Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren In a sense, it’s a daring crime given that the aircraft and the individual traveling in its executive cabin are among the most heavily secured entities in the world. And yet, it has become shockingly common — a rite of passage where the thieves proudly discuss and display their stolen goods. Everyone, it appears, is pilfering from Air Force One. And it’s gotten so bad that last month, NBC correspondent KELLY O’DONNELL, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, included a terse reminder to colleagues that taking items off the plane was not allowed and reflected poorly on the press corps as a whole, several individuals who saw the off-the-record email confirmed. The rampant thievery makes sense when you remember that Washington is a town populated by a lot of ambitious, status-seeking dorks. Many people who fly with the president on Air Force One really want you to know they’ve flown on Air Force One. And sure, a picture that you tweet out may suffice. A tarmac photo of yourself beneath the hulking plane or a certificate from your first flight, which the Air Force will gladly produce and send you by mail, is fine, too. But what better way to convey your arrival in that stratosphere than with an actual keepsake? For years, scores of journalists — and others — have quietly stuffed everything from engraved whiskey tumblers to wine glasses to pretty much anything with the Air Force One insignia on it into their bag before stepping off the plane. “On my first flight, the person next to me was like, ‘You should take that glass,’” one current White House reporter told West Wing Playbook. “They were like: ‘Everyone does it.’” And they do. When we raised the subject with current and former White House correspondents, stories spilled forth. There’s one about the senator in the front of the plane who — as a chatty aide told reporters — was taking everything not bolted down. Several colleagues of one former White House correspondent for a major newspaper described them hosting a dinner party where all the food was served on 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 or porcelain plates in their backpacks. But this may be changing. O’Donnell’s warning to colleagues arose after a multi-day west coast swing in early February, according to six people familiar with the matter. The Air Force crew that serves passengers aboard the plane inventoried items following the trip and notified the White House Travel Office on Feb. 5 that several were missing from the press cabin. BRIE MOORE, the former director of press advance, passed word onto the press office, four of the people who spoke about the matter to West Wing Playbook confirmed. One of the press wranglers emailed everyone who’d been part of the press pool on the trip. The email, the people said, was not accusatory. “It was like, ‘Hey, if you inadvertently wound up taking something off the plane by mistake, we can help facilitate a quiet return.’” One individual who received the email had, in fact, gotten off the plane with an Air Force One embroidered pillowcase, and probably not by accident. When they wrote back admitting as much, arrangements were made for a discreet return. The wrangler slipped out of the White House to meet the reporter by the statue of ANDREW JACKSON in Lafayette Square, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the north gates. The pillowcase changed hands, and that was that. None of the other members of the pool replied to the email. The point of the crackdown, White House officials familiar with the matter said, was not to embarrass individual reporters but to send a message that the thefts needed to stop. A former administration official said that it hasn’t amounted to “a massive amount of theft. It was just a petty, chronic grift. But we appreciated that Kelly O took it seriously and sent that note.” In that note, O’Donnell relayed that Air Force One emblazoned items could, in fact, be purchased. “But the glasses that are sold on the [Air Force] site aren’t the same as the ones they have on the plane,” another former administration official said. “Same with the blankets. That’s why the ones on board are so coveted.” MESSAGE US — Are you IN POSSESSION OF AIR FORCE ONE DINNERWARE? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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