Bloomberg News Global Defense Editor Gerry Doyle warned early Wednesday morning that the reason for the Federal Aviation Administration’s shutdown of the airspace around El Paso International Airport in Texas for unexplained security reasons was “probably very, very stupid and benign,” and that anyone claiming “right now that they Definitely Know What This Means... doesn't.”

Before the FAA lifted the closure later in the morning, Fox News proved Doyle right.

Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones highlighted the airspace closure just after 8:35 a.m. ET, and read from Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX)’s statement that the FAA should reopen the airspace because “there is no immediate threat to the community.” He then brought on Mike Boyd, identified as an “aviation expert,” and asked him to describe “some scenarios where this may be necessary to close air space for this duration."

Boyd responded in the most incendiary way possible, claiming that “you don't shut down a whole city for 10 days unless it's a major, major security threat like a military threat,” suggesting that the threat could involve Mexican cartel operatives threatening aircraft with shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, and ultimately concluding, “What I'm saying is, I think they might have discovered the next potential Pearl Harbor."

He also belittled Escobar’s remarks, saying, “I don't know who that congresswoman was you just quoted, but she really needs to get her head together."

“This ain't minor,” Boyd later added. “This is not a broken wire in an air traffic control system. This is something where there is something on the ground in El Paso, right now, today, that is geared to shooting down or destroying airplanes. … They wouldn't ground them otherwise. Let's put that right on the line here."

He concluded: “To say there isn't anything to it, I’m just amazed at what that congresswoman says, it was just very inept."

But the congresswoman was correct, and the purported expert Fox brought on to malign her was wrong.

Roughly 15 minutes after the segment ended, the FAA announced that it had lifted the airspace shutdown and that there is “no threat to commercial aviation.” The initial closure, Doyle reported, was rooted not in preventing a “potential Pearl Harbor,” but in an “inter-agency slap fight."