RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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CIA analysts expressed skepticism to the Trump administration about Israeli intelligence regarding an Iranian assassination plot that led the US president to secretly switch planes while departing Turkey last month, according to a Wednesday report.
Israel told the Central Intelligence Agency about the threat, but analysts there didn’t find it compelling, The Washington Post reported , citing current and former US officials familiar with the intelligence.
One of the officials who spoke with the newspaper dismissed the intelligence as “Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence,” while another said that “the Secret Service has had three near misses with this president, so they’re not taking any chances.”
“They did what they had to do,” that official added.
A former official, meanwhile, was quoted as saying the incident “fit a broader pattern of Israeli intelligence reporting that some officials see as designed as much to shape presidential decision-making as to inform it.”
That official noted that, according to his understanding, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was briefed on the intelligence, but he chose to fly on the ostensibly threatened plane anyway, suggesting some measure of confidence that it was safe to do so.
The Post said the White House wouldn’t comment directly on the report, though an anonymous US official told it in response that “as the president has said, he has faced numerous threats on his life, including ones from Iran, and every measure is taken to ensure his safety.”
“The United States Secret Service’s core mission is protecting the president, which they achieved,” the official added.
US President Donald Trump was sneaked away from Air Force One to a military plane at Ankara airport last month due to the threat of an Iranian attack. He'd been in the Turkish capital to attend a NATO summit.
The Wall Street Journal had reported Tuesday that the intelligence about the threat was provided by Israel, and it indicated that Iran was plotting to use shoulder-to-air missiles to take down Trump’s plane.
The New York Times reported Tuesday, however, that US intelligence had multiple sources of information about plans to fire a surface-to-air missile at Air Force One and had received a report of a person with a shoulder-fired missile in the area of the summit.
Additionally, the Iranians had zeroed in on Trump’s exact location in Ankara, down to the specific floor of his hotel building, according to the report, which cited two US officials with knowledge of the matter.
The report on Trump being clandestinely put on a different aircraft and quietly whisked out of the country added a fresh layer to just how seriously concerned US security officials were about the threat against the president during the ongoing war with Iran.
In fact, the regime has been publicly pledging to assassinate Trump since the US killed senior Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani during Trump’s first term in 2020.
Calls for the US president’s death featured prominently in the recent mourning commemorations for the slain supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the US-Israeli strikes that began the war with Iran on February 28.
Besides the alleged Iranian plans, there have been multiple assassination attempts against Trump.
Most recently, eight men were indicted last month on murder and terrorism conspiracy charges for their alleged roles in a thwarted plot to target officials linked to Israel, including Trump, Vice President JD Vance, other federal officials, trillionaire businessman Elon Musk, and “other high-value targets,” at the UFC event at the White House in June.
Federal prosecutors also alleged that the group discussed murdering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was not at the event.
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