WHEN US President Donald Trump sneaked out of Turkey last month in a clandestine operation, he brought a select few with him on the secret flight.
White House aides Natalie Harp, Dan Scavino and Walt Nauta, as well as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were all travelling with the president on a military jet, a United States official said.
Two Cabinet members, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, left the country on the decoy flight, which was an older model of Air Force One, the US official and a second official said. That plane carried other aides who had been attending the Nato summit in Ankara, along with journalists.
Trump had said he would be taking the older plane “for old time’s sake” for the first leg of the trip home, from Turkey to Britain.
But the reality was that US officials had determined there was a credible threat to Air Force One. So Trump boarded the decoy Air Force One in front of the cameras, then sneaked out in a catering container elevated on a hydraulic lift.
Joining him on the other plane were Harp, his ever-present aide; Nauta, his longtime “body man” who now is the head of Oval Office operations; and Scavino, a deputy White House chief of staff and head of presidential personnel, who has also handled Trump’s social media for years.
Those names were reported by CBS News.
Unlike Trump and the other passengers, Hegseth was seen publicly boarding the military jet, which apparently was part of the deception plan.
The reporters travelling on the older Air Force One were instructed to lower their window shades, without an explanation given; in hindsight, it kept them from catching a glimpse of Trump leaving the plane.
A White House spokesperson did not respond to an email seeking comment and asking for a full accounting of who was on the plane. — ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
