US officials secretly moved President Trump onto a different aircraft as he left Turkey last month, after identifying what they considered a credible assassination threat from Iran, The Washington Post has reported. The operation kept the press pool and some White House staff in the dark, who believed they were on the same plane as the president the entire time.
The switch took place July 8, one night after US forces resumed strikes on Iran following the collapse of ceasefire talks, as Trump departed Ankara after a NATO leaders summit. He had arrived in Turkey aboard the newly retrofitted Boeing 747-8 that Qatar gave the US — the plane’s first international trip carrying a president. Trump said at the time he’d fly home on the older Air Force One instead, so US troops stationed in Britain could see the new jet. That wasn’t the real reason.
The Qatari jet left Turkey first that evening for RAF Mildenhall in Britain. Trump then boarded an older Air Force One in Ankara in full view of cameras. Minutes later, he and several aides slipped through a door on the opposite side of the plane into an airport catering truck, out of sight of anyone not involved in the operation. The truck lowered him to the ground and drove him to a third aircraft — a modified Boeing 757 known as the C-32A, typically used for senior officials but also cleared to carry the president or vice president.
Trump flew to Britain aboard the C-32A, landing at around 10:20 p.m. The decoy Air Force One, carrying the press pool, touched down roughly nine minutes later. Staff had told reporters aboard to lower their window shades before takeoff in Ankara. How Trump got from the C-32A back onto the older Air Force One isn’t clear, but by around 11 p.m. he was back in front of cameras, descending its stairs, greeting US service members and boarding the Qatari-gifted jet for the flight home to Washington.
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The White House has kept saying Trump flew home from Turkey on the older Air Force One, posting a photo of that aircraft the night he landed in Britain. When the Post put its findings to the administration, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung defended the new jet’s security rather than address the deception, calling it, “a state-of-the-art aircraft equipped with high-level security protocols.”
Read: Trump Swaps Air Force Ones Mid-Trip, Citing Iranian ‘Kill List’
The New York Times first reported within days of the NATO summit that the Secret Service had recommended Trump take the older plane, describing it then as a general precaution, not a response to a specific threat. Weeks later, the Times reported the threat was credible and tied to Iranian proxies, and that the new jet lacked some of the older model’s defenses, including antimissile capability, making it too risky to fly.
The administration responded by subpoenaing four Times journalists to testify before a Manhattan grand jury about the leak. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said the subpoenas endangered the public’s right to know, warning, per CNN, that “all of us suffer irreparable harm” when that right is threatened. The Justice Department later dropped the subpoenas.
Read: DOJ Withdraws Subpoenas Against NYT Reporters After Judge Blasts ‘Sloppy’ Legal Work
Asked on the flight home whether the plane swap was a response to the Iran threat, Trump told reporters, “I have a threat all the time. I’m No. 1 on their list.”
