On the 8th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the ever-vigilant Coast Guard aggressively challenges a suspicious vessel, firing 10 (count 'em 10!) "warning" shots at the boat to move it out of restricted waters.
Except, that's not what happened.
Apparently some over-eager cub reporter was scanning the VHF and overheard an impromptu "exercise" the Coasties were conducting. The speed with which the erroneous report fell into CNN's news vacuum and subsequently spat out its satellite uplink could probably be measured in microseconds.
The exercise (along with some realistic sounding radio chatter) was, according to the Coast Guard, transmitted on a training frequency.
OK, so maybe it was not a good idea to conduct such training on 9/11, but my question is this: why didn't someone have the good sense to realize that Channel 16 -- not Channel 81 (or whatever) -- would have been used to hail another vessel? That would have at least given them a few seconds pause and could have averted a very embarrassing situation.
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