Coast Guard Exercise Rattles Capital

[Richard]

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Coast Guard Exercise Rattles Capital
David Stout, NYT, 11 Sep 2009

A Coast Guard training exercise in the Potomac River near the Pentagon stirred alarm and confusion on Friday morning around the time and the place that President Obama was observing the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The president’s motorcade had just crossed the Potomac, on its way back to the White House after a ceremony at the Pentagon honoring those who died there, when chatter on a marine radio channel used by the Coast Guard and monitored by the media told of shots being fired on the river.

No shots were actually fired in Friday’s training exercise that appears to have been routine in everything except for the date on which it was conducted. But while the confusion lasted only a few minutes, it was enough to scramble F.B.I. agents and halt departures from Reagan National Airport near the river from 10:08 a.m. until 10:30, Diane Spitaliere, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, told The Associated Press.

Much of the confusion seemed to have been stirred by reports on CNN, based on the radio chatter. Anyone listening to the marine frequency heard simulated instructions to fire 10 rounds at suspicious boats in the river. By the time it became clear that there actually were no shots and no suspicious boats, the confusion had taken on a life of its own, however brief.

It was far from clear whether the fault for the confusion lay with the Coast Guard or with CNN. The Coast Guard chief of staff, Vice Adm. John Currier, said at a mid-day news briefing that the exercise was entirely routine and that similar exercises are carried out several times a week.

In a statement before the briefing, the Coast Guard said: “The exercise was planned in advance and was being conducted on a marine radio frequency reserved for Coast Guard training and operations. No recreational boaters were involved in this training exercise.

“We are still gathering information of how this training event might have been misconstrued as an actual incident. We will conduct a thorough review of this incident.”

At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs said that officials had not been informed about the drill but that they had no objection. “We are all safer because of training exercises,” he said. “My only caution would be before we report things like this, checking would be good,” he said, criticizing CNN. As CNN continued to report what it described as a confrontation of some kind, several government agencies responded to questions by saying that it was only an exercise.

The CNN anchor Kyra Phillips said on the air that the network’s initial report arose from someone saying “bang, bang, bang” over a radio frequency monitored by the network’s police scanner.

“We did call the Coast Guard, and the Coast Guard said, ‘We don’t know what you’re talking about,’” Ms. Phillips said, according to The A.P. CNN went ahead with the account based on a reporter’s other sources, Ms. Phillips said.

A law enforcement official told The A.P. that federal agents rushed to the Potomac because the local F.B.I. office had not been notified about the exercise. But it was not immediately clear if the lack of notification could be described as an oversight, or whether the kind of exercise held in the river was so routine as not to call for advance notification.

On one of the bridges crossing the river, passersby seemed oblivious to the activity, involving four bright orange boats.

The Coast Guard vessels involved in the exercise were 25-footers carrying heavy machine guns among their weapons, so their appearance in the Potomac was dramatic in itself.

The brief disruption on Friday morning recalled an event earlier this year in New York City, when a presidential plane flew low over the city for a “photo opportunity,” stirring panic among people who recalled the toppling of the Twin Towers by hijacked jets on Sept. 11, 2001. But it was not immediately clear whether the Potomac incident reflected the kind of gross lack of communication that marked the flyover debacle and cost a White House official his job.

The Pentagon ceremony was timed to coincide almost to the minute that American Flight 77, which took off from Washington Dulles Airport, crashed into the Pentagon at 9:39 a.m.

For journalists and their critics, the mix-up on Friday could stir discussions and finger-pointing about the perils of listening too closely to police scanners and the rush to be first in this era of round-the-clock news.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/us...er=rss&emc=rss