[FedCom] White House criticizes news media for "reporting [that] was based on listening to a police scanner"

[ed]

When the White House criticizes the news media for "reporting [that] was based
on listening to a police scanner", it doesn't bode well for the future of
unencrypted public-safety radio communications.

Doubtless this incident will be used by government radio encryption proponents
to push for more encryption of open, clear government radio communications.

-bernieS


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/11/AR2009091101740.html

Radio Traffic Led to False Reports of Gunfire on Potomac

Coast Guard Responds to 'Routine Exercise'

(photo) Vice Adm. John Currier of the U.S. Coast Guard discusses the Friday
morning training exercise on the Potomac that caused high alert in the metro area.

By William Branigin, Debbi Wilgoren and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 11, 2009; 2:32 PM

Radio traffic about a Coast Guard training exercise Friday led to erroneous
television news reports that guardsmen had fired on a recreational boat in the
Potomac River, near where President Obama was remembering the 9/11 attacks, a
senior Coast Guard official said.
This Story

    *
      Radio Traffic Led to False Reports of Gunfire on Potomac (video)
    *
      Statement by U.S. Coast Guard (pdf)

The news reports generated "uncertainty," said Vice Adm. John Currier, the Coast
Guard chief of staff, that prompted federal and D.C. officials to respond
anxiously. D.C. police raced to the riverside, and the Federal Aviation
Administration temporarily grounded planes at Reagan National Airport, .

Currier told reporters outside Coast Guard headquarters in Washington that no
local, state or federal agencies were notified of the training exercise because
it was "routine" and "low-profile." He did not apologize for the incident, but
said the Coast Guard would review its procedures to ensure that future training
exercises would not spark similar alarm.

"No shots were fired," Currier said. "There was no suspect vessel. There was no
criminal activity. . . . This was a routine training exercise."

He said that unspecified "members of the public" had "intercepted"
clear-channel, unencrypted Coast Guard radio transmissions regarding the
exercise and apparently concluded erroneously that a real interdiction of a
suspect vessel was taking place on the Potomac, near Memorial Bridge. Not far
from the river, President Obama attended a ceremony Friday morning at the
Pentagon to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Currier said that although no shots were fired during the exercise, there was
"verbalization of gunfire" in the radio transmissions.

"Somebody said, 'Bang! Bang!' on the radio at an appropriate time in the
training exercise when the actual interdiction of the boat would have taken
place," he said.

CNN, Fox and other media outlets cited police radio transmissions in which
officers allegedly ordered shots fired. Television anchors and analysts
speculated on-air as to whether the allegedly "suspicious vessel" confronted by
the Coast Guard could be linked to the 9/11 anniversary.

D.C. police spokeswoman Traci Hughes said that her agency received a flurry of
media calls about the incident after it was broadcast on television and that
police were able to confirm that the action was a training exercise, not a
threatening situation. Hughes said she did not know whether local authorities
had been told about the exercise before it happened.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that it was "best not to
second-guess" the Coast Guard's decision that it needed to conduct the exercise
on such a sensitive date.

"I tend not to question law enforcement trying to keep the nation safe," he told
reporters. Gibbs said he did not believe the White House was notified about the
exercise.

He sharply criticized the news media for "reporting [that] was based on
listening to a police scanner" and was not "verified" before being broadcast.

"If anyone was unnecessarily alarmed based on erroneous reporting that denoted
shots had been fired, I think everybody is apologetic of that," Gibbs said.
This Story

CNN anchor Kyra Phillips said on-air that a CNN employee in Washington called
the Coast Guard about the scanner report, "and they said, 'We don't know what
you're talking about.' " So we went forward with what we learned." Phillips,
reporting in Atlanta, cited CNN employees in Washington for her information.

In one transmission that CNN recorded and broadcast, a Coast Guard member can be
heard saying, "Vessel, if you don't slow down, stop your vessel in an R zone,
you will be fired upon." He was apparently referring to a restricted zone.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Nick Cangemi said in an interview, "We use a frequency
reserved for the Coast Guard and reserved for training."

Currier said it was possible that Coast Guard personnel had reported shots fired
on the radio as part of the exercise, but he stressed that protocol is to
preface any such transmissions by announcing that they are part of a drill.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere said the agency's
decision to suspend departing flights at nearby Reagan National Airport was
"based on reports of activity on the Potomac." She said the pause began at 10:08
a.m. Eastern time and lasted 22 minutes.

"The tower stopped departures based on media reports . . . as a precaution," she
said. "They just wanted to straighten that out first" before resuming takeoff
operations to the north.

The FAA said 17 flights were delayed. Spitaliere said the agency faulted neither
the media nor the Coast Guard for the rapid response, saying, "I think it worked
well."

Currier, the Coast Guard chief of staff, said the agency would review its media
operation following complaints from reporters that they were unable to get
information from the Coast Guard public affairs office about what was taking
place on the Potomac.

The incident was "very instructive for us," he said. "We're going to look at how
we engage the press." He added: "What you see here is a loop between press
reports, the prominence of those press reports, uncertainty created by those
press reports, and the fact that other agencies, due to that uncertainty,
responded as they usually would."

Although Currier defended the Coast Guard's decision not to notify other
agencies of the training exercise, saying such notifications had not been issued
for numerous such exercises in the past, not everyone in the federal bureaucracy
was happy with the practice.

"If it's in the footprint of the of the National Capital Region, you'd think
they would let someone know," a senior military official in Washington said.

Staff writers Christian Davenport and Scott Butterworth contributed to this report.