Democrats on Tuesday called for a congressional briefing on a stunning hoax in which Donald Trump was secretly taken to a different plane than the one the public and press believed he was traveling on, an episode first reported by the Washington Post and also by the New York Times. Critics now question why journalists and the public had been deliberately misled. When US intelligence reportedly found a credible threat that Iran was plotting to kill him last month, Trump left Air Force One in a catering truck. While the president was reportedly smuggled out of the plane’s side door, more than a hundred aides, officials and journalists were kept on board to fly to Britain, without being told there was a threat to their lives. “It seems like the idea was that we can reduce the danger to President Trump by offering about 100 people for the Iranians to kill instead,” said Steven Cash, executive director of Steady State and a former CIA intelligence officer and senior adviser to the Department of Homeland Security. intelligence branch. Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, called the operation “unprecedented and surreal” and “downright terrifying” on CNN. “There has to be a briefing for Congress because this is not just about the president’s safety. I want to know what precautions were taken to ensure that all the passengers on that Air Force One, which was deemed too dangerous for the president to fly on, what precautions were taken to keep the staff and journalists safe on that plane?” He boarded the presidential plane in full view of television cameras before being kidnapped minutes later and transferred to an air force C-32A. The hoax was elaborate enough that journalists traveling with the president (and some White House staff) believed that Trump remained aboard Air Force One. The journalists were instructed to keep their window shades closed during the flight. The C-32A carrying Trump flew to RAF Mildenhall in Britain, arriving around 10:20 p.m. Photographers later captured Trump stepping off Air Force One, apparently after secretly meeting with him. Trump then greeted troops at the base before boarding the newly refurbished Boeing 747 donated by Qatar and flying to Washington. Ned Price, a former deputy to the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said he was not bothered by the White House taking extraordinary measures to protect the president, but that the current administration had perpetuated a “blatant lie” for weeks and had turned journalists into “unwilling ones.” conspirators.” Price, former special assistant to President Barack Obama on the national security council, added: “There was a way to do this where they didn’t need to lie. They could have recruited the traveling press group, who would very gladly, I’m sure, have not reported on certain security arrangements. “Once it was all said and done and the president was safely in the United Kingdom or back at Andrews Air Force Base, they could have said, ‘This is what we did and this is why we did it,’” Price added. “But they have no qualms about the truth. They have no loyalty to the truth. Instead, it’s just a last month’s effort to lie and deceive.” CNN anchor Jake Tapper tweeted: “Obviously the president’s life is paramount, and previous White Houses have used deception to protect the president’s life. But no official I’ve spoken to has ever heard of using an AF1 full of WH staff and journalists as a decoy during an imminent threat.” Deconstructed – videoThe White House has not directly confirmed the details of the operation. Instead, his communications director, Steven Cheung, told the Post that the president faced numerous threats and that officials used “every tool at our disposal” to protect him. The revelation sheds new light on an abrupt decision that had already raised questions about the safety of the Qatari plane. Trump had flown the newly remodeled plane to the NATO summit – his first international trip – but unexpectedly announced that he would instead use the aging Air Force One for the first leg of his return trip. At the time, Trump said the new plane was being moved to Mildenhall so it could be inspected by US troops stationed there. The New York Times and CBS News later reported that intelligence officials had raised concerns about a possible attack on Trump or his plane amid the escalating conflict with Iran. During the summit, the US military was carrying out major strikes against Iran, raising fears of Iranian retaliation. The new account suggests that the threat was taken more seriously than previously thought. Not everyone is convinced that the threat justified what happened next. “From the Iranian perspective, carrying out an attempt to attack a presidential plane at this depth would be extremely implausible; it would require nearby clandestine operators with man-portable anti-aircraft systems,” said Ankit Panda, Stanton senior fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Panda said it was not clear that there had been a specific, credible threat within Turkey itself, although presidential security routinely plans around “known unknowns.” “Iran does not have surface-to-air missiles that could target a plane taking off from Ankara,” said Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a distinguished fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. In theory, Iran could attack a plane on the runway with a ballistic missile, he said, “but that seems very unlikely.” Their guess: U.S. officials were worried about “a terrorist-type attack using a man-portable air defense system,” such as a Chinese-made QW-12 or FN-16, or a North Korean version of the Russian Igla. About 2 or 3 times a day Subscribe to Breaking News US Get the breaking news as it breaks after newsletter promotion James Jeffrey, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and deputy national security adviser under George W. Bush who is now a distinguished fellow at the pro-Israel Washington Institute, said the secrecy surrounding Trump’s transfer to another plane pointed to serious intelligence behind the threat. Jeffrey, who has extensive experience traveling aboard Air Force One. Jeffrey said he believed the intelligence could have come from Israel, which has extensive intelligence capabilities focused on Iran. While Israeli officials sometimes seek “not just to inform but to influence” American policy, he said they would not risk inventing a threat involving the president’s safety. “They wouldn’t play around with something as serious as the president’s security,” Jeffrey said, adding that any such warning would prompt the U.S. government to verify intelligence, gather more information about the threat and follow up on it. Trump himself appeared to hint at security concerns when reporters asked him why they had been ordered to keep the blinds closed. flight,” he said. “But if I go, you go. TRUE?” Asked later if there had been a credible Iranian threat against Air Force One, Trump said: “Well, I have a threat all the time. I’m number one on your list before you.” However, the operation has raised questions about the decision to mislead the press and public, particularly after the White House continued to maintain the cover story. “The way to mitigate the threat included offering the people remaining on Air Force One as an unwitting decoy,” Cash said. What was unclear, he added, was the order of the operations: whether Trump’s team waited until he was safe before allowing the rest of the plane “It really sounds like they were intended to serve as a decoy.” Cash pointed to Intelligence Community Directive 191, the government’s “duty to warn” policy, which requires intelligence agencies to alert people who are the specific and credible target of a threat. death, serious injury or kidnapping, including, he said, journalists and civilians, not just officials. “If there is information collected that shows that a human being or a group of human beings is in danger, they need to be warned,” Cash said. “The question is: were the people who remained on the plane warned? If not, it violated ICD 191.” The directive, adopted by the director of national intelligence in 2015, allows exemptions when a warning compromises sources, methods or operations, but Cash said he was not aware of any written exception for using people as decoys. “Probably because no one thought anyone would come up with the idea.” Others defended the operation. Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, said that if the report was accurate, The Secret Service, the Air Force and the White House deserved credit for protecting the president. “If there is a credible threat against any POTUS, their job is to protect him,” he wrote in of Trump as the only one. “If it was a credible threat and they allowed Air Force One to take off thinking it was going to be shot down or whatever was going to happen, they saw the pilots, the air crew, the White House staff, the journalists as expendable, expendable, meaningless,” he said. “There are a lot of implications here in this story that help us better understand this administration or perhaps reinforce the understanding we already have of this venal and vainglorious White House.”
