When former US President Bill Clinton landed in Islamabad, Pakistan, in March 2000, the authorities' deception was immediately apparent. A decoy plane with all the markings of Air Force One landed in front of reporters and a Secret Service agent who looked like the president emerged. Then an unmarked plane landed and the real president disembarked.
Susan Page, a White House correspondent covering the trip for USA Today, was one of the few who knew in advance what was going to happen. Before the flight from India to Pakistan, White House officials called Page, then president of the White House Correspondents' Association, and invited her for an informal chat. There, White House officials explained the operation to her, informing her of the president's location and the security measures that had been taken for journalists participating in the trip.
Page's briefing meant that at least one journalist from the media team accompanying the mission knew that Clinton would not be on Air Force One.
More than 25 years later, the White House faced a similar security dilemma, but handled the media in a completely different way.
In a special operation in Turkey a few weeks ago, security personnel secretly transferred US President Donald Trump from a plane marked Air Force One to a smaller plane, without Air Force markings, using a food delivery truck. The operation was carried out due to an Iranian threat against Trump.
When Trump was being transported, reporters aboard the rogue plane, who had been instructed to lower the window shades, were this time unaware of the situation, according to an exclusive report by the Washington Post.
The incident could further worsen the already tense relationship between the White House and the press corps, a relationship characterized by insults, threats, legal restrictions and lawsuits from Trump.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the impact of the operation on journalists aboard the rogue plane.
"As the president recently stated, there are many enemies of America who have targeted it, and we are using every tool at our disposal to counter these threats," White House communications director Stephen Cheung said earlier.
The White House Correspondents' Group is a network of media representatives who work in an alternate capacity and provide reports, photos, and videos of the president's activities on behalf of the entire press corps. This system has been in place since 1937.
The system is designed to ensure the presence of at least one press representative to monitor the president's movements and activities, thus providing the public with an independent view of events.
Against the backdrop of the fact that media representatives appeared to be unaware of the operation, Garrett Graff, a journalist and historian, said the Post report describes an event that is perhaps unprecedented in modern presidential history.
"The fact that the White House lied to the entire press staff about the president's whereabouts, that's new," he said. ©LAPSI.al
