U.S. State Department documents containing sensitive government information were discovered on a public printer at an Alaska hotel, two hours before a high-stakes summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Eight pages — containing a schedule, several phone numbers of government employees, and a luncheon menu — were found in a public hotel printer at Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage, a 20-minute drive from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson where the two world leaders met Friday to discuss the future of the war in Ukraine.
Three guests staying at Hotel Captain Cook found the pages around 9 a.m. Friday, two hours before the summit began, according to NPR. It’s not clear who left the papers but seven of the pages were “produced by the Office of the Chief of Protocol,” according to images obtained by NPR, which is part of the State Department.
The first five pages contain the sequence of the day’s events, including the participants, locations, and times. Below the names of Putin and his Russian aides sits a pronunciation for each name. Under the Russian president’s name, the file suggests: “POO-tihn.” The pages also contained phone numbers of government employees and a gift that Trump planned to give Putin, described as “American Bald Eagle Desk Statue.”
The sixth page showed a lunch seating chart. The two world leaders were seated at the centre of the table, flanked on both sides by their respective officials, six for Trump and five for Putin. The seventh page revealed the menu for lunch, which ended up being cancelled Friday. The first course would have offered a green salad with champagne vinaigrette dressing and sourdough bread with rosemary lemon butter. For the main course, there would’ve been a choice of either filet mignon with brandy peppercorn sauce or halibut Olympia.
A White House spokesperson told NPR that abandoning the documents in a public printer was not considered a security breach. Tommy Pigott, the State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson, told The Independent in a statement: “Instead of covering the historic steps towards peace achieved at Friday’s summit, NPR is trying to make a story out of a lunch menu. Ridiculous.” Other lawmakers and security experts lambasted the administration over the latest incident in Alaska.
