Flight of the Intruder

Frank Eugene Corder seemed to know exactly how he wanted to die. Sometime before midnight on Sept. 11, he stole a single-engine plane from an airport north of Baltimore headed south to Washington, flew over the National Zoological Park and down to the Mall, probably using the Washington Monument as a beacon. As he neared the famed obelisk, he banked a tight U-turn over the Ellipse, came in low over the White House South Lawn, clipped a hedge, skidded across the green lawn that girds the South Portico and crashed into a wall two stories below the presidential bedroom. Corder was...