2023-10-20 15:55:23
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE – When they reached the rear of the Air Force One to tell us what to do in the event of a rocket attack, it was clear that this was not going to be an ordinary presidential trip.
The famous blue and white Boeing 747 was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean this week transporting the President Joe Biden to Israel, which is in full war with Hamasand security people were giving instructions to traveling journalists on how to avoid, well, dying.
They handed out pocket tokens with instructions on how to act if an air raid siren sounded, indicating a possible Hamas attack while we were on the ground.
Biden hoped to use the visit to deter Iran and its forces in the region and prevent the conflict from spreading. Photo Kenny Holston/The New York Times
What to do if an attack occurs while we are under the wing of Air Force One on the tarmac waiting for the president to disembark.
What to do if an attack occurs while we are traveling in a caravan to Tel Aviv, Israel.
What to do if there is a attack in the hotel where Biden was to meet with Israeli officials.
It didn’t matter that the tiny font on the advice card was terribly difficult to read the moment we thought a rocket was headed our way.
But it was the first time Since I started covering the White House in 1996 I remembered such a briefing for reporters on Air Force One, a sign of how uncertain the trip could be.
After all, they were taking the president and his travel group to a country at war, in broad daylight and live on television.
Air Force One was to land at Ben-Gurion International Airport, very close to the Hamas rocket range from Gaza, a place considered so dangerous that many international airlines have stopped flying there.
Just the day before, the German chancellor Olaf Scholz He had to be evacuated from his own plane at the same airport due to air raid sirens and taken to a shelter.
The journalists who were traveling with him?
They were ordered to drop to the ground on the track and remain down until the danger had passed.
Just the day before, the Secretary of State Antony Blinken was taken to a shelter during a meeting with the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The journalists who accompanied him were taken out of vans and put on the stairs of a building to resist the possible attack.
Uncertain
It was already shaping up to be an unusual presidential trip in other ways. Even when the motorcade arrived at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland for the takeoff of Air Force One, we learned that the second half of the trip, a stop at Jordan for Biden to meet with Arab leaders, had just been suspended abruptly due to the explosion in a Gaza hospital.
Air Force One was taxiing down the runway and the travel itinerary had suddenly changed.
There is, of course, a reason why presidents don’t usually fly to countries at war.
When it has happened in the past, it has usually been under more controlled circumstances.
Little background
Franklin D. Roosevelt He was the first president to fly to a foreign destination in wartime, when he traveled to CasablancaMorocco, during the North African campaign of World War II, and no one found out until after he had arrived safely.
Reporters thought he was headed to his home in Hyde Park, New York.
Following that precedent, the presidents George W. Bush y Barack Obama They flew to Afghanistan or Iraq under secrecy, their arrivals were not announced in advance and their brief stays were measured in hours and limited to US military bases.
On one occasion, when Bush was being driven out of Washington for a trip to the war zone, his cover was nearly blown when a panhandler approached his unmarked vehicle at a traffic light.
While the president was being told to get down, a Secret Service agent in the car behind pulled out a few dollarss out the window to get the beggar’s attention.
When Biden traveled to Ukraine this year, he was the first president to visit a country at war outside the relative safety of a U.S. military presence, but that trip was also shrouded in secrecy.
Fearing Russian anti-aircraft missiles, Biden traveled to kyiv on a trip nine hours by trainwith only a handful of assistants, guards and two journalists accompanying him.
Instead, the White House announced Biden’s trip to Israel in advance.
And although he asked the journalists traveling with him to keep the details of his agenda secret until his arrival, the office of Netanyahu in Israel he posted where and when he would go before he landed.
Instructions
The safety briefing on the plane was surreal.
Although I had covered the wars of Afghanistan and Iraqhad not been among the few reporters who flew there with Bush or Obama.
But even then, I was told, journalists they did not receive the kind of information they gave us on the way to Tel Aviv.
They told us that if we heard an air raid siren, called “age“in Israel by alarm, we would have approximately one minute until impact if the rocket was coming towards us.
If it happened while we were on the tarmac covering the president’s arrival, we had to run at full speed towards the nearby motorcade vehicles.
If a siren sounded while we were in the vehicles, we had to stay in them, otherwise of the Israeli security protocol, which consists of getting out of the vehicle and looking for another shelter because the vehicle itself could be a target.
Once at the Tel Aviv hotel where the president would meet with Netanyahu, we were to find a designated shelter or safe room in the building, called “mama”.
Once the alarm ceased, we were told, it would mean that the rocket had been intercepted or had fallen elsewhere, but we should still shelter in place for a few minutes to avoid falling debris.
If we separated from the presidential motorcade or Air Force One took off without us, on the little card there was Telephone numbers those we could call.
Fortunately for Biden and his travel group, the nervous anticipation proved worse than the reality we would encounter during our short stay.
When we arrived in Tel Aviv, the coastal city looked as usual.
There were plenty of heavily armed soldiers along the motorcade route, but there usually are anywhere a president travels.
Israelis in shorts and T-shirts on a warm Mediterranean day stood along the road taking photos with their smartphones, as people often do during a presidential visit.
For some reason, we didn’t hear any air raid sirens while Biden was on the ground.
They did ring in other parts of the country, we were told, and they did ring in Tel Aviv after we left.
But it is evident that Hamas preferred not to provoker to the American president during his 7 and a half hours In Israel.
The trip ended with another surprise.
The president returned to the press box to speak with us live on the way home, something Biden had never done before during his presidency. (“They’re annoying,” he told us).
Dressed in a light blue zip-up sweater and jeans, he acknowledged that the trip was a risky bet, at least politically.
Presidential trips are usually scheduled and have specific results.
This one has been a bit of a risk in more ways than one.
But Biden seemed satisfied to have gotten what he wanted.
“I thought it was worth the risk,” he said.
c.2023 The New York Times Company
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