Top Secret $328,000 Photo: NYC Air Force Shot Won't Be Released

May 5, 2009— -- The White House is keeping a tight grip on photos from last week's botched Air Force One promotional photo op over Lower Manhattan.

At a press briefing Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs dodged reporters' questions about last week's photo-op, which cost over $328,000 in taxpayer dollars and frightened a broad swath of lower Manhattan, site of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center towers.

"I've watched CNN. . . I didn't notice a lack of archival material from that flight," Gibbs cracked, an apparent reference to the prevalence of shaky video shot last week by witnesses on the ground.

Gibbs said the White House anticipates completing a review of the incident this week, but did not answer questions about why it would not release the pictures or when it might do so.

A White House spokesman said this is not a new decision and the plan not to release the photo has remained the same since news of the incident broke last week.

The Air Force referred all questions on the matter to the White House.

The White House Military Office had reportedly organized the event, but made no arrangements to alert Manhattanites that a large plane would fly very close to their tall buildings. As a result, many fled the area at the sight of the plane, believing it could be another 9/11-style attack.

The Department of Defense photo shoot involved a Boeing 747 used as Air Force One and one fighter jet flying at low altitude in the area around Ground Zero.

Residents and workers in Lower Manhattan and New Jersey, unaware of the photo op, ran into the streets, traumatized by memories of 9-11 and afraid of another attack. Emergency offices in both cities were inundated with hundreds of frightened calls. "It scared a couple of million people," one airport official said.

President Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had not been told about the photo op, were both infuriated by the incident.

Bloomberg called it "ill-conceived" and a "waste of taxpayers' money." A White House official told ABC News that President Obama was "furious" when he found out, and the Director of the White House Military Office, Louis Caldera, who approved the photo op, was called into a meeting with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina.

"It didn't sound like a fun meeting," the White House official said.