Hunkered at Mar-a-Lago, Trump makes his club a makeshift Situation Room

By Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) — As gala-goers in gowns and tuxedos were dancing the night away inside Mar-a-Lago’s ballroom Friday evening, a very different scene was unfolding on the other side of the rambling estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

Out the gilded doors, past layers of security and behind a set of black curtains, the country’s top national security officials were convening in anticipation of a long night.

The CIA director, the secretary of state and the secretary of defense had all slipped in earlier, unseen by the crowd sipping cocktails by the pool. So had the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose map of the Middle East showing the locations of American assets — along with Iranian targets — was set up on an easel.

By the time President Donald Trump touched down, the space was running as a makeshift Situation Room from which he would oversee the start of a sustained attack on Iran.

First, though, the ballroom summoned.

“Have a good time, everybody,” Trump called out to the black-tie crowd gathered for a charity gala after briefly jerking his arms around to his anthem, “God Bless the USA.”

“I gotta go to work.”

Behind the black curtains, photos released by the White House showed Trump, tieless and wearing a white hat emblazoned with “USA,” watching the unfolding action, which would include the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Through most of Sunday, those images and two taped videos — the first announcing the extraordinary operation, in which Trump’s face was half obscured by the hat, and the second addressing Khamenei’s demise and the deaths of three American service members — were all the public saw of the president. He did not deliver a live formal address or convene a televised news conference.

That left the White House-provided photos of Trump as the primary images of his role in the operation, which he ordered after making little attempt to explain his strategic objectives or gain public buy-in.

In one photo, he leans into his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, as she gestures with her right hand. A black smart watch on Wiles’ wrist set off internet speculation she may have compromised the room’s security, an idea quickly shot down by the device’s maker.

“It’s called a whoop,” wrote Will Ahmed, the founder of the company that makes the watch. “It does not include a microphone, GPS, or cellular capability of any kind and has long been on the NSA approved (Personal Electronic Device) list.”

Wiles’ watch aside, Trump’s use of Mar-a-Lago to oversee the most sensitive military operations has always generated a degree of anxiety among national security professionals. The potential intersection of paying club members with the country’s most sensitive national security secrets gives some intelligence officials agita. The Secret Service screens guests before they enter but doesn’t determine who can access the club.

That has occasionally made for some jarring scenes. Early in his first term, Trump huddled over iceberg wedge salads on the patio with then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after a North Korean missile launch. Guests watched on, listening as the men discussed how to respond and posting photos of the episode on social media.

Trump and his aides have since enacted tighter rules for guests taking photographs. And the club’s classified communication apparatus has been expanded and fortified, in part through repeated use.

The list of highly classified operations green-lit from Mar-a-Lago is now a long one.

It was in a windowless basement room that Trump met with top national security officials in 2020 to make a final decision on taking out Iran’s top military commander, Qasem Soleimani.

It was from another secure room that Trump authorized strikes on Syria for the use of chemical weapons in 2017, before returning to dinner with China’s leader to recount them over chocolate cake. “He was eating his cake,” Trump would say later of his guest, Xi Jinping. “And he was silent.”

In the last year alone, Trump was at Mar-a-Lago as the US began an air campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen, observing the first salvos on monitors fresh from the golf course; as American Tomahawk missiles were fired into alleged ISIS camps in Nigeria on Christmas Day; and as the audacious mission to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro played out in Caracas just after New Year’s.

The club, which was built by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post in the 1920s, has certain natural protections. It is anchored to a coral reef by steel and concrete, making it hurricane resistant. Its walls are made from thick Dorian stone from Italy.

Newer fortifications include snipers, bomb-sniffing dogs and boats patrolling the Intracoastal Waterway, along with miles of secure telephone and internet cables.

But it is not impenetrable. Last month, US Secret Service agents and Palm Beach County law enforcement officers shot and killed an armed man who unlawfully entered the club’s secure perimeter carrying a shotgun and fuel can. Trump wasn’t on the property at the time.

After the launch of the US operation in Iran this weekend, the Secret Service said it was stepping up security around Mar-a-Lago, along with the White House.

Trump did not venture out of the club to play golf on Saturday or Sunday, a rarity for weekends he spends in Palm Beach. But on Saturday night, after dinner on the patio, he upheld a commitment to attend a fundraiser for a pro-Trump super PAC held on his property.

His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, described the fundraising initiative as “more important than ever.”

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