I'm not sure what went through the minds of the people in charge of publicity at the Department of Defense, but this is just dumb. They wanted to fly Air Force One near a national landmark (Statue of Liberty) to take photos of it. They said that they just wanted to "update file photos of the president's plane near the Lady Liberty". Obviously, when the planes flew by the city, people got worried about a possible 9/11 revisit. 

Hasn't the government ever heard of Photoshop? According to this article, this crazy stunt cost tax payers $328,835. If they gave me 10% of that, I would make sure that plane looked so real they would have never known the difference.

This kind of reminded me of the 30 Rock episode "Fireworks" where Jack wanted to shoot fireworks from the 30 Rock building and it ended up looking like a terrorist attack.

Some people just have to learn how to think about perceptions before they do something stupid like this.

/facepalm