Shall we tell the President? No.

Leaving aside the spectacle on worldwide TV of the US government fleeing from its place of work because of a single light airplane, there are a couple of telling details from Wednesday's midday security scare in Washington which emerge from Press Secretary Scott McClellan's briefing. First, Dubya wasn't even at the White House -- he was biking:

First of all, as you all are aware, the President was off-site, getting in a bike ride after returning from a four-day trip overseas.

And yet, despite the jumpiness of the Secret Service, inherited from Tuesday's cancelled stopover at Shannon, there was a strange lack of urgency about telling Dubya what was going on:

Q Why is that -- the President was off-site, but, obviously, he's still in the area somewhat. Why is it that there isn't a procedure that when something like this happens, he would automatically get taken to some sort of secure location?

MR. McCLELLAN: There are protocols in place, and I think that those are decisions that the Secret Service makes based on those protocols that are in place. And I think in this instance, they took the appropriate steps.

Q Just decided that the threat was not serious enough?

And in what is described as an addendum to the briefing, we learn that they didn't even interrupt the bike ride:

MR. McCLELLAN: ... The President’s detail was informed when the decision was made to raise the threat level at the White House to yellow. A determination was made that the threat posed no danger to the President since he was at an off-site location, and protocols were in place to protect people in the area of the threat. Those protocols did not require any presidential authority. Given such circumstances and the fact that the plane turned away from the White House, the decision was made to inform the President upon conclusion of his bike ride.

There was one other issue that was skirted around at the briefing: whether the military had authority to shoot down the plane if the threat was deemed too serious. One questioner got this far:

Q For example, we know September 11th, it was the Vice President who gave the authorization to shoot down, if it was necessary. So we're just wondering who would have been in --

But Scott wouldn't take that question, which is a shame, because whether Cheney actually gave that order is one the fairly evident lies told by Bush and Cheney to the 9/11 Commission: Cheney says he communicated the order to the military after clearing it with Dubya, who was the only one who had the authority to issue it. But there is no evidence that Dubya ever provided that authority. Now of course Scott can refer to "protocols" which presumably cover similar contingencies without needing Dubya's explicit authorisation. It's almost like the country doesn't need a President at all.

UPDATE 12 MAY: Here's an article in the Washington Post online wondering the same thing. It's as if one lesson from 9/11 was the need to ensure that the defence of the country wouldn't depend on any actual input from the Commander-in-Chief. And [further update 13 May], the White House Press Corps does their job and roasts McClellan over the obvious problems with the White House version of events -- that a potential attack on the country doesn't require an Executive Decision.