New Delhi: A Washington Post report this week said that US President Donald Trump secretly flew out of Turkey in July aboard a military aircraft over concerns about “credible” assassination threats from Iran. On 8 July, when Trump was in Ankara for a NATO summit, he first boarded the blue-and-white Air Force One in front of television cameras. Minutes later, he was secretly transferred to an Air Force C-32A using an airport catering truck typically used to load supplies onto aircraft.
But he isn’t the only US president to have done so.Bill Clinton had pulled the same move 26 years ago, while travelling to Pakistan from Mumbai airport.
In March 2000, then President Clinton left India for Pakistan for a visit aboard an unmarked aircraft that followed a decoy plane bearing markings of the Air Force One. The deception was not revealed until Clinton emerged from the second aircraft after landing in Islamabad, where he was to spend six hours under extraordinary security.But there was one important difference between the two secret flights.The White House press corps was not entirely kept in the dark back in 2000. USA Today reporter Susan Page was briefed secretly, though she chose to speak up only this past Tuesday.“Before we left Bombay, White House officials took me aside for an off-the-record conversation to discuss the extraordinary security precautions being taken. We also discussed concerns about the safety of the small group of journalists aboard the familiar Air Force One and the larger group traveling on the chartered press plane, which landed in Islamabad in advance of the White House planes,” Page revealed, adding that she was the only journalist who was aware of the president’s plane switch.
