WASHINGTON, Nov 28: On Wednesday night, a vehicle with tinted windows moved along Interstate 35 in Texas slowly headed for Dallas.

The man and woman passengers in the van wore baseball caps low over their foreheads, tipping them even lower and slouching sideways in their seats from time to time.

“We looked like a normal couple,” the man — President George W. Bush — recounted less than 24 hours later with evident glee at having pulled off the biggest travel surprise since Richard Nixon’s national security adviser Henry Kissinger snuck in and out of Beijing, twice, in 1971. The woman in the baseball cap was Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.

Mr Bush stunned about 600 soldiers in Baghdad when he walked out with no announcement to wish them a happy Thanksgiving and thank them for their sacrifices in the war in Iraq. He helped serve them their Thanksgiving dinner.

The soldiers were not the only ones in shock. Almost the entire White House press corps, and for that matter just about the entire White House and even the president’s father — were as much in the dark as Air Force One when it touched down in Baghdad.

Even First Lady Laura Bush, Mr Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, were also kept in the dark. It is hard to imagine they would be considered security risks, but officials said they didn’t want to cause any change of plans or routine that might inadvertently show the president’s hand to outsiders.

On Thursday afternoon, en route back from Baghdad, the president called in the few reporters who had accompanied him on the trip and offered a tick-tock report of how he had kept his secret, well, secret. This was the scenario outlined by the US president:

In October, his chief of staff, Andy Card, first raised the idea of a lightning trip to Baghdad. By the time Bush visited Asia later in the month, serious planning was under way.

“I was assured by our planners and, as importantly, our military people — the pilot here of this aeroplane — that the risk could be managed” as long as the secret was kept. “I mean, I was the biggest sceptic of all,” Mr. Bush said. “I had a lot of questions.”

President Bush discussed the trip with first lady Laura Bush, whom he said was enthusiastic, and with twin college-age daughters Barbara and Jenna, who were also happy because they said “a lot of people their age” were serving in Iraq, according to the president.

The trip began when Mr. Bush and Ms Rice left the president’s ranch near Crawford en route to Air Force One; at the airport gate, Mr Bush said, he slouched and pulled his hat down to avoid being recognized. Observers were told Air Force One was being flown away for maintenance.