WaPo (“Contradicting public statements, Trump took secret flight from Turkey amid Iranian threat“):
An Iranian assassination threat against President Donald Trump prompted an extraordinary operation last month in which he flew secretly from Turkey on an alternate military aircraft while the White House said he was aboard Air Force One, The Washington Post has learned.
The clandestine mission, which has not been reported previously, was carried out unbeknownst to journalists and some White House staff members who believed they were on the same plane as the president, according to material reviewed by The Post, a U.S. official familiar with the operation and another person with knowledge of the president’s travel. These people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the matter.
The administration has claimed that Trump departed Turkey on July 8 on the former Air Force One. Trump announced on social media that he would use the “former Air Force One” rather than the plane that flew him there, a newer Boeing 747-8 gifted to the United States by Qatar. The security of the Qatar-provided aircraft has been called into question, and Trump said last month after the trip that it would undergo additional upgrades.
In Ankara, Trump boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras. He was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane — an Air Force C-32A — via an airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight, according to the U.S. official and corroborating material reviewed by The Post. That made Air Force One a “decoy” with media and some White House staff aboard, the official said.
Trump had been in Ankara for a NATO summit with world leaders. The operation occurred a night after U.S. forces renewed military strikes on Iran at Trump’s direction following a breakdown of negotiations between Washington and Tehran to end their months-long war.
The maneuver meant that Trump’s actual location was concealed from the American public and many senior U.S. officials for hours. Weeks later, it remains unclear how widely the administration has disclosed the operation.
Offhand, the fact that the Secret Service thought the threat sufficiently grave to go through this ruse strikes me as a bigger story than deception to maintain the President’s security. But, the report notes,
For decades, it has been rare for U.S. presidents to travel without members of the White House press corps accompanying them in their roles as proxies for the American public. Journalists have traveled into war zones with numerous presidents, including Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
In the first hours after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Bush administration officials did not immediately disclose the president’s whereabouts, saying only that he had been taken to an “undisclosed location.” But they did not say he was somewhere he was not, and within hours officials revealed that he had been flown to a military facility in Nebraska.
I’m big on transparency, and think this administration has done us a disservice in, for example, having gone so long without a press conference on the Iran War effort. But I accept the need to keep sensitive national security matters secret, and there are few things more sensitive than measures to secure the President from specific threats from foreign adversaries.
The Trump operation unfolded quite differently, highlighting the depth of concern that U.S. security officials had about his safety leaving Turkey amid hostilities with Iran. Turkey, a key U.S. ally and member of the NATO military alliance, shares a border with Iran.
A credible threat to Trump involving Iran set the “deception operation” in motion, the U.S. official said. The New York Times and CBS News reported last month that intelligence officials flagged a specific threat of an attack on the president or his jet, triggering additional precautions.
There are decades-old concerns in the U.S. government of Iranian terrorism plots against American officials, including Trump. Those fears have escalated recently as a result of Washington’s role in the killing of Iranian military and political leaders.
One would imagine.
To transport the president out of Turkey, U.S. officials relied in part on a technique that has occasionally become public knowledge. One such mission occurred in March 2000, when President Bill Clinton visited Pakistan. With television cameras recording in Islamabad, Clinton disembarked from a plain white jet that followed the blue-and-white Air Force One, clarifying where he had been.
There have been other times in the last 30 years when Air Force One served as a decoy for the president because of a serious threat or because he was flying to a dangerous location, another U.S. official said, declining to elaborate. The legacy jet is highly secure, but also highly visible, so putting the president on an alternate plane instead can be considered safer, that former official said.
Ronald L. Rowe Jr., a former acting director of the Secret Service, said that the president’s protection is paramount and that the details of his movements are shielded for good reason.
“We need to keep the ‘secret’ in Secret Service,” said Rowe, now with the Chertoff Group, a security advisory firm. “The public should know what the president is doing on a daily basis, but when it comes to the methods by which the Secret Service keeps the president safe, that should remain out of public view.”
Hard concur.
The NYT account (“Trump Said to Have Secretly Used Military Jet to Leave Turkey Amid Threats“) does add a small wrinkle:
But instead of flying out aboard that older, powder blue, modified 747, Mr. Trump was whisked off that plane via a catering container that had been lifted to the opposite side of the plane from where the journalists traveling with him boarded, one of the U.S. officials said. The president was then taken to a third plane, which he flew in secret to Britain, the official with knowledge of the matter said.
Reporters on the older plane were not told that Mr. Trump had not flown with them from Turkey to an air base in Britain, making them unwitting participants in the ruse and leaving them, along with some White House staff members, to serve as unknowing decoys.
That is less than ideal, to be sure. It’s not obvious, given my limited knowledge, what the alternative was. One imagines the catering container didn’t have room for the press contingent.
