Tampabay: Pentagon reviews MacDill safety

"The idea that somebody can do something like that is disturbing," said Jack Spencer, a military analyst at the Heritage Foundation. "You don't want to shoot down a goofy 15-year-old kid flying a plane. At the same time, you don't know.

Officials at MacDill, which houses Central Command, the nerve center of the war in Afghanistan, said they never perceived 15-year-old Charles Bishop as a threat.

Bishop flew over the base for about a minute from 1,000 feet Saturday, MacDill officials said. Minutes later, Bishop crashed the stolen Cessna 172 into a downtown Tampa skyscraper.

"We knew he was in a Cessna, he was a student pilot, 15 and alone," said Sgt. Sonny Cohrs, a MacDill spokesman. "Also, he was not flying erratically."

In response to the question, "What if?" Cohrs said, "If we had shot him down, hindsight would have shown he was a distraught teenager."

Authorities also are looking into how Bishop, who also came within 1,000 feet of an airborne Southwest Airlines 737, was given unsupervised access to an aircraft.

Gov. Jeb Bush, calling Tampa Mayor Dick Greco the night of the crash, kept repeating, "How in the world did a 15-year old get possession of that airplane?" Greco said.

Monday, Bush promised to explore that issue.

"If the regulations are already in place, we should look at how we enforce them and keep this from happening again," he said.

Federal and local law enforcement agencies continued their investigation of the crash and Bishop, examining computers and obtaining subpoenas for his e-mails.

The family voluntarily gave law enforcement two computers used by Bishop, one from his grandmother's home and one from his mother's, said Tampa police Capt. Jane Castor.

The FBI was examining the computers' hard drives but a cursory search has found no significant evidence, Castor said.

Investigators declined to release the contents of Bishop's two-page handwritten suicide note, which they said was written in neat cursive. The note was found in a small canvas bag on the plane, not in Bishop's pocket as originally thought, said Tampa police spokeswoman Katie Hughes.

She said the note indicated he acted alone and out of sympathy for the efforts of Osama Bin Laden.

"By all indications, it was intentional," Hughes said of Bishop's crash into the Bank of America tower. "He took a direct flight pattern into the building."

Legislators, among others, wondered how he managed to get that far. If a teenage pilot can steal a plane, violate MacDill air space, and ram a building, what's to keep a terrorist from doing the same thing? Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Largo, asked Monday.

"Just as we learned after Sept. 11 that non-U.S. residents were training on high-performance commercial aircraft, we now learn that we have juveniles flying lower-performance aircraft," said Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla. "I'd like to know what the regulations are."

Cohrs, of MacDill, said the last time the base had a similar incident was in November 2000 when a civilian pilot mistook the base for Peter O. Knight Airport at Davis Islands and landed on a runway.

A Defense Department official said Sunday that to guard against an air threat, MacDill Air Force Base was equipped with .50-caliber machine guns. The official also said that MacDill relied on the control tower at Tampa International Airport for word of any suspicious aircraft near the base.

At a news briefing Monday, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke was asked if those were adequate defenses and whether plans were under way to review MacDill security.

As an ongoing basis, Clarke said, "We're looking at security at installations at locations throughout the United States at all times, and I'm sure this incident is being looked at appropriately."

Adm. John D. Stufflebeem, who joined Clarke at the briefing, also addressed MacDill's defenses. He said the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, maintains random combat air patrols, or CAPS, throughout the country to respond to "threats and unknowns."

Since Sept. 11, fighter jets have flown continuous missions in Washington and New York. Fighters have also flown random missions in other large U.S. cities.

In fact, NORAD dispatched two F-15s from Homestead Air Reserve Base, 200 miles away, on a CAPS mission over Tampa once it was notified Saturday by the FAA. Major Mike Snyder, a NORAD spokesman, said the aircraft arrived in Tampa about 5:15 p.m., after Bishop had crashed the Cessna.

The F-15s stayed in the bay area until 5:45 p.m., when it became clear there was no further threat, Snyder said.

Stufflebeem said the FAA, NORAD and MacDill would have to examine the Bishop case before deciding whether to make security changes.

About 4:50 p.m. Saturday, investigators said, Bishop took off from St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport.

After being alerted that a Cessna was within 3 miles of the base and 11/2 miles of its airspace, MacDill officials asked a nearby Coast Guard helicopter to try to make contact with the pilot, said MacDill Lt. Col. Rich McClain.

The Coast Guard, contacted at 4:58 p.m., was alongside the Cessna within two minutes, said Coast Guard spokesman Paul Rhynard.

Since the Cessna was not responding to radio contact, officials assumed its radio was out. A Coast Guard crew member on the helicopter signaled Bishop to land. The teenager made a dismissive gesture and continued on.

At 5:05 p.m., he crashed into the Bank of America tower.

On Monday, the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner's Office said the teenager's death had been ruled a suicide. The autopsy report may not be complete for another four to six weeks, until toxicological results are in, said Richard L. Bailey, operations manager for the medical examiner.

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