Update: Member of Obama Delegation to Mexico Tests Positive for Swine Flu, Along with his Son and Wife

The White House has issued a health advisory outlining "protective measures" for anyone who traveled on President Barack Obama’s trip to Mexico after a member of the U.S. delegation came down with flu-like symptoms – and tests on his family showed they’re probably infected with the swine flu.

The individual – an advance security staffer for Energy Secretary Steven Chu –appears to have spread the flu to his wife, son and nephew. All three have tested probable for swine flu, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday.

Gibbs, who did not name the security aide, said he did not work closely with Obama, didn’t fly on Air Force One and is back at work at the Energy Department.

More from Politico

Obama Security Advance Team Member Has Suspected Case of Swine Flu #breaking

Obama Security Advance Team Member Has Suspected Case of Swine Flu
A member of the security advance team for President Obama's recent trip to Mexico is suspected of having contracted swine flu.

News Alert
1:54 p.m. ET Thursday, April 30, 2009
Washingtonpost.com

Amtrak Joe Biden on Swine Flu: Avoid Trains, Subways, Airplanes

Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that he would not recommend taking any commercial flight or riding in a subway car “at this point” because swine flu virus can spread “in confined places.” A little more than one hour later, Biden rushed out a statement backing off.

“I would tell members of my family — and I have — I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,” Biden said on NBC’s “Today” show.. “It’s not that it’s going to Mexico. It’s [that] you’re in a confined aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft. That’s me. …

“So, from my perspective, what it relates to is mitigation. If you’re out in the middle of a field when someone sneezes, that’s one thing. If you’re in a closed aircraft or closed container or closed car or closed classroom, it’s a different thing.”

That contradicted more restrained advice from President Barack Obama and the federal government — and the last thing the White House wants to do right now is shut down the airline industry and big-city subways out of mass panic.

The White House quickly arranged for Biden to make this statement through a spokesperson.

Politico Story

Update: Air Force One Photo shoot over DC Monuments Cancelled

Don't look for the Air Force to conduct a photo shoot over Washington's monuments, like it did over New York.

A shoot planned for next week in D.C. has been canceled, WTOP has learned.

The cost for the flight that caused panic in New York was was $328,835, but the Air Force says the hours would have been flown anyway.

The White House calls the public relations stunt a mistake that "will not happen again."

Story from WTOP

Air Force One NYC Photo Op Cost Taxpayers $328,835

As people throughout America are losing their jobs, this seems like an excellent expenditure of tax payer money (sarcasm added).
=-=-==-
The cost of the frivolous flight was about $60,000 an hour and that was just for Air Force One. That doesn't include the cost of the two F-16s that came along.

The flight by the VC-25, a modified Boeing Co. 747, and two F-16 fighter jets cost $328,835, Air Force spokeswoman Vicki Stein said.

That includes $300,658 for the larger plane, which flew a three-hour mission, and about $28,178 for the F-16 jets, which flew 1.8 hours each, Stein said in an e-mailed statement.

April 28 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama ordered a review of a publicity-photo shoot with one of the planes that serves as Air Force One that cost taxpayers $328,835 and caused a furor in New York City.

Obama said he wasn’t informed in advance of yesterday’s low-altitude flight over New York Harbor, which rattled windows in New York’s financial district and prompted some office workers to flee buildings in fear it was a terrorist attack.

“It was a mistake,” Obama said today before a meeting at FBI headquarters in Washington. “It will not happen again.”

The incident continued to reverberate in New York and Washington today with two senators demanding an accounting of how the flight was approved, its cost and procedures aimed at avoiding a repeat.

“The supposed mission represents a fundamentally unsound exercise in military judgment and may have constituted an inappropriate use of Department of Defense resources,” Senator John McCain of Arizona wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

McCain, the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, asked Gates to provide a description of the mission, who ultimately approved it and an estimate of how much it cost.

The flight by the VC-25, a modified Boeing Co. 747, and two F-16 fighter jets cost $328,835, Air Force spokeswoman Vicki Stein said.

Three-Hour Mission

That includes $300,658 for the larger plane, which flew a three-hour mission, and about $28,178 for the F-16 jets, which flew 1.8 hours each, Stein said in an e-mailed statement.

The total includes fuel used in flight, fuel used to power ground equipment used to prepare the aircraft, and ground maintenance, Stein said.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday’s flyover was “two training missions that became in the end a picture mission” and only Air Force personnel were aboard.

Obama has directed Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina to review “how the decision was made to conduct the flight,” Gibbs said at the daily White House briefing.

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York said in a statement that he asked Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, whose department oversee the Federal Aviation Administration, to create an “ironclad procedure” to inform the public about such flights at least 48 hours in advance.

Anticipating Concern

“Somewhere along the line, someone at the FAA should have had the foresight to realize that New Yorkers would see this stunt and think back to 9-11,” Schumer said.

McCain, who ran against Obama in the 2008 presidential election, also said that the disruption and panic caused by the flight should have been foreseeable. He wrote that the apology and acceptance of responsibility from Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, “rings hollow.”

Obama today ignored questions from reporters about whether Caldera should keep his job.

Caldera yesterday took responsibility for authorizing a photo shoot involving the specially equipped 747 aircraft and a fighter jet escort that frightened Wall Street workers. The plane flew as low as 1,000 feet (305 meters).

In a statement yesterday evening, Caldera apologized for “any distress” it caused. While federal officials “took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it’s clear that the mission created confusion and disruption,” he said.

Caldera, 53, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a lawyer, was secretary of the Army during the Clinton administration and previously was a state legislator in California.

‘Furious’ Reaction

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said yesterday that he was “furious” when he was told about the flight. Obama also was “furious” about the incident and the confusion it caused, Gibbs told reporters.

Gibbs said the White House review of the incident probably wouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks. “And the president will look at that review and take any appropriate steps after that,” Gibbs said.

Paul Browne, deputy New York City police commissioner, said yesterday that the department was told by the FAA not to inform the public about what it thought would be a higher flyover by two F-16s and an Air Force VC-25 aircraft. The VC-25, a military version of the 747, is used as Air Force One when the president flies on it.

The planes flew past the Statue of Liberty and the financial district near the World Trade Center site that was hit in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The aircraft were on a “photo mission,” Jim Peters, an FAA spokesman, said yesterday.


Bloomerberg Story

White House Blunder - Low-flying plane over Staten Island and New York Harbor sparks fears of terror attack

Invoking fears that another terrorist attack was underway, a low-flying plane, closely escorted by two F-16 fighter jets, was spotted over Staten Island's North Shore and New York Harbor just before 10 a.m.

Update from USA TODAY:
The head of White House Military Office has apologized for rattling — and angering — New Yorkers with a low flyover by an Air Force One backup.

The Boeing 747 jet, accompanied by two F-16 fighters, swooped over New York Harbor so Air Force photographers could take pictures. The 30-minute morning flight conjured up memories of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and prompted evacuations of some offices.

“I thought, ‘Oh, hell,’ that it was 9/11 all over again,” Kate Geraghty, a Verizon Communications Inc. sales executive who saw the airplane from Jersey City, N.J., told Bloomberg News. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, this plane is going to crash.’”

Louis E. Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, issued an apology this afternoon.

"Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision," he said in a statement. "While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it’s clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused."

Aides said that President Obama was mad and that senior administration officials let Caldera know during an afternoon meeting, The New York Times says.

Caldera was secretary of the Army under President Clinton from 1998 until 2001.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wondered about the wisdom of the photo-op.
“Why the Defense Department wanted to do a photo op right around the site of the World Trade Center catastrophe defies imagination,” Bloomberg said at a City Hall news conference.

Swine Flu = Public Health Emergency Declared

White House press brief going on now live, regarding SWINE FLU

http://www.whitehouse.gov/live/


public health emergency declared - planning to release drugs from the SNS for DoD personnel.

CDC Recommends planning for school closings.

No evidence of bio-terror, but they are still investigating.

Breakout occurred in Mexico City on the day that Obama Visited... Man who greeted Obama in Mexico City died a few days later....

GIBBS: Obama has not been treated with antibiotics at this time.