ASSOCIATED PRESS– In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings. But the cause wasn’t terrorism — it was to be a simulated accident.

Officials at the Chantilly, Virginia-based National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise that morning in which a small corporate jet would crash into one of the four towers at the agency’s headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure.

The agency is about 4 miles (6 kilometers) from the runways of Washington Dulles International Airport.

Agency chiefs came up with the scenario to test employees’ ability to respond to a disaster, said spokesman Art Haubold. No actual plane was to be involved — to simulate the damage from the crash, some stairwells and exits were to be closed off, forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate the building.

“It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility,” Haubold said. “As soon as the real world events began, we canceled the exercise.”

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© 2002 AP

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