Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Airplane Enters Restricted Airspace Over Capital

Aired May 11, 2005 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


AARON BROWN, HOST, "NEWSNIGHT": Good evening again. We're in Washington, D.C. tonight. The White House, behind us, lit up for another half hour or so. For 24 minutes today in the heart of the Capitol, September 11 seemed as close as a small plane, a Cessna-150 that strayed into restricted air space and set off somewhat of a panic. It's so easy now to look at those events in those minutes and say it was nothing, but that misses the point. We didn't know what it was then. Homeland Security didn't know. The Pentagon didn't know. When it was happening, nothing wasn't nothing. It was very much something.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Keep going, keep going. Keep going.

BROWN: It was post-9/11 chaos in this post-9/11 world: a small plane close to all of the important buildings in the nation's capital. It was, truth be told, for a while today, chaos.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Keep moving. Keep moving.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All the way over to the porch.

BROWN: The White House, evacuated. The Supreme Court and the Congress, evacuated. In the air, a small plane, a little Cessna, chased by armed fighter jets and a helicopter. The plane is not communicating, the pilot's intentions are not known.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is a tutor plane over Washington, D.C. These jets are flying by. They're dropping flares (INAUDIBLE) threaten us.

BROWN: This small single engine plane was less than two minutes away from the White House.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The plane was within 10 miles.

BROWN: The plan prepared for the worst had kicked in. Motorcades left the White House. The first lady and visiting Nancy Reagan, sent to the basement. Congress evacuated, some senators wondering if the worst could be at hand. The president was out riding his bike in Maryland, it turned out, but that was the only benign moment in an afternoon filled with tension.

RICHARD FALKENRATH, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: I think people will probably look to see why didn't we catch this plane sooner. Did it file a proper flight plan? Did it deviate the that flight plan? Did we have to respond to quickly over the skies of Washington?

BROWN: The no-fly space was clearly and grossly violated. Had the pilot had malevolent intentions, it isn't clear what could have happened. Is the no-fly zone too small? Does the military have enough time to react?

DAN GOURE, VICE PRESIDENT, LEXINGTON INSTITUTE: An exclusion zone that would be sensible, from a security point of view, would be a 100-mile radius from the White House. That takes you to Richmond to the south, Baltimore and Philadelphia to the north, northeast. It is an impossible zone.

BROWN: That's because an area like that would play havoc with civilian air traffic. As it was, the Cessna was detected, but there are still other questions that need to be answered tonight. Were those large-scale evacuations, for instance, really necessary?

FALKENRATH: The government looks skittish and fearful, and we don't want to project that image around the world. Now, that's not to say that we didn't make the right decision today to evacuate.

BROWN: On the ground, the government says everything worked well, though some senators say they learned of the incident, not from anyone official, but by wireless e-mail messages from relatives who were watching on TV.

MICHAEL CHERTOFF, SECRETARY, HOMELAND SECURITY: It's a reminder again that we always have to be vigilant and we always will remain vigilant, but at the same time there's an effective response in place. We detect problems as they emerge on the horizon, we react appropriately and quickly, we resolve them, and now go on with the rest of our lives. And I think people should -- as I've said, people should enjoy the day and feel confident and secure in the fact that you've got professionals who are protecting the country and protecting the city.

BROWN: Tonight we know it all came down to human error in the cockpit of a tiny plane. Human error that triggered a massive response. We know that now. We didn't know it then.

FALKENRATH: They made a mistake and a bad one, and whether they got disoriented or were just not paying attention or were just not very intelligent, we don't really know yet. We'll find out, I'm sure, in due time. But they made a mistake and it was a doozy.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In an instant, that innocent mistake became a test to the national security system. September 11th showed us how fast disaster can strike, how little time there is to react. Today, with a plane bearing down on the Capitol, it seemed, and fighter jets scrambling to stop it, the urgent task on the ground was to get as many people out of harm's way as quickly as possible.

CNN's Suzanne Malveaux was at the White House when the order came.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on, let's go.

MALVEAUX: The scene at the White House turned from calm to chaotic in an instant.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going out the northwest gate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go.

MALVEAUX: I stepped outside the White House briefing room to find emergency response teams with their guns drawn, yelling at me to get back inside the building or get off the grounds.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Folks, you have to get off the grounds now.

MALVEAUX: I immediately got on my cell phone and called in.

One of the Secret Service agents told me, run, this is no joke. Leave the grounds. They were poised with their guns.

Vice President Dick Cheney's motorcade whisked him away. It was a full-scale evacuation. As I was heading to the northwest gate, an agent told me a plane had violated restricted air space and was heading our way. I heard a fighter jet roar overhead.

President Bush was already off the grounds on a bicycle ride 16 miles away, but Mrs. Bush and former First Lady Nancy Reagan, who had been visiting, were at the White House and had to be ushered to a secure bunker on site.

We were ordered to keep moving, across Pennsylvania Avenue, through Lafayette Park. It was all over in 15 minutes, as Secret Service agents waved and called for the all clear. White House and Secret Service officials said the evacuation went according to plan, although some members of the press corps said they weren't notified of the security scare. Motorcades carrying the president and vice president returned to the White House, and we returned to our cameras.

Well, Wolf, it's all rather calm right now after quite a bit of commotion.

But several hours later, when Mr. Bush was himself in front of the cameras, he refused to answer any questions about the scare, including whether he considered giving an order to shoot the plane down if it had come too close to the building.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX (on camera): Now, protocols set up after September 11 do not require the president's authority to shoot down a plane that is determined a threat. Now, White House officials say, in fact, since President Bush was never in any danger and since precautions had been taken to protect people here at the White House, the president was not notified of the security scare until after his bike ride when it was all over -- Aaron.

BROWN: Is the assumption in the Capitol that, any time a plane violates air space and that they have no communication, and they don't know what its intentions are, do they assume the plane's intention is to crash into a building?

MALVEAUX: Well, they certainly don't assume that the intention is a good one, that it's benign. What they do is, they assume the worst case scenario and they operate from there. In this scenario, you had a plane that was coming for the White House, that first was tracked at 15 miles, 10 miles, and then three miles, the closest point that it was at the White House. We are told that it never came to the point where any type of authority, be it presidential authority or otherwise, would actually have to give the order to shoot that plane down, that the plane had actually turned west before it got any closer to the White House. They did not have to make that very difficult decision.

We're also told, of course, that the president, not necessarily has to be the one to do that, that there are certainly other officials in place that could have made that call. Aaron?

BROWN: Suzanne, thank you very much. We'll come back to the question of what the assumptions are a little bit later in the program.

Three minutes after the evacuation at the White House started, the same order came over at the Capitol in what is the middle of a busy day for Congress. CNN's Joe Johns was in the Senate when he and everyone else was told to get out.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It started as a regular day. I was up here in our Senate booth researching a story when I heard someone shout, they're evacuating the Senate floor. I looked over at the TV monitor and saw this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Chair will recess. Chair stands in recess.

JOHNS: I turned to my producer and said, get out, get out now. I ran with my cell phone in my hand, calling the news in to the network. On the way out, I passed the Senate sergeant-at-arms and asked what's going on. He held up two fingerers and said, two minutes, get out. The police were shouting that it is not a drill and something about a threat from the air. Later we found what the threat was.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But it was on a straight-in shot towards the center of the Washington area.

JOHNS: But at that moment, scrambling to get out of the building and for information, we had no idea what was going on. All over the Capitol complex, lawmakers, staffers, tourists were scrambling for the exits: 25,000 people work up here, but the evacuation took just five or six minutes. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's scary. It is scary.

JOHNS: The congressional leadership was taken out first. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi was physically picked up by her security detail.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They just pulled me out of my shoes.

JOHNS: Tourists looked especially shocked. A group of advocates for the disabled got caught up in it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Once all the people started running, we were concerned because we couldn't go very fast.

JOHNS: Joe Johns, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Now to the pilots, one of whom was a student and making his first flight cross-country, perhaps also his last flight cross- country. He and his instructor chose a beautiful day to go flying. They also chose a route that caused for a fair bit of navigation. On a map, simple. In practice, maybe not. Here's CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLI ARENA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They were held for several hours by both the Secret Service and FBI and in the end officials said their intrusion into restricted air space was an accident.

MEL GLICK, SMOKETOWN AIRPORT OWNER: I think they just made a mistake. A big one.

ARENA: Law enforcement sources say it was mostly pilot error combined with some radio difficulty that caused the problem, but they wouldn't elaborate beyond that. The men were identified as Jim Sheaffer (ph), pilot, retired trucker and member of a small flying club. The second is Troy Martin (ph), a 35-year-old father and student pilot.

Martin's father says his son was aware of the no-fly zones and it made him nervous, especially because this was the longest flight he'd ever planned. Even so, his dad says he was shocked to learn that it was his son making headlines.

MEL MARTIN, TROY MARTIN'S FATHER: When I heard it come across the news, I never even thought that it was him! And then even they said, oh, two pilots from Smokestown, and so I was going to call his wife and say, hey, there's going to be excitement in Smokestown because somebody from Smokestown got into the no-fly area, never thinking it was my son. And then I called my wife to tell her, and she says, it was Troy!

ARENA: The Cessna they were flying is owned by the flying club. It's called the Vintage Aero Club, based in a small town in Pennsylvania. Friends say the men were heading to an air show in North Carolina.

PHIL BOYERS, AIRPORT OWNERS AND PILOTS ASS'N.: You can do so without ever talking to anyone on a radio, without having to have a flight plan if you don't want to, as long as the day is as clear as it was today. They obviously, then, didn't plot their course on the map properly. A straight line between those two points takes you right by the capital.

ARENA: The men may not have been detained for long, but by the time they were released, there wasn't much about them that law enforcement didn't know. There were background checks. Their names were run through terrorist and criminal databases. Friends and associates were interviewed.

In a statement, the Secret Service said, "the plane and individuals were searched," and "nothing of interest was found. No charges are being sought at this time." But the FAA could impose civil fines, and there's a good possibility that Sheaffer could have his pilot's license eventually revoked or suspended. Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Wonder what all this costs at the end of the day? We'll have more on defending the skies in a moment.

First, as we approach a quarter past the hour, time for some of the other stories that made news today. Erica Hill is in Atlanta tonight. Erica, good to see you.

ERICA HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS: Hi, Aaron. Good to see you as well.

Earlier today a special operations say that Hawk helicopter crashed and burned near the town of Angel Fire, New Mexico. One of the three airmen aboard was killed. An FAA officer said two others were injured. The Black Hawk, which was based at Curtlen (ph) Airforce Base, was on its way to a nearby Vietnam memorial.

In Iraq, a car bombing decimated a crowd of laborers gathered at a crowded intersection, waiting for day jobs in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. Thirty Iraqis were killed, 40 more wounded. The Army of Ansar al Sunni (ph) claimed responsibility, saying it is targeting people who work for the American military.

The army officer in charge of an intelligence unit at Abu Ghraib prison during the period of prisoner abuse has been reprimanded and fined $8,000. Colonel Thomas Pappas (ph), who was faulted for dereliction of duty, will not face criminal prosecution. Although Pappas isn't accused of ordering or participating in the abuse, some troops under his command were involved.

In Illinois, a judge has denied bail for Jerry Hobbs. He's the man charged with the vicious murders of his young daughter and her friend. Hobbs has now admitted to the Mother's Day killings, according to prosecutors, who say he was in a rage because his 8-year- old daughter Laura Hobbs was supposed to be grounded for stealing money.

"Absolutely ridiculous," those are the words Macaulay Culkin used to describe allegations that Michael Jackson molested young boys, including Culkin. In testimony today at the Jackson trial, the 24- year-old actor, godfather to two of Jackson's children, confirmed he did sleep on Jackson's bed several times, but says he rejects the idea that he could have been molested while he was sleeping. That's the latest from Headline News at this hour.

Aaron, back to you in D.C.

BROWN: Erica, thank you. We'll see you in about a half an hour.

Still ahead on the program, imagine this. Imagine looking up and seeing this whole terrifying spectacle that played out around the Capitol today, playing out barely above the tree lines and the street where you live.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(voice-over): Not an air show, not hardly. We'll talk with a woman who watched the fighter jets do their work right above her neighborhood.

Also tonight, a view from the fighter cockpit and potentially a view to kill.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do we have an engagement authority?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir, we have engagement authority on line.

BROWN: Facing the unthinkable -- pulling the trigger.

And in Washington or anywhere else, how well do pilots know the rules? How easy is it to stray? Easier than you might think. We, on the other hand, have one simple rule, in Washington, New York and around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Eighteen years ago this month, 18 years, a West German teenager managed to pilot his Cessna over the Soviet border and into Red Square. Some credit that flight with helping to bring down the Soviet Bloc. So, perhaps it shouldn't be so unusual in different times for such a tiny plane to have such a big impact as it did today.

Here's CNN's Miles O'Brien.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: You're looking at a Cessna-152. It's the cousin of the Cessna-150 which was involved in that incident in Washington. It's a small airplane, only has about a 100 horsepower engine, flies a little more than 110 miles an hour, carries about 26 gallons of gas up here in the wings, weighs about 1100 pounds empty, 1600 pounds, packed to the gills, dripping wet. In other words, it's a lot lighter, probably carries a little less fuel, than the SUV that is sitting in your driveway right now. So, the amount of damage something like this can cause is pretty limited.

The thing about the Cessna-150 and the 152 is it's designed to teach people how to fly. It's got really, just all the basic instruments -- one radio and one transponder. That transponder is a very key device if you had be flying in and around big cities like Atlanta or especially in a place like Washington.

That particular field in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was an uncontrolled field, and that means radio communication is optional. So they may not have been talking on the radio at all at the outset of this flight.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) cleared for takeoff. Left turn southwest, down approach (ph).

O'BRIEN: Now, when you take off from a controlled field, like my field, Peachtree-DeKalb Airport, you don't necessarily have to talk to controllers after that, depending on where you are. As a matter of fact, once you are clear of the airspace that is controlled by the control tower, you enter a part of the world that communication with air traffic control is optional.

Things change dramatically when you get near some big cities and big airports. The airspace around them is tightly controlled. You have to talk to controllers. You have to use a specific code on your so-called transponder, which is designed to enhance your picture on radar screens and give controllers a little bit of information about you.

Without a specific transponder code and two-way communication with those air traffic controllers, you can't fly near the largest airports in America. A lot of people are not familiar with the fact that small airplanes like this, when they're flying along long distances, do not necessarily have to be in communication with air traffic control.

It's perfectly legal. As long as you can see out the window, see the ground, weather is good enough, you fly at a certain altitude, you can safely fly. As long as you avoid the restricted airspace, you can safely fly long distances without talking to anybody. So, the real question here -- and we'll be asking this question for a while -- and is, what happened?

Were the pilots stupid? Did they not file a flight plan? Did they not talk to air traffic control? Did they not have their transponder set properly? Or is it possible they did everything by the rules and air traffic control made a mistake and lost them and, as a result, the planes and helicopters had to be scrambled?

Whatever the case, eventually once those military aircraft got into close proximity to that Cessna 150, they eventually were able to raise them on a special frequency reserved for these kinds of situations, emergency situations. And I am told by somebody who listened to that exchange that the pilot -- actually two of them were talking -- seemed to be under great duress as they were talking to that F-16 fighter 2 and those Black Hawk helicopters. Well, duress is probably an understatement.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I expect so. CNN's Miles O'Brien who's clearly a pilot. Debby Fallows on the other hand is not a pilot, though she logged plenty of miles along side her husband, Jim who is. She knows her way around the cockpit a bit. But we're just as interested tonight in what she saw on the ground. You saw much of this play out. Did you see it first or hear it first?

DEBBIE FALLOWS, EYEWITNESS: Oh, I heard it first.

BROWN: You heard the big -- the big military jets. You didn't hear the little Cessna?

FALLOWS: I did. I was working at my desk at home with the windows open. And I was hearing the commercial flights going on the flight path into National Airport. And then all of a sudden I heard what was clearly recognizable as these fighter jets. If you have lived in Washington during 2001, you got very used to what these fighter jets sounded like.

BROWN: Was that an unusual sound?

FALLOWS: It was more than an unusual sound. It was a roaring sound and it was a very fast moving sound. You had the sense that it was coming at you and then going away from you in just nanoseconds.

BROWN: Did you run outside?

FALLOWS: Would you run outside? Yes.

BROWN: Yes, of course, I'd run outside.

FALLOWS: Of course. Of course. Yes, I ran outside and I looked up as the jet was passing by, and then starting to make a circle around to the east again. And then as it was circling, I heard -- I heard this small kind of putter, putter, that was distinctly a small private plane. And looked up and this little Cessna, what I thought, or some small private plane, was just kind of puttering its way along -- past the house, just down our street -- like a Sunday sightseer.

BROWN: What altitude would you guess?

FALLOWS: I would guess...

BROWN: Was it way up?

FALLOWS: I would guess 1,200 feet. No, very close.

BROWN: You could almost touch it.

FALLOWS: Yes, a normal... BROWN: And what are the -- what are the F-16s doing at this point?

FALLOWS: The F-16 -- the F-16 was circling back around to come up from the rear behind the little plane. And just as the small plane was going past our house, two F-16s came in succession just roaring past him. They were higher than he was, but they were low enough so that they set out all the alarms on the cars that were parked up and down the street.

BROWN: What are you thinking at this point?

FALLOWS: I was thinking that something was terribly wrong.

BROWN: Are you thinking something's terribly wrong as in someone has violated the air space or something's terribly wrong as in this is some sort of an attack?

FALLOWS: No. I was thinking that this plane shouldn't be there, but the jets were reacting in such a way that there was something serious going on. They weren't just nicely escorting this little plane out of the air space. They were clearly in some kind of pursuit trying to convey some kind of message to him to get out of there.

BROWN: Did you have any sense that they were -- I mean, by how they were flying that they were trying to signal the pilot in any way?

FALLOWS: Well, it was hard to tell, because you could tell that they were having trouble making communication with him. They were far away. They were going so much faster than he was. And they were behaving in an intense way. And the small plane was just kind of casually puttering along.

BROWN: A very weird scene. How long -- how much time are we talking about here?

FALLOWS: We're probably talking about six hours -- we're probably talking about five or six minutes.

BROWN: Yes. It seemed longer?

FALLOWS: It seemed really long, because I was watching the jets make two or three circles around him during the time that he was in my line of vision going from east to west. And as the small plane -- then they were all kind of heading off to the west. And I lost a little bit of sight of them. But the two large -- it actually became more unnerving toward the end because the two jets were maneuvering back and forth toward each other in a kind of funny pattern. So, you couldn't really tell what they were doing. The light was glinting off them. And I really thought from my perspective that they were going to run into each other in midair.

BROWN: So it was more that they were going to smash into each other than they would shoot this little plane down?

FALLOWS: Well, as he was going over my house, I just kept kind of urging him to go on, to get out of the neighborhood, right.

BROWN: And just -- last question. So at some point they leave your sight line. You can probably still hear it, but they leave your sight. And how much longer is it before you sort of know what happened?

FALLOWS: It was probably another five minutes when I realized that everything was OK, because at that point it seemed like all the commercial air flight had stopped, and it was very quiet. And then I saw the commercial airplanes coming in again, so I thought, OK, this is over and went back to work.

BROWN: Went back to work. (INAUDIBLE) thanks for coming in today.

FALLOWS: Thanks, Aaron.

BROWN: Appreciate it, Debbie Fallows.

Coming up on the program tonight, preventing another scare or worse. We'll take a look at the warning systems that are in place now and how they work.

Also tonight, training for a moment that everyone hopes will never come. Shooting down a plane that strays. We'll take a break first. We're in the nation's capital and this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The White House tonight on a beautiful spring night in Washington after what has been a kind of crazy day, or at least for a while. White House staff gone. President probably in bed. And the lights will be going off soon at the White House here in Washington.

In a new normal, air space is a mine field where missteps can have deadly consequences. A plane that drifts into restricted air space -- and it happens more often than you might think -- becomes a target in a heartbeat. Today's scare in Washington comes just as the Capitol is about to launch a new warning system for pilots who do go astray. So could that warning system have made any difference today? Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Red, red green. Lasers pulsate into the night sky a short distance from the Capitol warning pilots as far as 20 miles away to stop and turn.

COL. JAMES DANIELS, FIRST AIR FORCE: I mean, there's so many high value targets in this area. It's the center of our government. We need to protect it.

MESERVE: The large hunk of restricted air space above and around the capital region is intended to prevent another September 11 style attack from the air.

(on camera): About a dozen times a week pilots enter this restricted air space, usually unintentionally.

(voice-over): During the funeral of President Ronald Reagan, there was a hasty evacuation of the Capitol when the governor of Kentucky's plane flew inside the zone.

In other cases, if a transgressing pilot cannot be raised on the radio, fighter jets are scrambles to drop warning flares. If that doesn't stop them, there's the possibility of a shootdown.

The laser warning lights scattered throughout the restricted zone can be directed precisely at any plane warning pilots they have gone astray.

DANIELS: We use a visual warning system, the aircraft turns around, we leave the fighters on the ground. All the other assets that we bring to bare. It could potentially prevent a tragic situation.

MESERVE: Lasers used for different purposes have given pilots problems, even injuries.

PARRY WINDER, DELTA AIRLINES PILOT: Initially, I noticed almost a flash blindness like you would have if you got really close to a flash camera.

MESERVE: But the warning system uses a different kind of laser beam, perfectly safe, according to pilots who have seen it from the air.

MELISSA RUDINGER, AIRCRAFT OWNERS AND PILOTS ASSN: I can tell you that it definitely doesn't hurt your eyes.

MESERVE: Pilots who have gotten briefings but have not seen the system in operation wonder whether the lasers will be visible in all conditions.

FAYEK ZABANEH, PILOT: If you are flying west in the afternoon and the sun is directly in your eyes, it will be very difficult to see anything else.

MESERVE: But officials say the distinctive pattern and colors stand out day and night except in low visibility conditions. Providing an easier, cheaper, safer way to warn those in the skies and protect those below.

For CNN's America bureau, Jeanne Meserve, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The fact is, however, that machinery only does so much. When a decision has to be made to deal with a potentially hostile aircraft, human judgment comes first and with it human consequences. , of course, for many. And in the case of a fighter pilot's soul, consequences for one.

Here's CNN's Kyra Phillips. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Aircraft to vertical.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Secret Service has been informed.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They call it the air war against terrorists. And this is the battlefield.

The potential enemy, a civilian aircraft under terrorist control. The strategy, to end every incident without firing a shot. But 9/11 spawned a new kind of war with chilling new rules of engagement. In this war, the military is forced to think the unthinkable.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think the public would have stood for anything -- us firing on commercial airliners in the past. But it's been proving, yes, something worse might happen. So we're just kind of an extension of the public will.

PHILLIPS: The Lieutenant Colonel T.G. Carazis (ph) and Major John Black of the 125th Fighter Wing are getting ready for a routine patrol in southeast U.S. airspace. These Florida Air National Guard F-15 fighter pilots are battle ready.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Check the back end of the gun. Make sure it is all hot and the bullets are loaded in the chambers. Check our heat seeker. Make sure that all looks good.

PHILLIPS: We're going along on a mission that shows what might happen if a commercial airliner is hijacked.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Raptor One copies. (INAUDIBLE).

PHILLIPS: It doesn't take long before this mission is diverted.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) contact this aircraft has failed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: FAA, can you give me a mode 3 on that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 5012, general.

PHILLIPS: Something is not right with a passenger plane over the Atlantic Ocean.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) this is (INAUDIBLE) battle commander. We have a NoRDO airliner.

PHILLIPS: NoRDO, no radio contact.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're a NoRDO aircraft that's (INAUDIBLE) airlines 409, Miami to Wilmington, metroliner.

PHILLIPS: Military intelligence and the FAA want to know everything about this airliner.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get the range. How far they think it would fly with 3400 pounds of gas.

PHILLIPS: Could this aircraft reach critical infrastructure?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has deviated from the flight path.

PHILLIPS: These commanders take no chances.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This time. We have committed Rattler 01, flight 2 out of the Jaguar Cap (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE; Your mission, intercept, shadow, commit bulls eye, 100157. 21,500 track west.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE).

PHILLIPS: Fighters now monitor Falcon flight 401 every move. Then.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The aircraft is now at squawk at 7500 squawk.

PHILLIPS: 7500 is the code for hijack.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Obtain permission for fighter to be intercept?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: See if they can give us any indication who is in control of the aircraft.

PHILLIPS: Pilots attempt hand signals no response. Pilots rock their winning. Still no response.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It should acknowledge with the ring arch, which he's not doing.

PHILLIPS: Two generals are brought in and briefed. One from the Canadian Air Force, one from the United States.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Souls on board?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 16. 14 passengers, two crew, one Pakistani, one Saudi, one French, the others are presumed to be of United States descent. fighters are on it now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My concern is, we could have something else in this country. So, we're going to keep our focus on this thing. But we're also going to keep focus on the rest of the country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The J-PAC has authorized the use of flares to get the pilots attention.

PHILLIPS: Now is the final attempt to get this pilot to respond. If he doesn't, the order could come to shoot this aircraft down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do we have an engagement authority?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir, we have engagement authority on line.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Raptor One copies. Flares are authorized.

PHILLIPS: Flares are released.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now the guy realizes he's series. Now he's coming left, following me.

PHILLIPS: The pilot finally responds.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think we should ever relax. We are going to have to continue to prosecute this enemy until they no longer present a threat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Active air scramble. Active air scramble.

PHILLIPS: A new kind of war, a new way of fighting. A battle in which a commander's best choice may be the lesser of two evils. And the battle cry is, never again.

(on camera): I talked with the F-16 pilot who flew the intercept on the Cessna headed toward the White House. I asked him if he received the order to shoot down that air craft. He said no.

I also ask him how he got the pilot to turn away from the White House and land that Cessna safely? He said he gave all the military visual signals, including dropping the flares. But what got that pilot of the Cessna to land was the radio communication.

The F-16 pilot from the 121st Fighter Squadron finally made contact with that Cessna pilot on the guard frequency. In other words, the emergency frequency -- 121.5

He said the pilot sounded nervous. But he listened and landed that small plane safely.

Kyra Phillips, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still to come on the program tonight, a chilling scene in the skies. Fighter jets scrambling to stop a suspicious plane. We'll show you what it looked like from the ground.

And inside Congress, they were told to run and they did. No fools they. We'll talk with a Congressman about what happened today and what did not. We'll take a break first.

From Washington, D.C. and around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Congressman John Mica chairs the House Aviation Subcommittee which has a hand in a lot of the agencies who work together today -- they did work together today. He's a Republican from the state of Florida. We're glad to have him with us tonight. Let's quickly have sort of the things that went right today. Each time something like this happens, I assume Homeland Security, the Pentagon, everybody you all learn things.

What was learned today?

REP. JOHN MICA (R-FL), CHMN., HOUSE AVIATION SUB. CMTE. Well, we had a lot of experience, you know, with Governor Fletcher flying in during the Reagan funeral. We learned that FAA was not that well coordinated with DOD. And some of our communications radars didn't mesh. Today worked very well. Actually, today was going to be the first day, ironically, that we were going to test another system, a laser warning system...

BROWN: We talked about that earlier.

MICA: ... to pilots that got into the air space. I know -- I was told that that system was not used here. They used flares. But everything went off pretty much as we would have anticipated. And fortunately, no one was injured.

BROWN: We talk about this a little more theoretically. I asked a correspondent of ours earlier, is the assumption that you all made that if a plane violates the air space and we don't know what its intentions are or that we think that the intentions are malevolent, that the malevolency is it's going to smash into a building?

MICA: Well, there's some judgments that have to be made. And we have a couple of zones, 50 miles out, then 15 miles out where you can make decisions. This was a small aircraft. It probably wouldn't have done much damage because it was a Cessna. Now, thought that went through my mind as I was fleeing from the capitol was smaller aircraft or an aircraft that might have biological...

BROWN: Yes. And you've got all these people outside.

MICA: Exactly. Biological, chemical, God forbid nuclear, because we've heard a lot about that. Now, small aircraft could do a lot of damage with that kind of a hit.

BROWN: Tell me if I'm right here. I'm not trying to scare people. I'm was trying to go through the way everybody needs to think about this stuff. A little Cessna, God forbid, smashing into a building would be a bad thing, but it would be a kind of -- it wouldn't be a major catastrophe.

MICA: It wouldn't have done much damage to the U.S. Capitol Building.

BROWN: But a small Cessna could carry enough bio-chem materials. What happened today is that everyone is essentially inside thrown outside.

MICA: Well, you've probably got a better chance because you're away from ground zero. And we figure the U.S. Capitol is going to be ground zero. So the thought is to get people as far as way as possible and give them some chance. Again, if there's that kind of eventuality or direct hit or the Capitol or one of the other office buildings.

BROWN: This is the sort of stuff that we need to -- we're going to have to live with in this post-9/11 world that we find ourself in.

MICA: It is, unfortunately, a reality. And we do live with that kind of a threat. The -- we know that the Capitol and the White House were targets in the past. And I would venture to say that terrorists would also target them in the future. Look at how long it took them to come back at the World Trade Center after -- and I remember going up in the World Trade Center just weeks before, and all the security that was in place at different levels. Then they came after it from a different -- with a different approach.

BROWN: Nice to meet you. I bet your heart was racing there for a while today.

MICA: Well, I had my son and my nephew waiting for me downstairs for lunch. And a lot of thought -- I was going against the crowd to make sure that they were going to get out of the building, until we knew. But quite a stressful day.

BROWN: We appreciate your efforts and you're being with us tonight.

MICA: Good day. Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.

Ahead on the program, we'll check some of the other stories that made news today. We'll take a break first. We're in the nation's capital and this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: About a quarter to the hour now. Back to Erica Hill in Atlanta for one more look at some of the other stories that made news in the world today, Erica.

HILL: Hi, Aaron.

We start off with a developing story, actually, out of California. A man driving a car, police say, was stolen during a home invasion robbery in Long Beach, California. Led officers on a 20 minute high speed chase that ended in a hail of gunfire killing the driver. Los Angeles TV stations provided live coverage. The chase started on one freeway, then proceeded to others with the driver weaving from one lane to another and at one point hitting a guardrail. He then tried to elude police on surface streets going through red lights, and occasionally driving against on coming traffic. The drama ended in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant when the driver stopped his car and jumped out brandishing a handgun. He was shot by police as he attempted to flee on foot. The man he fell to the pavement. His gun flew from his hand and skidded away. Police shot him again as he writhed on the ground, reached into his pant's pocket and appeared to pulled something out. Now, CNN decided against showing you that finally burst of gunfire because of its graphic nature.

And Bill Cosby's lawyers told a federal judge today the entertainer did not drug or sexually molest a woman at his Philadelphia home in January 2004. The woman sued Cosby after prosecutors declined to file charges earlier this year. Cosby admits he offered the woman some Benadryl, an allergy medicine, when she told him she was having trouble falling asleep.

And that is the latest from Headline news at this hour. Aaron, we turn it back to you.

BROWN: Erica, thank you for your efforts today.

It's the problem with those car chase stories, you never know how they're going to end. They can end horribly, badly, as this one did. And people see it on live TV. Thank you.

We call the segment "Newsbeat." It's a different take on the story of the day. Tonight Joe Johns on becoming part of the story even as he was covering it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (on camera): The first thing I think, obviously, is oh, no, not again. And I have a plan B that goes into effect whenever something like this happens. You grab the little run bag that I started carrying around September 11, 2001, go down the exits, follow the people, listen to the police and try to get out of the building and hope it's nothing. And that's essentially what I did.

(voice-over): My biggest surprise, without a doubt, was getting the information that there was believed to be a plane two minutes out. I got outside the door and heard overhead very distinctly the engine of an aircraft.

(on camera): And that point, my immediate thought was, oh, my gosh, this plane that they've been tracking has somehow gotten through the air defenses and it has arrived and there are still people in the building.

I think the main thing I see people getting from this story is that, yes, the government is still on alert, there is still concern about a potential threat to the United States. That's not going to change any time in the near future. And here is how the government responded today. That's probably the bottom line.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Correspondent Joe Johns. Take a look at morning papers when we come back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Okey-dokey. Time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world. The nation's capital version.

A lot of ways to headline the plane scare today. The Washington Examiner, "Plane Scare Empties Capitol: Two Pennsylvania Men Taken Into Custody After Violating Restricted Space." That's one way to do it.

But we prefer the way the New York Daily News did it, frankly. "Air Heads: Two Dimwits Fly Plane Near White House Causing Panic in D.C." That's why we're glad to have the Daily News.

The Chattanooga -- two dim wits. Chattanooga Times Free Press. Good front page story here. See if you can get this. "Uncle Sam Still Wants You: Enlistment Numbers Continue to Slide Regionally In Chattanooga, Tennessee." I don't know if there's another Chattanooga. I think I read today that the Army is going to stand down its recruiting -- it's recruiters for a day to try and kind of work this out. See if there are strategies they can come up with.

You know what? Well, all right. We're in Washington, we'll do this one. The Washington Times. Down at the bottom of the page, if you can. "Plentiful Pollen Does a Nose Job." I don't know how well you can see the drawing there, but it's fabulous.

All right. 15 seconds. Let's do the Chicago Sun-Times. The weather tomorrow in Chicago -- thank you. We bring that with us to Washington. May day may day. We'll wrap it up in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We started the day in Minneapolis. We thank the folks in the Twin Cities for their graciousness. We'll see you tomorrow. Good night for all of us.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired May 11, 2005 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, HOST, "NEWSNIGHT": Good evening again. We're in Washington, D.C. tonight. The White House, behind us, lit up for another half hour or so. For 24 minutes today in the heart of the Capitol, September 11 seemed as close as a small plane, a Cessna-150 that strayed into restricted air space and set off somewhat of a panic. It's so easy now to look at those events in those minutes and say it was nothing, but that misses the point. We didn't know what it was then. Homeland Security didn't know. The Pentagon didn't know. When it was happening, nothing wasn't nothing. It was very much something.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Keep going, keep going. Keep going.

BROWN: It was post-9/11 chaos in this post-9/11 world: a small plane close to all of the important buildings in the nation's capital. It was, truth be told, for a while today, chaos.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Keep moving. Keep moving.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All the way over to the porch.

BROWN: The White House, evacuated. The Supreme Court and the Congress, evacuated. In the air, a small plane, a little Cessna, chased by armed fighter jets and a helicopter. The plane is not communicating, the pilot's intentions are not known.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is a tutor plane over Washington, D.C. These jets are flying by. They're dropping flares (INAUDIBLE) threaten us.

BROWN: This small single engine plane was less than two minutes away from the White House.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The plane was within 10 miles.

BROWN: The plan prepared for the worst had kicked in. Motorcades left the White House. The first lady and visiting Nancy Reagan, sent to the basement. Congress evacuated, some senators wondering if the worst could be at hand. The president was out riding his bike in Maryland, it turned out, but that was the only benign moment in an afternoon filled with tension.

RICHARD FALKENRATH, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: I think people will probably look to see why didn't we catch this plane sooner. Did it file a proper flight plan? Did it deviate the that flight plan? Did we have to respond to quickly over the skies of Washington?

BROWN: The no-fly space was clearly and grossly violated. Had the pilot had malevolent intentions, it isn't clear what could have happened. Is the no-fly zone too small? Does the military have enough time to react?

DAN GOURE, VICE PRESIDENT, LEXINGTON INSTITUTE: An exclusion zone that would be sensible, from a security point of view, would be a 100-mile radius from the White House. That takes you to Richmond to the south, Baltimore and Philadelphia to the north, northeast. It is an impossible zone.

BROWN: That's because an area like that would play havoc with civilian air traffic. As it was, the Cessna was detected, but there are still other questions that need to be answered tonight. Were those large-scale evacuations, for instance, really necessary?

FALKENRATH: The government looks skittish and fearful, and we don't want to project that image around the world. Now, that's not to say that we didn't make the right decision today to evacuate.

BROWN: On the ground, the government says everything worked well, though some senators say they learned of the incident, not from anyone official, but by wireless e-mail messages from relatives who were watching on TV.

MICHAEL CHERTOFF, SECRETARY, HOMELAND SECURITY: It's a reminder again that we always have to be vigilant and we always will remain vigilant, but at the same time there's an effective response in place. We detect problems as they emerge on the horizon, we react appropriately and quickly, we resolve them, and now go on with the rest of our lives. And I think people should -- as I've said, people should enjoy the day and feel confident and secure in the fact that you've got professionals who are protecting the country and protecting the city.

BROWN: Tonight we know it all came down to human error in the cockpit of a tiny plane. Human error that triggered a massive response. We know that now. We didn't know it then.

FALKENRATH: They made a mistake and a bad one, and whether they got disoriented or were just not paying attention or were just not very intelligent, we don't really know yet. We'll find out, I'm sure, in due time. But they made a mistake and it was a doozy.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In an instant, that innocent mistake became a test to the national security system. September 11th showed us how fast disaster can strike, how little time there is to react. Today, with a plane bearing down on the Capitol, it seemed, and fighter jets scrambling to stop it, the urgent task on the ground was to get as many people out of harm's way as quickly as possible.

CNN's Suzanne Malveaux was at the White House when the order came.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on, let's go.

MALVEAUX: The scene at the White House turned from calm to chaotic in an instant.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going out the northwest gate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go.

MALVEAUX: I stepped outside the White House briefing room to find emergency response teams with their guns drawn, yelling at me to get back inside the building or get off the grounds.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Folks, you have to get off the grounds now.

MALVEAUX: I immediately got on my cell phone and called in.

One of the Secret Service agents told me, run, this is no joke. Leave the grounds. They were poised with their guns.

Vice President Dick Cheney's motorcade whisked him away. It was a full-scale evacuation. As I was heading to the northwest gate, an agent told me a plane had violated restricted air space and was heading our way. I heard a fighter jet roar overhead.

President Bush was already off the grounds on a bicycle ride 16 miles away, but Mrs. Bush and former First Lady Nancy Reagan, who had been visiting, were at the White House and had to be ushered to a secure bunker on site.

We were ordered to keep moving, across Pennsylvania Avenue, through Lafayette Park. It was all over in 15 minutes, as Secret Service agents waved and called for the all clear. White House and Secret Service officials said the evacuation went according to plan, although some members of the press corps said they weren't notified of the security scare. Motorcades carrying the president and vice president returned to the White House, and we returned to our cameras.

Well, Wolf, it's all rather calm right now after quite a bit of commotion.

But several hours later, when Mr. Bush was himself in front of the cameras, he refused to answer any questions about the scare, including whether he considered giving an order to shoot the plane down if it had come too close to the building.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX (on camera): Now, protocols set up after September 11 do not require the president's authority to shoot down a plane that is determined a threat. Now, White House officials say, in fact, since President Bush was never in any danger and since precautions had been taken to protect people here at the White House, the president was not notified of the security scare until after his bike ride when it was all over -- Aaron.

BROWN: Is the assumption in the Capitol that, any time a plane violates air space and that they have no communication, and they don't know what its intentions are, do they assume the plane's intention is to crash into a building?

MALVEAUX: Well, they certainly don't assume that the intention is a good one, that it's benign. What they do is, they assume the worst case scenario and they operate from there. In this scenario, you had a plane that was coming for the White House, that first was tracked at 15 miles, 10 miles, and then three miles, the closest point that it was at the White House. We are told that it never came to the point where any type of authority, be it presidential authority or otherwise, would actually have to give the order to shoot that plane down, that the plane had actually turned west before it got any closer to the White House. They did not have to make that very difficult decision.

We're also told, of course, that the president, not necessarily has to be the one to do that, that there are certainly other officials in place that could have made that call. Aaron?

BROWN: Suzanne, thank you very much. We'll come back to the question of what the assumptions are a little bit later in the program.

Three minutes after the evacuation at the White House started, the same order came over at the Capitol in what is the middle of a busy day for Congress. CNN's Joe Johns was in the Senate when he and everyone else was told to get out.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It started as a regular day. I was up here in our Senate booth researching a story when I heard someone shout, they're evacuating the Senate floor. I looked over at the TV monitor and saw this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Chair will recess. Chair stands in recess.

JOHNS: I turned to my producer and said, get out, get out now. I ran with my cell phone in my hand, calling the news in to the network. On the way out, I passed the Senate sergeant-at-arms and asked what's going on. He held up two fingerers and said, two minutes, get out. The police were shouting that it is not a drill and something about a threat from the air. Later we found what the threat was.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But it was on a straight-in shot towards the center of the Washington area.

JOHNS: But at that moment, scrambling to get out of the building and for information, we had no idea what was going on. All over the Capitol complex, lawmakers, staffers, tourists were scrambling for the exits: 25,000 people work up here, but the evacuation took just five or six minutes. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's scary. It is scary.

JOHNS: The congressional leadership was taken out first. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi was physically picked up by her security detail.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They just pulled me out of my shoes.

JOHNS: Tourists looked especially shocked. A group of advocates for the disabled got caught up in it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Once all the people started running, we were concerned because we couldn't go very fast.

JOHNS: Joe Johns, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Now to the pilots, one of whom was a student and making his first flight cross-country, perhaps also his last flight cross- country. He and his instructor chose a beautiful day to go flying. They also chose a route that caused for a fair bit of navigation. On a map, simple. In practice, maybe not. Here's CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLI ARENA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They were held for several hours by both the Secret Service and FBI and in the end officials said their intrusion into restricted air space was an accident.

MEL GLICK, SMOKETOWN AIRPORT OWNER: I think they just made a mistake. A big one.

ARENA: Law enforcement sources say it was mostly pilot error combined with some radio difficulty that caused the problem, but they wouldn't elaborate beyond that. The men were identified as Jim Sheaffer (ph), pilot, retired trucker and member of a small flying club. The second is Troy Martin (ph), a 35-year-old father and student pilot.

Martin's father says his son was aware of the no-fly zones and it made him nervous, especially because this was the longest flight he'd ever planned. Even so, his dad says he was shocked to learn that it was his son making headlines.

MEL MARTIN, TROY MARTIN'S FATHER: When I heard it come across the news, I never even thought that it was him! And then even they said, oh, two pilots from Smokestown, and so I was going to call his wife and say, hey, there's going to be excitement in Smokestown because somebody from Smokestown got into the no-fly area, never thinking it was my son. And then I called my wife to tell her, and she says, it was Troy!

ARENA: The Cessna they were flying is owned by the flying club. It's called the Vintage Aero Club, based in a small town in Pennsylvania. Friends say the men were heading to an air show in North Carolina.

PHIL BOYERS, AIRPORT OWNERS AND PILOTS ASS'N.: You can do so without ever talking to anyone on a radio, without having to have a flight plan if you don't want to, as long as the day is as clear as it was today. They obviously, then, didn't plot their course on the map properly. A straight line between those two points takes you right by the capital.

ARENA: The men may not have been detained for long, but by the time they were released, there wasn't much about them that law enforcement didn't know. There were background checks. Their names were run through terrorist and criminal databases. Friends and associates were interviewed.

In a statement, the Secret Service said, "the plane and individuals were searched," and "nothing of interest was found. No charges are being sought at this time." But the FAA could impose civil fines, and there's a good possibility that Sheaffer could have his pilot's license eventually revoked or suspended. Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Wonder what all this costs at the end of the day? We'll have more on defending the skies in a moment.

First, as we approach a quarter past the hour, time for some of the other stories that made news today. Erica Hill is in Atlanta tonight. Erica, good to see you.

ERICA HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS: Hi, Aaron. Good to see you as well.

Earlier today a special operations say that Hawk helicopter crashed and burned near the town of Angel Fire, New Mexico. One of the three airmen aboard was killed. An FAA officer said two others were injured. The Black Hawk, which was based at Curtlen (ph) Airforce Base, was on its way to a nearby Vietnam memorial.

In Iraq, a car bombing decimated a crowd of laborers gathered at a crowded intersection, waiting for day jobs in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. Thirty Iraqis were killed, 40 more wounded. The Army of Ansar al Sunni (ph) claimed responsibility, saying it is targeting people who work for the American military.

The army officer in charge of an intelligence unit at Abu Ghraib prison during the period of prisoner abuse has been reprimanded and fined $8,000. Colonel Thomas Pappas (ph), who was faulted for dereliction of duty, will not face criminal prosecution. Although Pappas isn't accused of ordering or participating in the abuse, some troops under his command were involved.

In Illinois, a judge has denied bail for Jerry Hobbs. He's the man charged with the vicious murders of his young daughter and her friend. Hobbs has now admitted to the Mother's Day killings, according to prosecutors, who say he was in a rage because his 8-year- old daughter Laura Hobbs was supposed to be grounded for stealing money.

"Absolutely ridiculous," those are the words Macaulay Culkin used to describe allegations that Michael Jackson molested young boys, including Culkin. In testimony today at the Jackson trial, the 24- year-old actor, godfather to two of Jackson's children, confirmed he did sleep on Jackson's bed several times, but says he rejects the idea that he could have been molested while he was sleeping. That's the latest from Headline News at this hour.

Aaron, back to you in D.C.

BROWN: Erica, thank you. We'll see you in about a half an hour.

Still ahead on the program, imagine this. Imagine looking up and seeing this whole terrifying spectacle that played out around the Capitol today, playing out barely above the tree lines and the street where you live.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(voice-over): Not an air show, not hardly. We'll talk with a woman who watched the fighter jets do their work right above her neighborhood.

Also tonight, a view from the fighter cockpit and potentially a view to kill.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do we have an engagement authority?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir, we have engagement authority on line.

BROWN: Facing the unthinkable -- pulling the trigger.

And in Washington or anywhere else, how well do pilots know the rules? How easy is it to stray? Easier than you might think. We, on the other hand, have one simple rule, in Washington, New York and around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Eighteen years ago this month, 18 years, a West German teenager managed to pilot his Cessna over the Soviet border and into Red Square. Some credit that flight with helping to bring down the Soviet Bloc. So, perhaps it shouldn't be so unusual in different times for such a tiny plane to have such a big impact as it did today.

Here's CNN's Miles O'Brien.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: You're looking at a Cessna-152. It's the cousin of the Cessna-150 which was involved in that incident in Washington. It's a small airplane, only has about a 100 horsepower engine, flies a little more than 110 miles an hour, carries about 26 gallons of gas up here in the wings, weighs about 1100 pounds empty, 1600 pounds, packed to the gills, dripping wet. In other words, it's a lot lighter, probably carries a little less fuel, than the SUV that is sitting in your driveway right now. So, the amount of damage something like this can cause is pretty limited.

The thing about the Cessna-150 and the 152 is it's designed to teach people how to fly. It's got really, just all the basic instruments -- one radio and one transponder. That transponder is a very key device if you had be flying in and around big cities like Atlanta or especially in a place like Washington.

That particular field in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was an uncontrolled field, and that means radio communication is optional. So they may not have been talking on the radio at all at the outset of this flight.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) cleared for takeoff. Left turn southwest, down approach (ph).

O'BRIEN: Now, when you take off from a controlled field, like my field, Peachtree-DeKalb Airport, you don't necessarily have to talk to controllers after that, depending on where you are. As a matter of fact, once you are clear of the airspace that is controlled by the control tower, you enter a part of the world that communication with air traffic control is optional.

Things change dramatically when you get near some big cities and big airports. The airspace around them is tightly controlled. You have to talk to controllers. You have to use a specific code on your so-called transponder, which is designed to enhance your picture on radar screens and give controllers a little bit of information about you.

Without a specific transponder code and two-way communication with those air traffic controllers, you can't fly near the largest airports in America. A lot of people are not familiar with the fact that small airplanes like this, when they're flying along long distances, do not necessarily have to be in communication with air traffic control.

It's perfectly legal. As long as you can see out the window, see the ground, weather is good enough, you fly at a certain altitude, you can safely fly. As long as you avoid the restricted airspace, you can safely fly long distances without talking to anybody. So, the real question here -- and we'll be asking this question for a while -- and is, what happened?

Were the pilots stupid? Did they not file a flight plan? Did they not talk to air traffic control? Did they not have their transponder set properly? Or is it possible they did everything by the rules and air traffic control made a mistake and lost them and, as a result, the planes and helicopters had to be scrambled?

Whatever the case, eventually once those military aircraft got into close proximity to that Cessna 150, they eventually were able to raise them on a special frequency reserved for these kinds of situations, emergency situations. And I am told by somebody who listened to that exchange that the pilot -- actually two of them were talking -- seemed to be under great duress as they were talking to that F-16 fighter 2 and those Black Hawk helicopters. Well, duress is probably an understatement.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I expect so. CNN's Miles O'Brien who's clearly a pilot. Debby Fallows on the other hand is not a pilot, though she logged plenty of miles along side her husband, Jim who is. She knows her way around the cockpit a bit. But we're just as interested tonight in what she saw on the ground. You saw much of this play out. Did you see it first or hear it first?

DEBBIE FALLOWS, EYEWITNESS: Oh, I heard it first.

BROWN: You heard the big -- the big military jets. You didn't hear the little Cessna?

FALLOWS: I did. I was working at my desk at home with the windows open. And I was hearing the commercial flights going on the flight path into National Airport. And then all of a sudden I heard what was clearly recognizable as these fighter jets. If you have lived in Washington during 2001, you got very used to what these fighter jets sounded like.

BROWN: Was that an unusual sound?

FALLOWS: It was more than an unusual sound. It was a roaring sound and it was a very fast moving sound. You had the sense that it was coming at you and then going away from you in just nanoseconds.

BROWN: Did you run outside?

FALLOWS: Would you run outside? Yes.

BROWN: Yes, of course, I'd run outside.

FALLOWS: Of course. Of course. Yes, I ran outside and I looked up as the jet was passing by, and then starting to make a circle around to the east again. And then as it was circling, I heard -- I heard this small kind of putter, putter, that was distinctly a small private plane. And looked up and this little Cessna, what I thought, or some small private plane, was just kind of puttering its way along -- past the house, just down our street -- like a Sunday sightseer.

BROWN: What altitude would you guess?

FALLOWS: I would guess...

BROWN: Was it way up?

FALLOWS: I would guess 1,200 feet. No, very close.

BROWN: You could almost touch it.

FALLOWS: Yes, a normal... BROWN: And what are the -- what are the F-16s doing at this point?

FALLOWS: The F-16 -- the F-16 was circling back around to come up from the rear behind the little plane. And just as the small plane was going past our house, two F-16s came in succession just roaring past him. They were higher than he was, but they were low enough so that they set out all the alarms on the cars that were parked up and down the street.

BROWN: What are you thinking at this point?

FALLOWS: I was thinking that something was terribly wrong.

BROWN: Are you thinking something's terribly wrong as in someone has violated the air space or something's terribly wrong as in this is some sort of an attack?

FALLOWS: No. I was thinking that this plane shouldn't be there, but the jets were reacting in such a way that there was something serious going on. They weren't just nicely escorting this little plane out of the air space. They were clearly in some kind of pursuit trying to convey some kind of message to him to get out of there.

BROWN: Did you have any sense that they were -- I mean, by how they were flying that they were trying to signal the pilot in any way?

FALLOWS: Well, it was hard to tell, because you could tell that they were having trouble making communication with him. They were far away. They were going so much faster than he was. And they were behaving in an intense way. And the small plane was just kind of casually puttering along.

BROWN: A very weird scene. How long -- how much time are we talking about here?

FALLOWS: We're probably talking about six hours -- we're probably talking about five or six minutes.

BROWN: Yes. It seemed longer?

FALLOWS: It seemed really long, because I was watching the jets make two or three circles around him during the time that he was in my line of vision going from east to west. And as the small plane -- then they were all kind of heading off to the west. And I lost a little bit of sight of them. But the two large -- it actually became more unnerving toward the end because the two jets were maneuvering back and forth toward each other in a kind of funny pattern. So, you couldn't really tell what they were doing. The light was glinting off them. And I really thought from my perspective that they were going to run into each other in midair.

BROWN: So it was more that they were going to smash into each other than they would shoot this little plane down?

FALLOWS: Well, as he was going over my house, I just kept kind of urging him to go on, to get out of the neighborhood, right.

BROWN: And just -- last question. So at some point they leave your sight line. You can probably still hear it, but they leave your sight. And how much longer is it before you sort of know what happened?

FALLOWS: It was probably another five minutes when I realized that everything was OK, because at that point it seemed like all the commercial air flight had stopped, and it was very quiet. And then I saw the commercial airplanes coming in again, so I thought, OK, this is over and went back to work.

BROWN: Went back to work. (INAUDIBLE) thanks for coming in today.

FALLOWS: Thanks, Aaron.

BROWN: Appreciate it, Debbie Fallows.

Coming up on the program tonight, preventing another scare or worse. We'll take a look at the warning systems that are in place now and how they work.

Also tonight, training for a moment that everyone hopes will never come. Shooting down a plane that strays. We'll take a break first. We're in the nation's capital and this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The White House tonight on a beautiful spring night in Washington after what has been a kind of crazy day, or at least for a while. White House staff gone. President probably in bed. And the lights will be going off soon at the White House here in Washington.

In a new normal, air space is a mine field where missteps can have deadly consequences. A plane that drifts into restricted air space -- and it happens more often than you might think -- becomes a target in a heartbeat. Today's scare in Washington comes just as the Capitol is about to launch a new warning system for pilots who do go astray. So could that warning system have made any difference today? Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Red, red green. Lasers pulsate into the night sky a short distance from the Capitol warning pilots as far as 20 miles away to stop and turn.

COL. JAMES DANIELS, FIRST AIR FORCE: I mean, there's so many high value targets in this area. It's the center of our government. We need to protect it.

MESERVE: The large hunk of restricted air space above and around the capital region is intended to prevent another September 11 style attack from the air.

(on camera): About a dozen times a week pilots enter this restricted air space, usually unintentionally.

(voice-over): During the funeral of President Ronald Reagan, there was a hasty evacuation of the Capitol when the governor of Kentucky's plane flew inside the zone.

In other cases, if a transgressing pilot cannot be raised on the radio, fighter jets are scrambles to drop warning flares. If that doesn't stop them, there's the possibility of a shootdown.

The laser warning lights scattered throughout the restricted zone can be directed precisely at any plane warning pilots they have gone astray.

DANIELS: We use a visual warning system, the aircraft turns around, we leave the fighters on the ground. All the other assets that we bring to bare. It could potentially prevent a tragic situation.

MESERVE: Lasers used for different purposes have given pilots problems, even injuries.

PARRY WINDER, DELTA AIRLINES PILOT: Initially, I noticed almost a flash blindness like you would have if you got really close to a flash camera.

MESERVE: But the warning system uses a different kind of laser beam, perfectly safe, according to pilots who have seen it from the air.

MELISSA RUDINGER, AIRCRAFT OWNERS AND PILOTS ASSN: I can tell you that it definitely doesn't hurt your eyes.

MESERVE: Pilots who have gotten briefings but have not seen the system in operation wonder whether the lasers will be visible in all conditions.

FAYEK ZABANEH, PILOT: If you are flying west in the afternoon and the sun is directly in your eyes, it will be very difficult to see anything else.

MESERVE: But officials say the distinctive pattern and colors stand out day and night except in low visibility conditions. Providing an easier, cheaper, safer way to warn those in the skies and protect those below.

For CNN's America bureau, Jeanne Meserve, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The fact is, however, that machinery only does so much. When a decision has to be made to deal with a potentially hostile aircraft, human judgment comes first and with it human consequences. , of course, for many. And in the case of a fighter pilot's soul, consequences for one.

Here's CNN's Kyra Phillips. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Aircraft to vertical.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Secret Service has been informed.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They call it the air war against terrorists. And this is the battlefield.

The potential enemy, a civilian aircraft under terrorist control. The strategy, to end every incident without firing a shot. But 9/11 spawned a new kind of war with chilling new rules of engagement. In this war, the military is forced to think the unthinkable.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think the public would have stood for anything -- us firing on commercial airliners in the past. But it's been proving, yes, something worse might happen. So we're just kind of an extension of the public will.

PHILLIPS: The Lieutenant Colonel T.G. Carazis (ph) and Major John Black of the 125th Fighter Wing are getting ready for a routine patrol in southeast U.S. airspace. These Florida Air National Guard F-15 fighter pilots are battle ready.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Check the back end of the gun. Make sure it is all hot and the bullets are loaded in the chambers. Check our heat seeker. Make sure that all looks good.

PHILLIPS: We're going along on a mission that shows what might happen if a commercial airliner is hijacked.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Raptor One copies. (INAUDIBLE).

PHILLIPS: It doesn't take long before this mission is diverted.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) contact this aircraft has failed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: FAA, can you give me a mode 3 on that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 5012, general.

PHILLIPS: Something is not right with a passenger plane over the Atlantic Ocean.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) this is (INAUDIBLE) battle commander. We have a NoRDO airliner.

PHILLIPS: NoRDO, no radio contact.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're a NoRDO aircraft that's (INAUDIBLE) airlines 409, Miami to Wilmington, metroliner.

PHILLIPS: Military intelligence and the FAA want to know everything about this airliner.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get the range. How far they think it would fly with 3400 pounds of gas.

PHILLIPS: Could this aircraft reach critical infrastructure?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has deviated from the flight path.

PHILLIPS: These commanders take no chances.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This time. We have committed Rattler 01, flight 2 out of the Jaguar Cap (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE; Your mission, intercept, shadow, commit bulls eye, 100157. 21,500 track west.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE).

PHILLIPS: Fighters now monitor Falcon flight 401 every move. Then.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The aircraft is now at squawk at 7500 squawk.

PHILLIPS: 7500 is the code for hijack.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Obtain permission for fighter to be intercept?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: See if they can give us any indication who is in control of the aircraft.

PHILLIPS: Pilots attempt hand signals no response. Pilots rock their winning. Still no response.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It should acknowledge with the ring arch, which he's not doing.

PHILLIPS: Two generals are brought in and briefed. One from the Canadian Air Force, one from the United States.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Souls on board?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 16. 14 passengers, two crew, one Pakistani, one Saudi, one French, the others are presumed to be of United States descent. fighters are on it now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My concern is, we could have something else in this country. So, we're going to keep our focus on this thing. But we're also going to keep focus on the rest of the country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The J-PAC has authorized the use of flares to get the pilots attention.

PHILLIPS: Now is the final attempt to get this pilot to respond. If he doesn't, the order could come to shoot this aircraft down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do we have an engagement authority?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir, we have engagement authority on line.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Raptor One copies. Flares are authorized.

PHILLIPS: Flares are released.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now the guy realizes he's series. Now he's coming left, following me.

PHILLIPS: The pilot finally responds.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think we should ever relax. We are going to have to continue to prosecute this enemy until they no longer present a threat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Active air scramble. Active air scramble.

PHILLIPS: A new kind of war, a new way of fighting. A battle in which a commander's best choice may be the lesser of two evils. And the battle cry is, never again.

(on camera): I talked with the F-16 pilot who flew the intercept on the Cessna headed toward the White House. I asked him if he received the order to shoot down that air craft. He said no.

I also ask him how he got the pilot to turn away from the White House and land that Cessna safely? He said he gave all the military visual signals, including dropping the flares. But what got that pilot of the Cessna to land was the radio communication.

The F-16 pilot from the 121st Fighter Squadron finally made contact with that Cessna pilot on the guard frequency. In other words, the emergency frequency -- 121.5

He said the pilot sounded nervous. But he listened and landed that small plane safely.

Kyra Phillips, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still to come on the program tonight, a chilling scene in the skies. Fighter jets scrambling to stop a suspicious plane. We'll show you what it looked like from the ground.

And inside Congress, they were told to run and they did. No fools they. We'll talk with a Congressman about what happened today and what did not. We'll take a break first.

From Washington, D.C. and around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Congressman John Mica chairs the House Aviation Subcommittee which has a hand in a lot of the agencies who work together today -- they did work together today. He's a Republican from the state of Florida. We're glad to have him with us tonight. Let's quickly have sort of the things that went right today. Each time something like this happens, I assume Homeland Security, the Pentagon, everybody you all learn things.

What was learned today?

REP. JOHN MICA (R-FL), CHMN., HOUSE AVIATION SUB. CMTE. Well, we had a lot of experience, you know, with Governor Fletcher flying in during the Reagan funeral. We learned that FAA was not that well coordinated with DOD. And some of our communications radars didn't mesh. Today worked very well. Actually, today was going to be the first day, ironically, that we were going to test another system, a laser warning system...

BROWN: We talked about that earlier.

MICA: ... to pilots that got into the air space. I know -- I was told that that system was not used here. They used flares. But everything went off pretty much as we would have anticipated. And fortunately, no one was injured.

BROWN: We talk about this a little more theoretically. I asked a correspondent of ours earlier, is the assumption that you all made that if a plane violates the air space and we don't know what its intentions are or that we think that the intentions are malevolent, that the malevolency is it's going to smash into a building?

MICA: Well, there's some judgments that have to be made. And we have a couple of zones, 50 miles out, then 15 miles out where you can make decisions. This was a small aircraft. It probably wouldn't have done much damage because it was a Cessna. Now, thought that went through my mind as I was fleeing from the capitol was smaller aircraft or an aircraft that might have biological...

BROWN: Yes. And you've got all these people outside.

MICA: Exactly. Biological, chemical, God forbid nuclear, because we've heard a lot about that. Now, small aircraft could do a lot of damage with that kind of a hit.

BROWN: Tell me if I'm right here. I'm not trying to scare people. I'm was trying to go through the way everybody needs to think about this stuff. A little Cessna, God forbid, smashing into a building would be a bad thing, but it would be a kind of -- it wouldn't be a major catastrophe.

MICA: It wouldn't have done much damage to the U.S. Capitol Building.

BROWN: But a small Cessna could carry enough bio-chem materials. What happened today is that everyone is essentially inside thrown outside.

MICA: Well, you've probably got a better chance because you're away from ground zero. And we figure the U.S. Capitol is going to be ground zero. So the thought is to get people as far as way as possible and give them some chance. Again, if there's that kind of eventuality or direct hit or the Capitol or one of the other office buildings.

BROWN: This is the sort of stuff that we need to -- we're going to have to live with in this post-9/11 world that we find ourself in.

MICA: It is, unfortunately, a reality. And we do live with that kind of a threat. The -- we know that the Capitol and the White House were targets in the past. And I would venture to say that terrorists would also target them in the future. Look at how long it took them to come back at the World Trade Center after -- and I remember going up in the World Trade Center just weeks before, and all the security that was in place at different levels. Then they came after it from a different -- with a different approach.

BROWN: Nice to meet you. I bet your heart was racing there for a while today.

MICA: Well, I had my son and my nephew waiting for me downstairs for lunch. And a lot of thought -- I was going against the crowd to make sure that they were going to get out of the building, until we knew. But quite a stressful day.

BROWN: We appreciate your efforts and you're being with us tonight.

MICA: Good day. Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.

Ahead on the program, we'll check some of the other stories that made news today. We'll take a break first. We're in the nation's capital and this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: About a quarter to the hour now. Back to Erica Hill in Atlanta for one more look at some of the other stories that made news in the world today, Erica.

HILL: Hi, Aaron.

We start off with a developing story, actually, out of California. A man driving a car, police say, was stolen during a home invasion robbery in Long Beach, California. Led officers on a 20 minute high speed chase that ended in a hail of gunfire killing the driver. Los Angeles TV stations provided live coverage. The chase started on one freeway, then proceeded to others with the driver weaving from one lane to another and at one point hitting a guardrail. He then tried to elude police on surface streets going through red lights, and occasionally driving against on coming traffic. The drama ended in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant when the driver stopped his car and jumped out brandishing a handgun. He was shot by police as he attempted to flee on foot. The man he fell to the pavement. His gun flew from his hand and skidded away. Police shot him again as he writhed on the ground, reached into his pant's pocket and appeared to pulled something out. Now, CNN decided against showing you that finally burst of gunfire because of its graphic nature.

And Bill Cosby's lawyers told a federal judge today the entertainer did not drug or sexually molest a woman at his Philadelphia home in January 2004. The woman sued Cosby after prosecutors declined to file charges earlier this year. Cosby admits he offered the woman some Benadryl, an allergy medicine, when she told him she was having trouble falling asleep.

And that is the latest from Headline news at this hour. Aaron, we turn it back to you.

BROWN: Erica, thank you for your efforts today.

It's the problem with those car chase stories, you never know how they're going to end. They can end horribly, badly, as this one did. And people see it on live TV. Thank you.

We call the segment "Newsbeat." It's a different take on the story of the day. Tonight Joe Johns on becoming part of the story even as he was covering it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (on camera): The first thing I think, obviously, is oh, no, not again. And I have a plan B that goes into effect whenever something like this happens. You grab the little run bag that I started carrying around September 11, 2001, go down the exits, follow the people, listen to the police and try to get out of the building and hope it's nothing. And that's essentially what I did.

(voice-over): My biggest surprise, without a doubt, was getting the information that there was believed to be a plane two minutes out. I got outside the door and heard overhead very distinctly the engine of an aircraft.

(on camera): And that point, my immediate thought was, oh, my gosh, this plane that they've been tracking has somehow gotten through the air defenses and it has arrived and there are still people in the building.

I think the main thing I see people getting from this story is that, yes, the government is still on alert, there is still concern about a potential threat to the United States. That's not going to change any time in the near future. And here is how the government responded today. That's probably the bottom line.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Correspondent Joe Johns. Take a look at morning papers when we come back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Okey-dokey. Time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world. The nation's capital version.

A lot of ways to headline the plane scare today. The Washington Examiner, "Plane Scare Empties Capitol: Two Pennsylvania Men Taken Into Custody After Violating Restricted Space." That's one way to do it.

But we prefer the way the New York Daily News did it, frankly. "Air Heads: Two Dimwits Fly Plane Near White House Causing Panic in D.C." That's why we're glad to have the Daily News.

The Chattanooga -- two dim wits. Chattanooga Times Free Press. Good front page story here. See if you can get this. "Uncle Sam Still Wants You: Enlistment Numbers Continue to Slide Regionally In Chattanooga, Tennessee." I don't know if there's another Chattanooga. I think I read today that the Army is going to stand down its recruiting -- it's recruiters for a day to try and kind of work this out. See if there are strategies they can come up with.

You know what? Well, all right. We're in Washington, we'll do this one. The Washington Times. Down at the bottom of the page, if you can. "Plentiful Pollen Does a Nose Job." I don't know how well you can see the drawing there, but it's fabulous.

All right. 15 seconds. Let's do the Chicago Sun-Times. The weather tomorrow in Chicago -- thank you. We bring that with us to Washington. May day may day. We'll wrap it up in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We started the day in Minneapolis. We thank the folks in the Twin Cities for their graciousness. We'll see you tomorrow. Good night for all of us.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com