At Fire Dog Lake and at American Spectator, evidence indicating that Patrick Howley, Assistant Editor of right-wing rag The American Spectator, acted as an agent provocateur at an anti-war protest outside the Air and Space Museum yesterday, leading to an incident in which a number of protesters were maced.

Above is a photo (slightly modified by Boing Boing) from Opednews.com, compared with Howley's Facebook profile pic.

From Howley's own report, shortly after the incident:

I was surprised to find myself a fugitive Saturday afternoon, stumbling around aircraft displays with just enough vision to keep tabs on my uniformed pursuers. "The museum is now closed!" screamed one of the guards as alarms sounded. "Everyone make your way to the exits immediately!" Using my jacket to cover my face — which I could feel swelling to Elephant Man proportions — I ducked through the confused tourists and raced out the exit. "Hey, you!" shouted a female guard reaching for my arm. "Get back here!" But I was already down the steps and out of sight.

Minutes earlier, I had been among those blocking major D.C. roads chanting "We're unstoppable" — and from beneath my unshaven left-wing altar ego, I worried that we might actually be. But just as the lefties couldn't figure out how to run their assembly meeting (many process points, I'm afraid to report, were left un-twinkled), so too do they lack the nerve to confront authority. From estimates within the protest, only ten people were pepper-sprayed, and as far as I could tell I was the only one who got inside the museum

Other revealing portions of his first-person account have already been redacted, seemingly to minimize the perception that he was there in a Breitbart-esque role. FDL has more.

What appear to be photos of Howley at the scene are here.





PREVIOUSLY: "Mace in the face at Air and Space."

UPDATE, 5pm PT: A related account at the Washington Post is now up.