A Year At The Circus

by Jon Sopel

  In the wake of the war we started to learn a new language. Questions would be asked about ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques – aka torture. Then there was ‘extraordinary rendition’ – the policy of shifting prisoners from country to country as a means of circumventing those places where the laws on detention and torture might be less forgiving. Cheney was hugely influential in what policies should be followed on the detention of suspected terrorists and what legal limits should apply to their questioning. A couple of years after leaving office, Cheney was still defending the use of waterboarding and the torture of terrorist suspects. Cheney would tell ABC News, ‘I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation programme.’

  There was another troubling aspect at this time. Beginning in 2003 – the year of the invasion – Cheney’s staff made an important decision. They stopped filing required reports with the National Archives and Records Administration, the office which protects classified information. Cheney’s staff also refused to allow inspection of their record keeping. Some news outlets started talking about a new, fourth branch of government, that had declared itself above the law of the land, and beyond the reach of democratic accountability.

  What I have concentrated upon here is the lead-up to and aftermath of the Iraq war – but Cheney’s influence extended way beyond foreign policy. On budget and tax policy – and critically environmental policy – he played a leading role, invariably tilting US policy in favour of business over environmental protection. In July 2008 a former official from the federal Environment Protection Agency stated publicly that Cheney’s office had pushed for significant deletions from a document detailing the effects of global warming, ‘fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases’. Shortly before leaving office, Cheney’s approval ratings stood at a miserable 13 per cent.

  Mike Pence is no Dick Cheney. Pence would not presume to override the President. The overall impression you get with Pence is that he knows his place. One memorable meeting after the midterm elections in November 2018 saw Donald Trump playing host in the Oval Office to the new Democratic Party Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer. It was a testy meeting – throughout which Pence never said a word. More than that, it was mesmerising. It almost seemed that he was playing statues. There was not a twitch of a facial muscle, barely a flicker of his eyes. If he had been painted head to toe in silver and was standing on a soapbox in some Italian piazza, you would have definitely chucked a couple of euros into his tin for the street art performance. Pence looked as though he had spent a few days at a taxidermist beforehand.

  In public pronouncements he will never get ahead of his boss. He will never seek limelight for himself at the expense of his master – that would be a criminally stupid thing to do. But he will seek to influence President Trump’s agenda and priorities behind the scenes. He is also the smoother of ruffled feathers – a job that has rarely been more important than under this crockery-breaking president. He is like the trained FBI negotiator whose job is to talk suicidal staffers and senior administration officials off parapets and tall buildings when they think they can take no more of the President’s antics. After Donald Trump had repeatedly undermined the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, it fell to Pence to persuade him not to jump. It would be a pacifying role he would play again and again.

  As well as pushing social conservatism – particularly when it comes to abortion – Pence has behind the scenes been a vocal support for the tough line that the administration has taken on Venezuela and Cuba. Fighting communism in America’s backyard has been a core conservative issue for decades. He’s notably taken a tough line with China and Russia – even if he can appear as a slightly obsequious toady. Meanwhile, for all the public professions of loyalty, you get the impression that there is a certain mistrust that pertains. Stories which appeared at critical times suggesting that Pence was biding his time, and was ready to step up if Trump stumbled, will have caused a certain amount of twitching in the White House. And when Donald Trump was asked whether he would back a Pence tilt at the presidency once he had left office, he very notably refused to give his number two that endorsement.

  Which is tough on Pence. In public he has never done anything that would allow anyone to think there was even so much as a cigarette paper’s width between him and the President. My favourite demonstration of this was in June 2019, when tensions with Iran were at a dangerous, flashing red on the dashboard high. American sanctions were trying to cripple the Iranian economy. The Iranians according to the US had attacked a number of tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. That was denied by Tehran – but when a $130 million dollar American drone was shot down over these contested waters by a surface-to-air missile, Iran was happy to claim responsibility. The President declared in the Oval Office that Iran had made a very big mistake. ‘Will America retaliate?’ reporters screamed. ‘You’ll see, you’ll see,’ said the President. And went on: ‘This country will not stand for it, that I can tell you.’ The omens were not good. Some kind of US response seemed inevitable.

  After that the lights burned late into the night as national security officials met to consider the US response. It was agreed there would be a limited but firm, no-nonsense response. And we waited. And waited. But nothing happened. That morning the New York Times reported that the President had got cold feet. He’d aborted. The Twitter tiger had become a policy pussy. Something that was later confirmed by the President himself, when he tweeted: ‘On Monday they shot down an unarmed drone flying in international waters. We were cocked and loaded to retaliate last night on three different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it. Not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.’

  This left the President open to a certain amount of criticism from all sides: Republican hawks thought he had allowed Iran to get away with an act of aggression where there were no consequences. This was like Obama over Syria, when a red line was crossed and no action was taken. Trump had done a grand old Duke of York. Democrats saw this as a crisis of the President’s own making: he’d pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal without a plan B. The Europeans who were still part of the deal were even more scathing. One senior official said to me that the episode showed how comprehensively this administration’s Iran policy was failing.

  And where did Mike Pence stand on this? His position was clarified by a spokesman: ‘Vice-President Mike Pence supported those plans to strike Iran, but also agreed with the President’s decision to abort them.’ Two men creating only one shadow.

  Chapter 8

  Air Force One

  Air Force One is not a building or a room, I freely acknowledge – but if there is one thing that projects unmistakable American power around the world it is the pale blue 747 jumbo jet with ‘United States of America’ written along the fuselage. I remember being in Cuba ahead of Barack Obama’s historic first visit to the Caribbean island, and watching Air Force One coming in low over the Havana slums before landing. It is a plane that turns heads. It is an aircraft which says the world’s pre-eminent superpower is on its way. On Donald Trump’s first overseas visit after he became president we travelled to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Rome and Brussels before ending up in Sicily for the G7 summit. I had to return to London and managed to hitch a ride on Theresa May’s plane. As we taxied out to the runway, all the journalists aboard and a lot of the officials were taking photos of Air Force One, which was parked nearby on the tarmac.

  The British equivalent of Air Force One, conversely, projects frugality. The RAF Voyager is used as a tanker for mid-air refuelling when it is not ferrying British dignitaries around the world. When I flew back from Sicily the plane had just returned from the skies above Syria, where it had been instrumental in refuelling fighter aircraft engaged in the battle against ISIS. And it looks like a military plane. It has ‘Royal A
ir Force’ written along the side, and the paintwork is a matt, gunmetal grey. Or it might be more accurate to describe it as hair-shirt grey. Because heaven forefend that the British government should have a plane at its disposal, as every other leading nation has.

  For years the easiest way to whip up a tabloid fervour against the government was to report that plans were being drawn up for the purchase of a British Air Force One. And so for years there was no prime-ministerial plane. In the days when I travelled with John Major and Tony Blair, Downing Street would charter a British Airways jet. Tony Blair had advocated that the British get their own version of AF1 – a project inevitably named Blair Force One, but that was scuttled by his nemesis, Gordon Brown. The famously dour Scot took delight when he eventually succeeded Tony Blair in cancelling the ‘vanity project’ of his more flamboyant predecessor. When David Cameron became PM he steered the middle path – a plane, yes, but one that would double as an RAF workhorse. That didn’t satisfy everyone. Anticipating a post-Brexit era in which Britain would have to project an image of dynamism around the world, Boris Johnson as foreign secretary complained about its grey drabness.

  In the US there are no such qualms or hand-wringing about Air Force One. It is a muscular expression of America’s place in the world. And Donald Trump loves it. No, it doesn’t have the gold fittings, shag pile carpets and white leather seats of his own plane that he used during the presidential campaign, but there is nothing quite like travelling on Air Force One. In the 2018 midterm elections he used it as a prop. The plane would draw up to an aircraft hangar where thousands of Trump supporters would have been waiting for hours. And a podium would have been erected between the crowd and AF1. It is an unbeatable backdrop, even if controversial. The jumbo is US government property, not an ‘accessory’ of the Republican party.

  And as he does with the Oval Office, Trump loves to show it off. Friends from Mar-a-Lago have been invited to look around the plane; there have even been occasions when the 13 members of what is called the ‘protective press pool’, which travels at the very back of the plane, have been invited to come up front to the President’s quarters to see his office suite – I am yet to be on the aircraft when that has happened. Travelling with him is a distinct mixed blessing. It can give you extraordinary access to the President and his entourage. When you fly with them, you move as the President moves. You are witnessing up close who he is meeting and what he is doing. But because you are ‘pool’ you are not working for your own media outlet, you are there representing all outlets. So the 13 seats reserved for the media are divided between newspapers, news sites, radio, television and the wire services. When the BBC is on the plane we only ever get the radio seat. The US networks will always be the TV pooler. And each seat is allocated – so you will always sit in the same seat. And your job is to report for all the radio networks who aren’t on the plane.

  It sounds fabulously glamorous. And it can be. First the glamour – and the obvious. Who wouldn’t want to travel on Air Force One? I have never seen my BBC colleagues so jealous as when I waltzed into New Broadcasting House having just flown into London from the Middle East with President Obama, with my pockets full of packets of M&Ms – the small boxes of sweets given out on the plane that bear the presidential seal on one side and the president’s signature on the other. They are top swag. We also get handed printed out cards from the flightdeck telling us the route, likely flying time and weather conditions. The food on board is terrific. There are trained United States Air Force chefs, who actually cut up fresh vegetables, and the meals are served on bone china with the presidential seal. Air Force One is the exclusive province of the 89th Airlift Wing at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland – charged with safely moving the president, his deputy and senior cabinet officials around the country and around the world. Being a part of the approximately 1,100 strong unit is considered one of the most plumb assignments of the Air Force.

  Also, and this may seem an odd thing to say, it is the nearest thing I have seen to travelling in an Uber. When the president arrives to board Air Force One, we are invariably at the foot of the steps filming him or recording him as he walks up to the aircraft. But the moment he is on board we are rushed along to the back of the aircraft where secret service personnel are urging us to race up the steps – and before we’ve even found our seats, the plane is on the move. There is no safety drill: no one checking that your seat is in the upright position, your tray table is stowed and your seat belt is securely fastened. The doors shut and away you go. And the press cabin has a bulkhead running down the centre of the plane, bisecting the rows of seats – there are no proper overhead bins, so most of your kit sits at your feet and not safely stowed. But waiting our turn to take off? Air traffic control permission to push back? Loading the last of the bags? Held in the stack? Fifteen minutes of circling? None of those things ever happen aboard Air Force One.

  This is also the nightmare of travelling on Air Force One. What if the president has said something as he boards? Then, you have literally seconds to file your report to the members of the White House Correspondents’ Association who are waiting anxiously for your dispatch. Fat thumbs going berserk on an iPhone trying to complete your report, invariably full of comedic typos, as the plane is climbing into the sky, knowing that the signal is about to disappear. On this ancient jumbo jet, the media don’t have access to the aircraft’s wi-fi. Also, if you imagine it is all flat-bed luxury, forget it. The press cabin is high-class economy.

  The last time I flew with the President, it was when Donald Trump had travelled to Florida. The ‘wranglers’ who are there to act as sheepdogs to us – a potentially wayward flock – had guided us to the vans where we would be part of the convoy going to Mar-a-Lago. But then we see that the President has gone to greet supporters at the airport. Out we charge to hear what he is saying – boom microphones being connected as we run, headphones on, machines set to record, phones to take photos. It is chaos. We are a tangle of wires, cables and recording devices. And then we are loaded back onto the vans, wedged in tight.

  The convoy moves at a fair lick, but we are sitting in our press van trying to connect recording machines to laptops. Mine sits precariously on my lap as I fiddle with connections and type in necessary instructions so that I can upload the audio, and then feed the material via the internet, which I’m trying to connect to with a mi-fi device. We are seemingly taking corners on two wheels as we have to keep pace with the police outriders and the Beast. We are also trying to write some copy that will accompany the audio of the President, to help set the scene. And obviously tweet out the pictures. It is claustrophobic and stressed. Also, I’m trying to look out of the window so we can witness whether the crowds on the roadside are cheering or booing his arrival.

  I swear, by the time we get to Mar-a-Lago I am ready to hurl the beautifully presented Air Force One meal, served on the finest bone china, with the freshly cut vegetables, all over the carefully manicured lawns of the President’s country club. Which would, I am thinking, be an unwelcome faux pas. Indeed, my face has turned the colour of the grass, and I am as clammy as a clammy thing. This is not the journalism of Hemingway, sitting with a large tumbler of whisky at a clickety clack typewriter in an exotic hotel room, cigar smoke curling upwards to be dispersed by the whirring overhead fan. And then ambling down to the night manager to ask him to wire his copy to the Toronto Star. This is feeding-the-machine, fast food journalism – and as someone who is a little technologically challenged and clearly of a delicate disposition it is an ordeal which I barely survive. And I vow that I am never going to do it again. But then I wouldn’t get to fly on Air Force One …

  The first presidential flight took place during the Second World War when Franklin Delano Roosevelt flew to the Casablanca Conference in Morocco, aboard a commercial Boeing Clipper Flying Boat. But defence chiefs were alarmed about the security implications of the President flying commercially, so it was decided there should be a dedicated aircraft run by the US Ai
r Force. It came into service in 1944 and was nicknamed by journalists ‘the Sacred Cow’. The Douglas C-54 Skymaster made its inaugural flight taking Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference, that would bring together FDR, Stalin and Churchill to discuss the shape of a post-war Europe. The plane was fitted with an elevator to lift the wheelchair-bound president into the cabin. But that didn’t stay in service long. It also had a range of 4,000 miles and could land at virtually any airfield. It had a conference room and a stateroom, and the picture windows were fitted with bullet-proof glass.

  ‘Air Force One’ became the call sign for the presidential aircraft after an incident in 1953 when a Lockheed Constellation, named Columbine 2, carrying President Dwight D. Eisenhower, found itself in airspace with a commercial aircraft with the same flight number. After that moment, whenever the president was on board, the call sign would be Air Force One (when the vice-president is using the plane, it is Air Force Two). John F. Kennedy’s Boeing 707 was the first plane to be specifically tailored for the Commander in Chief. Designs for the aircraft were leaked, and the French designer Raymond Loewy – who’d been behind iconic brands like Coca-Cola and Lucky Strike cigarettes – told a White House aide that he thought they were amateurish and gaudy. When Jackie Kennedy heard about this she insisted that Loewy be brought in to assist with the design. And so it was that John F. Kennedy ended up sitting on the floor of the West Wing with a French designer to pore over sketches and designs. That is when the iconic baby blue and slate was chosen. The plane’s markings were changed from ‘US Air Force’ to ‘United States of America’. The presidential seal would be placed near the nose; the Stars and Stripes on the tail. But JFK’s use of the aircraft would be brief.