(Bloomberg) -- National Security Agency police thwarted an intrusion at the highly secure Maryland campus by firing on a vehicle making an unauthorized entry, killing one person and wounding another in an incident the FBI said wasn’t related to terrorism. An NSA police officer also was hurt.
The driver, who wasn’t identified by the police, failed to obey an officer’s order to leave and then accelerated toward an agency police car blocking the road. The driver and passenger were two men dressed as women and were driving a stolen Ford Escape, according to a U.S. law enforcement official who asked for anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation.
“NSA police fired at the vehicle when it refused to stop,” Jonathan Freed, NSA director for strategic communications, said Monday in a statement.
One person in the vehicle died at the scene, he said. The other was injured and taken to a local hospital.
The incident is the latest attack at secured federal government facilities. The NSA, the nation’s top spy agency, reported damage from bullets earlier this month, and an intruder breached security at the White House in September and made his way into the president’s house.
The scene of Monday morning’s shooting was “contained,” according to a statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which said it wasn’t related to terrorism. The FBI’s Baltimore field office is investigating along with NSA police and other law enforcement agencies, according to the statement.
5,000-Acre Campus
The NSA is located at Fort Meade, a 5,000-acre highly secured military installation between Baltimore and Washington. Fort Meade has expanded since 2010 to include the U.S. Cyber Command, the Defense Information Systems Agency and U.S. Fleet Cyber Command, the Navy’s headquarters for computer security. The base has more than 51,000 military and civilian employees.
In the gunshot incident at the NSA, the police later arrested a 35-year-old man and accused him of shooting at five public places in Maryland.
Early in 1993, in front of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Virginia campus, Pakistani national Mir Aimal Kasi used an AK-47 assault rifle to fire into cars lined up waiting drive onto the secure campus, killing two employees. After the shootings, Kasi returned to his apartment, packed, and flew to Pakistan. His family smuggled him across the border into Afghanistan, according to an agency account of the attack.
After a four-year hunt, and acting on a tip, the CIA and FBI apprehended Kasi in Pakistan, flew him to the U.S. where he was convicted by a jury of murder and sentenced to die by lethal injection. He was executed on Nov. 14, 2002 -- almost a decade after the attack.
‘Remain Vigilant’
The intruders on Monday never passed the vehicle control point area on the perimeter of the campus, Freed said in his statement. It was unclear why the driver attempted to enter the NSA compound.
“The residents, service members and civilian employees on the installation are safe,” Colonel Brian Foley, Fort Meade garrison commander, said in an e-mailed statement. “We continue to remain vigilant at all of our access control points.”
For almost two years, the NSA has been caught up in a dispute over its interception of communications of foreign leaders and others, sparked by former U.S. contractor Edward Snowden’s release of confidential documents. The NSA has about 42,000 government and contract workers.
To contact the reporters on this story: Chris Strohm in Washington at cstrohm1@bloomberg.net; Del Quentin Wilber in Washington at dwilber@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Shepard at mshepard7@bloomberg.net Justin Blum, Don Frederick
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