Flight over NYC stirs up outrage
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WASHINGTON - President Obama yesterday ordered a review of the decision to send a backup Air Force One plane swooping low over Manhattan for a publicity photo, as lawmakers demanded answers about responsibility and cost.
Obama said he wasn't informed before Monday's flight, which rattled windows in New York's financial district and prompted some office workers to flee their buildings in fear that it was another terrorist attack.
"It was a mistake," Obama said before a meeting at FBI headquarters in Washington. "It will not happen again."
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that Obama has directed Jim Messina, his deputy chief of staff, to review "how the decision was made to conduct the flight." The director of the White House military office, Louis Caldera, took blame for the incident in a statement Monday.
The incident continued to reverberate in New York and Washington, with two senators demanding an accounting of the approval process for the flight, how much it cost, and new procedures aimed at avoiding a repeat. "The supposed mission represents a fundamentally unsound exercise in military judgment and may have constituted an inappropriate use of Department of Defense resources," Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, wrote to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
The Air Force is still calculating the full cost of the exercise, but fuel alone cost at least $24,000, spokeswoman Vicki Stein said.
Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a statement that he asked Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, whose department oversees the Federal Aviation Administration, to create an "ironclad procedure" to inform the public about such flights at least 48 hours in advance. "Someone at the FAA should have had the foresight to realize that New Yorkers would see this stunt and think back to 9/11," Schumer said.
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"I hope that Sojourner Truth would be proud to see me, a descendant of slaves, serving as the first lady of the United States of America," Obama said at the new Capitol Visitor Center.
An early crusader for giving women the right to vote, as well as ending slavery, Truth met Presidents Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and Ulysses S. Grant in 1870.
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Special education teacher Anthony Mullen joined the president at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. "Teaching is . . . a passion and it's a calling," Obama said. "Nobody, I think, exhibits that more than our honoree today."
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