How the 007s organised Trump’s secret escape from Ankara

Washington. Donald Trump boarded Air Force One in Ankara on 8 July, waved to the cameras and, according to the official account, began his return journey. The president was indeed leaving Turkey. Except that he wasn’t doing so on the plane that everyone had seen him board shortly before. A few minutes after boarding the oldest presidential Boeing 747, Trump was reportedly taken off the plane and into an airport catering van, before being flown out in a small Air Force C-32A. This aircraft took him secretly to London. The larger aircraft continued on its way with journalists and some of the White House staff on board, apparently unaware that the President had already left without them. At RAF Mildenhall, Trump then rejoined the publicly visible presidential motorcade. It was a manoeuvre worthy of a spy film, carried out using the least glamorous getaway vehicle available at the airport.

The Washington Post was the first to reveal the operation on Monday, citing a US official with knowledge of the facts and material examined by the newspaper. The New York Times separately confirmed certain elements of the account, and Reuters subsequently reported on them as well. According to these accounts, a credible threat linked to Iran is said to have prompted the ploy and the James Bond-style manoeuvres. The White House has not confirmed all the operational details, merely stating that it is taking extensive precautions to protect the president. “This case may seem strange, but I’m sure there are many other stories involving presidents that we simply aren’t aware of,” Kurt Volker, former US ambassador to NATO, told Il Foglio. The Secret Service, he added, simply carried out its primary duty: ensuring the president’s safety. The Secret Service is an elite unit that has been protecting US presidents since 1901, the year in which the assassination of William McKinley prompted Congress to formally entrust the agency with this task. Today, it plans presidential travel in collaboration with the White House Military Office, the Air Force, intelligence agencies and the security services of host countries. Its work extends far beyond the agents visibly accompanying the President. “Usually, the President’s movements are public knowledge. Sometimes, at an operational level, the Secret Service or others take measures that are only reported by the press weeks, if not months, later. These stories can demonstrate just how far ahead of their time they were,” explains Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran programme at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies. “There have been times when they were not exactly where they were believed to be. It is not just about the security of the aircraft. It is about the ability to plan, the ability to protect the President and the ability to prepare for any eventuality, no matter how small or serious the threat may be.”

The revelation has also raised disturbing questions about the journalists themselves, who spent the flight on board an aeroplane which, according to the most alarming interpretation of the intelligence, was the target, without realising that the man they were following had in fact left the scene in a food van. “The difference compared to Trump is that the press corps is treating this incident both as a major story and as a worrying one because, if the threat was real and the intended target was the aeroplane, some members of the press were on board that aeroplane. So, at last, it seems they are taking it seriously,” Taleblu tells Il Foglio. The closest modern precedent to the decision taken by the Secret Service dates back to March 2000, when President Bill Clinton travelled from India to Pakistan on board an unmarked executive jet. A decoy aircraft, bearing presidential markings, flew ahead to Islamabad, where, according to reports, a Secret Service agent who resembled Clinton was seen peering out of the aircraft’s door. Three years later, George W. Bush made a secret trip to Baghdad over the Thanksgiving holiday. On 11 September 2001, the authorities kept Bush away from Washington whilst they assessed whether the White House or Air Force One were still targets, routing him via bases in Louisiana and Nebraska. In 1943, Franklin Roosevelt’s journey to meet Winston Churchill in Casablanca was kept in the strictest confidence during the wartime blackout. Roosevelt followed a secret route and became the first sitting president to fly on official business.

This tradition predates the Secret Service’s very mission to protect the President. Gary Schmitt, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specialises in the presidency and national security, recalls Abraham Lincoln’s journey to Washington following the 1860 election. Having been warned of a possible plot in pro-secessionist Baltimore, the president-elect abandoned his announced itinerary and travelled through the city under cover of darkness on a secret train. “The train was supposed to pass through Baltimore,” says Schmitt, “but Baltimore was a hotbed of Confederate sympathisers. They smuggled him through the city one night to take him to the capital.” Historians still debate just how real the threat actually was, and Lincoln was mocked for appearing to have sneaked into the capital.

What sets Trump’s case apart is the controversy already surrounding his aeroplane. The President flew to Turkey aboard a Boeing 747-8 donated by Qatar. The gift, worth around $400 million, has sparked a wave of controversy in Washington regarding the appropriateness of accepting such an expensive favour from a foreign government, the cost to taxpayers of converting the aircraft, and the feasibility of making it sufficiently safe in a short space of time. Critics have also challenged plans to transfer the aircraft to the Trump Presidential Library once his term in office ends.

Before leaving Ankara, Trump had said he would use the old Air Force One to fly to Britain “for old times’ sake”. The change of aircraft suggests that nostalgia was not the main consideration. “Basically, you have to strip the aircraft down to its structural framework and rebuild it,” says Schmitt. “There’s a reason why Boeing took so long with this aircraft. The idea of being able to quickly bring the Qatari aircraft up to the same safety standard simply by adding systems would never have worked. By the time they’ve finished, it will certainly cost more than a billion dollars.” Air Force One is the radio call sign used by any US Air Force aircraft carrying the President. In practice, the term generally refers to one of the two specially modified Boeing 747s that serve as presidential aircraft. “Air Force One not only has well-known security features, but also a whole range of security features that are not known to the public,” observes Ben Taleblu. “It seems that the reason they had to revert to using the older aircraft, or resort to these manoeuvres and changes of plan, is that the new aircraft did not meet the required standards.”

Tehran has publicly vowed revenge ever since Trump ordered, in January 2020, the drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, and “given the previous assassination attempts against Trump, including Shakeri’s plot in response to Soleimani’s killing, and the fact that the United States and Israel have escalated matters by going so far as to kill Khamenei and large sections of the Iranian leadership, I am certain that the Secret Service is particularly sensitive to any threat or plan originating from Iran”, Peter Rough, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, tells "Il Foglio". “Trump is right to repeat that we have destroyed Iran’s conventional army, but this type of special operations is a speciality of the IRGC,” he explains. Tehran now harbours a personal grudge against the American president. “They are angry with President Trump because he has been more effective against this regime than any other US president. The Iranian clerical establishment has issued a whole series of fatwas against him, against his property and against his family. Unfortunately, in Washington this is treated as a joke. It is no joke. The Islamic Republic has spent four decades as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. They put their money where their mouth is,” argues Ben Taleblu. “The regime is playing the long game. Just look at the case of Salman Rushdie. So, even though many people are viewing this matter through the prism of Air Force One’s security, or the safety of the journalists travelling with the president, the underlying issue is that the Islamic Republic of Iran is trying to kill Donald Trump, and it will not stop.”

Trump has survived assassination attempts with a frequency that might even make James Bond jealous, and this makes the Secret Service particularly sensitive to intelligence regarding Iran or any other threat. The president was targeted during his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024, then again at his golf course in Florida that same year, and last April during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Each incident has raised questions about the Secret Service’s preparedness. This time, it appears the agency has decided to resort to a catering container in order to keep the president safe and safeguard its own reputation.