The media world is still buzzing about a massive scoop from The Washington Post earlier this week.
The situation was already strange. The Post’s reporting made it even wilder.
It goes back to the NATO summit in Turkey in early July. When it came time for President Donald Trump to begin his trip home, he chose not to take the plane gifted to him by Qatar that was intended to become the new Air Force One. Instead, he said he would take the old Air Force One. The reason: so military personnel in Europe could tour the new plane.
But then several news outlets, including The New York Times, reported that the real reason for the plane switch involved security concerns about the Qatar-gifted aircraft. Trump was so furious about that story that Times reporters were issued subpoenas so the administration could try to identify who might have leaked the information.
Then this week came the bombshell report from The Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe, John Hudson, Andrew Ba Tran and Joyce Sohyun Lee: “Contradicting public statements, Trump took secret flight from Turkey amid Iranian threat.”
That shocking story revealed that Trump didn’t take the new or old Air Force One. He took a third plane.
Television cameras and photographers captured Trump boarding the old Air Force One in Turkey. But then, the Post reported, “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.”
Trump was secretly moved to another plane because of a credible Iranian assassination threat.
So while journalists and some White House staff thought they were riding on the same plane as Trump, they were not.
The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, Eric Schmitt and Zolan Kanno-Youngs wrote, “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.”
The old Air Force One and the C-32A carrying Trump both flew to Britain. After landing, Trump was secretly moved from his plane back onto the old Air Force One. He disembarked in view of reporters, walked across the tarmac and then boarded the Qatar-gifted plane to return to the U.S.
Wild, right? But not unprecedented.
In 2000, President Bill Clinton flew from India to Pakistan in an unmarked plane that followed Air Force One.
USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page wrote about it Tuesday. She was there in 2000 and, at the time, was president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Page wrote, “Before we left Bombay, White House officials took me aside for an off-the-record conversation to discuss the extraordinary security precautions being taken.”
Page added, “We also discussed concerns about the safety of the small group of journalists aboard the familiar Air Force One and the larger group traveling on the chartered press plane, which landed in Islamabad in advance of the White House planes.”
Page was not aboard Clinton’s plane to Pakistan. She wrote, “I was aboard the press plane for the flight. As far as I know, I was the only journalist who was aware of the president's plane switch. Of course, when he landed, the world realized he had switched to the unmarked plane.”
The New York Times’ Claire Moses wrote: “3 Presidents Before Trump Who Obscured Their Risky Travel Plans.”
Moses mentioned the Clinton switch in 2000. She also wrote about George W. Bush’s surprise visit to troops in Iraq around Thanksgiving 2003. That trip was such a surprise, Moses wrote, that even Bush’s own wife and parents were not told ahead of time. Back in 2003, the Times wrote that Bush’s entourage included “a few advisers and a small number of reporters sworn to secrecy.”
Then, in 2010, President Barack Obama made a secret visit to Afghanistan to meet with American troops and speak with Afghan leaders. At the time, journalists were told Obama was at Camp David.
All of this is done, understandably, to keep the president safe.
Donald Mihalek, a former Secret Service agent who worked in the protective details for Bush and Obama, told the Times decoys are regularly used. He added, “The agency is not the agency of public affairs. The agency is the agency of the Secret Service. Their number one job is to keep the president safe.”
Ronald L. Rowe Jr., a former acting director of the Secret Service, told the Post, “We need to keep the ‘secret’ in Secret Service. 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.”
But this latest Trump story is messy for two reasons. One, the press was completely unaware of Trump’s whereabouts. Second, and more importantly, you have to ask: If Trump was moved off a plane because of a credible assassination threat, were the journalists who remained on that plane potentially in danger?
Former CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr told the Post’s Scott Nover that the press understands the need to keep the president safe.
But Starr added, “there will be a level of distrust now that we have not seen before … their own lives were potentially at risk without them even knowing it, without them having the option of making a different choice of how to get home.”
The New York Times’ Peter Baker wrote, “If the Iranians really were trying to shoot down the presidential plane last month, as U.S. officials concluded at the time, then the subterfuge in Ankara, Turkey, that protected the president also may have made targets of dozens of other people who flew aboard the jet, some of them unaware that Mr. Trump was not actually with them because it was considered too dangerous.”
S.V. Dáte, White House correspondent for HuffPost, was more blunt, tweeting, “In other words everyone aboard the real 747 AF1 — crew, guests, press pool — was considered expendable.”
Those who rode on the decoy Air Force One were reportedly told to lower their window shades. After arriving, they asked Trump if security concerns were the reason the shades had to be lowered. Now, mind you, at that moment, they believed Trump had traveled on the same plane.
Trump told them, “Well, I have a threat all the time. I’m No. 1 on their list, before you. But if I go, you go. Right? Perhaps someday you want to change professions.”
Or maybe change planes.
Nover wrote for the Post, “One White House reporter, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk publicly, said that they were outraged to learn about an operation that might have put the press corps in danger.”
That reporter told Nover, “When you sign up to work at the White House, even as a civilian, part of your job is to defend the president. That’s not my job. I cover the president. Reporters take risks as part of the job, but not on behalf of the president.”
