Officials to probe Washington airplane scare
 |  The Cessna was forced to land by military aircraft after it entered restricted air space. |
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| VIDEO |
 A top Pentagon official on making the decision to shoot down a plane.
 The response following the D.C. airspace security breach.
 Key buildings evacuated as plane enters restricted airspace.
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| CNN seeks home video | If you have home video of the airplane security breach Wednesday over Washington, please call CNN at (404)827-1500 and ask for Public Information.
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Authorities will investigate decisions made by officials when a small airplane strayed into restricted airspace over Washington, the White House said Thursday, including why President Bush was not informed about the incident until it was over.
Bush was on a bicycle trip in suburban Maryland on Wednesday when the plane approached within three miles of the White House, spokesman Scott McClellan said.
The Secret Service determined that Bush didn't need to know about the plane, which prompted more than 30,000 people to evacuate the White House, the Supreme Court, the U.S. Capitol and other federal buildings, McClellan said.
Instead, a military aide in close contact with the president was in communication with the White House situation room about developing events, McClellan said.
He said the investigation of how the incident was handled will include the Secret Service and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Joe Hagin.
While Bush was in Maryland, Secret Service officials at the White House moved Vice President Dick Cheney, first lady Laura Bush and visiting former first lady Nancy Reagan to secure locations, and Capitol Police did the same for leaders of Congress.
The two men who provoked the scare by flying a single-engine Cessna 150 within three miles of the White House were released Wednesday without charges after the Secret Service deemed that their intrusion was an accident. (Full story)
Former deputy homeland security adviser to the president and CNN security analyst -- Richard Falkenrath -- said the speed of the response to the incident was cause for concern.
Though the evacuations were carried out in five to six minutes, "that's probably not good enough in a real threat situation," Falkenrath said, noting that a plane traveling at 150 mph could cover the three miles in slightly more than a minute.
The flight represented the deepest penetration into the nation's most-restricted airspace since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he said, adding, "That's a very big deal."
Still, Falkenrath noted that F-16 fighter jets were scrambled in time to fire on the plane, had that been deemed necessary, and ground-based missile batteries around downtown Washington also could have attacked the aircraft.
McClellan said the investigation will examine why an emergency notification intercom system -- set up in the White House offices of the news media after the September 11 attacks -- failed to work.
"There were many people inside the White House who had no idea what was taking place," said CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux, who was in CNN's White House basement workspace when she heard something on a monitor "that sounded unusual."
Malveaux went upstairs and said people initially were being told to remain in the building, then, a minute later, they were told to leave. "I saw uniformed Secret Service yelling, 'This is not a joke,' screaming essentially for us to run and to get out."
On Capitol Hill, CNN congressional correspondent Joe Johns said he first noticed something was amiss when he looked at a television screen that showed the Senate being evacuated.
"That was out first sense of, 'we gotta get out of this building,'" he said.
A handful of members of the congressional leadership complained that, when they went downstairs, they had to merge with tourists, which made it harder for them to get out of the building, Johns said.
Enunciators -- speakers set up throughout the building to provide warnings of emergency situations -- did not work until later, he said.
It was not even clear whether the decision to evacuate was the proper one, given the small size of the plane, or whether it would have been better to tell the buildings' occupants to remain where they were.
But the Capitol Police defended the decision.
"There is some comfort in the type of damage that would cause but, since I don't know what was in it, that could also be very damaging," Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said.
