JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The scene of President Trump boarding Air Force One after last month's NATO summit in Turkey is one that TV cameras and photographers have captured countless times. However, what happened in the moments after that was far from routine. That is according to exclusive reporting from The Washington Post. The Post reports that Trump was shuttled in an airport catering truck to a smaller military plane in which he then secretly departed, even as the White House announced he was flying aboard Air Force One.
The operation was prompted by an Iranian assassination threat a U.S. official familiar with the operation told The Post. We should note that NPR has not independently confirmed this reporting. Dan Lamothe is one of The Washington Post reporters that broke this story, and he is with us now. Welcome to the program.
DAN LAMOTHE: Thank you.
SUMMERS: So, Dan, I mean, just walk us through this. Trump appears to get on Air Force One in Turkey, but tell us what actually happens next.
LAMOTHE: Right. So it's kind of a multistep process here. Trump flew to Turkey on the new Air Force One jet gifted by Qatar last year. Early in the day, he said that that plane was being sent back to Britain so troops there could see it. That raised a lot of red flags, even in the moment, that maybe something was off. At the time, everyone was told that Trump would be taking the old Air Force One, which is that powder blue and white plane...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
LAMOTHE: ...That everybody's seen for years, to get back home. What actually happened is that the president walked up the external steps to the old Air Force One, waved to the cameras, and then almost immediately, we're told, walked off the plane on the opposite side of the aircraft onto an elevated airport catering truck, which is basically a truck where it almost has, like, an elevator in the back of it that brings a shipping container up to the side of the plane. That truck then lowers back to ground level, drives over to a smaller plane, a C-32, and gets back on that other smaller plane.
Secretary Pete Hegseth walks up the external stairs to that C-32, making it look like he's the senior official aboard. And then in sequence, those planes fly to Britain with the larger plane carrying the Air Force One call sign, despite the president not being aboard. And then everybody gets back on the new jet from Qatar in Britain to fly back to the United States.
SUMMERS: OK. A lot of questions here. The first one is this. What do we know about the threat from Iran that prompted all of this? Do you have a sense of how immediate or specific it was?
LAMOTHE: We know, and it has been reported by a couple of outlets in the last month or so, that there was a specific threat that triggered a number of concerns. I don't have great fidelity on what would have prompted these sorts of really evasive maneuvers to try and protect the president.
SUMMERS: I mean, this is a really elaborate sort of operation. I mean, the staff and our fellow reporters who were onboard Air Force One were essentially part of the scheme, part of this decoy. Did they know that there was a threat?
LAMOTHE: No. You know, our reporting would bear out that, at the bare minimum, the vast majority - can't necessarily speak for all of them - but a majority of the press corps did not know and, in fact, continued to report it wrong over the last couple weeks, with public understanding not really holding anything until the last day.
SUMMERS: Remind us, if you can, where this fits into the ongoing conversation about security concerns with the new Qatar-provided Air Force One.
LAMOTHE: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the questions this whole thing has raised, again, is that this newer plane was not initially built to be both a VIP jet but also a military aircraft - something that has countermeasures, something that could perhaps throw flares, something that would be, in a way, able to protect the president should they face incoming drone fire, missile fire, something like that. They have vaguely alluded to it receiving upgrades, but the specifics of that have been left out of the public square. And there are some legitimate operational concerns there in terms of security that withholding some of those details is not a surprise.
SUMMERS: I mean, this is a sweeping national security story, but it's also a story about government transparency. We've heard Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal calling for a congressional briefing on the incident. And I wonder how unusual is it for the White House to deliberately mislead both the press and the public about where the president is.
LAMOTHE: Certainly, it's rare. The closest thing that came to mind was President Bill Clinton flying into Pakistan on a plane that flew in after Air Force One, in sequence. But in that case, he got off the plane immediately, in plain view. It became very apparent within minutes of him landing. And the news coverage and the public understanding at the time - really within the day, within the hour of him landing in Pakistan - the leads of those stories all suggested, you know, a decoy was involved in getting him there.
SUMMERS: And how has the White House responded to your reporting?
LAMOTHE: It's been muted so far. You know, that - they released a statement to The Post initially, and then other outlets that have confirmed basically defending the new aircraft, suggesting the new aircraft is capable and, you know, has what it needs. They alluded to there being a variety of ways that they need to protect the president. They did not get into specifics, and they also denied nothing.
SUMMERS: That was Dan Lamothe. He's a national security reporter at The Washington Post. Thank you and your colleagues so much for your reporting.
LAMOTHE: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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