A Year At The Circus

by Jon Sopel

  The plane would play an unwitting part in a desperate moment of US history; America’s darkest day since Pearl Harbor and a day of maximum trauma and distress. The shocking moment in Dallas when President Kennedy, travelling in an open-top car with his wife, Jackie, at his side, was killed by an assassin’s bullet. At Love Field Airport that November in 1963, Air Force One had been waiting to fly them back to Washington. Now it would fulfil a function that its designers – in fact, anyone – could scarcely have imagined. It would be the setting where the new president would be sworn in.

  A federal judge, Sarah T. Hughes, hastened to the plane to administer the oath of office. Members of the presidential and vice-presidential parties filled the central compartments of the plane to witness this extraordinary moment of history. At 14.38 Central Standard Time, Lyndon Baines Johnson became the 36th president of the United States. Jackie Kennedy was there to witness it too, unchanged in her bloodstained pink Chanel suit. They would then all fly back to Washington together – the now former first lady refusing to leave Dallas until her husband’s body had been loaded in its casket onto the plane. A decade later the same plane would bear the coffin of LBJ back to his home in Texas, after his State Funeral in Washington. That day in 1963 there were pool reporters present to provide a record of what happened. And getting the coffin aboard turned out to be anything but straightforward.

  One of the reporters was a man called Sid Davis whom I met a couple of years ago for a documentary I was making. Though 89 years old when I went to see him, his memories were vivid. He still had the black-and-white photos of him in the party witnessing the swearing in. He told me how, in the midst of this extraordinary moment of national drama, there were prosaic workaday issues that had to be dealt with. US Secret Service officers had to find an axe, because the coffin was too wide to get through the narrow hatchway onto the plane. The officers were having to use brute force to hack the big, ornamental handles off the casket. Davis was due to broadcast for the Westinghouse network when he got back to Washington, and having covered Kennedy extensively on the road, he remembered how JFK would often end his campaign speeches by quoting Robert Frost, the American poet who had died earlier that year. And that terrible night Sid Davis used those lines as well to end his report: ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.’

  The aircraft has extraordinary capabilities – some of which are kept secret, some of which are well known. The upstairs of the jumbo is out of bounds to visitors. It is where all the communications people are ensuring that the plane can function as a fully mobile West Wing, able to connect the president to anyone he needs to speak to. It is public knowledge that the plane can be refuelled mid-air, and stay flying indefinitely. On 9/11 it looked as though some of those capabilities would be tested. After President George W. Bush was given word that America was under attack, the plane took off from Florida as senior advisors and national security officials argued over where was the best place for the President to be.

  The plane’s departure is as dramatic as anyone can remember. By the time the convoy reaches the foot of the aircraft, the plane has been ringed by heavily armed secret service officers. Even the President’s most senior staff are searched before they can get aboard. Two of the plane’s engines are already running.

  Those who were aboard described the scene later as though out of a movie. The plane took off like a rocket, one would recount. The pilot that day, Colonel Mark Tillman, rejected the gradual easy ascent and just pointed the nose up. All the fittings on the plane were shaking as they climbed almost vertically. One of the White House stenographers would recount that she thought they might need oxygen, they were climbing so high and so fast.

  Then comes word that ‘Angel’ itself might be a target. This was the codeword for Air Force One, known only to a few insiders. Colonel Tillman takes the aircraft to 45,000 feet – about as high as a jumbo can go. His calculation is that if any plane came anywhere near that altitude you would know immediately it had bad intent. After the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, came confirmation that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon. President Bush had been growing exasperated at being unable to reach his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Now he understood why. Another thing was clear: they were not going back to Washington, and the crowded airspace over the US was shut down in an unprecedented move. With rumours swirling there could be similar attacks on the White House or the Capitol from the handful or so of planes that had not yet landed, the decision was made that the President would stay in the air.

  Soon the grey and blue jumbo with the tail number SAM (Special Air Mission) 28000 is the only plane along the eastern seaboard of the United States, except for its escort of F16 fighters that had been scrambled to protect the President and the 65 or so passengers (White House staff, secret service personnel and journalists) who are on board. Despite the President insisting the plane return to Washington, the Commander in Chief is overruled by his chief of staff, the pilot and the secret service. They head instead to a USAF base in Louisiana.

  Ari Fleischer, who was the President’s press secretary, comes back to speak to the journalists to brief them on what is going on. One of them is a longstanding White House correspondent for ABC television, Ann Compton. She would later tell Politico magazine: ‘Ari came back to the press cabin and said, “This is off the record, but the president is being evacuated.” I said, “You can’t put that off the record. That’s a historic and chilling fact. That has to be on the record.” It was a stunning statement, about the president trying to hold the country together but facing a mortal enemy. The president cannot be found because of his own safety. That sent chills down my spine.’

  At the airbase they are on an annual drill and exercise when the real world intervenes. The base commander recalls they were in receipt of a Code Alpha – a high priority incoming aircraft. The demand was for 150,000 pounds of fuel, 40 gallons of coffee, 70 lunch boxes, and 25 pounds of bananas. The plane wouldn’t identify itself. It didn’t take the airmen at the base long to figure out that the Code Alpha was Air Force One.

  This airbase now becomes the centre of operations for a US under attack, as George Bush is able to talk to Washington and key advisors and allies around the world. The other passengers are told they can make one call home to tell loved ones they were safe, but there were strict instructions that they could not disclose their location. A slightly absurd demand, seeing as a Louisiana television station had sent a film crew to the perimeter of the base to get the ‘local angle’ on the huge national story: ‘US military here in Barksdale have been put on a heightened state of alert following, etc., etc.’ They were doing their somewhat predictable live news reports when, stone the crows, what should descend from the sky, and into the viewfinder of the cameraman’s lens but a great big jumbo jet painted blue and grey, with ‘United States of America’ written along the fuselage. The ‘Where’s the president?’ question was a mystery no longer.

  One of Donald Trump’s first jobs when he became president was to decide on the replacements for the two identical ageing jumbos SAM 28000 and SAM 29000, which each functioned as Air Force One when he was on board. And he got immersed in the detail. Bargaining and haggling with Boeing over how much they intended to charge for the new aircraft; and just like Jackie Kennedy over half a century earlier, also taking a deep interest in the colour scheme and décor. And like Jackie he has very firm views on what he wants. Out will go the iconic robin’s egg blue or baby blue – he called it a Jackie Kennedy colour – for something that would be bolder and more ‘American’. He told CBS, ‘It’s going to be the top of the line, the top in the world … and it’s going be red, white and blue, which I think is appropriate.’

  Donald Trump has a highly distinctive foreign policy, and as he criss-crosses the globe on the presidential plane, he has occasionally delighted, sometimes alarmed and often bewildered friends and foes alike with his mantra of �
�America First’. In the US itself even the Republican foreign policy establishment has looked on aghast. If you take a sweep of the American presidents since the Second World War, of course you see big variations in how one president will prioritise a country or a region. Often the foreign policy of one is dictated by what are perceived to be the mistakes of a predecessor.

  Take the obvious example of the Middle East. The post-9/11 landscape came to define the presidency of George W. Bush and the premiership of Tony Blair. There had been terrorist training camps in Taleban-run Afghanistan used by Al Qaeda to equip their fighters to take jihad to the West. The regime of Mullah Omar needed to be swept away, and in the emotional aftermath of the September 11 attacks, there was consensus in the international community that this had to happen. Attempts were made to introduce western-style elections to the country. And so was born the idea of ‘liberal interventionism’. Next stop would be Iraq and the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein and his stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction – except, of course, he didn’t have any. Support for this military adventure was much more difficult to drum up. Opposition, particularly in Britain and Europe, was massive. American weaponry took no time at all to get rid of the Iraqi leader, but the total lack of thought over what would come next, and how you would manage the tensions between Shias, Sunnis and Kurds, plunged the country into the most brutal civil war. So when Barack Obama became president, you could see him very deliberately trying to press the reset button. American adventurism would stop. The country had new priorities.

  These are the policy adjustments that are the norm when a new president takes office. But they had always been made within a broadly agreed framework of America’s place in the world: the role of multilateral institutions, the responsibilities that went along with being the world’s pre-eminent superpower, and the alliances that would serve to achieve a certain stability. The architecture that had grown from the rubble of the Second World War, and which had – largely speaking – preserved the peace and seen nations grow more prosperous, had not been questioned: NATO, the European Union and the World Trade Organisation. The mixture of overwhelming military might through NATO, and the European economic area acting as a bulwark against the destructive nationalism that had been the spark on the continent for two world wars, and the WTO acting as a policeman – albeit an imperfect one – to govern and foster trade would keep a rules-based order on track. The UN – another imperfect policeman – would seek to set rules on acceptable and unacceptable behaviour of its members. These would be the pillars on which the new world order would be built.

  But two events in 2016 demonstrated how those tenets were being challenged by a surge of nationalism and dissatisfaction with the existing edifice. The Brexit vote in the UK in June of that year, as the British people voted narrowly to withdraw from the EU, and the November election in the US of Donald Trump, who made clear during his election campaign that he felt no particular affection towards any of those institutions. More than that, here was a presidential candidate advocating nativism and isolationism. America could no longer be the world’s policeman; America had to deal with its own problems. The US had to defend itself from globalisation and the forces that were sending American jobs overseas. The EU was ripping America off. Similar forces were at play in elections and protest movements that were springing up across Europe: the rise of the far right in Germany, the ‘gilets jaunes’ in France, the populists seizing control in Italy – and authoritarian rulers across the world seizing their moment to crush dissent in their own countries while America was gazing at its navel. What is certainly true is that these multilateral institutions now find themselves threatened by the very powers that constructed them – most notably, the United States under President Trump.

  The extent to which Donald Trump was merely reflecting the voice of ordinary Americans in expressing disenchantment with the liberal international order, or was actually leading the way, can be debated. His dislike of these institutions did not seem to be based on a historic assessment of their role and some kind of intellectual rejection. It seemed to me much more instinctive than that. President Trump is allergic to multilateral bodies as a whole. His business career was built on bilateral deals, with just one person or institution sitting across the table from him. It was mano a mano, eyeball to eyeball. And there was something else as well, that his advisors despite their best efforts could not shift him from. He would express a common critique of every multilateral institution he looked at – they were all bad for America. If America was paying more than another member it was a bad deal. And there was no dissuading him from that view, even if the facts and the ‘soft diplomacy’ gains that US involvement brought pointed in a completely different direction.

  Though criticism of the Trump approach to foreign policy and his view on America’s place in the world is quite common, it would find an unlikely voice in June 2019, albeit quite coded, from a 93-year-old woman. But a woman not to be messed with. Donald Trump had come for his three-day state visit to Britain – and had brought nearly all the family along too. Senior White House officials had been blown away by Buckingham Palace – one advisor said to me, ‘It is a useful reminder of what a young country America is.’ They were also, it has to be said, in awe of the Royal Family, and touched by the warmth of their welcome. A number of the White House women who were off to the Buckingham Palace banquet were putting on long, white gloves for the first time, and were fretting about not making a mess of the etiquette and protocol. One rather touchingly asked me if I knew when they came off and whether rings had to be worn over the top of the gloves. I had to confess to not having the faintest idea.

  The state visit coincided with the 75th anniversary of D-Day, a time when the cooperation between the US and the UK was at its most existentially vital. In their respective toasts the US president and the Queen paid homage to the extraordinary valour of those young men who stormed the Normandy beaches, and the bonds forged between the two nations in what would later become known as ‘the special relationship’. So far, so safe. But then the Queen went further: ‘As we face the new challenges of the twenty-first century, the anniversary of D-Day reminds us of all that our countries have achieved together. After the shared sacrifices of the Second World War, Britain and the United States worked with other allies to build an assembly of international institutions to ensure that the horrors of conflict would never be repeated. While the world has changed, we are forever mindful of the original purpose of these structures: nations working together to safeguard a hard-won peace.’ It looked like a very carefully worded, though deliberate rebuke to Donald Trump’s America First rhetoric.

  As I mentioned above, I travelled with the President on his first overseas tour. It is worth going through the trip in detail – and what has happened since, as each leg of the journey was instructive for what it told us about the new American foreign policy. Having never previously been to Saudi Arabia, this was now my second visit in a year. In 2016 I had accompanied Barack Obama on a very scratchy visit to the kingdom. There was no red carpet, no member of the Saudi royal family to greet him at the airport. The President lectured his hosts about their human rights record, and they lectured him on how disastrous the Iran nuclear deal would be. There was a strong mutual disrespect which neither side did much to cover up. When he arrived, he helicoptered in to the Ritz Carlton hotel where the presidential entourage was staying. I remember going into the city by bus on a drab, unremarkable journey. So when I flew in with President Trump I noted that on his itinerary it had him being driven into the city. It was a tiny thing, but I remember being surprised.

  There was calculation. At least on the part of the Saudis. Every half a mile along the route, giant gantries had been erected with huge pictures of a thoughtful looking Donald Trump and signs saying ‘Saudi Arabia welcomes you’ and ‘Together we prevail’. Genius. The new president loved it. Never mind that candidate Donald Trump had caused huge offence in the Islamic world with his plan to ban all Musli
ms from entering the United States; in the country which is home to Islam’s holiest site, his hosts were giving him the warmest of all welcomes.

  And Donald Trump went all in with the Saudis. They would be the pivotal country to deliver his ambitions for the region. The person he had tasked with delivering peace between Israelis and Palestinians, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner (never mind that he had zero experience, and his background as an orthodox Jew and family friend of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hardly enhanced his credentials as an honest broker) was a WhatsApp buddy with the rising star of the house of Saud, the young tyro, Mohammed bin Salman, who would soon take over the reins of power from the ailing king.

  Donald Trump did not arrive in Saudi with lofty ambitions, or with some over-arching vision of the future of a post-Arab Spring Middle East. He came with practical ambitions. He had come to sell US products to the kingdom – mainly military hardware. He wanted to exert maximum pressure on Iran. And the Saudis and Israelis both agree that Iran, with its nuclear ambitions and support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, is the major destabilising force in the region. The Saudis would put pressure on the Palestinians to agree to peace talks; the US would withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, even though Tehran was in compliance with the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that had been agreed by the previous administration; and a back channel was opened up between Israel and Saudi Arabia to coordinate on peace talks. The US bizarrely allowed itself to be drawn into an internal Gulf states dispute, siding with the Saudis as they and the UAE tried to engineer a coup in Qatar – seemingly unaware that the US had a huge military base in the country.