While hundreds of New Yorkers and New Jersyers(?) ran away from office buildings last Monday and scattered into the streets screaming about a terrorist attack, a mysterious airborne photographer cruised at an elevation of roughly 1500 feet taking pictures of Air Force One.
Today, that costly photograph has surfaced at last! And by costly I mean it was quite the Capitol Hill debacle, scared the living daylights out of plenty of 9/11 reminiscent people, and literally cost $328,000 
of taxpayer money.
A Goldman Sachs employee at the same Jersey City building that was featured in the haunting video taken from last week told Review reporters about the incident: “it was very freaky, the plane was making a b-line for the building, literally my whole floor took off screaming ‘lets go lets go,’ running toward the door. It was absurd. It wasn’t really panicking, but people had been in the WTC and around NYC on 9/11, so people seriously thought it was another attack. People were genuinely scared. It’s hard to imagine, but when you work in a building like that in NYC, it’s always in the back of your mind– it’s happened before, who knows, it may happen again.”
There is no doubt that the photo-op was ridiculous and unreasonable, but the plot got even thicker today when the white house administrator in charge of the photo shoot resigned simultaneously with the release of the photo. The letter Luis Caldera, Head of the White House military, wrote to Obama taking fault for the incident was subsequently released as well, and can be found here, but here’s a few excerpts.
I have concluded that the controversy surrounding the Presidential Airlift Group’s aerial photo shoot over New York City has made it impossible for me to effectively lead the White House Military Office. Moreover, it has become a distraction to the important work you are doing as President.
Obviously this has turned into a tourniquet operation to try and cut losses after the mess, and Caldera has been chosen as the scapegoat. Because he was literally in charge of the office responsible for the shoot, this makes sense. However, CNN reported that it was more of a bureaucratic disaster as appropriate people didn’t receive important emails, certain aides didn’t pick up phones, the usual results of inefficient bureaucracies. One thing worth pointing out however, was a tidbit that the New York Post reported, saying:
Gibbs said Obama has ordered a review of how the White House Military Office is set up, and how it reports to the White House and the Air Force.
That review, to be conducted by Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, will also offer recommendations to Obama designed to ensure that such an incident will not happen again, Gibbs said.
Really? How to prevent this incident again? Wow, this is an especially comical attempt to save backsides. It takes a committee and a review process to figure out how to not to do this again? I may have a solution: don’t fly a 747 and two fighter jets at 1500 feet around buildings in a recent disaster zone that was subject to attacks from low flying 747s.
