The FAA knew letting a presidential jumbo jet and an F-16 fighter fly ominously near Ground Zero Monday might cause panic in the streets — but the White House still insisted the photo-op be kept classified, sources said yesterday.
A cryptic, classified alert — obtained by The Post yesterday — written by James Johnston, a high-ranking Federal Aviation Administration official in Washington, predicted the fear and confusion.
“Due to the possibility of public concern regarding DOD [Department of Defense] aircraft flying at low levels, coordination with federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies, emergency-operations centers and aviation units has been accomplished,” the e-mail said.
But the message never made it past mid-level operatives at City Hall and the NYPD.
White House military officials mandated that the mission — a $328,835 operation to take glamour shots of the presidential jet amid the backdrop of the Statue of Liberty — not be shared with the media or the public.
But “keeping it secret was BS,” an FAA source said.
Had normal protocols been followed, Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and, by extension, the general public, would have been in the loop, sources said.
By classifying the message and insisting communication be handled out of Washington, all normal protocols got mixed up.
“We were dealing with a whole different bunch of bureaucrats,” a City Hall source said.
Bloomberg and Kelly, neither of whom learned of the flyover until it was in progress, were incensed at the lack of communication between Washington and their own internal chains of command.
Bloomberg has reprimanded staffer Marc Mugnos for failing to share the message with superiors, but the mayor also placed blame on Washington.
“Keep in mind there have been other flyovers over the last three or four years and we’ve dealt with them the way we should have,” Bloomberg said. “Normally, we get phenomenal cooperation out of the federal government.”
President Obama, who was not aware of the flyover plans, called for an inquiry and promised “it will not happen again.”
“As to the high price tag for the operation, a White House aide insists that the training part of the mission would have been carried out even without the photos — just not in New York.