By James Donahue

So what was that Air Force One low-level fly-over Manhattan all about? Defense Department officials said it was supposed to be a photo-op . . . a set-up for photographs to be taken of the president’s special plane flying over the Statue of Liberty, but there was an order not to warn New Yorkers who are still suffering from the effects of 9-11.

We don’t buy the story.

President Barack Obama quickly apologized for the fly-over blunder, and certain people in high places were reportedly reprimanded for what happened. But the stunt was so blatantly wrong it is hard to believe the lame story we were given as to why it happened.

Anyone who has worked with computer software and modern photography knows how to superimpose the image of the Statue of Liberty into a shot of the presidential plane. You don’t need to actually fly the plane over the statue to get such a picture.

We believe something else was afoot over Manhattan that day. Whatever it was, the military succeeded in reigniting fierce images and sensations of fear in the hearts of most New Yorkers with that one act.

The thing about that incident is that we knew our military is run by very bright and capable men and women who usually have a very good reason for staging public events. The results of a fly-over with an aircraft as large as a Boeing 747, designed to look like Air Force One, and accompanied by two F-16 Air Force jets, would have been carefully thought out. That New York authorities were told about it in advance, but warned not to make it public, also significant.

A lot of news reporters and blog writers have been asking similar questions about this odd event. Free lancer P. J. Gladnick writes that he has filed freedom of information requests with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Staff FOIA Requester Service Center trying to get the flight manifest, the names of people on board the aircraft, communications that would shed light on the origin and purpose of the “mission” and copies of any and all photographs taken at taxpayer expense.

We suspect Gladnick and anyone else going the FOIA route will be disappointed. His definition of this flight as a “mission” may have been correct. There may have been an important military reason to make someone . . . (possibly a suspected assassination plotting an attack on our president?) . . . believe Mr. Obama was flying over New York.

This this event occurred on Monday, April 20. Our president had just returned from an important meeting with our Latin American neighbors that included a stop in Mexico City on April 17. The first reports of the deadly swine influenza virus were being made that same weekend in Mexico. Was it a strange coincidence? Also a member of Obama’s staff who preceded his trip to Mexico City to plan the stop, has since fallen ill with this virus. Was it an attempted assault on President Obama?

Was the fly-over some kind of subterfuge designed to help keep our president safe? That federal officials are carefully dodging questions while some writers continue to probe leads us to believe there is much more to this story than meets the eye.