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U.S.: No Indication of Shuttle
Terrorism
The Associated Press 2003-02-01 11:16 WASHINGTON (AP) - Bush administration officials said they had no immediate information Saturday that terrorism was involved as NASA lost contact with the space shuttle Columbia. President Bush, who was at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, was informed about the situation and awaited updates from NASA. A White House official said the president planned to return to the White House to deal with the shuttle's loss. ``The president will return to the White House this afternoon where he will continue to monitor the situation,'' said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. ``We are awaiting more information from NASA at this point.'' ``There is no information at this time that this was a terrorist incident,'' said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the Homeland Security Department. ``Obviously the investigation is just beginning, but that is the information we have now.'' A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said no threat had been made against the flight, and the shuttle, at an altitude of 63 km over north-central Texas when it lost contact, was out of range of surface-to-air missiles. A senior law enforcement official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been some intelligence that raised concerns about a previously scheduled flight of Columbia, which was to have carried the same crew. The intelligence, related to Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, was termed not credible, but the flight was postponed for other reasons. There had been no troubling intelligence regarding this flight, officials said, and they do not believe terrorism was involved. McClellan said Bush was told about the situation by his chief of staff, Andrew Card. By midmorning, before NASA declared that the missing shuttle had crashed, Bush had not called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a senior administration official said. The vice president was briefed Saturday morning in Texas, where he was spending the weekend hunting, said spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise. She said he was following the television coverage. Millerwise would not say where Cheney was staying, but said it was not the east Texas area where the shuttle was lost. On a normally slow day, White House officials were scrambling to get into the office. ``We're all watching TV and devastated and concerned,'' said John Marburger, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
2003-02-01-13:11 EST |
