'No unusual communication from crew before crash'

WASHINGTON, NOV. 12. The White House spokesman, Mr. Ari Fleischer, said there were no unusual communications from the cockpit of the American Airlines plane that crashed on Monday in New York. A senior administration official added, ``It's looking like it's not a terrorist attack.''

Mr. Fleischer declined to rule out terrorism as a possible cause of the attack, but said he would not dispute the assessment of the other official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

At a White House briefing, Mr. Fleischer noted that the National Transportation Safety Board had been named the lead investigative agency into the crash, in which an Airbus crashed shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. That signaled that authorities had no information other than that a mechanical malfunction - and not a terrorist attack - brought down the plane with a large loss of lives.

Mr. Fleischer cautioned that initial information often could turn out to be incorrect. With the nation on high alert, a result of the September 11 attacks, he said the President, Mr. George Bush, was handed a note shortly before 9:30 a.m. (1430 GMT) that a plane had gone down.

Mr. Bush spoke with the New York Mayor, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, and the Governor, Mr. George Pataki, while the Homeland Security Director, Mr. Tom Ridge, went immediately to the White House Situation Room and initiated a conference call with other senior administration officials, Mr. Fleischer said.

The spokesman stepped to the microphones in the White House briefing room less than three hours after the plane crashed with 255 passengers and crew members aboard. Investigators had not yet found the ``black box'' that records important in-flight information.

He also said Mr. Bush had dispatched federal investigators and search-and-rescue personnel to the scene.

The crash triggered moments of intense concern inside the administration, struggling to cope with the aftermath of the September attacks and the anthrax outbreak that followed a few weeks later.

While the New York area airports were closed in the wake of the crash, Mr. Fleischer said officials did not intend to shut down the nation's airline system, as was done earlier.

Mr. Bush postponed a scheduled interview with Russian and American reporters so he could monitor the investigation of the crash. He meets on Tuesday with the Russian President, Mr. Vladimir Putin, opening three days of talks in Washington and Texas.

- AP

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