An F-16 fighter jet trails a larger military aircraft over Lower Manhattan Monday, April 27, 2009, conducting a photo shoot that panicked thousands of New Yorkers who believed the city was in jeopardy for another terrorist attack.
Posted on 04/28/2009 9:23:47 PM PDT by GVnana
FAA Memo: Feds Knew NYC Flyover Would Cause Panic
Threatened Federal Sanctions Against NYPD, Secret Service, FBI & Mayor's Office If Secret Ever Got Out
Furious Obama Apologizes: "It Will Never Happen Again"
CBS News Interactive: Sept. 11 And Since Reporting Marcia Kramer NEW YORK (CBS) ―
An F-16 fighter jet trails a larger military aircraft over Lower Manhattan Monday, April 27, 2009, conducting a photo shoot that panicked thousands of New Yorkers who believed the city was in jeopardy for another terrorist attack.
Dozens of people evacuated outside 17 State Street after military jets were seen escorting a 747 in Manhattan on April 27, 2009.
A furious President Barack Obama ordered an internal review of Monday's low-flying photo op over the Statue of Liberty.
CBS 2 HD has discovered the feds will have plenty to question.
Federal officials knew that sending two fighter jets and Air Force One to buzz ground zero and Lady Liberty might set off nightmarish fears of a 9/11 replay, but they still ordered the photo-op kept secret from the public.
In a memo obtained by CBS 2 HD the Federal Aviation Administration's James Johnston said the agency was aware of "the possibility of public concern regarding DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft flying at low altitudes" in an around New York City. But they demanded total secrecy from the NYPD, the Secret Service, the FBI and even the mayor's office and threatened federal sanctions if the secret got out.
(Excerpt) Read more at wcbstv.com ...
The GOP can CGI it close enough.
LOL! "Furious" my ass. Every media outlet buys this bullsh*t WH story. We all know damn well this was ordered by Axelrod himself for 2012 footage.
An F-16 fighter jet trails a larger military aircraft over Lower Manhattan Monday, April 27, 2009, conducting a photo shoot that panicked thousands of New Yorkers who believed the city was in jeopardy for another terrorist attack.
These goof balls in the White House think they're playing many of us for fools.
What the h&!! do they need a "photo shoot" for. A total waste of taxpayer money.
For now, unfortunately, the White House has it right.
Given the way the election went, I'd say they're right.
This clearly exposes how inexperienced and out of his league Obama is. If he can’t handle something so basic, how would he handle a serious crisis? And Biden was right about one thing, Obama will be tested. We’re in big trouble. 2010 and 2012 can’t get here fast enough.
Is it still a secret? Why Obama?
This stunt, reported by FOX, cost the US Taxpayers about $380,000.00.
The president didn’t know that Air Force One was flying over Manhattan?
Tell me another whopper!
Since Obama isn’t gun shy about releasing interrogation memos putting all of us at risk, I wonder why he hasn’t called for the public release of this memo over an incident that scared the crap out of every man, woman and child that lives and works near Ground Zero.
Mr. Obama, may I recommend a little product called Photoshop?
If this was done under the Bush Adm, the MSM would be going Ape Sh*t 24/7.
Good point. Except...we know the answer already.
Where's all this “live our values” stuff? Ah, but it's just so fine to waste money, put unnecessary pollution in the air and scare the day lights out of the same people who lived through 9/11.
Arrogant retards.
Chaos and fear are a fascist’s best friend... He could’ve even been the one to say - “do it anyway” and we’d never know... I don’t trust him ONE BIT.
Uh, no they don’t. The Air Force is certainly in charge of Air Force One but this decision to put it up in the air comes straight from Obama himself, and there is a lot of prior preparation and planning that goes into putting it up in the air. We’re not gonna learn much from Obama’s internal review. We’re certainly not going to learn that the White House is incompetent and I hardly believe Caldera will be out of work. What we already know is Obama’s dislike for the military. Even if he did know, this sort of crap fuels his ego.
He must of wanted the genuine thing since his forgers botched his photoshopped 'Certification of Live Birth' /not so much sarcasm...
Fighters can photogragh but the quality sucks. There are better platforms to take pictures from. I submit to you that da bigg 0 loaned AF1 to one or more of his buddies for a fly-by and he will soon be outed.
Fighters can photogragh but the quality sucks. There are better platforms to take pictures from. I submit to you that da bigg 0 loaned AF1 to one or more of his buddies for a fly-by and he will soon be outed.
The media's way of downplaying the entire event.
That number doesn't sound as big and mindboggling as $9 trillion, which is how much Obama has burned away in an effort to further his brand of Marxism.
1) Who was on Air Force One for this flight?
2) How much did this Photo Op cost, at a time when my taxes are being raised to death our convenient “crisis”?
3) Who requested and authorized this fiasco?
4) Exactly how many thousands of citizens were terrified by this fiasco?
5)What was the intended use of the photos taken?
AND, BTW, Obama’s excuses: “The flyover — apparently ordered by the White House Office of Military Affairs so it would have souvenir photos of Air Force One with the Statue of Liberty in the background...” doesn't pass the “smell test”. No way the DOD dreamed up this stunt. Why didn't they do this over the past eight years if it was so important? No, it was Obama and his merry band of delinquents and thugs who dreamed up this mess, and they need to be furnished big time.
Sounds fishy. Sounds more like some VIP was given a sightseeing flyover—hence the need for F-16 escorts and no announcement to the public.
The rest is White House CYA, IMHO...
The MSM can’t cover up for Obama on this screw up.
The plane was in the friggin’ sky and it terrorize New Yorkers, many of whom probably voted for the big Zero.
People can see that with their own eyes and they ain’t buying the official story.
Since there is no reasonable explanation for what happen, the MSM will just have to sink this story down the memory hole. They will say, “The President apologized, so let’s just move on. Now, more about the swine flu.”
If the press doesn’t zero in on this in the “100 Days” celebratory press conference, there is no press left at all.
Not only a waste of money, but in a time of recession to spend money for a photo-opp is ridiculous, evil, and incompetent. Zero and his buddies have no respect for the value of a tax dollar. For them it is like monopoly money to play with; oblivious to the consequences of their actions. The pain and suffering that will be caused by this fool will be astronomical in magnitude. GOD help us!
The answers to those highly legitimiate questions, (as well as some of my own that I have posed here), would require:
a) A Republican leadership with balls.
b) A truly professional media engaged in actual newsworthy reporting and public service.
In actuality, we have:
c) None of the above.
The secret part gets me though? Why did it need to be a secret?
Sounds like it to me, too. If this incident was actually what they were saying it was, a photo-op, they would have used a helicopter to get great shots of the plane and the terrain. Someone big enough to require a fighter escort was on that plane.
My guess is either a bigtime fundraiser, or Michelle and the kids.
Obama was NOT FURIOUS! The Jerk was laughing about it even today sitting next to Robert Mueller. If ZERO was truly FURIOUS about it, He would have responded immediately and Baghdad Bob Gibbs wouldn’t have been laughing about it late in the afternoon, some eight hours after it happened and making a FOOL out of himself and ZERO HUSSEIN by telling the reporters they should contact the FAA or “THE WHITE HOUSE!” Gibbs is the WH, and the bassshat oughta at least know that! THIS was an Act of TERROR WROUGHT on ALL NEW YORKERS BY ZERO, HIMSELF!
There’s got to be a hidden message there somewhere.
Maybe it was God.
I think He's got his own plane.
I’d bet on that one, too. Showin’ off the pimped out seven-fo’-seven, big screen tv, smokin’ the crack pipe and grinding on some chicken & waffles.
Look at the angle of bank on that 747, its at least 45 degrees, being flown more like a Fighter than a Transport:-)
Bettin that ZERO and some of his Buddies were on board for a Thrill Ride and an Ego Trip! Reggie Love was no doubt serving ZERO peanut butter sandwiches and helping him wipe his lips as all good butlers do:-(
Someone big enough to require a fighter escort was on that plane.
Fidel Castro? Hugo Chavez? King of Saud? King of Jordan?
We know it wasn’t Bibi.
when’s the next lecture on fiscal responsibility? I want to know more about this...it makes NO SENSE. WHO WAS ON THAT PLANE? That’s confidential..but memos about interrogation have to be transparent. I swear we’ve all lost our collective mind.
AMEN! ZERO was sending a message to his Muslim Buddies! “Look what I can do at the snap of my Arab Fingers!” and tried to camouflage it as a photo op{*}
LOL! "Furious" my ass. Every media outlet buys this bullsh*t WH story. We all know damn well this was ordered by Axelrod himself for 2012 footage.
Yeah, he's running for re-election to Terrorist in Chief. All his Hamas and Muzzy friends will vote him in -- as long as Soros and the King of Saudi Arabia approve, of course.
That’s it! I’d bet a whole bucket of chicken and waffles it was either Fidel or Chavez!
Something is really screwy with this story. It would be plausible that AF1 was doing some training type of exercise. Many of these excercises are videotaped from a tailing jet, hence the F16. Oh yeah, we would like to take some great pics while we were over Manhatten. This is even plausible. But they haven’t made these reasonable arguments because they are not true. What is the truth?
some speculated it was film for a Spike Lee movie
ZERO DISRESPECTS The Military and ZERO DISRESPECTS AMERICA!!:-(
That is Pathetic! and His Ghostwriter and Close Friend, illiam Ayers, Hates America since before 1970 when He Bombed The PENTAGON an Got Away With IT!
Because both of the AF1 planes are awesomely important security assets, and giving terrorists a big heads up about where either one of them is going to be in the air at a given time creates too big of risk of one of them being taken out, leaving POTUS with no back-up plane in the event of mechanical or other problems with the first one.
But, plenty of information could have been disseminated to prevent panic, without specifying that one of the planes involved would be an AF1 plane. I suspect this may be where the screw-up occurred -- i.e. somebody high up in DoD put out the word that the involvement of AF1 must be kept an absolute secret, and somebody between that person and the few public officials who got any information at all, misunderstood this directive to mean that entire mission had to be kept an absolute secret.
This doesn't make sense -- clearly we're still only getting garbled bits and pieces of the story. The FAA isn't in the business of giving a crap about secrecy of DoD flights -- it simply follows orders re DoD flights. Only the DoD would issue a directive requiring secrecy re a planned flight. The "they" referred to in the above paragraph therefore isn't the FAA -- if any party "demanded total secrecy" it would have been DoD (and possibly also the Secret Service, which may be involved in any use of either of the Air Force One planes). The notion that anyone in the FAA "demanded total secrecy . . . from the Secret Service" re an AF1 flight is too ludicrous for words. Anything that emanated from the FAA to that effect was just a DoD directive being passed along.
And the headline is simply false, at least based on what follows. "Possibility of public concern" is a long, long way from mass panic and building evacuations on the scale of the New York Mercantile Exchange and other large financial businesses. "Possibility of public concern" applies every time a fighter jet passes over the city at an altitude that can be detected by a paranoid citizen with a pair of binoculars. It's perfectly reasonable not to announce such things to the public, and to instruct 911 operators to reassure callers that it's "an authorized military flight".
There are many things that random nervous people call 911 over, that don't warrant advance public announcements. There's no evidence (yet, at least) that anyone involved in planning this flight and related communications had a clue that it would result in mass panic and full evacuations of large buildings by sensible people. And THAT is what we should be really worried about. Because either the people planning the flight are incredibly clueless (and thus shouldn't have authority over any aircraft bigger than a remote-controlled toy model airplane), or there was a serious breakdown in communications between the people involved in planning and the people involved in executing an unusual training mission involving an AF1 craft and escorting F-16s (and that's a pretty scary concept too, given that these would be the same people planning and executing "real" missions involving AF1+POTUS and escorting fighter jets).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.