Papers with US State Department markings, found Friday morning in the business center of an Alaskan hotel, revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the Aug. 15 meetings between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage.
Eight pages, which appear to have been produced by US staff and left behind accidentally, shared precise locations and meeting times of the summit and phone numbers of US government employees. On Saturday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly dismissed the papers as a "multi-page lunch menu" and suggested leaving the information on a public printer was not a security breach.
At around 9:00 a.m. on Friday, three guests at Hotel Captain Cook, a four-star hotel located 20 minutes from the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, where leaders from the US and Russia convened, found the documents left behind in one of the hotel's public printers. NPR reviewed photos of the documents taken by one of the guests, who NPR agreed not to identify because the guest said they feared retaliation.
The first page in the printed packet disclosed the sequence of meetings for August 15, including the specific names of the rooms inside the base in Anchorage where they would take place. It also revealed that Trump intended to give Putin a ceremonial present. "POTUS to President Putin," the document states, "American Bald Eagle Desk Statue."
Pages 2 through 5 of the documents listed the names and phone numbers of three US staff members, as well as the names of 13 US and Russian state leaders. The list provided phonetic pronouncers for all the Russian men expected at the summit, including "Mr. President POO-tihn." Pages 6 and 7 in the packet described how lunch at the summit would be served, and for whom. A menu included in the documents indicated that the luncheon was to be held "in honor of his excellency Vladimir Putin."
A seating chart shows that Putin and Trump were supposed to sit across from each other during the luncheon. Trump would be flanked by six officials: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to his right, and Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff to his left. Putin would be seated immediately next to Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov and Aide to the President for Foreign Policy Yuri Ushakov.
During the summit on Friday, lunch was apparently cancelled. But it was intended to be a simple, three-course meal, the documents showed. After a green salad, the world leaders would dine on filet mignon and halibut olympia. Crème brûlée would be served for dessert.
Jon Michaels, a professor of law at UCLA who lectures about national security, said that the documents found in the printer of the Alaskan hotel reveal a lapse in professional judgment in preparation for a high-stakes meeting. "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."
The printed papers are the latest example of a series of security breaches by officials of the Trump administration. Earlier this week, members of a law enforcement group chat that included members of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) added a random person to a conversation about an ongoing search for a convicted attempted murderer. In March, US national security leaders accidentally included a journalist in a group chat about impending military strikes in Yemen.
