NORAD official: Plane wasn't seen as threat
 |  NORAD spokesman Col. Keith Snyder |
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| VIDEO |
 A Pentagon official describes decision-making to shoot down a plane.
 The response to the Washington airspace security breach.
 Key buildings evacuated as plane enters restricted airspace.
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(CNN) -- A plane that accidentally flew within three miles of the White House prompted evacuations throughout the capital Wednesday before a Black Hawk helicopter and two F-16 fighter jets forced the aircraft to land at a Frederick, Maryland, airport.
CNN anchor Bill Hemmer spoke Thursday with Col. Keith Snyder, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, about the response to the security breach of restricted airspace and ways to prevent future incidents.
HEMMER: Let's try and answer the question that's on the mind of so many. How close did these two men come to being shot out of the air yesterday?
SNYDER: I can't tell you how the engagement authority yesterday afternoon viewed the situation other than that it was not a threat. And they made the decision that they weren't going to shoot the aircraft down.
We had eyes on that airplane for a number of minutes yesterday, with the fighters there getting a good identification and helping to pass that along to the engagement authorities yesterday to decide whether or not they wanted to engage that aircraft.
HEMMER: Give me a better sense of how you determined it was not a threat. How do you know that?
SNYDER: Well, it's not an exact science by any stretch of the imagination. We get the pilot's eyes onto the track of the interest, the aircraft, get his tail number.
We bring in other interagency assets, all source information. Is the aircraft stolen? Has it been hijacked? We go through a lot of those types of issues to determine and help us build a case on whether or not this aircraft represents a threat or not.
HEMMER: So are you suggesting then that while this process was under way in the skies over Washington, D.C., that you were in touch with the airport where the plane may have originated? Is that how you determined that?
SNYDER: The Transportation Security Administration as well as the Federal Aviation Administration and other officials could be making -- during that period of time -- could be making those types of decisions and trying to assess where that plane came from, who its owner is and all of the background information that they can and bring that to a conference, where these agencies are on the phone together, to try and make that decision on whether or not anybody has any information that could be valuable in determining the possible threat or nonthreat of a particular aircraft.
HEMMER: Then what explains when a Black Hawk helicopter is flying by the side of this Cessna for a period of what appears to be at least five minutes, possibly longer, F-16s rocking their wings on the sides, flares being fired into the sky? Why was not a more efficient response given from these pilots?
SNYDER: That's a good question. The majority of the time up there -- whenever we have someone enter the no-fly zone -- that aircraft pretty rapidly gets the picture and is able to turn away from the restricted airspace and leave.
It took a lot of maneuvering by the folks from Andrews [Air Force Base] yesterday and their jets to try and get him on -- to get him to fly away from the downtown area. And it wasn't apparently until they were able to actually raise him on the radio that they were successful.
HEMMER: So then, I'm wondering, is there a new warning system that's needed here? Is there a different perhaps relationship of interactions that has to be pursued when a plane like this is only three miles away from the White House?
SNYDER: Well, what we're trying to do and we're going to institute on the 21st of this month is another layer of aids to try and warn pilots. And that's our visual warning system -- have a series of flashing lights that will be clearly visible and aimed at a pilot that has strayed into the airspace there in D.C. as another indicator to try and warn him that he shouldn't be there where he's at.
HEMMER: If you're flashing lights in this incident like yesterday, would that have prevented this?
SNYDER: It may not have prevented it. It might have, and it might have caught the pilot's attention a little bit sooner -- as an additional aid, as one of the tools in the tool kit that we have available to us to try and warn those aircraft that they are entering airspace they shouldn't be in.
HEMMER: One last thing here. Are you sitting here today, like we are, wondering how this goes as far as it did?
SNYDER: I don't think that we feel that that's an issue in terms of how far. We were on that airplane for a very long time, monitoring him, trying to communicate with him.
So we spent a good deal of time on his wing, so to speak, yesterday trying to gather the information, trying to get him to maneuver away. So we feel fairly confident in our timelines -- the folks at Andrews -- those folks did a great job yesterday afternoon with that aircraft. The engagement authorities that were involved deemed that that aircraft was not a threat.
So it just took him a little longer to get the picture. And if he's a student pilot, he may not really know exactly what he should be doing or what those aircraft are trying to tell him to do.
