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NEW YORK (AP) When they arrived at an event Monday and found that Iraq's new chief justice and president as well as U.S. governor L. Paul Bremer were there, CNN's Christiane Amanpour and ABC's Peter Jennings looked at each other. Could this be it? Indeed it was.

The transfer of sovereignty from the U.S. to Iraq two days earlier than anticipated caused media organizations to change plans on the fly Monday.

The story came at the worst possible time for East Coast newspapers, who were not able to report it except online. On the West Coast, the Los Angeles Times led its paper with the story, headlining "U.S. Transfers Power to Iraq 2 Days Early."

The big three broadcast networks were fortunate in that each had sent their top anchors -- Jennings, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather -- to the Middle East early, although only Jennings was at Monday's ceremony.

The early arrival wasn't necessarily due to news intuition. Rather arrived Saturday because CBS was concerned that travel in and out of Baghdad would be restricted as an expected Wednesday ceremony neared, said Marcy McGinnis, CBS News senior vice president.

ABC wasn't told in advance that the ceremony would take place. But Bremer's office alerted the network that Monday's event was something Jennings would want to attend, said Jon Banner, executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight."

Amanpour said she had received a similarly vague invitation.

"We were told not to come with a camera," she said. "I thought it was going to be some chit-chat ... I had absolutely no idea."

The list of attendees, which included The Associated Press, and extraordinary preparations raised immediate suspicions, she said. Only one pool camera was allowed, and reporters were ordered to surrender telephones and walkie-talkies.

When the transfer was complete, officially at 2:26 a.m. EDT, the reporters couldn't get to their phones fast enough.

"There were a lot of heavy bodyguards who were extremely physical in the way they tried to keep me away from my phone," she said. "It caused quite a few tempers to flare."

Although Rather did not attend the ceremony, CBS appeared to get the news on the air first, breaking in at 2:43 a.m. EDT. ABC followed at 2:48 a.m. Networks are keenly competitive on breaking important news, even in the wee hours.

NBC chose to leave the story to its little-watched cable news outlet, MSNBC.

"Honestly, the other guys don't have anywhere else to go up but their network," said Mark Lukasiewicz, chief of special events coverage for NBC News. "We do, and that's where we came up."

Brokaw was reporting another story in Iraq at the time of the changeover, said Steve Capus, executive producer of NBC's "Nightly News."

TV news organizations, especially the cable news networks, had plotted programming around an expected Wednesday event -- even though, because of security concerns, they were never quite sure when that event would happen.

CNN had planned Tuesday for Anderson Cooper to anchor his prime-time program from Baghdad, Paula Zahn from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and Aaron Brown from Washington. They rushed to their spots for Monday instead.

Similarly, some guests booked on MSNBC for Wednesday, such as former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, were moved up two days. The network had to hurry some other reports and cancel others, spokesman Jeremy Gaines said.

A call to Fox News Channel went unreturned.

Brokaw, Rather and Jennings had been expected to stay in Iraq for the full week, but now those plans are in flux.

"You'd have to assume these events have caught everyone by surprise," Capus said. "It's possible that things are going to be a bit ugly on the ground and Baghdad the next few days."