CIA Had Low Confidence in Israeli Intelligence on Iranian Threat That Prompted Trump Plane Switch in Turkey

The CIA held "low confidence" in Israeli intelligence about an Iranian plot against Trump's plane that prompted a secret aircraft swap during his July 8 departure from the NATO summit in Ankara, current and former US officials told the Washington Post 1. CBS News reported that the NSA, CIA, and Turkey's MIT intelligence service picked up streams of information ahead of Trump's departure about a credible plot to fire a surface-to-air missile at Air Force One, and that a suspected missile team was initially reported in Turkey but not detected after further probes 2. Reuters reported that Israel passed several warnings to US agencies over the past year, including possible sniper or knife plots, that a current US official and two former officials said US intelligence could not independently verify, and that a Turkish official said Ankara's own services found no corroborating evidence for the Air Force One threat 34. One US official told the Washington Post the intelligence was "Israeli-derived, not US-generated," while a former official said Secretary of State Marco Rubio was briefed and chose to fly on the plane identified as Air Force One anyway 5.