Trump's "decoy plane": The hoax that caused a shock

Journalists, officials and aides were allowed to fly on the presidential plane during the return from Turkey to the US, despite the security threat, while Trump left urgently.

(The Guardian) - Democrats on Tuesday demanded a briefing from Congress about an extraordinary operation in which Donald Trump was secretly removed from a different plane than the one the public and media believed he was travelling on. Critics are now asking why journalists and the public were deliberately misled.

When U.S. intelligence allegedly detected a threat last month that Iran was plotting to assassinate Trump, the president was whisked off Air Force One in a food truck, an episode first reported by the Washington Post and then by the New York Times. While the president was reportedly secretly escorted out of the plane’s side door, more than 100 aides, officials and journalists were kept on board to fly to Britain, without being informed that there was a threat to their lives.

"The idea seems to have been: We can reduce the risk to President Trump by offering about 100 people for the Iranians to kill in his place," said Steven Cash, executive director of Steady State and a former CIA intelligence officer and former senior adviser to the intelligence branch of the Department of Homeland Security.

Trump confirmed on Tuesday that he had secretly switched planes, but said the plane he ultimately traveled on was even more exposed to risk than Air Force One.

"I actually think the plane I was flying on was in greater danger," Trump told reporters. "I think it was in greater danger because, in my opinion, that would be the plane that they would be most likely to hit."

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"Well, it all depends on the Secret Service. I just follow what they want me to do, so I act according to the instructions of the Secret Service and the military," Trump added.

Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, described the operation to CNN as "unprecedented and surreal" and "absolutely terrifying."

"There needs to be a briefing in Congress, because this is not just about the president's safety. I want to know what measures were taken to make sure that all the passengers on that Air Force One, which was considered too dangerous for the president, were safe. What measures were taken to protect the staff and journalists on that plane?" he said.

How did everything happen?

The White House had publicly stated that the president would fly to Britain on Air Force One, albeit an older version of the plane rather than the new one donated by Qatar. In reality, Trump boarded the presidential plane in front of television cameras, but minutes later he was secretly removed and transferred to an Air Force C-32A military aircraft.

The deception was so sophisticated that journalists traveling with the president, and some White House staffers, believed Trump was aboard Air Force One. The journalists were asked to keep the window shades closed during the flight.

The C-32A carrying Trump flew to RAF Mildenhall in Britain and arrived at around 22:20 p.m. The old Air Force One, with the journalists traveling with the president, arrived a few minutes later. Photographers then captured footage of Trump disembarking from the presidential plane, apparently after sneaking back into it.

Trump then greeted troops at the base, before boarding a newly refurbished Boeing 747, donated by Qatar, and continuing the flight to Washington.

Ned Price, former deputy US ambassador to the UN, said he was not opposed to the White House taking extraordinary measures to protect the president, but the current administration had spread a "blatant lie" for weeks and had turned journalists into "unwitting collaborators."

"There was a way to do this without having to lie. They could have included the group of journalists traveling with the president, who, I'm sure, would have been very happy to not report on certain security measures. After it was all over and the president was safe in Britain or back at Andrews Air Force Base, they could have said, 'Here's what we did and here's why we did it,'" said Price, a former special assistant to President Barack Obama on the National Security Council. 

Journalists also raised concerns. 

"It's clear that the president's life is paramount, and there have been scams to protect the president's life before. But none of the officials I spoke to had ever heard of an Air Force One, full of White House staff and journalists, being used as bait during an imminent threat," CNN anchor Jake Tapper wrote on X.

Meanwhile, Jose Zamora, regional director for the Americas of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the administration had a responsibility to ensure that journalists were not exposed to unnecessary risk.

"Journalists need to be informed about credible threats to security so they can make informed decisions about their safety," he said.

"Transparency should be the norm for any administration, especially when security is at stake," he added.

The new revelation sheds light on a surprise decision that had already raised questions about the safety of the Qatari plane. Trump had taken the newly refurbished plane to the NATO summit on his first international trip, but suddenly announced that, for the first part of the return trip, he would use the old Air Force One.

At the time, Trump said the new aircraft was being sent to Mildenhall so that US troops stationed there could inspect it.

The New York Times and CBS News later reported that intelligence officials had raised concerns about a possible attack on Trump or his plane as the conflict with Iran escalated.

During the summit, the US military was carrying out major strikes on Iran, raising fears of retaliation from Tehran. The new version of events suggests that the threat was taken much more seriously than previously understood.

The "impossible" threat

However, not everyone is convinced that the threat justified what happened next.

"From the Iranian perspective, carrying out a potential attack on the presidential plane at such a great distance would be extremely impossible, requiring covert operatives to be very close and equipped with portable anti-aircraft systems," said Ankit Panda, senior fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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“Iran does not have surface-to-air missiles that could hit a plane taking off from Ankara,” said Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Iran could theoretically hit a plane on the runway with a ballistic missile, he said, “but that seems highly unlikely.” 

James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and former deputy national security adviser during the George W. Bush administration who is now a distinguished scholar at the Washington Institute, said the secrecy surrounding Trump's transfer to another plane indicated that serious intelligence was behind the threat.

"This is a very unusual action and shows that they had very good information about a threat and that they did not trust the plane he was on," said Jeffrey, who has extensive experience traveling on Air Force One.

Jeffrey said he believed the intelligence information could have come from Israel, which has large intelligence capabilities focused on Iran. 

While Israeli officials sometimes try to "not only inform but also influence" American policy, he said they would not risk fabricating a threat related to the president's security.

Even Trump himself seemed to hint at security concerns when reporters asked him why they had been asked to keep the window blinds closed.

“You’re probably on a dangerous flight,” he said. “But if I go, you come too. Or not?”

When asked later if there had been a credible Iranian threat to Air Force One, Trump replied: "I have threats all the time. I'm number one on their list, ahead of you."

However, the operation has raised questions about the decision to deceive the body of journalists and the public, especially as the White House continued to maintain the official version of events.

"The way to mitigate the threat involved using other people who were on Air Force One as bait, without their knowledge," Cash said.

He added that what remained unclear was the order of operations, whether Trump's team waited until he had safely departed before the other plane took off, or whether the plane took off while they were unaware of what was happening.

If officials had simply announced that Trump was not on board after he had landed safely, he said, they would have achieved most of what they wanted without leaving people in the dark.

"It really seems like they were intended to serve as bait," Cash added.

Cash referred to “Intelligence Community Directive 191,” the US government’s “duty to warn” policy, which requires intelligence agencies to warn persons who are the specific and credible target of a threat of murder, serious injury, or kidnapping, including, he said, journalists and civilians, not just officials.

"If intelligence is gathered that indicates a person or group of people are at risk, they should be warned," Cash said.

"The question is: were the people who remained on the plane warned? If not, this would be a violation of ICD 191," he explained.

The directive, approved by the director of national intelligence in 2015, allows for exceptions in cases where a warning would compromise intelligence sources, methods or operations. But Cash said he knew of no exception that would allow the use of people as bait.

The almost similar case to "Clinton"

Others defended the operation. Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary during the administration of President George W. Bush, said that, if the reporting was accurate, the Secret Service, the Air Force and the White House deserved credit for protecting the president.

"If there is a credible threat to any US president, it is their duty to protect him," he wrote in X.

This extraordinary trip is reminiscent of an operation carried out by Bill Clinton in 2000, when the former president secretly flew to Pakistan on a private jet, while Air Force One was used as bait.

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But Matthew Hoh, a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network and Iraq War veteran, described the incident with Trump as unique.

"If the threat was credible and they allowed Air Force One to take off thinking it was going to crash or something else was going to happen to it, then they considered the pilots, the flight crew, the White House staff and the journalists as people who could be sacrificed, left behind and who didn't matter," he said.