Protecting the president of the United States is unquestionably one of the federal government’s most important responsibilities. But that responsibility should never make the safety of everyone traveling with the president an afterthought.
We learned last week that concerns about a possible Iranian assassination plot prompted extraordinary security measures as President Donald Trump prepared to leave Turkey. Rather than keep the presidential traveling party together or find a way to minimize the potential risk to everyone, officials secretly moved Trump to another aircraft while Air Force One continued on as part of a carefully orchestrated deception.
According to The Washington Post, Trump publicly boarded Air Force One in Ankara, then was quietly transported in a catering truck to a smaller Air Force C-32A. Air Force One continued to England carrying journalists, White House staff and others who believed the president was still aboard.
If officials were sufficiently concerned that Trump’s aircraft could be targeted that they secretly removed him from it, why was it acceptable to send that same plane into the air with everyone else aboard?
The president obviously requires a level of protection the rest of us don’t receive. But the lives of reporters, White House employees, military personnel and Secret Service agents are not expendable. If the threat involved the possibility of an attack on Air Force One, moving the president while leaving dozens of other Americans aboard raises legitimate and troubling questions about how their safety was considered.
It’s not as if there isn’t precedent for safety and secrecy action if officials believe a credible threat to the president when travelling overseas. It’s happened many times with previous presidents, but never were the others traveling with the president deceived to this extent.
A better approach would have been to get everyone potentially at risk out of the threatened situation. That could have meant delaying the departure, dispersing passengers among other aircraft, changing flight plans, or whatever alternative security professionals determined was safest. The passengers didn’t need to be told, “Iran may be trying to shoot down the president’s plane.”
Operational details obviously had to remain secret. But there is a difference between keeping people uninformed for security purposes and using an aircraft full of uninformed people to help sell the illusion that the president was aboard it.
As for the deception that took place and wasn’t discovered until weeks later, this was also unacceptable.
Operational secrecy during an active security threat is completely understandable. Presidents have made secret trips and used elaborate security measures when circumstances required them. No responsible journalist expects the Secret Service to broadcast the president’s movements while an assassination threat is unfolding.
But once everyone was safely home and the immediate threat had passed, there was no good reason to keep misleading the American people about what had happened.
The White House press corps isn’t simply along for the ride. The traveling press pool is there for a reason — to provide an independent record of where the president is and what he is doing, particularly when matters of national security are involved.
This president and his administration seem incapable of making a difficult decision, explaining it honestly and then taking responsibility for the consequences. That’s more than disheartening. It’s becoming dangerous. The people who travel with the president — staff, journalists, security personnel and others — have every right to trust that those making life-and-death security decisions are considering their safety, too. When that trust begins to erode, this becomes about far more than bad judgment or political spin.
It raises a very serious question: Can the people traveling with this president trust his administration to do what is right when their safety is on the line?
