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).
It's a complete steaming pile of bullcrap we've come to expect from this incompetent bunch. I cannot believe for one millisecond that this was so highly classified that even the president was kept out of the loop.
AF1 doesn’t need a fighter escort. It’s capable of defending itself if it comes under attack.
Not at all. That's why I'd like to see the FAA memo. CBS has a history with memos. ;)
Does anyone know if the memo is online somewhere?
Democrat talking heads and politicians accused President Bush of being a cowboy, among other things. They squealed about his use of AF1 on September 11, 2001, for starters.
He would no more dream of sending his 747 with a military jet escort to buzz Manhattan and Jersey, than he would think of doing any of the other catastrophic changes that the Obama admin is perpetrating on the country.
This did not result in death, that we know of, like the invasion of the Branch Davidian complex did, but it is on the same order of arrogance.
Just horrible!