Washington, D.C. - An eccentric madman - oh, no wait! I meant to say mailman - wanting to make a political point landed on the Capitol grounds Wednesday (April 15). He flew down on some kind of contraption that looked like it was put together by a kid with a Lego erector set.
Florida postal worker Doug Hughes even announced his plans beforehand. "I don't think the authorities are going to shoot down a 60-year-old man on a flying bicycle," he said in a video posted Wednesday on CNN's website.
"I'm not suicidal and I'm not going to commit suicide and I'm not going to fly over any monuments. Terrorists don't announce their flights before they take off and terrorists don't broadcast their flight path or invite an escort to go along with them," Hughes said in the video.
"I'm going to give them plenty of warning - well over an hour in advance of me getting to the no-fly zone, so they know who I am and what I'm doing....A Boy Scout with a BB gun can shoot me down...I have thought about walking away from this thing because it's crazy," Hughes said in the video.
According to reports on several media outlets, Hughes told friends and family members about his plans to fly his gyrocopter onto the Capitol grounds. None of them believed he'd actually do it, though, and what's more - none of them ever dreamed Hughes would pull off such a stunt, and be in the national spotlight.
Strange as it sounds, this isn't fake news. No, this actually happened. Just in case you missed it - yes, it's real news.
A resident of Ruskin, Fla., and a rural letter carrier with the U.S. Postal Service since 2003, Hughes was a man on a mission - his flying rickshaw descended onto the most glorious, greenest, most well-manicured lawn in the country on hump day with D.C. tourists looking up at the slow-moving craft with looks of dread as it got closer and closer to our national treasures. Of course, the thin, gray-bearded, flying wonder was immediately detained and the single-seat craft was quickly given the once-over for explosives and/or weapons by those party poopers - some kind of high-echelon federal cops.
All this begs the question: How safe is the White House? If some skinny mailman with a nasty attitude about corrupt money in politics can fly such a rickety thing right onto the Capitol grounds, is there any safety and security at all in the USA?
What about the folks in Michigan? Or Alabama? How's about Louisiana, California, Oregon, New Hampshire and all the rest? If the White House can be invaded by something so laughable that it looks like the Wright Brother's first flying machine at Kitty Hawk - and with prior warning coming from a Florida TV news broadcast - just how safe are we here in America? Hughes' gyrocopter was undetected by NORAD and his landing caused not only the Capitol, but those on nearby streets in Washington, D.C., to suffer a shut-down for part of Wednesday afternoon, according to reports.
Hughes' gyrocopter landing comes right on the heels of a drone landing on the southeast side of the White House in late January. And also in late January, in a Senate hearing room, a group of angry protesters were able to get within inches of Henry Kissinger, 91, a very important and distinguished international diplomat from the Nixon and Reagan administrations. On Sept. 19, 2014, a man carrying a knife in his pants pocket - with a blade 3.5-inches long - with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a machete and two hatchets in his car, jumped the White House fence and entered the executive mansion before he was apprehended. To say our federal government's headquarters is safe and secure is laughable. There's no use in talking about Homeland Security when the most important acreage in America could probably be invaded by the cast of Tim & Eric Awesome Show.
The CNN article explains: According to the U.S. Capitol Police, the aircraft was observed landing at about 1:30 p.m. and the operator -- Hughes -- was immediately taken into custody. A bomb squad investigated the gyrocopter but nothing hazardous was found. Law enforcement then took the gyrocopter to a secure location, according to the Capitol Police.
Hughes was arrested and transferred to central cellblock in Washington, with charges pending.
The wife of Doug Hughes confirmed to CNN that her husband was the pilot of the aircraft. A federal law enforcement officer also confirmed the name to CNN.
Another New York City News article reported that Hughes said that his gyrocopter can fly overhead at about 300 feet and travels at a top speed of 45-miles-per-hour. A video obtained by the Associated Press shows it flying fast and low over the National Mall toward the Capitol, alarming tourists, this article reads.
And it even gets weirder. Aboard his hovering gizmo, Hughes had 535 stamped letters - one for each member of Congress - with Hughes' vitriol explained in these letters about campaign finance laws.
Some early reports coming right after this ordeal mentioned that Hughes will be facing some very serious criminal charges.
Hughes is pretty old, but he's a techno-geek, gray-haired, sort of madman - he has his 1,600-word autobiography on the Democracy Club website and also has information published on another website, The Civilist Papers blog. NBC News did some digging into Hughes' background and discovered quite a bit about him. Here's a bit of what NBC News scooped-up about Hughes's writings, and the mainstream media giant even posted a few snippets online Wednesday:
"Moderates are all but extinct in this polarized and paralyzed Congress. For the lack of leaders who can negotiate and compromise, nothing in Congress gets done," Michael P. Shanahan, another rural postal carrier and Army veteran, and Hughes write in the introduction to The Civilist Papers.
"Democracy has worked in the past, and can work again if we remove the obstacles - the opportunity to cash in on elective office and the reliance of nearly every congressional campaign on special interest money," this blog proclaims. In a separate post, Shanahan writes that "voting along party lines might advance your favorite cause (or not) but it will certainly prolong the partisan gridlock and corruption that infect Congress."
Hughes' gyrocopter flight also sent the Tweetie birds soaring. Here are a few early bird Twitter offerings:
* I hear a postal guy went gyrocopter today. - Bob Owens @bob_owens
* Can a gyrocopter be used to deliver gyros? - Matt Yglesias @mattyglesias
* I assume the gyrocopter dude was leading a rag-tag band of survivors through nuclear-devastated Australia? - Olivier Knox @OKnox
Well, Doug Hughes, you're 61 now and you don't look a day over 91. By the time they let you out of federal prison, however, that will be about your age then - 91. You really pissed off the Good & the Great. But it certainly was a fine air show.
