Hundreds flee one building; employee says no warning provided

NEW YORK - A Boeing 747 used by the president was escorted over lower Manhattan by an Air Force fighter jet Monday as part of a government photo opportunity and training mission, causing a brief panic among office workers near where hijacked passenger jets crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Workers from several office buildings poured out onto the streets before they learned that the flights were harmless.

John Leitner, a floor trader at the New York Mercantile Exchange Building, said about 1,000 people "went into a total panic" and ran out of the building around 10 a.m. after seeing the planes whiz by their building, near the World Trade Center site.
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"Apparently, nobody in the building was informed that this was going to happen," he said. "Everyone panicked, as you can certainly understand."

He said the workers gathered along the Hudson River until a security officer with a bullhorn told them it was a planned exercise.

Susan and Jay DeVita sent msnbc.com a photo taken by their son Michael from his office window, asking: "What is wrong with people. ... A photo op????? The people of New York and New Jersey do not deserve to be scared like this."

Another reader who responded to msnbc.com's request for photos said: "Video? Picture? Who the heck had time for that?!?!?! We were all too busy getting the heck out of the building!

"A coworker, whose desk faces the window, all of a sudden had this huge jumbo jet in his face," wrote Jenny Espinosa. "This poor kid freaked. One woman who works in our building, and is pregnant, had a panic attack and almost collapsed."

"We remember all too well 911," he said. "There are so many people who work here who still suffer from PTS, and you schedule a photo-op/drill without letting people know? ... if it was 'nothing more than an photo-op/drill', then there are some heads which need to roll. Don't be surprised if these 1000's of people who were put through this trauma file a class action suit!"

FAA alerted, but not public
The Federal Aviation Administration said it had notified city law enforcement about the mission before it took place.

"The FAA and the presidential airlift group conducted an aerial photo mission" and training for crew members of the president's flying fleet, said Air Force spokeswoman Capt. Angela Webb. She declined to release any other information about the nature of the photos being taken.

She said the flight involved a VC-25, a Defense Department version of the 747 that is called Air Force One when the president is aboard, and an Air Force F-16 jet fighter. They flew over the upper New York Bay and Newark Bay between 10 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.

The NYPD said the flight "was authorized by the FAA for the vicinity of the Statue of Liberty, with directives to local authorities not to disclose information about it, but to direct all inquiries to the FAA."

Webb did not know why the public wasn't notified ahead of time.

Sen. Charles Schumer blasted the FAA for the lack of warning.

"This was a photo shoot. There was no need for surprise," Schumer said. "There was no need to scare thousands of New Yorkers who still have the vivid memory of 9/11."

'A scary scene'
Among the workers who left their buildings were some at The Wall Street Journal.

Kathleen Seagriff, a staff assistant in the news rooms, said workers heard the roar of the planes and then saw them from their windows.

"They went down the Hudson, turned around and came back by the building," she said. "It was a scary scene, especially for those of us who were there on 9/11."

Some staffers, who thought they made out an American flag on one of the planes, stayed behind. But she said most didn't want to take the chance.

The incident also caused a panic in Jersey City.

Stan Eason of the Jersey City Police Department told WNBC that "thousands" panicked and that buildings were evacuated because residents were unaware of what was going on.