President Donald Trump has confirmed he secretly switched planes when leaving the NATO summit in Turkey last month in an effort to evade a possible Iranian threat.
“It's only up to the Secret Service. I just follow what they'd like to do, so I go by Secret Service and the military,” Trump told reporters late Tuesday at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. “They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, equal safety, but they wanted me to do it, so I do it, I do what they say."
When asked about the nature of the “threat,” Trump acknowledged there had been one but said he “didn’t really ask too much about it,” adding that he receives “a lot of threats.”
The Washington Post first reported Monday that when Trump left Ankara, Turkey, on July 8 and headed to England, he boarded Air Force One in front of the media, before being transferred to a military aircraft via a catering truck in an effort to conceal his exact whereabouts. Several other outlets also carried the story citing unnamed U.S. officials as sources.
Video footage of the scene shows a Turkish airport catering truck, understood to be sheltering Trump inside, pulling away from Air Force One.
Journalists, alongside some White House staffers, traveled on Air Force One and were reportedly unaware of the President no longer being onboard.
The operation has come under scrutiny, sparking questions as to whether those left on the decoy plane presumed to still be carrying the President were at risk.
"I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk,” Trump told reporters late Tuesday. ”Because that would be the plane, I think, that they would be more likely to go for."
Robert McDonald, who spent 21 years with the Secret Service, also pushed back on the idea that Air Force One and the people still aboard it may have been left exposed. “I would find it incredibly hard to believe that those two planes weren't escorted or with other assets from allies or the U.S. Air Force in the area,” he told TIME, adding that he doubted the people on the aircraft “were dangled out there and left to fend for themselves.”
Prior to leaving the summit on July 8, Trump had posted on social media that, for “old time’s sake,” he would fly out of Turkey on the older Air Force One instead of the newer, controversial Qatari-gifted aircraft, which had made its first international trip to the NATO event.
“To honor our brave men and women of the military, we are sending the brand new, and truly spectacular, Air Force One to Mildenhall Air Force Base, in the United Kingdom, to give them a chance to tour the aircraft,” he said.
When asked during a NATO press briefing why he wasn’t flying the new plane home, the President told reporters that the aircraft was being flown to a U.S. base to give service members a chance to see it.
In reality, the clandestine operation meant that, for a portion of time, the President’s real whereabouts were seemingly unknown to—and concealed from—the White House press pool.
Trump isn't the only President to execute a decoy mission
Although rare, a decoy maneuver such as this is not unheard of when it comes to presidential travel.
A similar episode occurred in March 2000, when former President Bill Clinton secretly switched to a decoy jet, with all of the markings of Air Force One, as he traveled to Islamabad, Pakistan for a visit marked by extraordinary security.
The switch was revealed when a Secret Service agent resembling Clinton stepped out of Air Force One upon touching down in Pakistan, while Clinton disembarked from the second aircraft.
However, at least one member of the White House pool was aware of the ruse: Susan Page, then-president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, who was covering the trip for USA TODAY.
Page this week broke her 26-year silence on the briefing that preceded the secret switch.
“They told me about the extraordinary security procedures being taken because of the dangers in flying there, including use of the decoy plane,” she told the Post. “Of course, the dangers threatened the journalists covering the trip as well as President Clinton.”
On why she chose to share her experience all these years later, Page explained: “I haven’t spoken about this episode before, because of the off-the-record ground rules of that discussion. But since more than a quarter-century has passed—and since the ruse became evident as soon as President Clinton disembarked in Pakistan—I think it’s OK for me to relay it now.”