MEDIA

Conservative Journalist: I Escalated DC Protest

Patrick Howley says he provoked museum shutdown.

A conservative journalist claims he caused a protest in Washington, D.C. to escalate to the point where a Smithsonian museum was shut down. Patrick Howley, an assistant editor at the American Spectator, wrote that he joined the protest as a demonstrator “to mock and undermine in the pages of the American Spectator.” (The language in Howley’s article has since been changed without explanation.) Saturday’s protest had originally been organized by the anti-war group October 11 and they were later joined by members of an Occupy Wall Street group, and a group of protesters—including Howley—were pepper sprayed by police when they tried to move past the security at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Howley said he infiltrated the protest for “journalistic purposes.”