‘Everyone does it’: media pilfering from Air Force One prompts clampdown

A White House staffer recently met a reporter for a covert assignment by the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square.

But the House of Cards-esque rendezvous was not staged to hand over state secrets, or leak presidential gossip, or even to spread dirt on Joe Biden’s opponents. The item handed over – an embroidered pillowcase from Air Force One – was handed back, by the reporter involved.

So said Politico, reporting an attempt to clamp down on theft of branded items from the presidential plane.

The meeting by the Jackson statue, Politico said, came about after US air force crew members alerted the White House travel office that a west coast trip in early February ended with “several [items] missing from the press cabin”.

An email went out, described by one of no less than six anonymous sources as saying: “Hey, if you inadvertently wound up taking something off the plane by mistake, we can help facilitate a quiet return.”

The reporter who took the pillowcase had done so “probably not by accident”, Politico said. And so the meeting was arranged, the item “changed hands, and that was that”.

According to Politico, the White House press pack has long seen Air Force One as a source of souvenirs.

One unnamed current White House reporter said: “On my first flight, the person next to me was like, ‘You should take that glass.’ They were like, ‘Everyone does it.’”

Several unnamed sources, meanwhile, described to Politico a “former White House correspondent for a major newspaper” hosting a dinner party using “gold-rimmed Air Force One plates, evidently taken bit by bit over the course of some time”.

“Reporters recalled coming down the back stairs after returning to Joint Base Andrews in the evening with the sounds of clinking glassware