MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st February, 2023) The White House instructed two pool reporters on Friday to keep US President Joe Biden's visit to Kiev a secret, Sabrina Siddiqui, the White House pool reporter for The Wall Street Journal, said on Monday.
Siddiqui said in a pool report that only she and Evan Vucci, a pool reporter for Associated Press, accompanied Biden to Kiev. She noted that they were summoned to the White House communications director Kate Bedingfield's office on Friday, with White House Communications Agency President Tamara Keith also attending the meeting. During the meeting, the reporters were informed that Biden would be traveling to Kiev and that they would be the only journalists traveling with him.
"Your pool was sworn to secrecy about the trip and told to look out for an email containing instructions for an early Sunday morning departure from Andrews Air Force Base. The subject line would read: Arrival instructions for the golf tourney," Siddiqui said.
She added that she received the email containing instructions at 3:00 p.m. EST on Saturday. In the email, she was told to report to Andrews between 2:00 a.m. and 2:15 a.m. EST on Sunday.
Siddiqui said that her and Vucci's phones were taken by US agents and were returned upon their arrival at the US Embassy in Kiev more than 24 hours later.
The journalist said she did not see Biden boarding a plane at Andrews or leaving it, nor she saw the president getting aboard a train from Poland to Ukraine. She did not see Biden until after they arrived in Kiev. The first she saw the president was when he left the train minutes later after US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Biden's Deputy Chief of Staff Jen O'Malley Dillon.
On Monday, Biden arrived in Kiev for an unannounced visit for the first time since the start of Russia's special operation and met with Zelenskyy. During a briefing, Biden said that Ukraine would receive a new military assistance package worth $500 million, as well as "billions" in direct budgetary support this week.
