The covert movements that saw U.S. President Donald Trump depart a plane carrying reporters and some White House staff in Turkey last month have few, if any, precedents in modern history, and have left lingering questions.
Following a NATO summit in Ankara, Trump was secretly transferred from Air Force One to a military plane via a catering truck in an extraordinary deception prompted by an Iranian assassination threat, U.S. media reported.
The White House did not disclose the change — even though reporters and some White House staff remained on Air Force One — and it remained a secret until the Washington Post first reported it on Monday.
Trump, who said Tuesday he was only acting at the direction of the U.S. Secret Service, was accompanied by several close aides to the smaller military aircraft.
Former CIA director John Brennan — a vocal Trump critic whom the president perceives as an enemy worthy of prosecution — said Tuesday the White House had an “ethical requirement” to let the press pool know.
“None of the presidents I worked for would have allowed the White House staff and a planeload of journalists to go if the threat was not mitigated sufficiently for the president,” Brennan told MS Now.
‘For old time’s sake’
Trump had taken a newly renovated, Qatari-donated jet to the summit but said while there that he’d take the older Air Force One — for “old time’s sake” — upon departing for the U.K. The statement piqued the curiosity of the press, given that Trump has often expressed his displeasure over the two Air Force One planes that have been in use from 1990 until this year.
The trip to Ankara was also the first time the new plane took Trump overseas, after speedy upgrades triggered questions over its cost and security.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman has since said “there could have been an off-the-record conversation” with the press about the arrangements, and which kept them off Air Force One.
“The press would then report it later but [officials] would not have potentially jeopardized anyone,” she said on the newspaper’s podcast The Daily, on Wednesday.
That actually happened in 2000. And apparently, a reporter kept the confidence for 25 years, only discussing it in the wake of this week’s revelations.
Susan Page of USA Today told the Post this week about the time in 2000 when President Bill Clinton used an unmarked executive jet to fly into Pakistan, while sending Air Force One as decoy.
“They told me about the extraordinary security procedures being taken because of the dangers in flying there, including use of the decoy plane,” she said. “Of course, the dangers threatened the journalists covering the trip as well as President Clinton.”
It’s not clear if that approach was ever considered by the Trump White House, which has an antagonistic relationship with several media outlets. In fact, the administration sought to subpoena some of Haberman’s colleagues at the Times when they reported about security concerns regarding the Qatari jet — backing off after a hearing in which a federal judge assailed the government over the threats to reporters.
Haberman said it was “unsettling” to learn about the switch, but it’s not clear if the reporters were in any real danger.
The legacy Air Force One is checked before boarding and is equipped with a range of advanced defensive systems including flares, electronic jammers and infrared detection systems that protect against missile strikes, though it is impossible to know how effective those systems would be.
Trump suggested to reporters late Tuesday that the decoy plane was likely safer than the U.S. air force C-32A he travelled on to England. It’s not clear if the plane the press travelled on received any kind of military escort.
Democrats want answers
There is no law that the president’s whereabouts must be known at all times, but the press generally has a sense of the day’s schedule.
A notable exception was the day of the 9/11 attacks on U.S. soil, when it was several hours before the press and the public learned of President George W. Bush’s travels from a Florida school to, eventually, an air force base in Nebraska. But on that occasion there was no misdirection, just a delay in the face of extraordinary and uncertain circumstances.
A threat was also present this time, the Wall Street Journal emphasized in an editorial published late Tuesday.
“The press corps, which had been left on the decoy Presidential plane, understandably is up in arms. But the real story is the seriousness of Iran’s efforts to kill the President,” the paper said.
White House spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement that “there are many enemies of America … and we use every tool at our disposal to address” threats against the president.
Trump has faced a number of assassination threats domestically, including the attempt on his life in Pennsylvania in 2024 which led to the resignation of the Secret Service director at the time.
Iranian-linked entities have been monitored since a U.S. drone strike in early 2020 assassinated Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have since described plots to kill Trump, high-profile members of his first administration John Bolton and Mike Pompeo and, in an alleged plot involving Canadian residents, unspecified individuals who lived near D.C.
Trump has said he’s “No. 1 on the kill list for Iran,” a claim likely exacerbated by this year’s killings of of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other Iranian military, political and religious leaders.
Democrats are, not surprisingly, full of questions about the plane swaps.
“Trump has put America’s sons and daughters in harm’s way by getting into an unnecessary and reckless war, and this administration has repeatedly refused to provide Congress and the public with the transparency they deserve,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader, wrote in a statement.
Schumer, according to the Post, was demanding that the White House brief congressional leaders about what happened.
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