[Infowarrior] - White House Apologizes for Air Force Flyover

[Richard Forno]

April 27, 2009, 10:36 am
White House Apologizes for Air Force Flyover
By A. G. Sulzberger AND Matthew L. Wald

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/air-force-one-backup-rattles-new-york-nerve/?pagemode=print

An Air Force One lookalike, the backup plane for the one regularly  
used by the president, flew low over parts of New York and New Jersey  
on Monday morning, accompanied by two F-16 fighters, so Air Force  
photographers could take pictures high above the New York harbor.

But the exercise — conducted without any notification to the public —  
caused momentary panic in some quarters and led to the evacuation of  
several buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City. By the  
afternoon, the situation had turned into a political fuse box, with  
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg saying that he was “furious” that he had  
not been told in advance about the flyover.

At 4:39 p.m. Monday, the White House issued an apology for the  
flyover. Louis E. Caldera, director of the White House Military  
Office, who served in the Clinton administration as secretary of the  
Army, said in a statement:

Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility  
for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to  
notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it’s  
clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize  
and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused.

The mission on Monday, officials said, was set up to create an iconic  
shot of Air Force One, similar to one that was taken in recent years  
over the Grand Canyon.

When President Obama learned of the episode on Monday afternoon, aides  
said, he, too, was furious. Senior administration officials conveyed  
the president’s anger in a meeting with Mr. Caldera on Monday afternoon.

A senior administration official said that an F.A.A. official notified  
Mayor Bloomberg’s office last week about the flyover. She said that  
Marc Mugnos, the director of operations in the office of citywide  
event coordination and management, was the official notified about the  
Air Force operation.

The flyover, which began around 10 a.m., resulted in widespread  
confusion and a flood of calls to emergency hot lines. Perplexed  
officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and other  
authorities were inundated with calls from anxious ferry passengers,  
office workers and residents.

The mayor said the Police Department and someone in his administration  
– he did not say who – received an e-mail from the Federal Aviation  
Administration late on Thursday, informing them that there would be “a  
fly-by for a photo-op, as they described it.”

However, Mr. Bloomberg said he was not apprised of the flyover until  
his BlackBerry started buzzing this morning with messages from people  
asking if he knew what was going on. He characterized it as a  
breakdown in communication that “will never happen again.”

“First thing is, I’m annoyed – furious is a better word – that I  
wasn’t told,” he said at a City Hall news conference held to discuss  
the swine flu cluster in Queens.

In unusually harsh language, the mayor criticized the Defense  
Department for conducting the exercise and the Federal Aviation  
Administration for being secretive about it.

Jim Peters, an F.A.A. spokesman, said “the photo op was approved and  
coordinated with everyone.” Notification was made in advance to the  
mayor’s office, “including its 911 and 311 operation centers,” the New  
York City Police Department, the New Jersey State Police, the United  
States Park Police and other agencies, he said.

The Police Department confirmed that it had been notified about the  
event but said it had been barred from alerting the public. “The  
flight of a VC-25 aircraft and F-16 fighters this morning was  
authorized by the F.A.A. for the vicinity of the Statue of Liberty  
with directives to local authorities not to disclose information about  
it but to direct any inquiries to the F.A.A. Air Traffic Security  
Coordinator,” the Police Department said in a statement.

The mayor criticized the secrecy around the flyover. The e-mail  
notification “did have the normal language of saying this is sensitive  
information, should be distributed on a need-to-know basis, that they  
did not plan to have any publicity about it, which I think is  
ridiculous and just poor judgment,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

He added:

Why the Defense Department wanted to do a photo-op right around the  
site of the World Trade Center catastrophe defies imagination. Poor  
judgment would be a nice ways to phrase it, but they did. I also think  
that once they had told us, we should have done a better job. Had I  
known about it, I would have called them right away and asked them not  
to. It is the federal government and they can do in the end what they  
please, but I would have tried to stop it. I don’t know there’s a lot  
else to say other than they shouldn’t have done it.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said Monday afternoon  
that he was unaware of the flyover. At his daily press briefing, Mr.  
Gibbs initially referred questions to the F.A.A. and the Air Force.  
When told that those government offices were referring questions to  
the White House, Mr. Gibbs said: “I have no information on this other  
than what I saw.”

Mr. Gibbs, pressed by reporters, said he had seen news reports of the  
flyover, but declared: “I was working on other things. You might be  
surprised to know that I don’t know every movement of Air Force One.”  
Later, he added that he would look into the matter.

The flyover was scheduled for 10 to 10:30 a.m. The plane is designated  
by the Defense Department as a VC-25 but is recognizable to the public  
as a Boeing 747.
Dan Kohn A reader, Dan Kohn, took this picture of planes flying low  
over the harbor on Monday morning. At the rear is the Goldman Sachs  
tower in Jersey City.

Unaware of the planned exercise, scores of office workers flooded out  
of buildings, worried about the prospect of terrorism.

“People came pouring out of the buildings, the American Express  
Building, all the buildings in the financial district by the water,”  
said Edward Acker, a photographer who was at the building, 3 World  
Financial Center. “And even the construction guys over by 100 North  
End Avenue area, they all got out of their buildings. Nobody knew  
about it. Finally some guy showed up with a little megaphone to tell  
everyone it was a test, but the people were not happy. The people who  
were here 9/11 were not happy.”

Mr. Acker added: “New York City police were standing right there and  
they had no knowledge of it. The evacuations were spontaneous. Guys  
from the floor came out, and one guy I talked to was just shaking.”

Even the markets dipped shortly after 10 a.m., though it was unclear  
if the alarm over the planes was a factor. Starting at 10:02 a.m.,  
three main market indexes started dropping precipitously. The Dow  
Jones industrial average dropped 40 points in 10 minutes, starting  
10:15 a.m., before it rebounded more than 50 points.

In Jersey City, construction workers were evacuated from a condominium  
tower under construction at 77 Hudson Street.

The workers, who were on the 32nd floor of the construction site, said  
the plane circled three times past the Goldman Sachs tower, the  
tallest building in New Jersey. On the second pass, they said, the jet  
appeared to be only a few dozen feet from the building — close enough  
to clip the side of the skyscraper. A fighter followed right behind,  
mirroring its moves.

The construction site as were other buildings in downtown Jersey City,  
including offices in the Exchange Place financial complex.

Carlina Rivera, 25, who works at an educational services company on  
the 22nd floor of 1 Liberty Plaza, said her co-workers were spooked in  
part because their offices are so close to the site of the 9/11  
attack. “As soon as someone saw how close it got to the buildings,  
people literally ran out,” she said. “Probably about 80 percent of my  
office left within two minutes of seeing how close it got to our  
building.”

Ms. Rivera, who was a high school student in the East Village when the  
9/11 attack occurred, added, “I did feel a little bit foolish for  
staying in the office while everyone left.”

Ms. Rivera said eventually there was a message made over the public  
announcement system that the plane was an advertisement for a movie —  
which she said that did not coincide with what they were reading  
online about the plane taking pictures of the Statue of Liberty. “It  
was a little confusing. What was the truth?” she said.

Ms. Rivera continued: “Of course, everyone had to take out their  
cellphones and say, ‘You can come back, it’s O.K.’ Eventually they  
returned with some sort of comfort food. We feel like we should have  
at least been warned.”

At 1 Liberty Plaza, according to another person who works in Lower  
Manhattan, a loudspeaker announcement said at 10:55 a.m., “Planes were  
observed flying low over Lower Manhattan, but were part of an approved  
federal action.”

Johnny Villafane, 42, of the Upper West Side, said, “The plane did a  
360. There was a vibration. The glass in the skyscrapers was  
shivering.” He added, “It sounded like the building were cracking,  
everything started shaking. I thought the plane was coming down.”

Sidney Bordley, a floor director in an office building at 1 Battery  
Park Place, said, “People were running out of the office, claiming  
they saw a commercial flight being pursued by F-16’s.” He added,  
“There was some confusion and a little excitement.”

A group of financial services workers, who were gathered outside the  
same building but declined to give their names, described their  
reactions. “I saw the landing gear and I was out of here,” one said.  
Another said: “There were people in my elevator, sweating and shaking.  
There were women
crying. It was not an experience to be taken lightly.”

Andrew Burke, 49, a T-shirt vendor from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, said:  
“People panicked and ran into the streets thinking the worst.” He  
added, “It’s a real shame they couldn’t tell the city what they were  
going to do.”

Notify NYC, a pilot electronic service intended to quickly provide  
emergency alerts to New Yorkers who sign up for them, did not prove  
particularly effective.

Text messages and e-mail messages explaining the flyover were sent out  
at 10:38 a.m., after the exercise was already scheduled to end. “The  
community was startled, and would have preferred advance warning,”  
said Catherine McVay Hughes, vice chairwoman of Community Board 1 in  
Lower Manhattan.

Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority, which runs the  
region’s three major airports, said the low-flying planes prompted  
confusion. “This has nothing to do with any of our airports,” he added.

The Staten Island Advance reported that the Federal Aviation  
Administration had authorized the flights and that the flights were  
“pre-planned.”

President Obama was not aboard the plane, nor was he in the New York  
area. He gave a speech at 9 a.m. at the National Academy of Sciences  
in downtown Washington.

It was not the first time that flyovers had left anxiety in Lower  
Manhattan.

In February 2002, two Air Force F-16 fighters flew low over Manhattan  
as they made their way back to Atlantic City after a regular patrol.  
Officials later acknowledged that “the timing and location” of the  
flyover were “poorly coordinated.”

And in May 2003, a Continental Airlines flight carrying American  
troops returning from Iraq received permission to fly low around the  
city, a decision that also rattled nerves.

Jessica Bagdorf, Sewell Chan, Jennifer 8. Lee, Colin Moynihan,  
Fernanda Santos, Daniel E. Slotnik and Jeff Zeleny contributed  
reporting.