Guests at a top Alaska hotel made a shocking discovery on Friday morning. Papers marked with U.S. State Department logos were left in the business center of the Hotel Captain Cook. The documents revealed secret details about the Aug. 15 meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage.
The eight-page packet appeared to have been accidentally left behind by U.S. staff. It included exact locations and times of meetings, phone numbers of U.S. government employees, and even the planned ceremonial gift for Putin. According to the documents, Trump was set to give Putin an American Bald Eagle Desk Statue.
Three hotel guests found the papers around 9 a.m., about 20 minutes from the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, where the summit took place. NPR reviewed photos of the documents taken by one of the guests, who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation. Neither the White House nor the State Department commented on the leak.
The packet revealed detailed summit plans. Pages 2 to 5 listed U.S. staff members’ names and phone numbers, along with the names of 13 U.S. and Russian leaders. The documents even included pronunciation guides for the Russian officials, such as “Mr. President POO-tihn.”
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Pages 6 and 7 showed lunch arrangements, including a three-course menu for the leaders. Trump and Putin were scheduled to sit across from each other. Trump’s side included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to his right. To his left were Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Putin was to sit next to his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and aide Yuri Ushakov. Lunch was apparently canceled during the summit, but the menu would have included green salad, filet mignon, halibut olympia, and crème brûlée.
Jon Michaels, a UCLA law professor who teaches national security, said the discovery showed a serious lapse in judgement.
“It strikes me as further evidence of the sloppiness and the incompetence of the administration,” Michaels said. “You just don’t leave things in printers. It’s that simple.”
This is the latest security mishap linked to the Trump administration. Earlier this week, ICE officials accidentally added a stranger to a group chat about an ongoing search for a convicted attempted murderer. In March, U.S. national security officials accidentally included a journalist in a group chat about planned military strikes in Yemen.
Featured image via Screengrab
