From Texas to Washington to Baghdad, intense secrecy was the word of the day for US President George W. Bush's unannounced visit to Iraq.

US President Bush leaves Air Force One early Friday morning, Nov. 28, 2003, after arriving at TSTC airfield after his visit to Iraq to spend Thanksgiving dinner with the troops. Bush boarded Marine One to his ranch near Crawford Texas.  [AP]

Secret Service agents guarding his Texas ranch were not told when the president quietly slipped away in an unmarked car, officials said. The agents remained at their posts as Bush was hustled to Air Force One at Texas State Technical College, a former military base.

The plane's departure was explained by the ruse that it needed maintenance in Washington.

The level of secrecy -- the tightest ever in recent memory -- was intended to prevent terrorists and Saddam Hussein loyalists from trying to take a shot at the president.

First lady Laura Bush, preparing a Thanksgiving Day dinner, didn't learn about the trip until Wednesday, one aide said. Another said she might have been told on Tuesday. The president, when talking by telephone from his ranch with White House chief of staff Andy Card, spoke in code words to keep the trip under wraps.

Bush's daughters, Barbara and Jenna, were not informed until just hours before he left. His parents, former President George H. W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, were not to be told until they arrived for Thanksgiving dinner, White House communications director Dan Bartlett said.

White House aides emphasized the high security risks and said the trip would be abandoned if word leaked out.

Retired Air Force Major General Don Shepperd, a military analyst, said he thought the risks "were absolutely minimal as long as secrecy could be maintained. And obviously all the stops were pulled out to keep this secret.''

US President George W. Bush carries a platter of turkey and fixings as he visits US troops for Thanksgiving in Baghdad.  [AFP]

Shepperd said other factors lowering the risk were the fact that Bush's plane landed at night, lowering the threat of heat-seeking missiles, and it has the latest available equipment for repelling such attacks.

Reporters who accompanied the president were not allowed to reveal Bush's trip until he was back on Air Force One and heading out of Baghdad.

Only a handful of aides knew in advance; Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was informed last week. Secretary of State Colin Powell also was in the loop, as was national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, officials said. Rice informed her deputy, Stephen Hadley, on Wednesday.

The press contingent included five reporters, a television producer and two-member camera crew, and five still photographers.

Bush made the 45-minute ride from the ranch to the airport in an unmarked vehicle. He joked about encountering traffic for the first time in three years, Bartlett said. The president stopped at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington to change planes and pick up some aides.

Reporters and photographers who had accompanied him from Texas were asked to take the batteries out of their phones. They were ordered to surrender their cell phones, pagers and other electronic devices until the plane was airborne.

Passengers were ordered to keep the plane's window blinds closed throughout the flight and were told that the aircraft would be flying in radio silence and would not be identified by its usual call sign, "Air Force One.''

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