WASHINGTON (WUSA9) -- Douglas Hughes flew a 250-pound gyrocopter through restricted airspace and landed it right in front of the U.S. Capitol, Wednesday afternoon.
Hughes' plan was far from a secret.
Hughes, a 61 year old from Ruskin, Florida, reached out to countless news outlets the morning of his flight, but he contacted one reporter at the Tampa Bay Times least a year ago – and now some are wondering why it took so long for the publication to contact police.
Ben Montgomery is a reporter for Tampa Bay Times. He met with Hughes and spoke with him repeatedly for a number months.
"I think it was about a year ago," Montgomery said. "[Hughes] called. I was at work. I answered my phone… he didn't identify himself and he said, 'I'm going to commit an act of civil disobedience and nobody is going to get hurt, but I might get killed or arrested and so I need somebody to tell my backstory."
Montgomery, surprised and "curious" about the callers plot, decided to invite him out for a cup of coffee.
"He laid out this very detailed plan. He struck me as a sane, overly honest, and transparent guy who was super passionate about campaign finance reform and had this bizarre, interesting plan to try to arrest the news cycle and shift people's attention to, you know, what he thinks is the most important issue of our day," Montgomery explained.
After that meeting, he spoke with Hughes monthly, but Montgomery did not call police.
"I never thought about contacting authorities," Montgomery told WUSA. "[Hughes] had been visited twice by the Secret Service. It sounded like he was on their radar."
Editors at the Tampa Bay Times did not contact police until Wednesday. Hughes landed at the Capitol around 1:30pm. Someone with the paper called roughly thirty-minutes before, asking Capitol Police if they were aware of the gyrocopter.
It's a decision Montgomery believes was the right one.
"Right until he took off we didn't have a news story. If this guy just has a really interesting, bizarre plan – that's not a news story. Once he was off the ground it became a news story, and that's immediately when we published."
Others, like the Washington Post's media reporter Paul Farhi, say their actions were negligent and unethical.
"As reporters, we are not supposed to be in the business of hiding from the public, the potential public safety threat. In this case, a guy flying a small helicopter into restricted airspace, could have gone terribly, terribly wrong," Farhi said.
Members of press, Fahri continued, "are under some ethical obligation to let people know about this. Whether it's posting the story enough in advance so that people can see the threat building or basically calling up law enforcement and saying this guy is coming."
Montgomery says he worried and thought about the potential problems that could arise, but did not believe Hughes was a threat to himself or others – and his editors agreed.
Fahri says it is simply impossible for anyone to know if Hughes was threat – and the public had a right to know about him before yesterday afternoon.
"They don't know what kind of threat he is," said Fahri.
"He says he's not a threat. He says he's harmless. They think he's harmless, but how do you really know?"
