National Security Agency

For 11 years, prosecutors say, William Turley and two of his children used their Maryland manufacturing business to brazenly bill nearly $1.5 million in overcharges to a single customer: the National Security Agency. The scam, described in a federal indictment, seems a foolish venture; after all, the NSA is the intelligence agency that helped find Osama bin Laden. Even more surprising — the scam is not unique. The Turleys, who all pleaded not guilty this month in Baltimore's U.S. District Court, are just the latest in a string of people prosecuted by the Maryland U.S. attorney's office for similar crimes involving non-classified work for the NSA, records show.

A federal judge sentenced father and son William and Donald Turley on Friday to 18 months in prison for using the family business to cheat the National Security Agency out of nearly $1.5 million, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office announced. William Turley, 71, is from Annapolis; Donald Turley, 54, is from Owings, in Calvert County. Together they ran the Bechdon Co., located in Upper Marlboro, which made metal and plastic parts for the NSA. The men purposely overbilled the agency for hours that were never worked for more than a decade, prosecutors said.

Industry and academia have cut back on hiring. But the secretive National Security Agency needs more than a few good mathematicians and has sacrificed some of its cherished anonymity to recruit them.At a time when the NSA plans to trim its overall work force by about 15 percent, the high-technology spy agency near Fort Meade is aggressively recruiting people with degrees in mathematics.The agency, which refuses to cite numbers, already claims to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States.

Jean W. South, a retired National Security Agency analyst and school bus driver, died of liver failure Monday at University of Maryland Medical Center. The Annapolis resident was 69. Born Jean Wisniewski in Baltimore and raised on Andre Street in Locust Point, she was a 1960 Seton High School graduate. She earned a degree at Anne Arundel Community College and attended the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She met her future husband, Larry South, a defense contractor, while on a skiing trip in Vermont.

National Security Agency's Cryptologic Museum Where: There is no address. Really. But the NSA Web site does provide directions: From Baltimore, take 295 South or Interstate 95 South to Route 32 East toward Fort Meade. Move to left lane and exit onto Canine Road. Turn left at the light onto Colony Seven Road. Follow past the aircraft and Shell station into the museum parking lot. For more directions and a map, visit the Web site (see below). When: 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mondays-Fridays; 10 a.m.-2 p.m. every first and third Saturday.

President Clinton has nominated Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Hayden as the director of the Fort Meade-based National Security Agency, the Pentagon announced yesterday.Hayden is a 32-year Air Force veteran and a longtime intelligence officer. He is stationed in Korea as deputy chief of staff for the United Nations Command, where he has led negotiations between North and South Korean delegations.Hayden, 52, will replace Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minihan, who will end his three-year tour at the agency March 15.Hayden's nomination to the NSA must first be confirmed by the full Senate.

Milton H. Gable, a retired plumber who had worked at the National Security Agency, died Tuesday of colon cancer at Northwest Hospital Center. He was 85 and a longtime Lansdowne resident. Mr. Gable was born on his family's Gable Avenue farm in Southwest Baltimore. After the death of his mother when he was 8 years old, he and a sister were placed in the General German Orphan Home in Catonsville. "His father, who had been born in 1865, was elderly and could only care for the older children," said his son, Charles M. Gable of Ellicott City.

Making room for a wave of new hires, the National Security Agency has leased a former Sony computer chip plant in San Antonio from a Maryland real estate company, the agency said yesterday. Some Maryland employees will be affected by the expansion in Texas, the NSA said, because a core group of experienced analysts at the agency's Fort Meade headquarters will be transferred to train the new ones in San Antonio. Employees will not be moved over their objections or laid off as a result, officials says.

She remembers it was 2 p.m. on Sept. 3 when a taxi delivered the yellow telegram to her door in New Jersey. Teresa Durkin RTC expected it to be from her brother in the military, needing a ride to another air base. Instead, it was from the Air Force, and it started with five awful words: "It is with deep regret "That was 39 years ago, and yesterday the federal government finally recognized the sacrifice of her late brother -- Master Sgt. George P. Petrochilos -- and dozens of other airmen who died in some of the most secret service of the Cold War.The National Security Agency unveiled the National Vigilance Park and Aerial Reconnaissance Memorial at its headquarters near Fort Meade.

IT IS JAN. 17, 2001, the 10th anniversary of the U.S. bombing campaign against Baghdad, Iraq.Suddenly, an hour after the opening bell, the computers at the New York Stock Exchange flicker off. A jumbo jet landing at Chicago's O'Hare airport crashes when a bogus tower message tells it to land on a crowded runway. On board the USS Eisenhower in the Persian Gulf, angry sailors demand to know why their bank accounts back home have been emptied.For the first time in the history of warfare, the American mainland has been invaded - but not by troops.

Analysts with the National Security Agency see the threats coming at corporate America: viruses, worms and other malware targeting the computer networks that serve the nation's banks, utilities and businesses. But the 64-year-old law that established the modern U.S. intelligence community prevents them from sharing the classified details with the private businesses in the cross hairs. "I'm really concerned that we will have some type of serious attack within the year," said Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, who receives security briefings as the top-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

It was shocking to see that the National Security Agency is still persecuting Thomas Drake, the whistleblower who exposed a wasteful computer system and then was prosecuted ("NSA whistle-blowers want seized computers returned," Nov. 18). He and his colleagues tried to do the right thing for the taxpayers. As often happens to whistleblowers, Mr. Drake was fired, lost his pensions, and was consumed financially by a bogus legal case. This was a warning to those considering blowing the whistle.

A 46-year-old Columbia woman was sentenced to 10 months of home detention and four additional years of probation Friday for inflating the hours she worked as a contractor to overbill the National Security Agency by nearly $109,000, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office announced. Ann Warwick worked for Business Consulting Technology LLC, a subcontractor providing intelligence analyst services for the NSA, from August 2009 to July 2010, when she's accused of adding 836 hours to her time sheets, at a rate of more than $100 per hour.

Joseph Hooper Mettle Jr., a retired communications system engineer who had worked for the National Security Agency for more than three decades, died July 30 of liver cancer at his Eldersburg home. He was 77. The son of a government worker and a homemaker, Mr. Mettle was born in Baltimore and raised on Reisterstown Road in Northwest Baltimore. He attended Mount St. Joseph High School in Irvington, and after graduating from Forest Park High School in 1952, enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Since I believe Thomas Drake is a hero for blowing the whistle on incompetence and possible malfeasance at the National Security Agency, I attended his sentencing hearing ("No jail time for ex-NSA official," July 16). I appreciated the fact that U.S. District Court Judge Richard D. Bennett excoriated the government's treatment of Mr. Drake. Unfortunately, the judge did not go far enough. To prevent future government abuse of whistleblowers, he should have congratulated Mr. Drake for his efforts to expose a shoddy government program.

For 11 years, prosecutors say, William Turley and two of his children used their Maryland manufacturing business to brazenly bill nearly $1.5 million in overcharges to a single customer: the National Security Agency. The scam, described in a federal indictment, seems a foolish venture; after all, the NSA is the intelligence agency that helped find Osama bin Laden. Even more surprising — the scam is not unique. The Turleys, who all pleaded not guilty this month in Baltimore's U.S. District Court, are just the latest in a string of people prosecuted by the Maryland U.S. attorney's office for similar crimes involving non-classified work for the NSA, records show.

Espionage watchers consider the early 1990s a low point for the National Security Agency.Around that time, the Internet was beginning to change how people communicate, becoming a new tool for everyday life. But while the rest of the nation was e-mailing each other, NSA was still delivering top-secret intelligence reports to Washington inside pizza boxes.An agency that in its heyday had helped create the first computers had become appallingly low-tech. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf even complained about it during 1991's Persian Gulf war when he said intelligence reports on Iraq's military were taking too long to reach his hands.

Seventy-year-old William Turley and his two children — Donald Turley, 53; and Christina Turley Knott, 50 — pleaded not guilty Friday in Baltimore's U.S. District Court to charges they used their Maryland manufacturing business to overbill the National Security Agency by $1.5 million over 11 years. The Turleys are accused of instructing employees of The Bechdon Company, based in Upper Marlboro, to lie about how long they worked on unclassified NSA contracts, starting in 1997 and continuing through 2008.