- Apr 24, 2013
- 1,200
WASHINGTON — The two young men who had spent the night at a nearby motel with an older man and stole his car on Monday morning may not have known exactly where they were going. But they sped into a special highway exit reserved for employees of the National Security Agency.
The agency, the country’s largest and most secretive intelligence organization, is protected by its own police force on a sprawling Maryland campus and is on permanent alert against intruders. The encounter ended with both men shot, one fatally, by agency security personnel, the authorities said.
“There’s still a lot of investigating to do,” said a law enforcement official who was briefed on the episode. “But it seems very possible that they didn’t set out to go to N.S.A.”
Officials said they found cocaine and at least one firearm in the stolen Ford Escape S.U.V., which was perhaps why the driver did not obey orders from N.S.A. officers to stop. They said both young men were wearing women’s clothing. Officials identified the wounded passenger in the stolen car as Kevin Fleming, 20, of Baltimore. The name of the driver, who was pronounced dead at the scene, was not disclosed by late Monday.
Government officials in Europe and the United States have been especially wary of terrorist attacks in recent months, with the Islamic State and the Yemen branch of Al Qaeda both calling on devotees in the West to lash out. But surely none of the myriad counterterrorism briefings for the N.S.A. staff had prepared security officers for this: two men, dressed as women, driving up to the N.S.A. employee checkpoint at Fort Meade, off Interstate 295, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.
Initial reports suggested that the men were shot as they tried to crash the secure entrance. But in a statement on Monday afternoon, Jonathan Freed, an N.S.A. spokesman, described a more complicated encounter.
Mr. Freed said the car approached an N.S.A. gate shortly after 9 a.m., and “the driver failed to obey an N.S.A. police officer’s routine instructions for safely exiting the secure campus.”
“The vehicle failed to stop, and barriers were deployed,” he said. After that, the car “accelerated toward an N.S.A. police vehicle blocking the road. N.S.A. police fired at the vehicle when it refused to stop.”
The two men’s vehicle crashed into the police car, the statement said. One N.S.A. police officer was injured in the crash and was taken to a hospital.
“The incident has been contained and is under investigation,” said Col. Brian P. Foley, Fort Meade garrison commander. “We continue to remain vigilant at all of our access control points.”
An F.B.I. spokeswoman, Amy J. Thoreson, said at midday, “We do not believe it is related to terrorism.”
For much of the morning, however, the sketchy news reports from N.S.A. suggested the possibility of a terrorist assault. Dozens of emergency vehicles rushed to the scene. Guards with automatic weapons patrolled the area. Television networks dispatched helicopters to film the chaotic scene from above.
But as investigators pieced together the prelude to the fatal encounter, they found a far more banal sequence of events.
The law enforcement official, who said he was not authorized to speak on the record about the continuing inquiry, said the owner of the Ford Escape had picked up the two younger men on Sunday night and taken them to a motel in Elkridge, Md.
On Monday morning, when the car owner, who is about 60 years old, was in the motel bathroom, the two younger men decided to steal the Escape. Where they intended to go was uncertain, but they exited I-295 at the special N.S.A. exit, which is closed to the public.
F.B.I. agents were on the scene for several hours on Monday, interviewing witnesses along with the N.S.A.’s police force, and a bureau forensic team was collecting evidence at the crime scene, Ms. Thoreson said.
The National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on foreign communications, has always tried to operate out of public view, though with about 35,000 employees it is the largest United States spy agency. It has drawn unprecedented public attention since 2013, when a former N.S.A. contractor, Edward J. Snowden, released thousands of classified documents and accused the agency of violating the privacy of Americans and foreigners.
The agency’s campus was open to car traffic for decades. But after the 2001 terrorist attacks, security was tightened, and access, through gates operated by armed guards, is now limited to employees and pre-cleared visitors.
Monday’s episode was the second this month involving gunfire at the agency. A Beltsville, Md., man, Hong Young, a 35-year-old former prison guard, was arrested on March 3 in connection with a series of random shots fired near public and commercial buildings, including one at the N.S.A.
The police said no one was seriously hurt in those episodes, though at least one man was grazed by a bullet while walking near a mall. In that case, too, the authorities say there was no evidence of terrorism; relatives and officials say Mr. Young appears to have been suffering from mental illness and had no political motive.
The agency, the country’s largest and most secretive intelligence organization, is protected by its own police force on a sprawling Maryland campus and is on permanent alert against intruders. The encounter ended with both men shot, one fatally, by agency security personnel, the authorities said.
“There’s still a lot of investigating to do,” said a law enforcement official who was briefed on the episode. “But it seems very possible that they didn’t set out to go to N.S.A.”
Officials said they found cocaine and at least one firearm in the stolen Ford Escape S.U.V., which was perhaps why the driver did not obey orders from N.S.A. officers to stop. They said both young men were wearing women’s clothing. Officials identified the wounded passenger in the stolen car as Kevin Fleming, 20, of Baltimore. The name of the driver, who was pronounced dead at the scene, was not disclosed by late Monday.
Government officials in Europe and the United States have been especially wary of terrorist attacks in recent months, with the Islamic State and the Yemen branch of Al Qaeda both calling on devotees in the West to lash out. But surely none of the myriad counterterrorism briefings for the N.S.A. staff had prepared security officers for this: two men, dressed as women, driving up to the N.S.A. employee checkpoint at Fort Meade, off Interstate 295, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.
Initial reports suggested that the men were shot as they tried to crash the secure entrance. But in a statement on Monday afternoon, Jonathan Freed, an N.S.A. spokesman, described a more complicated encounter.
Mr. Freed said the car approached an N.S.A. gate shortly after 9 a.m., and “the driver failed to obey an N.S.A. police officer’s routine instructions for safely exiting the secure campus.”
“The vehicle failed to stop, and barriers were deployed,” he said. After that, the car “accelerated toward an N.S.A. police vehicle blocking the road. N.S.A. police fired at the vehicle when it refused to stop.”
The two men’s vehicle crashed into the police car, the statement said. One N.S.A. police officer was injured in the crash and was taken to a hospital.
“The incident has been contained and is under investigation,” said Col. Brian P. Foley, Fort Meade garrison commander. “We continue to remain vigilant at all of our access control points.”
An F.B.I. spokeswoman, Amy J. Thoreson, said at midday, “We do not believe it is related to terrorism.”
For much of the morning, however, the sketchy news reports from N.S.A. suggested the possibility of a terrorist assault. Dozens of emergency vehicles rushed to the scene. Guards with automatic weapons patrolled the area. Television networks dispatched helicopters to film the chaotic scene from above.
But as investigators pieced together the prelude to the fatal encounter, they found a far more banal sequence of events.
The law enforcement official, who said he was not authorized to speak on the record about the continuing inquiry, said the owner of the Ford Escape had picked up the two younger men on Sunday night and taken them to a motel in Elkridge, Md.
On Monday morning, when the car owner, who is about 60 years old, was in the motel bathroom, the two younger men decided to steal the Escape. Where they intended to go was uncertain, but they exited I-295 at the special N.S.A. exit, which is closed to the public.
F.B.I. agents were on the scene for several hours on Monday, interviewing witnesses along with the N.S.A.’s police force, and a bureau forensic team was collecting evidence at the crime scene, Ms. Thoreson said.
The National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on foreign communications, has always tried to operate out of public view, though with about 35,000 employees it is the largest United States spy agency. It has drawn unprecedented public attention since 2013, when a former N.S.A. contractor, Edward J. Snowden, released thousands of classified documents and accused the agency of violating the privacy of Americans and foreigners.
The agency’s campus was open to car traffic for decades. But after the 2001 terrorist attacks, security was tightened, and access, through gates operated by armed guards, is now limited to employees and pre-cleared visitors.
Monday’s episode was the second this month involving gunfire at the agency. A Beltsville, Md., man, Hong Young, a 35-year-old former prison guard, was arrested on March 3 in connection with a series of random shots fired near public and commercial buildings, including one at the N.S.A.
The police said no one was seriously hurt in those episodes, though at least one man was grazed by a bullet while walking near a mall. In that case, too, the authorities say there was no evidence of terrorism; relatives and officials say Mr. Young appears to have been suffering from mental illness and had no political motive.
