The CIA reportedly had “low confidence” in a warning from Israel that Iran might try to assassinate Donald Trump. That apparently didn’t matter much.
According to The Washington Post, U.S. intelligence officials received the warning from Israel ahead of Trump’s departure from Turkey following the NATO summit in Ankara. But officials reportedly didn’t consider the information particularly compelling when they passed it along to Trump administration officials.
Trump, however, believed he was in danger, so the Secret Service decided to put him at ease.
The result was an extraordinary deception operation that involved secretly whisking the president away from his own plane while White House officials and reporters unknowingly continued aboard what effectively became a presidential decoy.
Trump had traveled to the NATO gathering aboard the retrofitted Boeing 747-8 that Qatar gave him last year. Concerns were later raised about whether the aircraft had adequate security features, prompting plans for Trump to return to the United States aboard the older Air Force One.
Except that’s not what happened.
During a refueling stop at RAF Mildenhall in eastern England, Trump was secretly transferred to a third aircraft — a military C-32A.
And the method of transportation was almost comically elaborate.
Trump was reportedly moved to the military aircraft inside a hydraulic catering truck, the kind normally used to load meals onto airplanes.
Meanwhile, Air Force One continued on its planned route with White House staff and journalists aboard, all apparently believing the president was still with them.
The C-32A flew in parallel before Trump eventually rejoined Air Force One away from the reporters’ view.
Photographers later captured Trump stepping off the primary presidential aircraft at Mildenhall, revealing that he had somehow ended up back aboard the plane everyone assumed he had been on all along.
So why go through all of this if U.S. intelligence officials had doubts about the threat?
One unnamed official told The Washington Post that the Secret Service simply wasn’t willing to gamble.
“The Secret Service has had three near misses with this president, so they’re not taking any chances,” the official said. “They did what they had to do.”
But another former official offered a more complicated explanation, saying the warning fit into what he described as a broader pattern of Israeli intelligence reporting that some U.S. officials believe is designed not only to inform the White House but also to influence presidential decision-making.
And that is where the story gets even more uncomfortable.
The New York Times previously reported that CIA Director Jim Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had warned Trump against launching his Operation Epic Fury strikes against Iran in February.
According to that reporting, the officials believed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had **“oversold”** the threat posed by Tehran.
Trump ignored those warnings, along with objections reportedly raised by Vice President JD Vance, and sided with Netanyahu.
The decision helped trigger the war that has now entered its sixth month, with no clear end in sight.
Still, former Secret Service agent Bobby McDonald defended the decision to secretly move Trump, telling The Independent that the agency had to be creative given the threats facing the president.
“It’s been a very long two years of both domestic – and now international – potential assassination attempts,” McDonald said. “You’ve got to be creative. You’ve got to be nimble. You’ve got to make things happen.”
Trump himself has offered a remarkably casual explanation for the bizarre escape operation.
“It’s really just up to Secret Service,” Trump said. “I just follow what they like to do.”
“They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, equal safety… I do what they say.”
But that explanation leaves an obvious question hanging in the air: If the intelligence community had low confidence in the assassination warning, why was Trump secretly smuggled onto a military aircraft inside a catering truck?
The answer appears to be simple: The Secret Service wasn’t about to tell the president his fears were unfounded.
Trump has faced multiple assassination attempts and threats in recent years. Two incidents occurred during his 2024 presidential campaign, while another incident unfolded this year when a gunman attempted to breach security at the Washington Hilton during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Iran has also threatened Trump since he ordered the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, in January 2020. Those tensions escalated dramatically after the current conflict began.
Secret Service Director Sean Curran recently described the threat environment surrounding the agency as “off the charts,” saying the political climate was more volatile than anything he’d witnessed during his 24-year career.
But the latest reporting paints a remarkable picture: American intelligence officials reportedly weren’t convinced the specific assassination threat was credible, while Trump was sufficiently concerned that the Secret Service hid him inside a catering truck and sent his staff and reporters flying aboard a decoy Air Force One.
All that just to get the president out of Turkey safely. Apparently, when you’re Donald Trump, even leaving town requires a Hollywood-level escape plan.
