A veteran White House reporter sat on the secret of a Clinton-era Air Force One decoy operation for more than a quarter-century, and her belated disclosure now highlights a sharp difference between how two administrations handled presidential security and press transparency.
Susan Page, now USA Today's Washington bureau chief, revealed that Clinton administration officials pulled her aside before President Bill Clinton flew from India to Pakistan in March 2000 and told her, off the record, that a decoy jet would land in Islamabad bearing Air Force One markings while Clinton arrived separately on an unmarked plane. A Secret Service agent who resembled Clinton stepped off the decoy aircraft in full view of cameras. The real president emerged from the unmarked plane moments later, and the ruse was immediately apparent to everyone on the ground, Newsmax reported.
Page disclosed the episode to The Washington Post after reports surfaced about a parallel, but far more secretive, security maneuver involving President Trump during a recent NATO summit in Turkey. The two incidents share a surface resemblance: both involved decoy planes and credible threats. But the mechanics, the transparency, and the aftermath diverge in ways that undercut critics trying to treat them as equivalent.
Page told the Post that Clinton officials summoned her in her capacity as president of the White House Correspondents' Association before the Pakistan leg of the trip. She was already a senior figure in the press corps, and the briefing carried strict ground rules.
Page described the conversation plainly:
"They told me about the extraordinary security procedures being taken because of the dangers in flying there, including use of the decoy plane."
She added that the danger extended beyond the president.
"Of course, the dangers threatened the journalists covering the trip as well as President Clinton."
Page said she had never spoken publicly about the episode because of the off-the-record agreement. Her reasoning for coming forward now was straightforward:
"But since more than a quarter-century has passed, and since the ruse became evident as soon as President Clinton disembarked in Pakistan, I think it's OK for me to relay it now."
That last detail matters. The Clinton operation was designed to deceive potential threats on the ground, not the American press. Once Clinton stepped off the unmarked plane in Islamabad, every reporter present could see what had happened. The deception lasted minutes, not weeks.
The Trump maneuver in Turkey operated on a different model. Security personnel secretly moved the president from an aircraft marked as Air Force One to a smaller, unmarked Air Force plane. Reporters aboard the original aircraft were told to close their window shades. They were not informed that the president had left the plane. AP News reported that Trump was hidden inside an airport catering container to board the second aircraft while Air Force One served as a decoy, and that his whereabouts were concealed not just during the flight but for weeks afterward.
Trump himself later confirmed the incident, telling reporters the Secret Service and military wanted him off the plane because of a credible threat, reportedly from Iran. He downplayed the danger. Breitbart reported Trump's own words:
"I guess there was a threat out there. I didn't really ask too much about it. I get a lot of threats."
White House communications director Steven Cheung framed the response in broader terms:
"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."
The threat was real. Fox News reported that Israeli intelligence had briefed the Trump administration on a potential plan to use shoulder-fired missiles against Air Force One. Former Secret Service agent Bill Gage told Fox the threat level required to trigger such a switch would have been extraordinary:
"Overall, the threat must have been substantial and corroborated to conduct the switch/ruse. The highest levels of the government and intelligence agencies would have been involved in analyzing the threat and developing countermeasures."
The sharpest difference between the two episodes is not the planes or the threats, it is what each administration told the press, and when. Clinton's team gave the WHCA president advance notice, explained the danger, and trusted her to honor the off-the-record agreement. Within minutes of landing, the operation was visible to everyone.
Former Clinton White House press secretary Joe Lockhart drew the distinction himself, telling AP: "There was no attempt to hide anything, much less lie about it later."
Trump's team took a harder line. Reporters remained aboard the decoy aircraft, an aircraft that, according to Fox News, also carried Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other senior White House staff. CNN anchor Jake Tapper observed that no officials he had spoken to "have ever before heard of using an AF1 full of WH staff and journalists as a decoy during an imminent threat."
That raised a legitimate question: if the threat involved shoulder-fired missiles aimed at the plane, what did it mean for the people still sitting inside it?
Journalist and historian Garrett Graff, author of a book on presidential security, told the Post the Trump episode broke new ground, and not in a way he considered routine. His concern was specific:
"That the White House would lie to the press corps in its entirety about where the president is. That's a new Rubicon that's being crossed."
Graff's use of the word "lie" is his own characterization. What the material establishes is that reporters were not told the president had been moved and were instructed to close their shades, whether that constitutes an active falsehood or an omission under extreme duress is a distinction worth making. Graff, notably, acknowledged that presidents have used unmarked and decoy planes before, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and similar environments. His objection was to the duration of the concealment, not the tactic itself.
After the Turkey episode became public, members of the White House press corps raised complaints about both their safety and the lack of transparency. WHCA President Jacqui Heinrich met with senior Trump administration officials and described the conversation as "candid and productive."
Heinrich sent an email to WHCA members afterward, framing the association's position carefully:
"If circumstances ever result in reporters unwittingly transmitting inaccurate or misleading information, there needs to be a way for the press to correct the record once the security concern has passed."
Whether that meeting produced any formal agreement or written protocol remains unclear. The Clinton network's long institutional memory makes Page's disclosure useful context, but it does not settle the question of what rules, if any, should govern future operations like the one in Turkey.
Some press voices have tried to use the Clinton precedent to frame the Trump maneuver as business as usual. Page's own account works against that reading. Clinton's team looped in the press association president, explained the danger, and let the deception end the moment the president's boots hit the tarmac. The press knew within minutes. The public knew the same day.
Trump's team, facing what U.S. and Israeli intelligence assessed as a missile threat, made a harder call, and kept it quiet for weeks. Reasonable people can disagree about whether that extended silence was justified by the severity of the threat or whether it crossed a line. But pretending the two episodes are interchangeable requires ignoring the timeline, the briefing, and the duration of concealment.
The Clintons have remained a fixture of public life for decades, and the 2000 Pakistan trip is a footnote in a long presidency. Page's disclosure adds a small, interesting detail to the historical record. It does not, however, provide the press corps with the gotcha some of them clearly want.
Trump faced a credible, intelligence-backed threat and his security team acted accordingly. The press can ask for better protocols going forward, Heinrich's request is reasonable on its face, without pretending that a president's survival is secondary to a reporter's right to know his seat number in real time.
When the threat is real and the stakes are a president's life, the people paid to keep him alive get to make the call. The press can complain about the process afterward, but they should be grateful the process worked.
