Ooops, They Did It Again?

Homeland Security officials in Washington are distancing their department from what appears to have been a bungled Coast Guard training exercise at 9:30 a.m. in the Potomac River Friday morning. Precisely what happened is still being sorted out, but in a statement, the Coast Guard confirmed that as part of a "training event," Coast Guard boats were "operating in the vicinity" of the Memorial Bridge and 14th Street Bridge, which connect Virginia to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon, which was the only Washington-area target attacked by Al Qaeda hijackers exactly eight years ago, is located near the river between the two bridges, and President Obama was heading to the nearby Pentagon to attend a commemoration of the 9/11 attacks at the same time that the training event took place.  (Article continued below...)

According to a government source who was working nearby at the time, an internal Pentagon message system flashed an alert indicating that shots had been fired. The source said the alert indicated that this information may have originated with CNN. According to the Coast Guard statement on the incident, media reports about alleged gunfire "were based on overheard radio calls made over a training frequency." While insisting that no shots—involving either live ammunition or blanks—were fired during the training activity, Lt Nadine Santiago, a Coast Guard spokeswoman, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that as part of the exercise, one of the crewmen may have said "bang bang."  She said that one of the scenarios that is frequently practiced during exercises like the one conducted today is a drill in which Coast Guard boats challenge a boat which fails to heed an order to stop. She said that this may have been the scenario which the four-boat Coast Guard fleet, based at the service's Washington Station, was practicing on the Potomac today.

She said that the Coast Guard was currently conducting an investigation to determine why this particular exercise was scheduled for a time and location which might have caused alarm, given the resonance with the 9/11 anniversary and President Obama's visit to the Pentagon. "We're trying to get a clearer picture as to why this was chosen for today," she said.

"We are still gathering information of how this training event might have been misconstrued as an actual incident," the Coast Guard statement continued, adding that it had not yet been confirmed whether the Coast Guard boats were the same boats using the marine radio frequency over which the purported training messages apparently were transmitted. 

The Coast Guard insisted that in order to be prepared for contingencies, the service had to engage in "constant training and exercise" but declared that it would "conduct a thorough review of this incident." A government official, who requested anonymity when discussing a matter still under investigation, described the Coast Guard activity as a "low-level training exercise" which was not sanctioned by, or even known to, high-level Homeland Security officials. 

The incident caused traffic disruptions on Potomac River bridges, including an unusual late rush-hour jam on the bridge I was using to drive to work—the same bridge I used on the morning of the original 9/11 attacks. That morning, as I drove across the river, I could see smoke rising from where a hijacked United Airlines jet had crashed into the Pentagon. On Friday morning, an orange helicopter was circling over the river near the Lincoln Memorial (which is located at the D.C. end of Memorial Bridge). But no smoke could be seen from the direction of the Pentagon, and the late traffic delays were unexplained.

The White House acknowledged it was unaware of the exercise this morning, but pointed the finger at CNN for causing unnecessary drama by not verifying its reporting before going on air. "Before we report things like this, checking would be good," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters this morning. CNN fired back shortly thereafter, issuing a statement that read, in part, "After hearing a U.S. Coast Guard radio transmission that a boat had breached a security zone on the Potomac River a short distance from the Pentagon where the President had just attended a 9/11 anniversary ceremony, CNN contacted the Coast Guard public affairs office at the agency's headquarters. The Coast Guard spokeswoman said she was unaware of any activity taking place on the Potomac River. After hearing a further radio transmission about 10 rounds being expended, and after reviewing video of rapid movement by Coast Guard vessels as the President's motorcade crossed the Memorial Bridge, CNN reported the story... It would have been irresponsible not to report on what we were hearing and seeing."

Departures from Reagan National Airport, which is located on the Potomac just south of the 14th Street bridge, were suspended for about half an hour as a precautionary measure. 

A U.S. counterterrorism official said that the Potomac River is lined with video cameras and sensors to be carefully monitored for clues to possible terrorist incidents. But the official said that in practice the monitoring system has not been used effectively by D.C.-area authorities. Coast Guard Vice Adm. John Currier said that his agency did not notify other agencies—including the U.S. Secret Service, which guards the president and, like the Coast Guard, is part of the Homeland Security Department—of the training. He said such routine training exercises are conducted four times each week.

Friday's incident is the second this year in which a counterterrorism exercise caused major public anxiety. In late April, nervous New Yorkers scrambled to get off the streets as a government 747 jumbo jet, painted in Air Force One livery and escorted by F-16 fighter jets, flew uncomfortably close to skyscrapers in lower Manhattan. The flight turned out to be an exercise staged, in part, to give Air Force photographers an opportunity to take pictures of Air Force One over New York Harbor, and caused embarrassment to the Obama administration. The head of the White House Military Office subsequently resigned after questions were raised as to why the public was not given more advance notice of the exercise.

On Friday, Gibbs rejected comparisons to the controversial Air Force One flyover in New York and dismissed questions about whether it was appropriate to time such an exercise on 9/11, saying that it was not up to the White House to "micromanage" every government agency. "I tend not to question law enforcement," Gibbs said.