Send Clowns identified the core of the problem perfectly....the people getting excited over the King Air with the inop transponder were Dept of Homeland Security (he gagged as he wrote it) not FAA and not DoD.
The controllers in the DC area are all FAA except for Andrews AFB, MCAF Quantico, and Davidson AAF (Ft. Belvoir) and the military tower and approach facilities work well with Potomac TRACON and ZDC. The people getting excited are cops and politicians who do not know much of anything about aviation and do not care to learn, it appears.