CIA 'skeptical' of Israeli intelligence on Iranian assassination plot against Trump - report
“Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence,” a US intel official said, “the Secret Service has had three near misses with this president, so they’re not taking any chances"
US intelligence officials questioned the credibility of an Iranian assassination threat that Israel passed to Washington before President Trump was quietly moved out of Turkey last month, according to reporting by The Washington Post.
The intelligence was relayed by the Israeli government to the CIA, where analysts reportedly viewed the information with skepticism and communicated their concerns to officials in the Trump administration.
Despite those doubts, the threat appears to have contributed to an unusually cautious security operation surrounding Trump's departure from Ankara on July 8.
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 says that “the Secret Service has had three near misses with this president, so they’re not taking any chances.”
The reported disagreement over the intelligence helps explain why the president's security team took extraordinary precautions even without a clear consensus that an attack was imminent.
Trump had been expected to leave Turkey aboard the older Air Force One after attending the NATO summit. Instead, concerns about the security capabilities of the newly acquired Boeing 747-8 aircraft gifted to the United States by Qatar contributed to a more complicated plan.
In response to the threat, Trump was discreetly removed from Air Force One and transported in a catering truck to a military aircraft, allowing him to leave the country without following the planned departure route.
Several senior Trump administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, reportedly remained aboard Air Force One despite the security alert, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Trump later confirmed that he in fact secretly switched planes after last month’s NATO summit in Turkey at the direction of the Secret Service and military, citing a possible threat. The president said he did not ask for details, adding that he receives “a lot of threats.”
"I go by Secret Service and the military. They wanted me to go in a different flight, different plane, I just have to do what they say." Trump said in an address to reporters on Tuesday.