Nightly News   |  May 13, 2011

White House Situation Room turns 50

President Obama invited Caroline Kennedy to the originally named "Cold War Control Center" on Friday for a birthday celebration of the command center that recently served as the nerve center of the Osama bin Laden raid. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

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This content comes from a Full-Text Transcript of the program.

BRIAN WILLIAMS, anchor: The Situation Room turned 50 years old today. You know, it long ago became an enormously important landmark resource. Actually, I don't know how this videotape wound up in our control room . We mean, of course, the other Situation Room . Yes, that one, the one below ground level in the West Wing of the White House . They had a birthday celebration today for what may be the most low-profile national landmark in our country. President Obama invited Caroline Kennedy today and named the room after her father. In the original Kennedy administration memos, you can see they first named it the Cold War Control Center . The modern day Sit Room , as it's called in the trade, is soundproof and full of telecommunications, immortalized recently as the control center during that bin Laden raid, then for the Photoshop versions of the famous photo, including one showing " The Situation " in the Situation Room . Our apologies as well to our friend Wolf . When