Doug Hughes wouldn’t like this story.

After all, the Florida letter carrier who landed a gyro-copter at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday has long insisted that his message — not he — is what’s important: “I’m just delivering the mail.”

“Anybody in politics or the news media who want to spend inordinate amounts of time talking about me is avoiding the real discussion — which is about Congress,” Hughes wrote on The Democracy Club website, which chronicles his plans to jolt the government into doing something to clean up big money in politics. “Let’s keep the discussion focused on reform — not me.”

But in light of a series of recent breaches of security in the federal government’s core in downtown Washington, it’s important to know how a self-described “old mailman from Florida” was able to evade aviation and military watchdogs and slip through the fingers of the Secret Service — which he’d told about his plans in October 2013. read more