There are moments in history when the awesome majesty of the American presidency is revealed in all its splendour. Washington crossing the Delaware. Lincoln at Gettysburg. Kennedy staring down the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Reagan demanding that Gorbachev tear down the Berlin Wall. And now we have Donald Trump disappearing inside an airport catering truck!
Yes, apparently this really happened. During Trump's departure from the NATO summit in Ankara in July, US security officials were sufficiently concerned about a credible threat against the President that they devised an elaborate deception. Trump publicly boarded Air Force One, thereby encouraging anyone watching to assume that the President was safely aboard the enormous and extremely conspicuous Boeing 747. Then came the cunning part. Trump was secretly removed and transported in a catering truck before boarding another aircraft, while Air Force One departed as a decoy.
From a security perspective, it was probably quite clever. From a comedy perspective, however, the Secret Service has accidentally created material that could keep satirists employed until Christmas.
A catering truck? Who would ever think of looking for Donald Trump there?
Indeed, this may have been the greatest example of hiding in plain sight since someone concealed a Labrador in a pet-food warehouse. Imagine the hostile intelligence analysts desperately scanning satellite photographs. Air Force One: check. Presidential motorcade: check. Security perimeter: check. Catering truck full of hamburgers, fries, Diet Coke and possibly the President of the United States: nothing to see here.
One can only wonder what happened inside. Did Trump sit solemnly between stainless-steel food trolleys while the Secret Service whispered into their radios? Or did he regard the whole thing as an unexpected presidential buffet? "Sir, please don't touch anything. This is a covert evacuation." "I'm just checking the cheeseburgers. Very important security inspection. Nobody inspects cheeseburgers better than me."
But now that the catering-truck gambit has become public knowledge, it can presumably never be used again. Every Iranian intelligence officer on Earth will henceforth be staring suspiciously at airport catering vehicles. Thus begins the great challenge for the Secret Service: where do you hide a President when everyone knows about the catering truck?
The possibilities are almost limitless.
The mail bag deserves serious consideration. Forget Air Force One. Put the Commander-in-Chief into a large reinforced postal sack, attach sufficient postage and send him ordinary mail. Not registered post, obviously, because that would attract attention. Ordinary surface mail. Somewhere in Tehran, an intelligence officer could spend three weeks studying American military flight movements while Trump slowly makes his way through the postal system marked RETURN TO SENDER IF UNDELIVERABLE.
There is only one problem. Someone might actually lose him.
The rubbish truck offers another possibility. Nobody expects the President of the United States to depart an international summit among empty Coke cans, cardboard boxes and yesterday's newspapers. The Secret Service could even give the operation an impressive codename: OPERATION DUMPSTER ONE. Unfortunately, once the vehicle reached the recycling centre, the consequences of a paperwork error could become constitutionally complicated.
Then there is the airport luggage carousel. Put Trump inside an enormous suitcase, attach a tag reading CLEVELAND and let nature take its course. Admittedly, he might end up in Singapore, but no assassination team would find him. Neither would the Secret Service.
A portable toilet would be almost unbeatable. Nobody voluntarily investigates a portable toilet unless absolutely necessary. Surround it with three hundred identical units and even the CIA might have trouble locating the President. The presidential nuclear codes could be concealed in the toilet-roll dispenser. The only difficulty would arise when an unfortunate airport worker arrived to service the unit.
A mascot costume has possibilities. Trump could leave the next NATO summit dressed as an enormous eagle. Nobody would suspect anything. The eagle could be bundled into the back of a van while Air Force One remained surrounded by cameras. The Secret Service would merely announce that the President was continuing important bilateral discussions while a seven-foot bald eagle wearing a red tie waddled towards the runway.
Perhaps the ultimate hiding place would be an IKEA flat-pack box. Mark it BOOKCASE — PARTS MISSING and no terrorist would dare open it. Unfortunately, assembling the President again at the destination might require an Allen key and instructions available only in Swedish.
One could go still further. Trump concealed beneath a pile of golf clubs. Trump inside a diplomatic pouch. Trump disguised as an airport vending machine. Trump underneath a giant novelty MAGA hat. Trump rolled through customs inside a laundry trolley. Trump emerging from a florist's van disguised as an unusually large arrangement of chrysanthemums. Trump hidden inside the presidential lectern while somebody wheels it away, complaining that podiums have become remarkably heavy lately.
There is even the classic Trojan Horse strategy. Build an enormous wooden cheeseburger, place the President inside and leave it unattended near the runway. The enemy would immediately suspect a trap, of course, but would they suspect that Donald Trump was actually inside the cheeseburger? This becomes security by exhaustion.
The supreme strategy, however, might be the simplest. Put Trump on a suburban bus wearing sunglasses, dressed in rags like a homeless person, and carrying a supermarket bag. Every intelligence service would be watching private jets, limousines, helicopters, military convoys and catering trucks while the President sat up the back wondering why the bus had stopped at every second street.
"Sir, we've successfully evaded surveillance."
"Fantastic. Where are we?"
"About forty minutes outside Ankara."
"When do we reach Washington?"
"There may be a few connections."
There is, beneath all this absurdity, a serious point. Protecting a president against a credible assassination threat is deadly serious business, and deception has always been part of executive protection. If hostile actors really possessed information about Trump's movements and potentially had access to sophisticated missiles, changing aircraft and disguising the transfer made considerable sense. The fact that the plan sounds like something devised by the Marx Brothers does not mean it was foolish. Indeed, precisely because a catering truck sounds ridiculous, it may have been an excellent hiding place.
But history will remember the image. The President of the United States, holder of the nuclear codes, commander-in-chief of the world's most powerful military, quietly disappearing from Air Force One aboard the same sort of vehicle normally associated with miniature bottles of water and trays of airline chicken.
The Secret Service succeeded. Trump got away safely. The operation worked. Unfortunately, they have now revealed the catering-truck trick. Next time they will have to think of something even better.
My money is on the mail bag.