The Curious Case of Marine One's Emergency Landing

On Friday, Marine One -- the President's helicopter -- was forced to land on its way to Camp David due to inclement weather that no one else could see:

• President Obama and his oldest daughter Sasha landed in an undisclosed location and were quickly transferred to a motorcade to complete their trip...

• The same day, a civilian aircraft was intercepted close to Camp David and was escorted to an airfield in West Virginia by a pair of F-15s...

• Also that day, the FBI issued a nationwide warning about Al Qaeda threats to small aircraft, only days before the tenth anniversary of 9/11...

Law enforcement received a five-page bulletin from DHS that outlined a general -- but not yet specific -- threat:

The alert, issued ahead of the summer’s last busy travel weekend, said terrorists have considered renting private planes and loading them with explosives.

“Al-Qaida and its affiliates have maintained an interest in obtaining aviation training, particularly on small aircraft, and in recruiting Western individuals for training in Europe or the United States, although we do not have current, credible information or intelligence of an imminent attack being planned,” according to the bulletin obtained by The Associated Press.

The bulletin also says al-Qaida would like to use sympathetic Westerners to get flight training, then get them to become flight instructors.

You can't blame the Secret Service for taking any and all precautions to protect the president. And certainly they need to remain mum about their tactics. But the questions remain:

In a highly unusual maneuver, President Obama’s 30-minute flight to the Presidential mountain retreat at Camp David Friday afternoon was diverted to an undisclosed landing near Frederick, Md. and a motorcade assembled to drive him to the nearby site. White House press secretary Jay Carney tells ABC News a “bad weather call” was made before the President and his younger daughter Sasha even boarded the aircraft.

Carney says they arrived safely at Camp David. It remains unexplained why the President would be allowed to board Marine One knowing that the landing site on the mountain was experiencing poor weather making a landing difficult.

...At the time Marine One took off in Washington Accuweather.com reported there was no precipitation across the entire region, including Camp David... Light winds blew from the southeast at 10mph with mostly cloudy skies and temperatures in the mid-70s.

Bottom line: better safe than sorry.


Update: All American Blogger points us to this ABC News report entitled "Small Aircraft Terror Threat."