(Bloomberg) -- Qatar’s offer of a luxury Boeing 747 to President Donald Trump has set off alarm bells within the US intelligence and diplomatic community, where gifts from foreign powers have long been viewed with suspicion.
Aside from any legal and ethical qualms about Trump accepting the plane — an 89-seater with a sumptuous French-designed interior — there are technical and security concerns too. Experts say any such gift on a foreign government’s behalf presents opportunities for surveilling, tracking or compromising communications of the president and anyone traveling with him.
“If we had built the plane, knowing it was going to a foreign government, we would probably have bugged it,” said Thad Troy, a former station chief with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Troy recalled serving in Cold War-era Moscow when the American Embassy was being dismantled brick by brick to remove a tangle of surveillance devices embedded into the very concrete of the building.
Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, called accepting the gift “incredibly reckless.”
“A foreign-provided aircraft presents a host of potential security risks, from surveillance equipment to compromised communications systems, and thoroughly inspecting a plane like that for espionage tools or safety concerns would be nearly impossible,” he said in a statement Wednesday to Bloomberg News.
Trump ordered up two new presidential planes from Boeing Co. for $3.9 billion during his first term. Frustrated at delivery delays, he’s been on the lookout for alternatives – and apparently had his eye on the Qatari plane even before it was offered to him as a gift this month.
Parisian Finish
The jumbo in question, built in 2012, was previously on call for Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani. The 66-year-old is one of the Qatari royal family’s wealthiest figures, having served as prime minister and head of the sovereign wealth fund.
It has creamy white and tan furnishings, rugs and artwork by Cabinet Alberto Pinto, a Paris interior design firm. There are custom-made Tai Ping rugs, sycamore and wacapou wood fixtures, and artwork by Alexander Calder. The upper deck has a master bedroom and bath, guest bedroom and private lounge, and downstairs there are lounges, an office and crew areas.
The plane would need to be retrofitted to standards that Air Force One currently maintains, according to Troy. That would include a hardening of its surface to withstand explosions and attacks, and technical extras like air-to-air refueling capabilities and classified communications and weapons systems.
It would also take months if not years for defense department officials and intelligence officers to take the plane apart and thoroughly sweep it for any tracking devices or detect monitoring of systems that could, among other things, reveal the plane’s location.
“This is why it takes so long to build Air Force One,” said Troy. “It has so many things attached to it to make the president safe.”
‘Such a Stain’
Trump, who’s blamed Boeing for falling “way behind,” has defended the gift.
“Some people say, oh, you shouldn’t accept gifts for the country,” the president told Fox News while en route to Saudi Arabia where he began a Middle East visit on Tuesday. “My attitude is, why wouldn’t I accept a gift? We’re giving to everybody else.” He also said that Gulf monarchies have bigger and newer planes than the American government, and “I believe that we should have the most impressive plane.”
But some of the fiercest criticism has come from devoted supporters, who’ve called it a bribe or a brazen push for influence by the Gulf state.
Commentator Ben Shapiro asked how Trump voters would react if a Democrat had done this. “I think if we switched the names to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, we’d all be freaking out on the right,” Shapiro said Monday on his podcast. “President Trump promised to drain the swamp. This is not, in fact, draining the swamp.”
“This is really going to be such a stain on the admin if this is true,” far-right activist Laura Loomer posted on X. “And I say that as someone who would take a bullet for Trump.”
Qatar is a longstanding US ally, and has been a key mediator along with Egypt in efforts to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
The country also hosts Hamas’s political office. Relationships like that pose a risk “in terms of potential information falling into the hands of people who would use it for their own purposes,” according to James Der Derian, who heads the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia.
“To be sure, Qatar is not the Soviet Union, but it does have a pretty robust intelligence footprint,” he said. “It punches above its weight.”
Still, while there are dangers in accepting gifts from foreign governments, turning them down isn’t risk-free either. Since gift-giving is significant in Arab culture, it could amount to a diplomatic blunder – especially when Qatar is playing such an important role in the search for an end to the Gaza war.
That’s why “this plane has taken on so much symbolic value right now,” Der Derian said. Refuse the gift, and “there could be a lot of upset leaders — not just the US but also Qatar and other Arab countries that think hospitality is a very important part of their culture.”
(Updates with Warner statement in fifth and sixth paragraphs)
