The biggest secret about Douglas Hughes’ gyrocopter flight from Gettysburg, Pa., to the Capitol lawn is that it was a secret to nobody, officials revealed at Wednesday’s House hearing.
Hughes, a disgruntled Florida man who used the stunt as a way to make a statement about campaign finance reform, first popped up to the Secret Service on Oct. 4, 2013, when the agency became aware that he “intended to fly single-seat aircraft on to grounds of the Capitol or the White House with no specific timeframe provided,” according to testimony at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
The committee wants to know how a private individual was able to fly and land a gyrocopter on the U.S. Capitol lawn.
The day of the incident, the Federal Aviation Administration had Hughes’ gyrocopter blip on its unfiltered radar feed – as an “unidentified element” — indistinguishable from all of the other non-aircraft items that appear on radar, such as weather balloons.
Also during Hughes’ April 15 flight from the historic Pennsylvania town to Washington, the U.S. Capitol Police got a call from a Tampa Bay Times reporter, asking if they were aware of the gyrocopter heading to the Capitol or had seen the live feed of the flight.
The U.S. Park Police saw the gyrocopter in person, as it crossed the Lincoln Memorial at approximately 100 feet, called the U.S. Capitol police and followed the gyrocopter in a squad car – until it landed on the lawn.
But along the way, none of the intelligence could be synthesized in a way to deter Hughes from crossing D.C’s restricted airspace — a breach that exposed vulnerabilities in Capitol Hill’s defensive ring.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform heard these details Wednesday as agency heads testified about how D.C.’s airspace can be protected from future flights.
In an earlier hearing on the event, committee Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said Hughes should have been shot down. Instead he was able to land safety and was apprehended without incident.
In the Secret Service’s case, they went to interview Hughes the day after they became aware of his intentions. Hughes first denied owning an airframe, but in subsequent interviews, he cooperated with the Secret Service.
Somehow Hughes convinced them he was “not interested in persons or players involving the Secret Service,” said agency Director James Clancy.
Clancy did not get a chance to address whether the Secret Service then brought the U.S. Capitol Police into the loop. The hearing temporarily adjourned so members could hear Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe address a Joint Session of Congress. Abe, who is visiting the U.S. this week to outline a new defense alliance, coincidentally was the recent target of a drone, when his protective services found a small UAV that tested positive for radioactive material on the roof of his office in Tokyo.
