Plane Circling Statue of Liberty Just "Taking Photos," Says Paper

If you were worried about the plane lazily circling the Statue of Liberty this morning, don't be: the Staten Island Advance reveals, albeit belatedly, that the military flight "taking photos" of the statue. "Reports indicate it may be Air Force One," they add, suggesting that the Obama may have gotten the kids up earlier and treated them to some President-style tourism. Or maybe a military coup has begun, in which case it was nice talking with you guys. Advance commenters are mostly enraged: "That damn plane was maybe 2000-3000 feet from my building-Newport tower when it banked left. not cool at all," "We started getting phone calls like crazy in my office, then the market started getting hit. Now it just richochet back up when we learned it was just a drill," etc. Update: Now the Wall Street Journal and WCBS are carrying the government propaganda story, phlegmatically reporting that the unannounced low-altitude flyover caused "some evacuations of office buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City, N.J." Update 2: The Times says it was an "Air Force One lookalike," accompanied by two F-16s, for purposes unknown. The city was notified of the exercise by the FAA, but told not to tell citizens. Maybe the idea was to see how pissed off people would get when they found out. But then, why would they bother? Photo (cc) Mark Heard.