Presidents have made secret trips abroad before for security reasons, with the agenda and logistics kept secret until the end to protect the commander-in-chief. But not in the way President Donald Trump did in July, the Associated Press reported, BTA reported.
At the time, the White House said the president was traveling on “Air Force One“ from Turkey, where he was attending a NATO summit, to Britain. Shortly after boarding the plane, however, Trump secretly left it, getting on a catering truck and transferring to another plane, which he flew to Britain, the Washington Post reported, citing unnamed sources.
The New York Times reported similar information, citing unnamed US officials.
Trump arrived in Ankara for the NATO summit on a recently refurbished plane donated by Qatar. He then unexpectedly announced that he would depart the country on the older Air Force One, raising questions about the new plane's security, Reuters reported.
The trip to the NATO summit was the first international flight of the new plane, whose rapid refurbishment has raised questions about cost and security. The visit came amid escalating hostilities with Iran, which borders Turkey.
Journalists who believed they were traveling with Trump in the older “Air Force One“, which was effectively used as a decoy, were instructed to keep the window shades down. According to “The Washington Post“, not only the journalists but also some White House officials believed the president was on board.
The C-32A plane with Trump on board arrived in the UK at around 10:20 p.m., and the older “Air Force One“ with the journalists landed a few minutes later, the “Washington Post“ reported. It is unclear how Trump was transferred back from the C-32A to the old “Air Force One“.
During the stopover in Britain, Trump unobtrusively reboarded the presidential plane and mockingly dismissed questions about the possible danger, the AP added. When reporters asked why they had to keep the sunshades down during the flight, Trump replied that the reason was because “they were probably on a dangerous flight”. “If I die, you die too. "Right?" he told reporters, without mentioning that if the plane had been shot down, the president would not have been on board.
The cover-up of Trump's whereabouts during the trip and for weeks afterward is considered unprecedented, even in the modern world, where security deception is not uncommon, the AP said.
"We've certainly seen the president fly unmarked or decoy planes to Iraq, Afghanistan and other war-like locations before," said Garrett M. Graff, author of "Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Ourselves While the Rest of Us Die."
"But never before, to my knowledge, have we seen such a secret kept so closely guarded long“, he added.
The president's departure from Turkey attracted attention even then, as Trump had arrived in Ankara on a luxury plane donated by Qatar, which lacked some of the missile detection and countermeasure systems installed on older presidential planes.
Trump himself confirmed the information to the “Washington Post“. “I comply with the Secret Service and the military. They wanted me to travel on a different flight, on a different plane“, Trump told reporters yesterday after a visit to the state of Ohio. “I just have to do what they tell me“, he added.
According to him, the plane he actually traveled on was in greater danger. "I actually think the plane I was on was at greater risk because I think it was more likely they were going to target it," the US president said.
Presidents have regularly visited war zones to demonstrate American presence and their own leadership qualities. Such trips are usually not announced until the president is deemed safe. The difference this time is that Trump was secretly separated from the rest of the people traveling with him, including the press corps, whose job it is to independently cover the president and his actions. After the danger passed, the White House did not notify the public of what happened and has not yet fully disclosed the details.
According to Graff, the presence of accredited journalists at the White House is important not only for covering events, but also for protecting the “presidential institution and democracy”. “This shows that the White House does not understand at all how important the role of the press corps is – to be able to independently and transparently confirm the condition and location of the US president at any time”, he said.
Officials have taken extraordinary measures before to ensure the safety of presidents on secret trips.
In 2023, a motorcade left the White House at around 3:30 a.m. on Sunday. Later, President Joe Biden boarded a US Air Force C-32 plane – a modified “Boeing 757” normally used for domestic flights to smaller airports – and flew to Poland. Biden then secretly traveled by night train for 10 hours to Kiev to demonstrate solidarity with Ukraine after the Russian invasion, the AP recalls.
The White House press pool expected Biden to spend a quiet Sunday in Washington. However, two journalists accompanied him to Ukraine and documented the visit. They filmed Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky walking past a monument to fallen servicemen in the Ukrainian capital as air raid sirens sounded.
During his first term, Trump made a secret visit to Afghanistan on Thanksgiving Day in 2019. Officials left a separate group of journalists and a decoy plane in Florida to maintain the impression that the president was spending the holiday at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Instead, Trump and another group of journalists flew to the large US military base at Bagram. The president spent more than three hours there, handing out turkey to troops, giving a speech, and meeting with then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, and journalists documented the proceedings.
When President George W. Bush first visited Iraq in 2003, the news was not released until after he had flown back to the United States. President Barack Obama made a secret overnight visit to Afghanistan in 2010, when he was officially scheduled to spend the weekend at Camp David. Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon also visited war zones in Vietnam.
In 2000, President Bill Clinton traveled secretly from India to Pakistan in an attempt to ease tensions over the disputed region of Kashmir. He was seen talking to officials outside a military plane, which he apparently boarded. Instead, Clinton walked around the front of the plane and boarded another plane parked nearby. Both planes took off for Islamabad, as did a third, painted in the familiar light blue of “Air Force One“.