Topic: Military Plane's Secret Cargo Is A Little Bit Of Home Sweet Home

New York Daily News
February 28, 2007

From the outside, the C-17 cargo plane that carried Vice President Cheney to Afghanistan looked unremarkable.
Inside, it was a surprise.
Anchored to the floor in the cargo hold was a custom Airstream trailer - minus the wheels - featuring a wood-paneled cabin, plush gray leather chairs, matching carpeting, recessed ceiling lights, a coffee maker and a microwave oven.
In addition to a TV and DVD player mounted in a wall above the desk, there was some light reading like James McPherson's "This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War" for Cheney to peruse on the flight over from Pakistan, according to the pool reporter.
"Important people need to move in and out of country, and not all the aircraft are equipped to do that, but we are," Lt. Col Ricky Rupp told Bloomberg News.
While Rupp has flown hundreds of government officials aboard the Spirit of Strom Thurmond, Cheney outranked them all.
The C-17 is nowhere near as luxurious as Air Force Two, which Cheney left in Oman so he could travel relatively inconspicuously.
At one point Cheney was flying just 35 miles from Iranian air space. "One C-17 looks like all 161 others," Boeing spokesman Rick Sanford said.
Corky Siemaszko