When the President of the United States travels, secrecy and security are at their highest levels. However, for this meeting extraordinary measures were taken to insure the names of those in attendance would never be disclosed. No entries were made in any log. Once the meeting was over, it had never occurred.
Norma Whitehead, President Marshall Norris’s Secretary of State, left an Organization of American States meeting in San Paulo, Brazil, boarded an unmarked Dassault Falcon and flew nonstop to Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport. She was whisked to a waiting Marine helicopter parked at a remote corner of the airport.
The other attendees followed a similar routine.
United States Ambassador to the UN Calvin Carnesworth and United Nations Secretary-General Frerik Tillens took a limousine to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. Their jet set down at Hagerstown Regional Airport.
Attorney-General Michael Shadburn left Saint Louis where he delivered the keynote address at the American Bar Association’s annual convention. He landed at Tri-State Airport in Huntington, West Virginia.
Frank Marlowe, President Marshall’s chief-of-staff, traveled with the president to Andrews Air Force Base in an unannounced 3:00 a.m. motorcade. They boarded Marine One and took off.
The attendees arrived at Camp David by 10:00 a.m. Each traveled alone; no staff members were allowed. The regular contingent of Navy enlisted personnel who manned the historic presidential retreat was replaced by a specially-screened and selected staff of cooks and housekeepers. Cell phones and other communications devices were banned. Even the Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who carried the briefcase containing the nuclear launch codes, commonly known as the nuclear football, was sequestered in a locked room. Other than the president, no one could communicate with the outside world.
This was the third such meeting. The first convened a year and a half earlier, the second eight months after that. Four more such confabs were scheduled
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