Men Disguised As Women Spark NSA Shooting
Sources said gunfire erupted Monday morning at the gate of the National Security Agency #39;s facility at Fort Meade in Maryland when two men disguised as women in a stolen car tried to enter....
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Men Disguised As Women Spark NSA Shooting - Video
Not many students have the cutting-edge cybersecurity skills the NSA needs, recruiters say. And these days industry is paying top dollar for talent. Brooks Kraft/Corbis hide caption
Not many students have the cutting-edge cybersecurity skills the NSA needs, recruiters say. And these days industry is paying top dollar for talent.
Daniel Swann is exactly the type of person the National Security Agency would love to have working for it. The 22-year-old is a fourth-year concurrent bachelor's-master's student at Johns Hopkins University with a bright future in cybersecurity.
And growing up in Annapolis, Md., not far from the NSA's headquarters, Swann thought he might work at the agency, which intercepts phone calls, emails and other so-called "signals intelligence" from U.S. adversaries.
"When I was a senior in high school I thought I would end up working for a defense contractor or the NSA itself," Swann says. Then, in 2013, NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked a treasure-trove of top-secret documents. They showed that the agency's programs to collect intelligence were far more sweeping than Americans realized.
After Snowden's revelations, Swann's thinking changed. The NSA's tactics, which include retaining data from American citizens, raise too many questions in his mind: "I can't see myself working there," he says, "partially because of these moral reasons."
This year, the NSA needs to find 1,600 recruits. Hundreds of them must come from highly specialized fields like computer science and mathematics. So far, it says, the agency has been successful. But with its popularity down, and pay from wealthy Silicon Valley companies way up, agency officials concede that recruitment is a worry. If enough students follow Daniel Swann, then one of the world's most powerful spy agencies could lose its edge.
People Power Makes The Difference
Contrary to popular belief, the NSA's black buildings aren't simply filled with code-cracking supercomputers.
"There's no such thing as a computer that can break any code," says Neal Ziring, a technical lead in the agency's information assurance directorate. "People like to think there's some magic bullet here, and there isn't. It's all hard work."
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After Snowden, The NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge
FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) -- Two cross-dressing men who were fired upon by National Security Agency police when they disobeyed orders at a heavily guarded gate had just stolen a car from a man who had picked them up to "party" at a motel, police said Tuesday.
The FBI said the driver, Ricky Shawatza Hall, 27, died at the scene, and his passenger remained hospitalized Tuesday with unspecified injuries. An NSA police officer was treated for minor injuries and released.
NSA police opened fire on the stolen sports utility vehicle after Hall failed to follow instructions for leaving a restricted area, authorities said.
As it turns out, Hall and his passenger had just driven off in the SUV of a 60-year-old Baltimore man, who told investigators that he had picked up the two strangers in Baltimore and brought them to a Howard County motel to "party."
Howard County Police "can't confirm there was any sexual activity involved," spokeswoman Mary Phelan told The Associated Press on Tuesday. She also declined to elaborate on whether drugs or alcohol were part of their plan.
The SUV's owner, who has not been publicly identified, said they checked into a room at the Terrace Motel in Elkridge at about 7:30 a.m. Monday, and that he used the bathroom about an hour later. When he came out, the men were gone, along with his car keys.
He called police to report the stolen car, and only minutes later, just before 9 a.m., the men took a highway exit that leads directly to a restricted area at the NSA entrance at Fort Meade.
The two men were dressed as women, but "not in an attempt to disguise themselves from authorities," FBI spokeswoman Amy Thoreson said.
The FBI has ruled out terrorism, and no one has explained yet why the men ended up in a restricted NSA area.
However, the new timeline suggests they may have simply taken a wrong turn while fleeing the motel, about 12 minutes away.
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NSA shooting: FBI identifies man killed
The FBI on Tuesday identified the man who died after the stolen vehicle he was in crashed into a police cruiser Monday at the gate of the National Security Agency in Fort Meade as Ricky Shawatza Hall, 27.
Authorities released Halls identity in a statement but did not offer more details about how he died. A second man who was in the vehicle with him has been identified as Kevin Lamont Fleming, 20, of Baltimore. He continues to be hospitalized.
The NSA police officer who was also injured after the incident was released from the hospital Monday, according to the FBI.
Hall and the man in the car with him were dressed as women at the time of the crash, but not in an attempt to disguise themselves from authorities, the statement said.
Federal prosecutors and the FBI are working to determine if any charges will be filed, the statement said.
Local television showed two damaged vehicles near a gate and emergency workers loading an injured uniformed man into an ambulance. (AP)
The incident did not appear to be a planned attack or related to terrorism but may have been a case of a wrong turn, according to authorities. The driver of the stolen car may have mistakenly taken a restricted exit heading toward an NSA security post about 9 a.m. Monday and ignored police commands to stop possibly because there were drugs inside the vehicle.
Police fired at the SUV as it accelerated toward the cruiser, authorities said, but it is unclear how the officer and the two men involved were injured. In the aftermath of the crash, images from local television cameras showed two vehicles with smashed bumpers and flipped hoods at a security gate near NSA headquarters.
The SUV involved in the incident was reported stolen from a Howard County motel on U.S. 1 in Elkridge, south of Baltimore, where the men involved in the incident had briefly stayed on Monday. Authorities had previously said the motel was in adjacent Jessup.
Officials with knowledge of the investigation said investigators believe a 60-year-old man who owns the Ford Escape picked up the two men who were dressed as women at the time in Baltimore on Sunday night or early Monday. Howard County police said in a statement that the three men checked into the Terrace Motel on U.S. 1, also called Washington Boulevard, at 7:30 a.m. Monday. The county police said the two men dressed as women stole the SUV about 8:30 a.m.
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FBI identifies man who died in NSA incident as Ricky Shawatza Hall
Story highlights Two people tried to enter the main gate to enter the headquarters of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade. One died at the scene, and another was wounded, the NSA says.
His passenger who remained hospitalized Tuesday has not been publicly identified.
On Monday morning, Hall attempted to gain entry at the National Security Agency headquarters, Jonathan Freed, NSA director of strategic communications, said in a statement.
"The driver failed to obey an NSA Police officer's routine instructions for safely exiting the secure campus. The vehicle failed to stop and barriers were deployed."
NSA police on the scene fired on the vehicle when it accelerated toward a police car, blocking its way, according to the NSA. An NSA police officer was also hospitalized but not identified.
The two men who officials say tried to ram the main gate at NSA headquarters were dressed as women, according to a federal law enforcement official.
Investigators are looking into whether the men were under the influence of drugs following a night of partying, a federal law enforcement official said.
A man reported his car stolen from a hotel not far away from NSA Headquarters and said he had been with two men who had taken his car. Cocaine was found in the vehicle. The Howard County Police Department confirms that a Ford Escape reported stolen in Howard County, Maryland, is the vehicle involved in the incident.
The FBI said Monday morning that it was conducting an investigation with NSA police and other law enforcement agencies, and interviewing witnesses on the scene. The incident took place near one of the gates to the complex, far from the main buildings. The FBI said they did not think terrorism was related to the incident.
"We are working with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Maryland to determine if federal charges are warranted," the FBI said in a statement.
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2 men dressed as women ram NSA gate