Documents bearing the insignia of the US State Department, discovered Friday morning in the business center of a hotel in Alaska, revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the August 15 meetings between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage.
Eight pages, apparently produced by American personnel and accidentally left behind, contained the exact locations and times of the summit meetings, as well as the phone numbers of some American government employees.
Around 9 a.m., three guests of the Captain Cook hotel, a four-star hotel located 20 minutes from the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson military base in Anchorage, where the US and Russian leaders met, discovered the forgotten documents in one of the hotel's public printers.
NPR analyzed photos of the documents taken by one of the guests, who requested to remain anonymous, citing fear of reprisal.
Meeting agenda and gift for Putin
The first page of the stack of papers contained the sequence of meetings on August 15, including the exact names of the rooms at the military base where they were to take place. It also mentioned that Trump intended to offer Putin a symbolic gift.
"POTUS to President Putin: bald eagle office statue," the document stated.
List of participants and pronunciation of Putin's name
Pages 2–5 of the documents contained the names and phone numbers of three American staff members, as well as a list of 13 American and Russian leaders. The list included phonetic guides for the names of the Russian officials, including "Mr. President POO-tihn."
Pages 6 and 7 described how lunch was to be served at the summit and for whom. The documents included a menu stating that the lunch was "in honor of His Excellency Vladimir Putin."
Meal plan and canceled discussion menu
A meal plan sketch showed that Putin and Trump were to sit face to face at lunch. Trump would have been flanked by six officials: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on the right, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff on the left.
On the other side, Putin would have been seated next to his Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, and Presidential Adviser for Foreign Policy, Yuri Ushakov.
Although Friday's lunch was canceled, the documents indicated that it was designed as a simple meal, with three courses: green salad, filet mignon, and "olympia" halibut, with crème brûlée for dessert.
Criticism regarding lack of professionalism
White House Deputy Spokesperson Anna Kelly downplayed the incident, calling the documents "a multi-page lunch menu" and suggesting that leaving them in a public printer does not constitute a security breach. The US State Department did not respond to requests for comments.
Jon Michaels, a law professor at UCLA specializing in national security, stated that the documents found at the hotel printer indicate a serious lack of professionalism in preparing for such a significant meeting.
"It strikes me as yet another example of negligence and incompetence within the administration," Michaels said. "You just don't leave things like that in printers. It's so simple."
The printed documents represent the latest example of a series of security breaches in the Trump administration. Earlier this week, members of a law enforcement discussion group, including ICE agents, accidentally added an unknown person to a conversation about searching for a convicted criminal. In March, national security leaders mistakenly included a journalist in a chat about imminent military strikes in Yemen.