Published: 7:55am, 14 May 2025Updated: 7:56am, 14 May 2025
Qatar’s offer of a luxury Boeing 747 to US 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.
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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 travelling 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.
He 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.
Trump ordered up two new presidential planes from Boeing for US$3.9 billion during his first term. Frustrated at delivery delays, he has 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.