Journalist admits 'crime' in D.C. protest

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- A journalist writing for The American Spectator acknowledged committing a crime during a weekend protest at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

Patrick Howley, listed on the conservative news and political magazine's Web site as an editorial assistant, wrote that he had infiltrated a group of demonstrators associated with the Occupy Wall Street protests and was part of a smaller number of the group who charged into the museum after guards tried to block the entrances Saturday afternoon.

The museum was shut down for the rest of the day following the incident, in which a museum spokeswoman said protesters pushed a guard against a wall as they tried to enter the facility. Linda St. Thomas said as many as 200 protesters tried to enter the museum at the Smithsonian but were told by security guards they could not come in, The Washington Post reported.

She said another guard used pepper-spray before Washington police and U.S. Park Police were called. Witnesses told the newspaper more than a dozen people has been sprayed.

In a post on The American Spectator Web site, Howley said he joined the rush to get past the guards "for journalistic purposes." He said he sneaked past a guard initially, and was hit with pepper spray as he ran toward an exit after he was shoved into a wall during a shoving match between a security guard and a demonstrator he characterized as a "fanatic."

In the post, which was subsequently taken down, Howley wrote that he infiltrated the protest "in order to mock and undermine [it] in the pages of The American Spectator."

Eventually, he said, he "ducked through the confused tourists and raced out the exit."

"As I scrambled away from the scene of my crime, a police officer outside the museum gates pointed at my eyes, puffed out his chest, and shouted: 'Yeah, that's right. That's right.' He was proud that I had been pepper-sprayed, and, oddly, so was I."