Presidents Have Always Lied — When Threatened by Assassins

Sneering coverage of President Donald Trump’s furtive exit from Ankara last month suggests that his “deceptive” behavior lacked “transparency.” Indeed, Trump tricked the American people, reporters, and – most important – potential Iranian assassins, by secretly leaving his presidential plane via a raised airport catering truck. His safe flight on a military C-32A jet while Air Force One took off without him, fits into a long history of presidential subterfuge defying security threats.

Presidents should be as honest as possible with the public, and accessible too. But in a country that has buried four assassinated commanders-in-chief, and watched eight others survive near-misses, professional security experts must be trusted. Indeed, although it was founded in 1865 to combat counterfeiting, the Secret Service is aptly named.

One of our martyred presidents, Abraham Lincoln, first dodged an assassination plot shortly before his 1861 inauguration. Trying to calm his fragmenting nation, Lincoln stretched his 800-mile journey from Springfield, Illinois to Washington, DC, to 2000 miles, making over 70 stops along the way. Lincoln’s aide John Nicolay later recalled that Lincoln’s “mail was infested with brutal and vulgar menace … but he had himself so sane a mind, and a heart so kindly, even to his enemies, that it was hard for him to believe in political hatred so deadly as to lead to murder.”

Relying on Allan Pinkerton, “America’s first private eye,” Lincoln slowly made his way to Washington. Pinkerton and his people became convinced that Southern secessionists in Baltimore posed a mortal threat. “Lincoln shall never, never be president,” Cypriano Ferrandini, a Baltimore barber, vowed. “My life is of no consequence. I am willing to give it for his. I will sell my life for that of that abolitionist.” Improvising, Pinkerton had the president-elect arrive in Baltimore earlier than announced – stooping, wrapped in a woolen shawl, with his face obscured by a low-hanging hat.

As a shrewd politician, Lincoln had worried: “What would the nation think of its President stealing into the Capital like a thief in the night?” Indeed, the press was cruel then, too. Many, North and South, mocked Lincoln’s caution as cowardice, including a sneering Harper’s Weekly cartoon, “The Flight of Abraham.” Nevertheless, the ruse worked: Lincoln made it to Washington safely. 

Three decades later, mass economic unrest ultimately convinced the Secret Service to start protecting the president. In 1894, Coxey’s Army, the “petition in boots,” protesting the economic crash following the Panic of 1893, and organized by an Ohio businessman, Jacob Coxey, roiled the nation. Rumors of “anarchist” plots to overrun the White House abounded. President Grover Cleveland placed troops and local police officers on alert. Secret Service officials quietly dispatched two guards to the White House. 

More serious was an actual plot against the president. Secret Service agents, pursuing their founding mission to protect America’s currency, discovered in 1894 that some Colorado gamblers sought to harm the president. The Secret Service’s summary account recorded agents being tasked to “watch for suspicious persons who might be Western gamblers, Anarchists or cranks” lurking near the White House by day, while trying “to attend meetings of Coxey’s army, which was then in town,” in the evening. That summer, first lady Frances Cleveland reported seeing “three diferent very tough looking men” near their Buzzard’s Bay summer home. Worried about her two young children’s safety, she asked the president’s personal secretary if detectives could “be sent on to help” the “local” authorities. This time, however, it was the president who had to be tricked. Frances Cleveland explained: “I don’t want by any chance to have a word of this get to the President because he is worried and anxious enough.”

Congress only authorized the Secret Service’s new presidential protective role in 1906, following William McKinley’s 1901 murder – the third presidential assassination in 36 years, following Lincoln’s and James Garfield’s. Since then, the Secret Service has been busy helping presidents dodge assassination plots, from changing Franklin D. Roosevelt’s lodgings while organizing decoy convoys in Tehran in 1943, to running its own airport shell game to fly Bill Clinton into Pakistan on a C-20 in 2000. 

Sometimes, presidential agendas put extra stress on their security details. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower secretly flew to Korea on a military transport plane shortly before his inauguration, to assess the Korean War situation up-front.  Fourteen years later, Lyndon Johnson surreptitiously visited South Vietnam for two-and-a-half hours. In 2003, George W. Bush flew to Baghdad – giving reporters false itineraries, to join troops in Baghdad for Thanksgiving. And in 2023, Joe Biden secretly flew to Poland, then took a 10-hour train ride to Kyiv, to raise Ukrainian morale.

Presidential security machinations, like presidential vacation time and decorating budgets, often serve as partisan Rorschach tests: rivals mock, while supporters defend. In fact, from the Civil War through the Panic of 1893, the forced intrigues track America’s ongoing addiction to political violence. And from World War II to the current Iran imbroglio, they reflect the blessings and burdens of being the Leader of the Free World.

Professor Gil Troy is a Distinguished Scholar of North American History at McGill University and a Senior Research Fellow at the JPPI, the Jewish People Policy Institute. He is the author of nine books on presidential history including “The Age of Clinton,” and, more recently, “To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream”  as well as his latest e-book, “The Essential Guide to the U.S.-Israel Partnership: the 250th Anniversary Edition.”