The threat to Air Force One was seen as so dire that they sneaked President Trump off the jet in a catering container to keep him safe. But the same dire threat did not stop them from then sending Air Force One into the skies anyway with a planeful of government employees, reporters and military personnel serving as decoys.
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.
The government has on rare occasions engaged in sleight of hand to safeguard presidents from possible jeopardy, particularly for journeys to hazardous locations, such as when George W. Bush or Barack Obama flew to Iraq during days of war or when Bill Clinton made a brief visit to Pakistan with its history of terrorism. The Trump team’s ruse in Ankara, however, stands out not only for its misdirection but also for the way it shifted the evident peril to others and was kept secret long after Mr. Trump was out of harm’s way.
“They just didn’t seem to give a second thought to anybody but the president and the few people who were with him,” said Joe Lockhart, who served as White House press secretary to Mr. Clinton during his 2000 trip to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. “We went out of our way to make sure the maximum number of people, especially civilians, were protected and not human shields. They didn’t even think about it. And to me, that’s the big difference.”
But other veterans of risky White House trips said there were times that extreme measures were justified to protect the president. Joseph W. Hagin, who as a top adviser to Mr. Bush helped organize his war zone trips and later served as Mr. Trump’s deputy White House chief of staff in his first term, said he would not second-guess the decision in Ankara.
“I understand there is concern for those flying on what was assumed to be the primary aircraft,” Mr. Hagin said, “but when you go to work at the White House or travel with the president, you are accepting a not-insignificant degree of risk. Telling everyone what’s up in an operation like this would have obviously jeopardized the president’s safety.”
When Mr. Bush or Mr. Obama brought staff members and reporters with them to war zones, Mr. Hagin added, those were dangerous moments, too. “This was no different than the trips to Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said. “You add up all the risks and figure out the tactics that give you the safest option, regardless of whose toes get stepped on or feelings get hurt.”
The government officials and reporters who traveled with presidents to war zones, of course, knew they were doing so, while those left on Air Force One in Ankara last month were not told of the increased threat. Journalists traveling in the back of the plane were instructed while still on the ground to keep their window shades closed during the July 8 flight from Ankara to Britain, where Mr. Trump landed secretly in another military plane. The president was then sneaked back onto Air Force One so that he could disembark in front of cameras as if he had been onboard all along.
The secret switch in Ankara, first reported on Monday by The Washington Post and confirmed by The New York Times and other news outlets, was so remarkable that it sounded like something out of Hollywood. In fact, it defied even the imagination of Andrew W. Marlowe, who wrote the screenplay for the iconic 1997 thriller “Air Force One,” featuring Harrison Ford as a president whose plane is hijacked. Mulling it over on Tuesday, Mr. Marlowe said he was sure the Secret Service was doing what was necessary to keep the president safe. But he added that it did not make Mr. Trump look all that good.
“Now real life isn’t a movie, but given the circumstances, I’m not sure I could ever script a moment like that for a heroic main character,” Mr. Marlowe said. “If the threat were that great, it’s hard to imagine the audience rooting for any character who would trade his own safety by treating the remaining civilians onboard as potential sacrificial lambs, especially without their informed consent.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the calculations that went into the decision or whether extra measures were taken to protect the plane from any threat even without Mr. Trump onboard.
The extraordinary deception underscored the sense of danger felt by Mr. Trump, who was grazed by a would-be assassin’s bullet while campaigning in Butler, Pa., in 2024 and targeted by another armed man at his Florida golf course later that year. During the Biden administration, officials said that Iranian elements were trying to kill Mr. Trump. As recently as Tuesday, the police were investigating a bomb threat at a McDonald’s in Ohio near the site of a planned visit by Mr. Trump later that evening.
The Secret Service and military units charged with the president’s safety typically use decoys to confuse possible attackers, although not involving civilians without their knowledge. When any president travels in a motorcade, there are usually two identical armored limousines or sport utility vehicles with identical Washington, D.C., license plates to make it hard to know which one he is in. When he flies by Marine One, there are often three or four identical green-and-white helicopters flying together.
“If there’s an attack on the motorcade, the secure package splits off and everyone else is on their own, from some WH staff to some military officials, all reporters and members of Congress,” Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary for Mr. Bush, wrote on social media on Tuesday. “The safety of potus always comes first. We don’t complain. That’s the way it is.”
A president of the United States, or POTUS in government jargon, is at once the most visible and most protected official in the country. The White House over the years has become a virtual fortress, and Mr. Trump plans to expand the security perimeter with a new fence around Lafayette Square across the street from the mansion.
At the same time, a president by tradition always travels with a pool of journalists who record his every public movement and comment. Such constant coverage has been considered vital in the nuclear era when a crisis can confront a president at any moment. Journalists were with John F. Kennedy when he was shot in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, and they were with Mr. Bush when terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
When presidents have made war zone trips in recent years, the White House typically summoned a select number of news executives to the Situation Room or called journalists to clue them in and swear them to secrecy so at least a few could go along and report about the visits once it was safe. Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama both took reporters with them to Afghanistan and Iraq, as did Mr. Trump in his first term. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. took one news reporter and one news photographer with him on a secret nine-and-a-half-hour train trip into war-torn Ukraine.
When Mr. Clinton traveled to Pakistan, he too switched planes to avoid detection by possible attackers. He had been urged not to go because parts of the country were havens for terrorist groups, but since he was already going to India, he felt compelled to stop in Islamabad for a few hours.
The original security plan called for fooling the accompanying journalists into thinking that Mr. Clinton had boarded the same C-17 military jet that they were on, while he would secretly get onto a separate Air Force version of a Gulfstream known as a C-20. “My vehement protest was you can’t use the media as decoys,” he said. “And they came back with a plan that satisfied me.”
Instead, according to another veteran of that trip who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional repercussions, they had Mr. Clinton walk around the nose of the C-17 to the other side where three smaller unmarked planes were waiting. The journalists were not able to see which of the three he boarded, but they saw that he had not gotten on the C-17.
Unlike the Trump team in Ankara, the Clinton team informed at least one of the pool journalists in advance, Susan Page of USA Today, who recounted the episode on Tuesday. And the White House then publicly disclosed the details more broadly once Mr. Clinton was safely out of harm’s way. Mr. Trump’s team, by contrast, never disclosed what happened in Ankara until The Post broke the story.
“It’s totally understandable that the White House would want to compartmentalize a security operation like this,” said John F. Kirby, a retired Navy rear admiral who served as a top spokesman for the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon during the Obama and Biden administrations. “I don’t fault them for going to lengths to keep the president safe or in withholding specific threat intelligence.”
“But,” he added, “they also have an obligation for the safety and security of those traveling with the president. And when the risk of that travel is knowable — as it certainly was in this case — they have an obligation to at least provide the broad contours of it so that travelers can make informed decisions.”
Mr. Hagin disagreed. “My only criticism is that it leaked,” he said. “It is very, very hard to move the president covertly, and when you burn one of these tactics it’s unlikely you could get away with it again, which just makes it even harder the next time you need to do it. This wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last that an operation like this is required, regardless who is president.”
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