J$P Instant Transcript! John Loftus says we botched the Security Alert at the Capitol.

From Dayside with Linda Vester, May 11 2005:

LINDA VESTER [FOX NEWS]: Taking it back to John Loftus, former Justice Department Prosecutor. In the first few minutes after this alert, John, what worked and what didn't?

JOHN LOFTUS: Almost nothing worked. I mean the planes had scrambled, but this small plane should never have gotten anywhere--four miles? That's a few minutes' flight time.

VESTER: That's very close.

LOFTUS: Linda, that's really bad. And you have such a small plane, some serious mistakes were made. First of all, it's too small for explosives. There was no need to call for a running evacuation of the Capitol Building. They would have been safer indoors. A plane that small can't have enough explosives to puncture the major walls. It could only be used for biological or chemical weapons. Right to call the alert, wrong to call a running alert. They blew it, big time.

VESTER: What about all the buildings they evacuated? I said White House, Capitol, Treasury, Supreme Court, not the Pentagon.

LOFTUS: They evacuated the wrong buildings. The wind was blowing to the SouthWest at 7 miles an hour; this plane is heading for the Capitol. Typical tourist overflight, I want to see DC. The building that should have been evacuated was the building to the SouthWest of the Capitol, which is the Pentagon. That wasn't. Everything else was. So that was the second huge mistake. Now what you have here is a little tiny airplane that should have--90% of the time, this happens with very rich people who think they're above the law. They think they can afford a plane. They don't care about these air defense zones. 9/11 applies to everyone else, and not them. We have intrusions like this in the outer zone hundreds of times, and several times since 9/11 we've had something like this take place.

VESTER: So why would, if you say that we've had these intrusions hundreds of times, why, when the fighter jets get scrambled, why would there be a running evacuation for this--

LOFTUS: This guy flew the paperclip pattern. Now that's what he flew into the red zone, turned around after he was told to get out, then turned around again to come back in. So that appeared to be consistent with a determined terrorist who wanted to evade the first approach but wanted to sneak back into DC and kill someone. Now it will probably turn out it's just some arrogant businessman who wanted a closeup look at the Capitol Building. Now ironically, we have laws where we can seize a Cadillac from a drug dealer; if he uses somebody else's car at a crime it gets seized. We don't have a law to seize that airplane, and we should. Every time one of these idiots sends all of our people in DC scurrying around getting out of his way, take the little plane away. Make Daddy pay for it. Hit him in the pocketbook....

VESTER: After 9/11 we had air patrols, caps, over New York and Washington.

LOFTUS: We physically had airplanes flying overhead in New York and Washington. We don't anymore. They're on the ground. And now it takes a couple of minutes for the pilots to put down their coffee, go out to the plane, start up the engine, hop in and take off. You know what? We're better off spending a little extra money to at least keep the engines running in the plane, waste the fuel. And we'd be better off to have one plane in the air and two on the ground--the reaction time is too short. Now there are alternatives. If a plane comes in 75 miles away, doesn't have its radio on and is not coming in, you have to make a decision then to intercept that far out. This plane got within three miles of the White House. That's within range of radiological weapons, chemical weapons. Even a common missile could be fired out the window of that plane and take out a target. Three miles is extremely close.

VESTER: Considering how erratic this pilot's flight pattern was, that he was in the space, he went out, he went back, even after he had gotten flares fired toward him by US fighter jets--

LOFTUS: He turned around and still came back in.

VESTER: A reporter asked the question, and it's worth asking, why was there no shoot-down order? Because at that point he's already ignored numerous regular contacts, but you're ignoring flares as well?

LOFTUS: Linda, you've hit the biggest point here. This is air-con red. This is a guy who's come in to the red zone, turned around, and then is coming back again. There should have been a shoot-to-kill order immediately, when he executed the second turn. Nothing was done. That tells every terrorist in the world, hey, the Americans are idiots. We can fly anything into the nation's capitol and get real close before they even think about shooting us down. We have to change the rules. The rules of engagement have to be more defensive.

VESTER: But then again, had there been a shoot-down and then we find out that the pilot of this Cessna is some average Joe from Pennsylvania--and we're hearing that this plane was registered in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, or at least near there--we saw the person who was taken into custody. He seemed like a regular guy with shoulder-length hair and a sports shirt and khaki shorts and white socks and sneakers.

LOFTUS: Gee, you know what, Linda? We're at war. And I think the American people will accept that some spoiled rich kid who doesn't pay attention to the rules or where he's going may have to risk losing his life rather than risking losing our nation's capitol. It's a balance, and in the terms of the national interest and the interests of that selfish, stupid person, I think he loses.

VESTER: One quick final question. After 9/11 how much did we harden they key targets we're talking about today, the Capitol--

LOFTUS: We didn't. Hardening means you physically build up a wall. We did one wall of the Pentagon before 9/11 and that saved thousands of lives. That's where the plane hit, thank God, was the one wall we had just finished hardening with super-reinforcing materials, extra-thick glass. We haven't done that to our nation's Capitol, or the Supreme Court, or most of the White House. So yeah, we need to spend some money and harden up those targets so we don't evacuate when a little Cessna comes in because they'll almost bounce off. The real danger of a plane like that is it can spray chemical or biological weapons. I saw one study recently saying that biological weapons could be carried in a small Cessna and the plume would take out 85,000 people in Washington DC. That's what almost happened today, if that was a real terrorist. We can't take that risk anymore.

VESTER: OK, John Loftus, former Justice Department Prosecutor, thank you very much.