Trump’s Air Force One deception faces scrutiny over ‘decoy’ passengers

Democrats called on Tuesday for a congressional briefing over a stunning charade in which Donald Trump was secretly spirited to different plane than the one the public and press believed he was travelling on, an episode first reported by the Washington Post and also by the New York Times. Critics now question why reporters and the public had been deliberately misled.

When US intelligence allegedly found a credible threat that Iran plotted to kill him last month, Trump left Air Force One in a catering truck. While the president was reportedly snuck out the side door of the plane, more than a hundred aides, officials and reporters were kept onboard to fly towards Britain, without being told there was a threat to their lives.

“It appears that the idea was we can reduce the danger to President Trump by offering up 100 or so people to be killed by the Iranians in his place,” said Steven Cash, executive director of the Steady State and a former CIA intelligence officer and senior adviser to the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence branch.

Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, called the operation “unprecedented and surreal” and “downright scary” on CNN. “There has to be a congressional briefing because it involves not just the safety of the president.

“I want to know what precautions were taken to make sure that all of the passengers on that Air Force One, which was judged too dangerous for the president to fly on, what precautions were taken to keep the staff and reporters on that plane safe?”

The White House had publicly said the president would fly to Britain onboard Air Force One – albeit an older version instead of the new Qatari-gifted aircraft. In reality, Trump boarded the presidential jet in full view of television cameras before being spirited away minutes later and transferred to an air force C-32A.

The deception was sufficiently elaborate that journalists travelling with the president – and some White House staff – believed Trump remained onboard Air Force One. Reporters were instructed to keep the shades over their windows closed during the flight.

The C-32A carrying Trump flew to RAF Mildenhall in Britain, arriving at about 10.20pm. The older Air Force One and the travelling press pool arrived minutes later. Photographers subsequently captured Trump descending from the presidential aircraft, apparently after he had been secretly reunited with it.

Trump then greeted troops at the base before boarding the newly refurbished Boeing 747 donated by Qatar and flying on to Washington.

Ned Price, a former deputy to the US ambassador to the UN, said he did not begrudge any White House taking extraordinary measures to protect the president but the current administration had perpetuated an “outright lie” for weeks and turned reporters into “unwitting conspirators”.

Price, an ex-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 enlisted the travelling press pool, who would have very willingly, I am certain, not reported on certain security arrangements.

“Once all was said and done and the president was safely in the UK 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 feel no compunction to the truth. They feel no loyalty to the truth. Instead it’s just an effort over the past month to lie and to mislead.”

Journalists also raised concerns. Jake Tapper, an anchor on CNN, tweeted: “Obviously the life of the president is paramount, and previous White Houses have used deception to protect the president’s life. But no officials I’ve spoken to have ever before heard of using an AF1 full of WH staff and journalists as a decoy during an imminent threat.”

The White House has not directly confirmed the details of the operation. Its communications director, Steven Cheung, instead told the Post 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 security of the Qatari aircraft. Trump had flown the newly refurbished jet to the Nato summit – its first international journey – but unexpectedly announced that he would instead use the older Air Force One on the first leg of his return journey.

At the time, Trump said the new aircraft was being flown to Mildenhall so US troops stationed there could inspect it. The New York Times and CBS News subsequently reported that intelligence officials had raised concerns about a possible attack on Trump or his aircraft amid the escalating conflict with Iran.

During the summit, the US military was conducting major strikes against Iran, adding to fears of Iranian retaliation. The new account suggests that the threat was taken more seriously than previously understood.

Not everyone is convinced the threat justified what happened next. “From the Iranian perspective, pulling off an attempted targeting of presidential aircraft at this depth would be extremely implausible; it would require close-in clandestine operators with man-portable anti-air systems,” said Ankit Panda, the Stanton senior fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Panda said it was not clear there had been a specific, credible threat within Turkey itself, though presidential security routinely plans around “known unknowns”.

“Iran doesn’t have surface-to-air missiles that could target an aircraft taking off from Ankara,” said Dr Jeffrey Lewis, a distinguished fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Iran could in theory strike a plane on the runway with a ballistic missile, he said, “but that seems very unlikely”. His guess: US officials were worried about “a terrorist-like 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.

James Jeffrey, a former US 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 around moving Trump to another aircraft pointed to serious intelligence behind the threat.

“This is very unusual, and indicates that they had very good intelligence of a threat, and that they did not trust the aircraft that he was in,” said Jeffrey, who has extensive experience traveling onboard Air Force One.

Jeffrey said he believed the intelligence may have come from Israel, which has extensive intelligence capabilities focused on Iran. While Israeli officials sometimes seek to “not only inform but influence” US policy, he said they would not risk fabricating a threat involving the president’s safety.

“They wouldn’t play with something as serious as the president’s safety,” Jeffrey said, adding that any such warning would prompt the US government to verify the intelligence, gather more information about the threat and follow up on it.”

Trump himself appeared to hint at the security concerns when reporters questioned him about why they had been ordered to keep their window shades closed. “You’re probably on a dangerous flight,” he said. “But if I go, you go. Right?”

Asked later whether 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 their list before you.”

The operation has nevertheless prompted questions about the decision to deceive the press corps and the public, particularly after the White House continued to maintain the cover story.

“The way to mitigate the threat included offering up the remaining people on Air Force One as an unwitting decoy,” Cash said. What was unclear, he added, was the order of operations – whether Trump’s team waited until he was safely away before letting the rest of the plane take off, or sent it up not knowing. If officials had simply announced Trump wasn’t onboard once he had landed safely, he said, they could have accomplished most of what they wanted without anyone remaining in the dark. “It really does sound 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, credible target of a threat of killing, serious injury or kidnapping – including, he said, journalists and civilians, not just officials.

“If there’s intelligence collected that shows that a human being or a group of human beings are 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, does allow waivers when a warning would compromise sources, methods or operations – but Cash said he knew of no exception written for using people as decoys. “Probably because nobody ever thought that anybody would come up with the idea.”

Others defended the operation. Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary under President George W Bush, said that if the report was accurate, the Secret Service, air force and White House deserved credit for protecting the president. “If there’s a credible threat against any POTUS, their job is to protect him,” he wrote on X.

The extraordinary journey echoes an operation carried out by Bill Clinton in 2000, when the former president secretly flew into Pakistan onboard an unmarked executive jet while Air Force One was used as a decoy.

But Matthew Hoh, a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network and Iraq war combat veteran, described the Trump incident as unique. “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 happen, they saw the pilots, the air crew, the White House staff, the journalists as all being expendable, dispensable, meaningless,” he said.

“There’s a lot of implications here with this story that help us understand this administration better or maybe reinforce the understanding we already have of this venal and vainglorious White House.”