The White House Drone Crash Was Apparently Caused By An Intelligence Staffer Who Was Drinking
The New York Times reported Tuesday that a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency employee admitted to the Secret Service that he was flying the drone.
"He told Secret Service investigators that he had been drinking at an apartment nearby before he lost control of the craft," wrote the Times' Michael Schmidt and Michael Shear.
The Times did not name the man responsible for the crash. He reportedly contacted authorities on Monday after seeing widespread media stories about the drone, which he said was about two feet in diameter. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a Department of Defense "combat support agency," declined to comment to the paper.
President Barack Obama in a Tuesday interview that the crash is part of a "broader problem": the lack of regulations for drones.
"I've actually asked the FAA and a number of agencies to examine how we are managing this new technology. Because the drone that landed at the White House you buy in Radio Shack. You know that there are companies like Amazon that are talking about using small drones to deliver packages," Obama told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in India. "We don't really have any regulatory structure at all for it."