Top National Security Agency official Teresa Shea is leaving her position after BuzzFeed News reported on her and her husband’s financial interests. The move comes as the NSA faces more questions about the business dealings of its former director, Keith Alexander, and potential ethics conflicts.
A sign outside the National Security Administration campus in Fort Meade, Maryland.
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File
WASHINGTON — One of the nation's top spies is leaving her position at the National Security Agency, according to two sources, amid growing disclosures of possible conflicts of interest at the secretive agency.
The shakeup comes just a month after BuzzFeed News began reporting on the financial interests of the official, Teresa Shea, and her husband.
Shea was the director of Signals Intelligence, or SIGINT, which involves intercepting and decoding electronic communications via phones, email, chat, Skype, and radio. That's widely considered the most important mission of the NSA, and it includes some of the most controversial programs disclosed by former contractor Edward Snowden, including the mass domestic surveillance program.
It couldn't be determined why Shea is leaving her position or what new job she might take. Neither the Sheas nor the NSA responded immediately to requests for comment.
In September, BuzzFeed News reported that a SIGINT "contracting and consulting" company was registered at Shea's house, even while she was the SIGINT director at NSA. The resident agent of the company, Telic Networks, is listed as James Shea, her husband.
Mr. Shea is also the vice president of a major SIGINT contractor that appears to do business with the NSA. The company, DRS Signals Solutions, is a subsidiary of DRS Technologies, which itself is a subsidiary of Italian owned Finmeccanica SPA.
Last week Buzzfeed News also reported Shea herself had incorporated an "office and electronics" business at her house, and that the company owned a six-seat airplane and a condominium in the resort town of Hilton Head, South Carolina.
Over the past month, Teresa Shea and James Shea haven't returned phone calls, and the NSA has declined to comment about any specifics, beyond explaining how the agency tries to address conflict of interest issues in general, and to say that "the agency takes Federal ethics laws quite seriously."
In April, Admiral Michael Rogers took over as director of the NSA, and it was expected he might shuffle staff. One intelligence source said Shea's departure from her job appeared to be due in part to the "optics" of a top NSA official coming under scrutiny by the press for her and her husband's business dealings. The other said the press disclosures may have nothing to do with her leaving.
Shea, as SIGINT director, presided over most of the NSA operations disclosed by Snowden. The most controversial of those is the mass domestic surveillance program, under which the agency collects data on virtually every phone call Americans make, domestically or overseas, from a cell phone or a landline. But other operations included disclosures that calls by the leaders of foreign allies were intercepted, and that a vast amount of electronic communications were collected from American internet companies such as Google and Yahoo.
Last week, the NSA came under increasing pressure because of the business dealings former director Keith Alexander, who left the agency in March.
Reuters disclosed last week that Alexander hired another top NSA official to work at his company, even while the scientist continued to work at the NSA. Reuters said that the NSA had begun a review of the unusual agreement, under which the NSA's Chief Technology Officer Patrick Dowd was to work twenty hours a week at Alexander's company, called Ironnet Cybersecurity, while still working for the United States government.
This week, after the controversy erupted, the company said Dowd would no longer work there.
Aram Roston can be reached at aram.roston@buzzfeed.com and his PGP fingerprint is C21A 2C8F 128D 81D5 766D 227C FC9B C4E1 1546 9FDC
John Stanton contributed reporting to this story.
from BuzzFeed - Breaking http://ift.tt/1ysiBVk
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