when did it become OK to have fighter planes shoot down any airplane that gets too close to the president???? Original Article Errant plane over U.S. capital in security cross hairs Lara Jakes Jordan Associated Press May. 13, 2005 12:00 AM WASHINGTON - As a wayward Cessna flew deep into restricted airspace, national security officials were on the phone discussing whether to implement the last line of defense: shooting it down. The single-engine Cessna that prompted a frenzied evacuation of the White House, Capitol and Supreme Court on Wednesday veered from downtown landmarks just before that decision needed to be made. It was a close call. One senior Bush administration counterterrorism official said it was "a real finger-biting period because they came very close to ordering a shot against a general aircraft." "How many more seconds away or minutes - it was within a very small window where there would have been the decision," said the official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Administration officials spent Thursday reviewing the bizarre series of events involving the small plane, which was carrying a pilot and a student pilot from Pennsylvania to an air show in North Carolina. It entered restricted airspace then continued flying toward highly sensitive areas, prompting evacuations of tens of thousands of people as military aircraft scrambled to intercept it. Hundreds of planes have encroached on the airspace since the Sept. 11 attacks, but none is believed to have traveled so close to the White House. Lt. Col. Tim Lehmann, one of two F-16 fighter pilots who tracked the Cessna, said he was prepared to use deadly force. He said he realized how serious the situation became when he looked at the plane and saw the Washington Monument, too. "We may have been on the cusp of some kind of engagement," Lehmann said. "I don't know how close we came." A response system put in place after the attacks, coordinated in part by the Department of Homeland Security's classified operations center, alerted other areas of the federal government to the incoming plane. Security forces at individual facilities and agencies decided on whether to evacuate or raise their alert level. Alert levels at the White House and the Capitol were raised to their highest level - red - at the height of the frenzy. President Bush, biking at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Beltsville, Md., was unaware of the midday scare as it was occurring.