Following last month's NATO summit in Turkey, President Trump boarded Air Force One in front of news cameras before being secretly transferred to a smaller plane, fooling reporters and the public. The decoy operation aimed to protect Trump due to security threats from nearby Iran, including potential missile risks targeting the presidential aircraft, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

The president was carried between planes in a catering truck and raised to plane level on the far side from where he had boarded. High-ranking officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well as reporters boarded Air Force One. The operation wasn't publicly disclosed until the Washington Post reported it late Monday.

Sitting presidents have duped the public on their whereabouts for over a century in a series of stunts involving trains, battleships, planes and yachts. Here's a selection.

A secret trip to Afghanistan

In 2019, during Trump's first term, the White House said the president was at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida while he instead flew to Afghanistan. Trump took a plane from Florida back to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, while the aircraft that had flown him to Palm Beach stayed parked on the tarmac as a decoy to suggest he was still there. At Andrews, he boarded a twin Air Force One, which had been hidden in a hangar, to Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan. Reporters on the plane were informed of the destination two hours before they arrived in Afghanistan.

Such blackouts are common when the president or high-ranking U.S. officials travel to war zones or other dangerous places and want to keep their whereabouts secret. Typically, the misdirections are revealed to the public in a timely manner.

Coverups on presidential health

During the economic depression of 1893, President Grover Cleveland discovered a cancerous lesion on the roof of his mouth. Fearing financial panic if the public knew he had cancer, the White House announced Cleveland was going on a four-day trip on a friend's yacht. In reality, surgeons removed the tumor, five teeth, and part of his upper jaw at sea. The White House denied a news report about it and the operation wasn't publicly acknowledged until 24 years after the procedure took place and nine years after Cleveland's death.

While on a cross-country train tour promoting the League of Nations in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson collapsed in Colorado. The White House canceled the tour, claimed he was suffering from exhaustion and rushed his train back to Washington. He soon after sustained a stroke, and his administration concealed his condition for months.

Thwarting possible threats

In March 2000, President Bill Clinton was on a high-profile tour of South Asia. Intelligence agencies warned that visiting Pakistan posed extreme threats from terrorist networks, including al Qaeda.

The president walked on a red carpet toward a military transport in full view of press cameras in India. Instead of boarding, he moved to two small, twin executive jets parked on the far side of the runway, one labeled with an American flag and one unmarked. The painted jet landed first at a Pakistan air base, filmed by press awaiting Clinton's arrival, while the president arrived in the other minutes later.

Conducting back-channel diplomacy

In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt covertly left Washington by train to Miami, then used a flying boat to cross the Atlantic to Morocco. Journalists accompanying or covering the White House were sworn to secrecy under strict wartime security agreements. Similar media arrangements covered up trips by Roosevelt to Tehran and Hawaii.

President Joe Biden slipped away to Ukraine in 2023 with a small team including two journalists sworn to secrecy. The White House published a schedule claiming the president would be at the White House while he instead boarded a jetliner to Poland and embarked on a 10-hour train ride to Kyiv dubbed "Rail Force One."

In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson made the first presidential visit to an active conflict zone in Vietnam during the war. His public itinerary showed a stop in the Philippines while in reality he flew to a supply base on Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam to address troops.

President George W. Bush similarly told press he and his family would be celebrating Thanksgiving in 2003 in Texas, where reporters staked out in front of his ranch filed stories about the dinner down to the menu. He was actually in Iraq.