What were they thinking?!
This is stupefying in its disregard for what constitutes a terribly bad idea, and its terrible consequences.
A White House official apologized Monday after a low-flying Boeing 747 spotted above the Manhattan skyline frightened workers and residents into evacuating buildings.
The huge aircraft, which functions as Air Force One when the president is aboard, was taking part in a classified, government-sanctioned photo shoot, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
A photo shoot?! To capture film of Air Force One in the same frame with the Statue of Liberty? While countless thousands of New York and New Jersey residents were terrorized at the very sight of what appeared, viscerally, to be another potential attack in the making?
“Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision,” said Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office. “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.”
Aren’t there more checks and balances for rogue operators like this? How much did this exercise in creative marketing cost? Besides nerves, lost work time, panic moves to seek shelter, emergency calls to loved ones and offices, etc….
Witnesses reported seeing the plane circle over the Upper New York Bay near the Statue of Liberty before flying up the Hudson River. It was accompanied by two F-16s.
The White House military office was trying to update its file photos of Air Force One. Excuse us.
“The president was furious about it,” one of the officials said. The incident outraged many New Yorkers, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“First thing is, I’m annoyed — furious is a better word — that I wasn’t told,” he said, calling the aviation administration’s decision to withhold details about the flight “ridiculous” and “poor judgment.”
“Why the Defense Department wanted to do a photo op right around the site of the World Trade Center defies the imagination,” he said.
They would be annihilating an unpopular president for this. The president’s own party is very unhappy about it, for good reason.
Sen. Chuck Schumer echoed the mayor’s sentiments in a separate news conference Monday afternoon, saying the Federal Aviation Administration should have notified the public to avoid panic.
“It is absolutely outrageous and appalling to think that the FAA would plan such a photo shoot and not warn the public, knowing full well New Yorkers still have the vivid memory of 9/11 sketched in their minds,” the New York Democrat said. Schumer said the FAA’s decision to not announce the fly-by “really borders on being either cruel or very very stupid.”
Or some astonishing degree of both.
