Gibbs slams CNN for 9/11 training incident

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says CNN should have checked its facts on a training exercise on Friday's anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Politico said Gibbs criticized the cable news network for incorrectly reporting gunshots were fired upon a "suspicious vessel" on the Potomac River Friday, saying those reports were based on unverified information.

"Let's understand that best I can tell there was reporting based on listening to a police scanner that was not verified, and then it was on television and now we've raced back to find out that it's a training exercise. So I think it appears as if a lot of this might have been avoided," Gibbs said.

Gibbs added the U.S. Coast Guard, which conducted the Potomac River exercise near the Pentagon, was holding a news conference to discuss the training operation.

"Hopefully CNN will go," Gibbs said of the conference. "My only caution would be that before we report things like this, checking would be good."