NEW YORK — One of the president’s official planes and a supersonic fighter jet zoomed past the lower Manhattan skyline in a flash just as the work day was beginning Monday. Within minutes, startled financial workers streamed out of their offices, fearing a nightmarish replay of Sept. 11.
For a half-hour, the Boeing 747 and F-16 jet circled the Statue of Liberty and the lower Manhattan skyline near the World Trade Center site. Offices evacuated. Dispatchers were inundated with calls. Witnesses thought the planes were flying dangerously low.
But the flyover was nothing but a photo op, carried out by the Defense Department, apparently one of a series of flights to get pictures of the president’s airliner in front of national landmarks.
Even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg didn’t know about it, and he later called it “insensitive” to fly so near the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The director of the White House military office, Louis Caldera, took the blame a few hours later. The airliner was a Boeing 747 that is called Air Force One when used by the president.
“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,” Caldera said.
When told of the flight, President Barack Obama was furious, a White House official said.
An administration official said the White House military office told the Federal Aviation Administration that it was updating file photos of Air Force One near national landmarks.
The FAA notified the New York Police Department of the flyover, telling them photos of the Air Force One jet would be taken about 1,500 feet above the Statue of Liberty around 10 a.m. Monday. It had a classified footnote that said “information in this document shall not be released to the public or the media.”
“Why the Defense Department wanted to do a photo op right around the site of the World Trade Center catastrophe defies the imagination,” Bloomberg said. “Poor judgment would be a nice ways to phrase it. … Had I known about it, I would have called them right away and asked them not to.”
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said typically a flight like this would be publicized to avoid causing a panic, but they were under orders not to in this case. They regularly get requests for flyovers, but without secrecy restrictions.
The FAA also alerted an official in the mayor’s office, but he didn’t tell Bloomberg, who said he first learned about it when his “BlackBerry went off crazy with people complaining about it.”
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