An incredible operation. Donald Trump confirmed, Tuesday, August 11, that he had secretly changed planes to leave Turkey after the NATO summit last month, on instructions from the American secret services, confirming information reported Monday by the Washington Post.
“They wanted to put me on another flight, on another plane, with the same security, they wanted me to do it, so I did it. I do what they tell me,” declared the American president near Washington while returning from a trip.
The Washington Post’s revelations on the operation which took place on the tarmac of Ankara airport on July 8, facing the risk of an Iranian attack, raise questions about the security of the American president as well as the credibility of the threat which weighed on him as much as on the communication from the White House.
That day, to leave the NATO summit in Turkey, the President of the United States was exfiltrated in a supply container to another plane, while Air Force One took off with a dozen journalists on board, wrongly convinced that they were traveling with Donald Trump. The latter finally took his place on board another aircraft.
“I imagine there was a threat. I didn’t ask for much more,” the president said Tuesday evening, when asked about the reason that pushed his protective service, the Secret Service, to advise him on this maneuver.
Donald Trump, visibly trying to minimize the episode, claimed to have been “not surprised”, “I am the subject of many threats of which you are not aware.”
However, the matter has become political: earlier Tuesday, the leader of the Democratic opposition in the Senate Chuck Schumer had asked that parliamentarians be “immediately informed”. “It is unacceptable that Congress has been left in the dark.”
Supply containers
This return trip from Türkiye had already given rise to an adventure before. Donald Trump should have left Ankara for the United Kingdom with the same Boeing 747 that brought him, an aircraft offered by Qatar and subject to costly modifications.
But concerns for his safety led the White House to change the program at the last minute and have him travel on the old plane, considered safer.
It is therefore in this plane – with the light blue paintwork characteristic of old versions of Air Force One – that the American president boarded, under the cameras and the lenses of photographers.
In an AFP photo taken earlier, two supply containers mounted on hydraulic springs are clearly visible, one positioned at the front, the other at the rear.
According to the American press, it was in this container that Donald Trump left the plane, to board the other American Air Force aircraft, a C-32A.
The Wall Street Journal quotes a U.S. official as saying that Israel informed the United States of a threat of a man-portable surface-to-air missile attack on the plane. The daily specifies that senior American officials, including the head of diplomacy Marco Rubio, remained on board.
Portholes closed
Just like the dozen journalists traveling at the rear, in a cabin which does not communicate with the space reserved for the president, located towards the front, and who guessed nothing of the subterfuge – security had also asked them to lower the window blinds, a very unusual instruction outside of combat zones.
Once he arrived at the Mildenhall military base, in the east of England, a little before this decoy plane, the 80-year-old billionaire got back there, again secretly and without the Washington Post being able to learn how.
Then he walked down the gangplank in front of the journalists before immediately boarding the plane offered by Qatar to return to the United States.
This is not the first time in history that an American president has taken exceptional precautions, but the secrecy surrounding this operation is unusual. In 2000, Bill Clinton had already used this decoy plane technique to travel from India to Pakistan. According to the Washington Post, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association at the time had been warned.
In 2023, a visit by Joe Biden to Ukraine was also shrouded in great secrecy. The Democratic president was accompanied by two journalists.
With AFP
