US intelligence agencies had raised doubts about the credibility of a threat to President Donald Trump’s safety before he was secretly moved to another plane, sources told ABC News. The intelligence pointing to an Iranian plot to target Air Force One with a semi-automatic rifle originated with Israel, which passed it to the United States as Trump prepared to leave Ankara, Turkey.

Threat Assessment

Israeli officials had not had time to fully vet the information or reach their own determination about how credible the intelligence was, the sources said, but chose to share it given how quickly the president was set to depart. U.S. intelligence agencies ultimately deemed it not to indicate a serious or immediate threat.

Despite the assessment, the Secret Service decided it could not take a chance on even the possibility of a threat and recommended enhanced security for the president’s departure, which resulted in him being moved to another military aircraft aboard a catering truck, the sources said.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters he was following Secret Service’s direction. ‘It’s only up to Secret Service. I just follow what they’d like to do,’ he said. ‘So I go by Secret Service and the military. They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane. Equal safety. But they wanted me to do it, so I do it. I do what they say,’ Trump said.

Context

Trump has been a top target of Iran’s leadership since he ordered the airstrike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in early 2020, and sources have indicated a particular sensitivity surrounding threats directed at the president from Iran and its proxies.

U.S. and Turkish authorities continued investigating the potential missile threat after Trump departed the NATO summit, but did not uncover evidence of an operational plot, according to one official.

Original reporting: Brookhaven News – ABC7 New York — read the source article.