieces. My tour began near the end of the George W. Bush Administration, and I noticed Bush wore his Timex Indiglo faithfully, and VP Cheney wore his gold Rolex Day-Date “President” nearly as often – I was wearing my Seiko 6139 “True Bruce Lee” when I departed my interview for the WHSR position and Cheney nearly knocked me over in his haste to get to the Oval Office, offering me nothing but a glare. Rounding out the national security trifecta, although she had transitioned from National Security Advisor (NSA) to Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice wore a stylish Michelle Mini Urban.
Established a month after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by President Kennedy’s NSA McGeorge Bundy in May 1961, WHSR has served Presidents since, with the main responsibility to alert and update White House Principals (President, Vice President, and NSC) when a development of interest breaks anywhere in the world, regardless of time and Principal location.
Long obsessed with watches, those I favored during my WHSR tour were a mix of vintage and modern Seiko and Heuer, with a few outliers. Privy to sensitive WHSR meetings and conversations, I mostly used my go-to chronographs – a handful of Seiko 6139s (to include a 1969 Seiko 6139-6010 “True Bruce Lee” and 1969 Seiko 6139-6000 SpeedTimer “Cevert”), a 1977 Seiko 6138 “UFO,” and a 1970s Heuer Autavia “Viceroy” – to time WHSR meetings and Presidential Head of State (HoS) phone calls. I also wore a late 1990s Seiko SKX dive watch (with Arabic day wheel) I had purchased for Temporary Duty Assignments, usually to austere countries with lots of desert.
WHSR organizes HoS calls between the President and foreign leaders, and we listen in to draft a Memorandum of Conversation transcript (MEMCON, a permanent record for NSC files) and distribute it to relevant NSC Directors. Nearly every country’s WHSR-equivalent was wholly professional – except Russia. WHSR protocol was to bring a foreign leader to the call first, then connect the U.S. President. Russia, however, would put someone on pretending to be the Russian President. WHSR would inform the President, “President Putin is on the line,” but when the President would say, “Hello, Vladimir,” the Russians would reply, “Please hold for the Russian President,” and make our President wait. Every. Single. Time. I would learn in my career subsequent WHSR this pettiness characterized most aspects of Russia/U.S. foreign relations.
Within WHSR, a DO’s home agency dictated their watch choice – USMIL favored Casio G-Shocks; State Department – Omega and Rolex; CIA – Breitling (surprised?), Rolex, and G-Shock. When no overseas coup presented itself, late night shifts wandered into a wide variety of topics, watches included. Much to no reader’s surprise, USMIL members had some of the best tool watch stories.
WHSR also monitors breaking domestic events to include natural – or unnatural – catastrophes, major power failures, and accidents involving toxic materials. Oh, and car chases and mass shootings. The assassination attempts this year would have been within our purview, and the WHSR Senior Duty Officer leader that shift would have immediately chosen one of their team to work with 24/7 ops centers at DHS, FBI, etc to gather what each knew of the breaking event, and then draft a one-page “Intelligence Note” to brief the President.
My team was monitoring reporting on the breaking November 2009 Fort Hood shooting, when the WHSR Director came in and requested I reach out to the National Military Command Center (NMCC) for amplifying reporting to add to the all-source reporting we had already been gathering, and then draft an Intel Note for Brennan to brief the President. When I asked the requisite question (ie: when do you need it by?), he informed me I had nine minutes, thought for a second, and extended it to 15. Brennan showed up 15 minutes later and took the Intel Note to brief the President in the Oval Office.
Separate from Seiko, I regularly wore two Heuer divers – the Aquaracer (one of the highlights of my tour was a compliment from Obama, who owns a two-tone TAG Heuer 1500 Series diver) and an early 1980’s Heuer Ref. 980.006 “Jumbo” I picked up during my WHSR tour.
WHSR DOs also answer NSC ad hoc requests, and some have historically included borderline espionage acts – distrusting State Department, Nixon’s NSA Henry Kissinger used DOs to establish back-channel communications with foreign leaders, to include the People’s Republic of China (before U.S. diplomatic recognition), and Vietnam to establish Paris peace talks to end the Vietnam conflict. Administrations, at least through Obama, continued to consult Kissinger on various foreign policy issues.
Much like the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration chose function over form when it came to watches – Obama preferred his Highgear Enduro Compass watch and a customized Jorg Gray 6500 chronograph gifted by the Secret Service. NSA General James Jones, like many in the military, favored G-Shock, and Brennan wore – and continued to wear during his time as D/CIA – a two-tone 2000’s Seiko 7N43-6A09 dress watch. One exception was Vice President Biden, who remains a watch collector – I saw him wear several watches, usually favoring TAG Heuer, Omega, and his Tissot Touch (Biden complimented me on my own Tissot Touch).
Regardless of watch taste, WHSR officers are not political appointees – we serve regardless of who is in the Oval Office; I started during the GW Bush Administration and served for the first two years of the Obama Administration. Nor are we senior – rather, WHSR relies on DOs to be calm and professional, with a track record of handling fast-paced and ambiguous crisis situations with aplomb. The ability to shift through large volumes of reporting from disparate unclassified and classified sources, identify items of importance, and distill these down into concise, synthesized one-page reports quickly is a must.
DOs share another thing in common, witnessing U.S. foreign policy and history being made firsthand. But this also made WHSR of interest to foreign intelligence agencies – in 1991, CIA Case Officer and Soviet agent Aldrich “Rick” Ames lunched at the White House Mess and was given a WHSR tour after he ate (possibly earning a bonus from his Soviet handlers that month). One of the more unusual watches I acquired during my WHSR tour was an iconic Cold War watch, a manually wound 1980s Raketa “Big Zero” – Raketa acquired its namesake from USSR Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s inaugural flight into outer space, setting up the “Space Race” to the moon.
According to legend (and corroborated by subsequent Raketa promotional video) in 1985, the last leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev was in Italy wearing this watch. Press took note, and next day front pages featured the headline, “Russians are starting from zero!” and attributed the remarks to Gorbachev, a likely reference to his policies of glasnost and perestroika (“transparency and restructuring”).
WHSR connections to espionage aren’t all historical, however; in mid-July 2024, an NSC Director I worked with – former senior CIA North Korea analyst and Director for Korea and Japan during the Bush and Obama Administrations, Sue Mi Terry – was indicted for working with the South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS). The Department of Justice indictment alleged she exchanged cash (a paltry $37,000) and luxury goods in return for writing pro-South Korea articles, providing non-public information, and acting as an “access agent” (brokering introductions between NIS intelligence officers and senior Trump, then Biden Admin officials and Congress members). Luxury goods included Louis Vuitton handbags and a Dolce & Gabbana coat, but – despite being photographed with numerous expensive watches – no mention of NIS “gifting” her a watch. Zero Breitling. Amateurs.
Though few NSC members were as passionate about watches as I was, the Raketa Big Zero never failed to attract attention when I wore it, and I never tired of joking about the previous foreign agent in WHSR, Ames.
At least I wasn’t a spy for Russia or South Korea.
About The Author: Nick Ferrell is a vintage watch dealer and founder of Los Angeles-based DC Vintage Watches and the Sycamore watch line. He is a former U.S. diplomat and intelligence community member, and previously served on the National Security Council. When not obsessing over watches, he is an avid reader of, well, everything. DCVW’s Instagram account is @DCVintageWatches.
Sources:
Michael K. Bohn, “Nerve Center: Inside the White House Situation Room,” 2004
BBC, “The Do’s and Don’ts of the Situation Room,” 13 August 2018
George Stephanopoulos, “The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis,” 2024