After Trump plane ruse, WHCA presses White House on press pool safeguards
By Brian Stelter, CNN
(CNN) — The White House Correspondents’ Association has asked President Donald Trump’s administration to “work with us on a protocol for handling extraordinary security circumstances in the future,” now that his secret plane switch last month has been revealed by leaks to news organizations.
Fox News anchor and senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, who is currently serving as president of the group, met with Trump aides about the matter on Tuesday and relayed the press corps’ concerns about the subterfuge.
The so-called “press pool,” which is meant to travel with the US president at all times, was kept in the dark when Trump was slipped out of Turkey last month on an alternate military plane.
Administration officials and members of the media unknowingly flew on a decoy plane — all part of an elaborate ruse prompted by an Iranian threat.
The Washington Post revealed the ruse in a story on Monday night, shocking the reporters who were aboard the July 8 flight.
The association immediately heard concerns from members — including, Heinrich wrote, “press safety, the ability of the pool to maintain an independent record of the president’s movements, and the integrity and credibility of pooled reporting.”
In a memo to members on Tuesday evening, Heinrich wrote that she had a “candid and productive meeting” to convey those concerns.
While the meeting itself was off the record, and the White House has yet to answer many questions about the secret plane switch, Heinrich indicated that the White House’s credibility is on the line.
“I emphasized that WHCA recognizes the paramount responsibility of the Secret Service to protect the president and that genuine security threats can require extraordinary measures, including circumstances in which operational security limits what can be shared with reporters in real time,” she wrote. “At the same time, I advocated strongly for the importance of maintaining independent press coverage of the president and an accurate historical record of his movements.”
On July 8, the historical record was inaccurate due to the ruse, and the truth only emerged a month later when anonymous sources spoke with The Post.
Heinrich wrote that she stressed to the Trump administration “that undermining confidence in the reliability of pool reports carries risks beyond any single incident. In an already conspiratorial information environment, uncertainty about whether independent reporting can be trusted can be exploited by bad actors seeking to sow confusion and undermine confidence in journalism.
That’s why she said the association will advocate for a protocol that “recognizes the Secret Service’s responsibility to respond to genuine threats while protecting press safety, preserving independent coverage of the president, and providing a mechanism to correct the record after the fact when necessary.”
White House communications director Steven Cheung did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the meeting.
The-CNN-Wire
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