Phones in the Oval Office |
| The President’s Desk |
|
Type of Activity | Visiting the Oval Office |
Location |
Location | Washington DC |
Date of Activity | January 2021 |
Coordinates | 38°53'51.2"N
77°02'20.9"W |
On January 20, 2021 the 46th president of the United States was inaugurated into office. As such he had access to the presidential communications system, including secure and non-secure telephone lines.
There was small and unnoticed changes in the
telephones on the desk of the new president, as well as what happened to the
call device that became known as Trump's "Diet Coke Button".
The
telephones on the President’s desk
On
the first day as president, the Oval Office of the White
House By then, this famous room had already been redecorated with new
paintings, busts and photographs, while Trump's beige rug had been replaced by
the deep blue one from Bill Clinton's Oval Office. The flags
of the five branches of
the US Armed Forces have also been removed.
A close look at the photos shows that there was also a small change in the
telephone equipment. On Biden's presidential desk there are now two identical
phone sets, which can be identified as the high-end Cisco
IP 8851 Phone:
|
Former president Donald Trump in the Oval Office, December 3, 2020. |
Both phones are not the standard commercially available model, however, as they
have been modified by a small communications security company called Advanced Programs, Inc. (API).
This can be recognized by the dark gray metal box at the back side of the
phone's color display and an additional red button on the front panel of the
phone:
The purpose of these modifications is to provide on-hook
security for the handset and the speakerphone and probably also for TEMPEST protection
- to make sure that the phone cannot, either accidentally or deliberately, pick
up and transmit audio when the handset is on-hook.
Comparing the two phones on Biden's desk with the ones used by President Trump,
we see that under Trump only one of the Cisco 8851 IP phones had the
aforementioned modifications. The other phone was the standard model:
Unclassified phone calls
The modified Cisco 8851 IP phone was placed on the president's desk by the end
of 2016, replacing an old Avaya/Lucent 8520T of the internal White House
telephone network which is used for all kinds of unclassified phone calls.
Classified phone calls
The standard, unmodified Cisco 8851 IP phone on Trump's desk was for the highly
secure Executive Voice over Secure IP-network which is part of the Crisis
Management System (CMS) and connects the President, the National Security
Council, Cabinet members, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, various intelligence
agency headquarters and watch centers, as well as Continuity of
Operations (COOP) sites.
This
telephone replaced an old Cisco 7975 IP phone in September 2017 and connects to
the so-called Signal switchboard of the White House
Communications Agency (WHCA). The WHCA is a joint
military unit that provides the president with secure and non-secure
communications in Washington as well as during presidential travels. The Signal
board also connects to the White House Situation Room.
Despite being used for classified conversations, the Cisco 8851 IP phone for
secure calls wasn't equipped with the additional security features like the
non-secure telephone - probably because secure calls travel over a separate,
encrypted network, which mitigates the risk that adversaries can abuse the
phone's microphones for eavesdropping.
But now, under president Biden, the phone for secure calls also has the
modifications for on-hook security. Maybe this was considered safer, or maybe
it's just to make both phone sets look the same, so outsiders cannot see
whether the president is making a classified or an unclassified phone call
based upon which telephone he is using.
Usually, the phones for the secure top-level telephone network can be
recognized by a bright yellow faceplate, as can be seen at the modified Cisco IP phone that is used when the president is outside the White
House, for example.
Yellow is the color code for the highest classification category: Top Secret/SCI, but in the Oval Office this would probably stand out too
much, so here this phone just has the presidential seal in the bottom left
corner of the black display section:
|
Close-up of the presidential seal on a Cisco 8851 IP phone |
Update
#1:
Around the first of February 2021, there was another small change in the phone
on Biden's desk in the Oval Office: as can be seen in the picture below, the
Cisco IP phone on the left, probably the one for unclassified conversations,
now has an Key Expansion
Module attached to it, which provides
14 additional programmable direct line buttons.
|
President Biden's desk in the Oval Office. One of the Cisco 8851 IP phones having an additional Key Expansion Module, February 2, 2021
|
|
Under Obama, the old Cisco 7975 IP Phone for secure calls had a similar
expansion module, but under President Trump that module was removed. Apparently
he saw no need for having the extra direct line buttons, probably because he
could always make calls via the White House switchboard operator, but it also
symbolized that there was only a very small group of people he was in contact
with.
Update #2:
On February 18, 2021, the White House released a
photo in which we see president Biden in the office of his secretary, just outside the Oval Office. On the
desk in front of him are the same modified Cisco 8851 IP phone sets as on his
own desk, although here, both have an additional Key Expansion
Module.
In the Oval Office, the phones have brown network cables to blend in with the
furniture, but in the secretary's office the cables are color-coded: green for
the Unclassified network and yellow for the Top Secret/SCI telephone network:
The
president's call button
While the small change in phones wasn't noticed, there was quite some media
attention for something that appeared missing on the desk of president Biden: the wooden box with
the presidential seal and a red push-button, which became known as Trump's
"Diet Coke Button".
The removal of this box was just temporarily though, because meanwhile it has been placed back on the president's desk, as can be seen in this photo from January 25:
|
President Joe Biden at his desk in the Oval Office, January 25, 2021 |
Trump's
"Diet Coke Button"
There are a lot of stories about how President Trump used the button. Former
White House communications aide Cliff Sims, for example, wrote in his 2019
book Team of Vipers that Trump would
prank visitors by hitting the button and suggesting it was related to the
country’s nuclear weapons arsenal.
"Out of nowhere,
he'd suddenly press the button," Sims wrote. "Not sure what to do,
guests would look at one another with raised eyebrows" he added.
"Moments later, a steward would enter the room carrying a glass filled
with Diet Coke on a silver platter, and Trump would burst out laughing."
|
Trump's glass of Diet Coke in front of the Cisco 8851 IP phone for secure calls
|
On Twitter, Times Radio political commentator Newton Dunn recalled a similar situation: "When Tim Shipman and I
interviewed Donald Trump in 2019, we became fascinated by what the little red button
did. Eventually Trump pressed it, and a butler swiftly brought in a Diet Coke
on a silver platter."
| President George W. Bush in the small dining room near the Oval Office
On the table is the wooden box with the call button. |
|
Earlier usage of the call button
The fancy walnut box used by the President to call his Valet for services goes back to the Nixon Administration. WHCA technicians were pretty crafty at fabricating things after going to Radio Shack and purchasing a bag of components. The original "Valet Call System" was locally fabricated by purchasing the mechanism for a "Sears Garage Door Opener" and then remounting the electronics inside a wooden housing. That proved to be the quick and easy way, they actually had to buy a complete garage door opener, motor, chain, mounting rails, and the works, only to keep the guts for the call box. Push the button, and it would trigger a relay in the nearby kitchen or other nearby room for the Valet's to respond. I am sure they have advanced to a off the shelf product after 50+ years. Both the Western White House in San Clemente and Key Biscayne as well as Camp David had WHCA fabricated Call systems.
The box with the call button is in the Oval Office not only on the president's desk, but also on a side table in the seating area and in the small presidential dining room nearby the Oval Office.The button has nothing to do with nuclear command and control, but can be used by the president to summon assistance. According to earlier sources, it was meant to alert the Secret Service, while others say that pushing the button makes an aide come in for whatever the president may need.
The fancy walnut box used by the President to call his Valet for services goes back to the Nixon Administration. Our technicians were pretty crafty at fabricating things after going to Radio Shack and purchasing a bag of components. The original "Valet Call System" was locally fabricated by purchasing the mechanism for a "Sears Garage Door Opener" and then remounting the electronics inside a wooden housing. That proved to be the quick and easy way, they actually had to buy a complete garage door opener, motor, chain, mounting rails, and the works, only to keep the guts for the call box. Push the button, and it would trigger a relay in the nearby kitchen or other nearby room for the Valet's to respond. I am sure they have advanced to a off the shelf product after 50+ years.
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