A lot of you ask how we operate....

When my phone rang this morning, I looked quickly looked at the clock: 4:15 a.m. Nothing good ever happens at 4:15 a.m.

It was our vice president of news coverage. Did I know about the terror plot? Where was Anderson?

The assignment desk had already set up a conference bridge -- a kind of discreet party line -- for CNN managers to dial into to sort out the story and the logistics of getting London staffed-up. After all, many of CNN International's considerable resources were already dedicated to the Middle East.

As for Anderson, after 28 days in the Middle East -- Cyprus, Lebanon and Israel -- he was driving down from Israel's northern border toward Tel Aviv to start a long weekend break. When I found him, Anderson and his cameraman Neil Hallsworth already had sketchy details of the breaking terror story and were looking into ways to get from Tel Aviv to London.

Heathrow airport in London was shutdown. So we looked at flights to Paris and Budapest and then connecting to the Eurostar train. We figured that with air travel paralyzed rail would be a sure way to get Anderson to London.

As it turned out, all of the connections were dicey at best, so we arranged a charter jet to a small airfield in the United Kingdom, added a couple of additional CNN producers to fill the seats, and before long, the plane was in the air. All of this happened before 6:30 a.m.

Anderson should be on scene and reporting from London by mid-afternoon. Of course, we will continue our extensive coverage from the Middle East as well. John Roberts will anchor our coverage from there.