Washington: US President Donald Trump said he was just following Secret Service instructions when he secretly swapped planes while leaving Turkey by hiding in a catering truck and leaving journalists and some officials to fly in a decoy plane.
It comes as some White House reporters ask why they were lied to and left to unknowingly travel without the president inside a jet that was apparently the target of an assassination plot by Iran from a shoulder-fired missile.
The Washington Post released a bombshell report on Monday (US time) revealing that last month, Trump pretended to leave the NATO summit in Ankara aboard Air Force One, a Boeing 747, while secretly transferring to a smaller plane.
After boarding the 747 in front of the cameras, Trump was taken into an airport catering truck, which secretly deposited him inside a US Air Force Boeing C-32A.
At the time, Trump acknowledged swapping from his new Qatari-gifted 747 gifted to the legacy 747, but claimed it was to allow the new 747 to fly to a US air base in the United Kingdom, to show it to troops who wanted to see the plane.
But the White House never revealed that Trump did not fly on the older 747 either, and secretly swapped to the other jet.
Asked about the matter on Tuesday night following the Post’s revelation, Trump admitted to the subterfuge, but said he was just following orders.
“It’s only up to Secret Service,” he said. “I just follow what they’d like to do … They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane. Equal safety. But they wanted me to do it … so I do what they said.”
Trump did not explain his claim that the planes would have had “equal safety”, but later said: “I think the plane that I flew on was at greater risk. That would be the plane I think that they [Iran] would be more likely to go for.”
The New York Times reported on Tuesday night that US intelligence was aware of a specific threat involving a surface-to-air missile against Air Force One, “and that someone in the vicinity of the NATO summit had been spotted with a shoulder-fired missile”, citing two US officials.
Trump would not discuss specifics on Tuesday night but told reporters: “I have a lot of threats that you don’t know about. Any consequential president has a lot of threats … and I think that I may be the most consequential president.”
Despite generally recognising the importance of the president’s safety, some members of the press raised concerns about why the travelling press corps was not informed about the threat, and were allowed to travel on a plane that had effectively become a decoy because Trump was not on board.
Shirish Date, a White House reporter for The Huffington Post, said on X that Trump “abandoned” Secret Service, Air Force One crew, journalists and his own staff to secretly board the alternative plane, “but that was a sacrifice the president was willing to make”.
“The reporters in Trump’s [travelling press] pool were lied to and treated as bait,” Date said.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper noted that other presidential visits to dangerous locations had involved subterfuge and deception for safety reasons.
“But no officials I’ve spoken to have ever before heard of using an Air Force One full of White House staff and journalists as a decoy during an imminent threat,” he said on X.
Jacqui Heinrich, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, met with senior administration officials on Tuesday to convey concerns, according to a leaked copy of an off-the-record memo to White House reporters, which was reported by CNN and The Washington Post.
Heinrich asked the White House to co-operate on protocols for future events in extraordinary security circumstances to better preserve independent and accurate coverage of the president, according to the leaked memo.
The memo conceded – as have some White House reporters – that deception can be necessary to protect the president’s safety, but that the record should be corrected after the fact, something which did not take place on this occasion.
The newly revealed threats to Trump’s life from Iran – and efforts to counter them – underline the high stakes of the ongoing war, which is now in its sixth month, though at a lower intensity.
On Tuesday, the US military said it disabled the steering gear of a Panama-flagged cargo vessel, the M/V Vela Nova, as it attempted to transit the Gulf of Oman towards an Iranian port, in violation of the US blockade.
A US Navy helicopter fired two hellfire missiles into the ship’s engine room after the crew “ignored repeated warnings from American forces”, Central Command said. It was the third ship disabled by the US military since the blockade recommenced last month.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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