Police have not released the identities of the people involved, or the conditions of the man who survived the incident and the injured NSA officer. The NSA statement did not say whether either person in the car was struck by gunfire or was injured as a result of the crash.

Details about how the incident began were pieced together with information from several law enforcement officials and others familiar with the case, who spoke on the condition they not be named in order to discuss a pending case.

A Howard County police spokeswoman confirmed that the men involved stayed at a Jessup motel and that the owner of the SUV called police Monday morning to report it stolen.

Police officials said late Monday afternoon that they were still trying to piece together the sequence of events and locations. One official said it appears that the owner of the SUV picked up the other two men in Baltimore, though the official said detectives had not confirmed that account entirely.

The officials do know that the three men checked into the motel room and stayed the night. One official familiar with the investigation described the episode as “prostitution and drug-related.”

Mary Phelan, a spokeswoman for the Howard County Police Department, confirmed that the SUV stolen from the motel was the vehicle that ended up at the NSA checkpoint. Officials said they are trying to sort through the vehicle owner’s statement; it was unclear whether the person injured in the incident could be interviewed at the hospital.

The encounter at the NSA occurred shortly before 9 a.m., when the vehicle entered the NSA complex in Anne Arundel County and “failed to obey an NSA police officer’s routine instructions for safely exiting the secure campus.” The statement said security barriers were raised.


One official said the vehicle struck a security officer and the security barrier. The NSA statement said the “vehicle accelerated toward an NSA police vehicle blocking the road” and that police “fired at the vehicle.” It then crashed into the police vehicle.

Local television cameras showed two vehicles that were damaged near a gate at the military base.

Dozens of media descended onto the NSA campus Monday morning eager for details, but when they arrived, the press and their news trucks were corralled to a parking lot blocks away from NSA headquarters with no view of the scene.

A line of cameras sat on a hill facing away from the NSA building into the evening because NSA officials told the media they could not take video or photos of the campus. News helicopters buzzed overhead through most of the day.

FBI crews from its evidence response team were processing the scene, and agents were interviewing witnesses. Deputy White House press secretary Eric Schultz said President Obama has been briefed on the incident.

Fort Meade has about 11,000 military personnel and an additional 29,000 civilian employees, according to its Web site. The facility sits near Odenton and Laurel and is the third-largest employer in Maryland. It houses other federal agencies in addition to the NSA, including the Defense Information School, the U.S. Army Cyber Command and various military intelligence offices.

A parkway sign that points to the exit says “NSA” and below, in black letters on a white background, says, “Restricted Entrance.”

Monday’s shooting comes after other incidents where authorities said people either accidentally or intentionally tried to breach security at area government buildings.

Earlier this month, a Beltsville man was arrested in a string of shootings at public buildings around suburban Maryland, including one shooting at an NSA building just east of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. A former prison guard was arrested and named a suspect in the shootings, and has told investigators that he was “hearing voices” that told him to fire the shots.

In September, a man with a knife was able to jump a fence, get past the U.S. Secret Service and enter an unlocked door of the White House before he was caught. That incident forced a review of security procedures and staff changes at the top of the agency.

And in October 2013, a woman with her 1-year-old daughter in her car rammed a gate outside the White House, then sped to the U.S. Capitol, where police twice opened fire on her car. She was killed after getting past a security barrier on the Capitol grounds. Her family has said she suffered from mental issues and panicked when she saw police with guns and had not meant to breach the security barriers.

Dropbear Victim wrote:
I find it slightly funny the NSA didnt see it coming. Although it wont be a laughing matter when they use this to justify more surveillance.