AIR FORCE NONE

The Secret Service Pulled Off a Brilliant Move to Keep the President Safe.

We’re learning today that back on July 8th, President Trump made an elaborate departure from Ankara, Turkey after a NATO meeting, in a three-plane-monty worthy of a Netflix thriller.

Recall the government of Qatar gifted the President a 747 that is painted differently, and is referred to as the new Air Force One, (new AF-1). There was plenty of criticism over the deal, but that’s not part of the story yet. Except among Trump critics who don’t need much of an excuse to criticize him - we’ll get to that.

Part of the criticism over the plane, legitimate or not, is that the new AF-1 is allegedly not up to the same safety protocols for protecting the President as the old AF-1. We don’t know the details, but we’re not supposed to know those types of details. It turns out, that is part of the story. The President flew to Turkey on the new AF-1, and the old AF-1 traveled there also. Before departing, it was announced the President would fly back on the old AF-1. When questioned, he said it was “For old time’s sake.” Critics and the press didn’t buy that and speculated it was because the new AF-1 was missing those important (and secret) safety systems.

That turned out not to be true. We have since learned there was indeed a threat against the President, probably from the Iranians related to the current conflict with Iran. So the U.S. Secret Service had the President go into a catering truck that was pulled up to the old AF-1, and it took him across the tarmac to another Air Force aircraft, a C-32A, (a military version of the Boeing 757,) which he flew to the U.K. aboard.

Meanwhile the new AF-1 had departed two hours earlier for the U.K. under the ruse it was stopping there for troops stationed nearby to view it, before the President landed and switched planes..

Before departing from Turkey, White House staff and journalists assumed the President was aboard. They were told that for security reasons, they were to keep the window shades down during takeoff, and there was an unusually long hold on the ground in the U.K. where the USSS snuck the President back onboard the old AF-1 from the C-32A. He then publicly got off of the old AF-1, walked across the tarmac and boarded the new AF-1. Only the USSS and perhaps a few very senior officials knew Trump had not flown from Turkey to the U.K. with them.

Predictably, the media and critics of the President (often the same cohort,) are outraged. I’ve heard the the media refer to White House staff and journalists on the old AF-1 as human decoys and human shields. The media is posturing about a duty to warn and saying that staff and journalists deserved the same level of concern about their safety as was afforded the President.

That’s ridiculous. For several years we have heard criticism about Secret Service failures and questions as to whether they are up to their most important tasks, keeping the President of the United States safe. One of Trump’s harshest critics, Carol Leonnig, wrote a book about the USSS literally called Zero Fail. There have been at least three viable assassination attempts agains Mr. Trump: Butler, PA when he was a candidate and wounded by a bullet, at his own golf course near Mar A Largo, and at the White House Correspondents Dinner last April.

Speaking of which, this is two events in four months when the media looks at threats to the President of the United States through the lens of how it affects them. It’s not that we lack empathy, but frankly the media’s job is to report the facts, not make themselves part of the story.

It would be horrific if terrorists were able to destroy a U.S. Air Force plane carrying White House staff and American journalists. It would be incalculably worse if a foreign adversary successfully assassinated the President of the United States. The ability of the U.S. to project power as a force for good in the world would be forever erased if such a plot were to succeed.

The U.S. Secret Service and everybody who had a hand in that operation last month is to be congratulated for their ingenuity in pulling it off. Whoever leaked the story to the press should be prosecuted in my opinion.

And Trump deserves credit for, in a very un-Trumpian manner, allowing the media to criticize him about the safety of the new plane and the ruse for why it went to the U.K., when that was all part of the plan. It takes a lot for Trump to not punch back.

WHAT I’M WORKING ON:

A year in the making, GRAY GHOST, An Air America - CIA Thriller comes out in a couple of weeks, September 1st. Follow former Jesuit priest turned CIA case officer Chase Black as he lands in Laos in 1968 to try and find a pilot from the Agency’s super secret airline, Air America, who was shot down and is being held captive. Pre-order here.