WASHINGTON — In an extraordinary security operation triggered by a credible assassination threat from Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump was secretly shuttled via an airport catering truck to board a military aircraft and leave Turkey following a NATO summit last month, according to reports published Monday by The Washington Post and The New York Times.
The elaborate deception operation took place on July 8 at Ankara International Airport in Turkey. While the White House had publicly announced that the president was departing aboard the primary U.S. presidential aircraft, Trump briefly boarded the U.S. presidential Boeing 747 in full view of television news cameras before being surreptitiously moved into a catering cart (a service vehicle typically used to load meals and inflight supplies) and driven to a smaller, secondary U.S. military plane.
A High-Stakes ‘Deception Operation’
According to U.S. officials familiar with the operation, the complex swap was set in motion due to intelligence indicating a credible safety threat targeting the president from Iranian forces or proxies. Hostilities between Washington and Tehran have escalated sharply in recent months along the Turkish-Iranian border region.
Once inside the catering truck, Trump was driven across the tarmac to an waiting U.S. Air Force C-32A, a military transport variant of the Boeing 757. The primary jumbo jet, along with accompanying White House staff and traveling journalists who believed the president was on board, took off as a high-visibility decoy.
Inflight, reporters aboard the decoy aircraft were instructed by staff to keep all cabin window shades tightly closed. When journalists later questioned Trump about the unusual request, he remarked, “You were probably on a dangerous flight. But if I go, you go. Right?”
Rendezvous in the U.K.
Both aircraft flew in tandem toward RAF Mildenhall in the United Kingdom, arriving within minutes of each other around 10:20 p.m. local time. Trump was subsequently re-transferred onto the primary presidential jet without detection before stepping off the aircraft to greet military personnel and media members waiting on the tarmac.
The tactical decoy operation draws parallels to a similar maneuver in 2000, when President Bill Clinton utilized an unmarked executive jet to fly into Pakistan while sending the standard Air Force One aircraft ahead as a decoy.
In a statement responding to reports of the Ankara incident, White House Communications Director Steve Cheung emphasized that military and security teams utilize robust measures to safeguard the commander-in-chief.
“As the President has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats,” Cheung said.
