The Pentagon has released a document dump of internal e-mails from its struggle to deal with the Air Force One flyover that freaked out Manhattan in April. You can smell the panic.

We haven't had time to digest the hundreds of pages yet, but here are some snapshots that show the frantic attempts to deal with the "flail," as one Pentagon e-mail put it, and pass the blame up the bureaucratic chain.

The first inkling that something has gone wrong starts to circulate.

Uh oh. The blogs are on it.

And Robert Gibbs is not happy.

So let's talk about how to not get blamed for this.

One way to get blamed is to talk to reporters. SO DO NOT TALK TO REPORTERS.

Those fuckers at NORAD are going to try to blame us—don't let them!

Those acronyms are military-speak for this was not our fault.


She's got a point.




This is a chart from a media assessment of the flyover story's coverage. Those marks quantifying web coverage mean "infinity."


Why won't the bloggers shut up about this?


They seriously won't shut up about this.


Especially the conservative ones.


Oh shit. Twitter. But thank god for the swine flu.


It's cool, Boeing paid for the whole thing.