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The radio chatter from the exercise was so realistic the FBI and U.S. Park Police raced to the river, fearing another attack was unfolding. Neither agency had been told about the drill.

CNN and Fox News interrupted Sept. 11 tributes to report on the developing drama, which was magnified because President Obama was at the Pentagon for a wreath-laying ceremony.

Cops and TV stations were reacting to Coast Guard radios, which crackled with the warning: “Stop your vessel. …You will be fired on.”

It was followed by a man barking: “bang, bang.”

The Coast Guard blew it, big time, said retired top FBI counterterror official Thomas Fuentes.

“This is what law enforcement calls ‘felony stupid,'” said Fuentes. “That ‘bang, bang’ was the sound of the Coast Guard shooting itself in the foot.”

The incident was eerily similar to the unannounced Air Force One photo-op flyby of the Statue of Liberty this spring.

“No, I’m not issuing an apology,” Currier told reporters. He said no shots were actually fired. “This was a routine, low-profile, normal training exercise.”

And Currier had no qualms about training while Obama and military leaders paid tribute to the victims of the nation’s worst terror attack. “I don’t think that our operational commander saw any reason not to train,” Currier said.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs accused the media – particularly CNN – of creating the confusion by reporting on an unconfirmed river shootout. “Before we report things like this, checking would be good,” Gibbs sniffed.

But ex-President George Bush’s counterterror adviser Frances Townsend said, “It shouldn’t have been lost on the commanders that this wasn’t a day to be doing exercises.”

“People are already on edge” on 9/11, she added.

In a video of Friday’s drill,Coast Guard boats are seen circling on the water as Obama’s motorcade crossed a nearby bridge – though his protective detail didn’t notice them, sources said.

Park Police and FBI agents scrambled to the river after hearing of gunfire in an off-limits area. Flights were halted at nearby Reagan National Airport.

Minutes after Obama was safely back inside the White House at 10 a.m., a cop on the shoreline radioed his commanders about “shots fired to a boat” by the Coast Guard. Minutes later, a dispatcher replied, “The Coast Guard says it was a training incident only.”

“Information passed to me was the Coast Guard had fired shots at a vessel inside the [restricted zone],” the apparently confused Park Police officer explained.