First, President Obama dismissed the device that landed on the White House lawn in Monday's early morning hours as "something you buy at Radio Shack."
Then, the Secret Service stripped away the "drone" label. "We're calling it a quad copter," a Secret Service spokesperson tells PEOPLE.
Now, it's being reported that a man playing with his quad copter near the White House was drinking when he lost track of his toy.
Talk about a big oops.
The New York Times says it hears from law enforcement sources that the man in question is an employee of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency who was drinking when he lost control of the remote-controlled aircraft and who, despite suspecting the drone had flown over the White House fence, simply went to bed.
Discovery of the drone, er, quad copter, put the White House on lockdown early Monday morning and sent dozens of flashlight-wielding Secret Service officers out to scour the lawn.
Alerted by friends to what was all over the news on Monday, the man called the Secret Service to "self-report" his mea culpa.
"The individual has been interviewed by Secret Service agents and been fully cooperative. Initial indications are that this incident occurred as a result of recreational use of the device," the agency's spokesperson said, declining to comment on the details in the Timesreport.
"The investigation is ongoing."
Also ongoing is work on government rules for the operation of so-called unmanned aerial vehicles.
Obama told CNN that he's ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to look into regulations "because the drone that landed at the White House you buy at a Radio Shack, [but] you know that there are companies like Amazon that are talking about using small drones to delver packages."
And the use of drones is sure to take off from there, the president added.
"There are incredibly useful functions that these drones can play in terms of farmers who are managing crops and conservationists who want to take stock of wildlife. There are a whole range of things we can do with it, but we don't really have any kind of regulatory structure at all for it."
The quad copter that breached the White House grounds
US SECRET SERVICE/AP
