American officials speaking to journalists said that earlier the same day, alarming information was passed to the US leader. It was indicated that Iran allegedly knew which luxury hotel chain D. Trump had chosen for his stay in Ankara.
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According to them, the Iranians supposedly also had information about how his motorcade would move around the Turkish capital. Moreover, as D. Trump himself has said several times, the Iranian regime is determined to kill him. Then the idea was raised that they might use a shoulder-launched missile to shoot down the presidential aircraft “Air Force One”.
As CNN writes, the fact that Iran knew D. Trump’s schedule in detail caused concern for his team, although some American officials expressed skepticism about Iran attempting to plot to kill the US president during the highly secured NATO summit.
One official said that the Israeli government shared intelligence with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) about a possible Iranian plot to kill the president. However, the agency, as well as some other officials from D. Trump’s administration, viewed the Israeli intelligence data skeptically. Some intelligence officials questioned its reliability and whether Iran even had the capability to carry out such an attack, the article states.
Despite this, the information significantly increased the alertness level of US officials, who were already tense due to three previous assassination attempts on D. Trump and criticism of the president’s security team.
A later decision was made to secretly transfer him to a military plane at Ankara airport before D. Trump’s return trip to the United States. Weeks after he returned from the NATO summit, it was revealed that this was carried out using a food delivery van.
Controversial assessments
As sources said, the need to find ways to safely get the president out of Turkey became a real headache for a small group of security officials.
“They spent the whole morning and afternoon in Turkey evaluating possible options and providing information to Trump as he traveled from one meeting with world leaders to another,” CNN writes.
Only a few hours remained until D. Trump’s scheduled departure from Turkey.
Inside the elegant and heavily guarded Beştepe presidential complex, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, who arrived in Turkey before D. Trump, gathered other top officials to prepare a plan together with the Secret Service.
Officials discussed several factors, including the nature of the threat itself.
Israel was the first to warn the US about a new Iranian plot to kill D. Trump, allegedly planning to use intermediaries. However, the information was unclear.
At that time, the war with Iran had reached a turning point, so some officials thought it might be an attempt to influence D. Trump’s decision-making.
Three American sources familiar with the matter indicated that US intelligence assessments before the trip showed no signs of any new, specific Iranian plot to kill the US president.
According to one American official, as the summit began, US intelligence provided more information related to a potential threat to the “Air Force One” plane, which could be posed by a missile launched from the ground near the airport.
However, there were intelligence officials who claimed that such a threat scenario was fabricated. Security at the NATO summit was especially strict – even stricter than usual at world leaders’ meetings, considering the ongoing war with Iran and Turkey’s geographical proximity to that country.
Tens of thousands of Turkish security forces and police officers were concentrated in Ankara, and temporary cameras were installed on almost every street corner. Multi-layered security surrounded both the summit venue and the airport, where leaders of all 32 NATO members arrived and departed.
It is unclear exactly where the information about the missile threat, which could be launched from a portable system, came from. US and regional officials later said that after the president’s departure, no fighters were detained and no evidence of a possible plot was found.
Nevertheless, the Secret Service quickly decided that the potential risk – however unclear – deserved serious attention.
“The threat was serious enough that extreme measures had to be taken that day,” one US official emphasized to CNN. “Otherwise, we would not have taken those actions.”
Two sources familiar with the situation said some security officials believed the best way to safely get D. Trump out of Turkey was to secretly leave the country earlier the same day the missile threat information was recorded.
“Written” on the face
As CNN notes, this idea was rejected. D. Trump stuck to his schedule, including meetings with the leaders of Ukraine and Syria before holding a press conference.
However, it was clear that the threat to his life caused some psychological burden, the article notes.
“This morning I saw one thing. I am on every one of their lists. And so far, I think I’m a bit lucky,” D. Trump said during a morning meeting with the NATO Secretary General. “But that might not last very long.”
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Deception with a food delivery van
While the Secret Service, White House, and military officials were devising a plan to secretly get the American president out of the country, D. Trump himself took separate actions to explain why he would not use the huge $400 million aircraft he flew to Turkey on for the return to the United States.
The Boeing 747 gifted by Qatar was a great source of pride for the president, although some officials privately doubted whether it was worth flying it abroad to a country bordering Iran.
The flight from Washington was successful, and D. Trump, arriving at the airport and meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, proudly smiled looking at the new plane painted in his chosen color scheme.
“The old plane,” he said to his colleague on the runway, “is now just a ‘backup’.
However, security officials decided the next day that neither the new plane nor the old one, easily recognizable by its light blue and white color scheme, would be an ideal choice for D. Trump’s departure.
The president quickly realized this would raise uncomfortable questions about why he was not flying back on the plane he had persistently called the best in the world.
At 3:42 PM, just before a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, D. Trump posted online that the new plane gifted by Qatar would fly to a military base in the United Kingdom so that the troops there could inspect it.
“Everyone is very excited, so we thought they should be the first,” he wrote, adding that he himself would fly on the older plane “in memory of the old times.”
In fact, he chose neither. The plan prepared by his advisors and the Secret Service was based on a carefully planned deceptive maneuver that has long been part of the president’s security strategy.
“The US Secret Service constantly analyzes a wide range of information to be able to lead our protective operations in real time at all our protected locations,” explained Secret Service communications chief Anthony Guglielmis.
“Given the recent assassination attempts and significantly increased threats to the president, we continue to persevere in carrying out our mission,” he added.
According to the carefully prepared plan, D. Trump was to board his old “Air Force One” and quickly move from the main door to another exit on the opposite side of the plane, where a white food delivery van awaited him.
The company “Turkish Airlines” is well known for its gourmet dishes, so finding such a truck was not a problem. According to one source, the van D. Trump boarded was empty.
What did Trump bring with him?
According to CNN, in the pre-cleared cabin were D. Trump, his permanent assistant Natalie Harp, former bodyguard Walt Nauta, now serving as the Oval Office operations chief, and Dan Scavino, head of the White House staff department but working for D. Trump for decades. Secret Service agents were also present.
When the group was boarded, a Secret Service agent dressed in a suit sat in the driver’s cabin for the 162-second trip to the smaller “C-32A” plane.
It is reported that Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth also joined D. Trump on the “C-32A” flight to Mildenhall military airbase in the United Kingdom.
In the larger plane remained Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as well as many other senior aides to D. Trump: chief policy advisor Stephen Miller, communications director Steven Cheung, staff secretary Will Scharf, deputy national security advisor Michael Needham, and deputy chief of staff Richard Walters.
Other staff, including press representatives, also stayed on the plane. Many of them did not know that D. Trump was not in the front cabin and, in fact, was not on the plane at all. During the flight, they were instructed to lower the window shades.
Former Secret Service agent and CNN contributor Johnathanan Vakarou noted that it is not unusual for Secret Service agents, when the president travels, to play a “three-card monte-like game” of deception.
“In the president’s case, decoy vehicles are used constantly. If you think about every time he gets on a helicopter in Washington, D.C., there are always three identical helicopters playing this game,” he summarized.
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