Obama Orders Review of $329,000 Air Force Flight Over New York

President Barack Obama ordered a review of the decision giving the go-ahead to a $329,000 publicity-photo shoot over New York City with one of the planes that serves as Air Force One.

Obama “was furious” when he learned about the April 27 flight and the tumult it caused when the VC-25, a military version of Boeing Co.’s 747, and two F-16 fighter jets flew low over New York Harbor, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

The president directed Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina to find out “how the decision was made to conduct the flight” and “why the decision was made,” Gibbs said yesterday.

Obama gave a short answer to reporters who asked him about the incident as he arrived for an event in Washington yesterday. “It was a mistake,” he said at FBI headquarters. “It will not happen again.”

The aircraft rattled windows in New York’s financial district and prompted some office workers to flee buildings in fear it was a repeat of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The incident continued to reverberate in New York and Washington yesterday with two senators demanding an accounting of how the flight was approved and 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 of Arizona wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Seeking Answers

McCain, the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, asked Gates to provide a description of the mission, who ultimately approved it and how much it cost. While McCain gave the Pentagon until May 4 to provide answers, the Air Force released the numbers last night.

The estimated cost for all three aircraft was $328,835, Air Force spokeswoman Vicki Stein said in an e-mailed response to inquiries.

That includes $300,658 for the VC-25, which flew a three- hour mission, and about $28,178 for the F-16 jets, which flew 1.8 hours each, Stein said.

The total includes fuel used in flight, fuel needed to power ground equipment that helped prepare the aircraft, and ground maintenance, Stein said. The flights were a training mission and “the hours would have been flown regardless,” she said.

Picture Mission

Gibbs said the flyover was “two training missions that became, in the end, a picture mission” and only Air Force personnel were aboard. Obama and his senior staff weren’t informed about it in advance, he said.

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York said in a statement that he asked Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, whose department oversee the Federal Aviation Administration, to create an “ironclad procedure” to tell the public about such flights at least 48 hours in advance.

“Somewhere along the line, 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.

McCain, who ran against Obama in the 2008 presidential election, also said that the disruption and panic caused by the flight should have been foreseeable. He wrote that the apology and acceptance of responsibility from Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, “rings hollow.”

Responsibility

Obama yesterday ignored questions from reporters about whether Caldera should keep his job.

Caldera took responsibility for authorizing a flight for the specially equipped 747 aircraft in a statement issued late April 27.

He apologized for “any distress” it caused. While federal officials “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,” he said.

Caldera, 53, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a lawyer, was secretary of the Army during the Clinton administration and previously was a state legislator in California.

Gibbs said the White House review of the incident probably wouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks. “And the president will look at that review and take any appropriate steps after that,” Gibbs said.

Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said the incident wasn’t likely to spark congressional action.

‘Communications Mistake’

“Obviously we’re caught in a communications mistake,” Levin told reporters in Washington. “I can’t believe they’re not going to correct it on their own without a hearing.”

Paul Browne, deputy New York City police commissioner, said April 27 that the department was told by the FAA not to inform the public about what it thought would be a higher flyover by the aircraft.

The planes flew past the Statue of Liberty and the financial district near the World Trade Center site that was hit in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The aircraft were on a “photo mission,” Jim Peters, an FAA spokesman, said.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was “furious” when he learned about the flight. The planes flew as low as 1,000 feet (305 meters), he said at a City Hall news conference.

The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP. link...