Friday, November 21, 2003

White House Is Evacuated, but the Scene is Serene:
We Will Not Be Intimidated… We Will Not Be Intimidated…

"Was it a bird, a plane, a computer glitch? No one connected to the nation's air defense system claimed to know, but whatever it was, it briefly turned the White House upside down on Thursday.

About 9:20 a.m., staff members in the West Wing and schoolchildren on tours were suddenly ordered by the Secret Service to evacuate. The initial word was that radar had picked up a plane flying within five miles of restricted White House airspace."


In fact, it was nothing more than a false alarm. But somewhere, somehow, someone monitoring a computer screen saw something disturbing on a clear blue late fall morning in the nation's capital. Officials at the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, in Colorado Springs, would provide no other details, but they scrambled two F-16 fighter jets from the nearby Andrews Air Force Base to investigate.

The White House staff, meanwhile, clustered across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House near the historic townhouses of Jackson Place, a far more placid scene than the terrifying White House evacuation of Sept. 11, 2001.

This time, Tom Ridge, the domestic security secretary whose job was created after the Sept. 11 attacks, was seen leaving, too. Some staff members spotted Secret Service agents stationed near the door of the White House bombproof underground bunker, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, apparently waiting for Vice President Dick Cheney. President Bush was in London.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/21/politics/21EVAC.html

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