Why Trump’s Secret Flight Was Extraordinary by Presidential Standards

The “secret flight” that President Donald Trump took out of Turkey last month following an Iranian assassination threat, newly revealed by the Washington Post this week, marked a rare occasion for a commander-in-chief: traveling without the White House press pool.

Multiple outlets have reported, citing unnamed sources, that when Trump left Turkey after the NATO Summit last month, he secretly departed the country on an alternate plane because of an assassination threat made against him from Iran.

Publicly, the Administration said that Trump would fly out of Turkey on July 8 on an older Air Force One aircraft, and the President did board that plane in the sight of cameras and reporters on that day. But the Post reported that Trump then got into a catering truck, which transported him to another plane—all unbeknownst to the journalists who were on the former Air Force One and were under the impression that they were on the same aircraft as the President.

The clandestine operation meant that, for several hours, the President’s real whereabouts were unknown to—and concealed from—both the White House press pool and the American public. 

In response to the Post’s questions about the operation, White House communications director Steven Cheung shared a statement defending the plane Trump traveled on to get to Turkey, a Qatar-gifted aircraft that drew controversy.

“The new Air Force One is a state-of-the-art aircraft that has been fitted with high-level security protocols that ensure the safety of the President and his staff,” Cheung said in the statement. “As the President has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats.”

Historically, the journalists who make up the White House press pool travel with—or alongside—the sitting President nearly everywhere he goes. Here’s what to know about the pool, and previous instances when a commander-in-chief has made the extraordinary move of traveling without those journalists.

What is the White House press pool?

The White House press pool is a small group of journalists from various news outlets who follow the President around to various events, such as bill signings and trips. Because there is limited space to attend these events or travel with the President, the system allows news outlets to “pool” their resources; the print reporter on “pool duty” each day shares “pool reports,” which contain notes and quotes they took down as they followed the President, with the entire White House press corps. The specific journalists who are part of the press pool rotate.

“For nearly a century, the story of the American presidency has been written through the eyes of the ‘press pool,’ the small team of writers, photographers and technicians assigned each day to cover the commander-in-chief on behalf of the broader corps of correspondents,” the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), which works to coordinate and ensure access for journalists covering the White House, said on its website. The WHCA went on to say that the accounts documented by the pool “provide a daily record of the presidency that forever lives in the archives of news organizations.”

“Pool duty is an essential element of the work of White House correspondents because one never knows when the world will need good information about precisely where the president of the United States is and what he is doing at any moment,” the association continued.

Members of the White House press pool have been with Presidents during a slew of historic and high-stakes moments. They were, for instance, in the motorcade when former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. The press pool was also present when an assassination attempt was made on former President Ronald Reagan’s life in Washington, D.C. in 1981. On Sept. 11, 2001, amid the chaos and fear that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush traveled with a smaller press pool to a military facility and then back to the nation’s capital.Journalists have also followed Presidents—including Trump—into dangerous war zones.

When Presidents have traveled without the press pool in the past

While it is rare for the sitting President to travel without the press pool, it has happened on occasion in the past.

In 2010, former President Barack Obama left the White House without the press pool and went to one of his daughter’s soccer games, a decision that generated controversy. The Associated Press wrote at the time that Obama had “quietly breached years of protocol” by doing so.

Soon after Trump first won the presidency in 2016, but before he was sworn into the White House, he went out to dinner without notifying the reporters who were covering him. The move prompted press organizations to release an open letter to Trump, in which they emphasized the importance of the press pool.

“As the new leader of the free world, we expect that you will preserve longstanding traditions that ensure coverage of the Trump presidency,” the organizations said in their 2016 letter. “The idea of a press pool that covers all of the president’s movements is one that dates back to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. Every president of both parties has treated this important tradition with respect. The role of the press pool is critically important to our country, whose citizens depend on and deserve to know what the president is doing.”

Neither of those instances were a result of threats made against Obama or Trump. The operation last month, in contrast, stemmed from a threat against the President’s life that Administration officials deemed credible enough to warrant the secrecy, the Post reported.

Air Force One has been used as a “decoy” for a President’s protection in the past: former President Bill Clinton, for instance, traveled to Pakistan in a white aircraft that followed Air Force One in 2000. But he got off the unmarked plane in Islamabad in view of cameras and journalists, revealing the covert operation. And, before takeoff, Clinton Administration officials told at least one member of the White House pool about the operation.

When Trump boarded the alternate plane in secret last month, the poolers who were assigned to travel with him were not informed that he had switched to a different aircraft—nor were they notified about the adjudged credibility of the threat on the one they were on, an official told the Post.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper emphasized on Tuesday the extraordinary circumstances of the clandestine operation in Turkey.

“Obviously the life of the president is paramount, and previous White Houses have used deception to protect the president’s life,” he said in a post on X. “But no officials I’ve spoken to have ever before heard of using an [Air Force One] full of [White House] staff and journalists as a decoy during an imminent threat.”

Ronald L. Rowe Jr., a former acting director of the Secret Service, told the Post that, if the President’s location is kept secret, it is for a reason.

“We need to keep the ‘secret’ in Secret Service,” Rowe told the news outlet. “The public should know what the president is doing on a daily basis, but when it comes to the methods by which the Secret Service keeps the president safe, that should remain out of public view.”

Robert McDonald, who worked with the Secret Service for more than two decades, told TIME that the operation in Turkey appears to be a result of real-time improvisation by the President’s security team. He also cast doubt on the idea that the journalists who were on the former Air Force One were left at risk.

“I would find it incredibly hard to believe that those two planes weren’t escorted or with other assets from allies or the U.S. Air Force in the area,” he said.

McDonald went on to say that restricting the number of people who are informed of such an operation is standard practice, and stressed that the outcome of the mission was that everyone arrived home safe.

“Everybody that I’m aware of got home from that trip to Turkey,” he said. “The bottom line is everybody got home safe. That’s the main function of the Secret Service.”

Reporting from Time contributed to this story.