So apparently the National Security Agency is actually dedicated to the financial security of the officials who run the agency! Via Buzzfeed:
On a quiet street in Ellicott City, Maryland, a blue-grey two-story clapboard house, set back from the road, is shaded by two sycamores and a towering maple. It’s the unassuming home of one of the National Security Agency’s most powerful officials, Teresa H. Shea.
In September, BuzzFeed News disclosed a potential conflict of interest involving Shea, the director of Signals Intelligence. Called SIGINT in espionage jargon, it refers to all electronic eavesdropping and interception, including the controversial domestic surveillance program that collects information about Americans’ phone use.
As BuzzFeed News reported, there’s a private SIGINT consulting and contracting business based at Shea’s home in that quiet neighborhood. Shea’s husband, a business executive in the small but profitable SIGINT industry, is the resident agent for the firm, Telic Networks.
In addition, James Shea also works for a major SIGINT contracting firm, DRS Signal Solutions Inc., which appears to do SIGINT business with the NSA.
DRS declined to comment, and the NSA declined to answer questions related to the Sheas, Telic Networks, or DRS.
Now there’s a new wrinkle, which the NSA has also declined to discuss: Yet another company, apparently focused on the office and electronics business, is based at the Shea residence on that well-tended lot.
This company is called Oplnet LLC.
Teresa Shea, who has been at the NSA since 1984, is the company’s resident agent. Thecompany’s articles of organization, signed by Teresa Shea, show that the firm was established in 1999 primarily “to buy, sell, rent and lease office and electronic equipment and related goods and services.” An attorney who also signed the document, Alan Engel, said he couldn’t comment on client matters.
BuzzFeed News found no evidence that the firm has done business with the federal government, and it is unclear what electronics or office business the firm deals in. The firm is listed as active at the Maryland Department of Assessment and Taxation. One document on file at the Federal Aviation Administration lists Teresa Shea as the “sole member” of the LLC.
Records show Oplnet does own a six-seat airplane, as well a condominium property with an assessed value of $275,000 in the resort town of Hilton Head, South Carolina.
This summer the NSA turned down a Freedom of Information Act request for Shea’s public financial disclosure form. The agency said that, unlike every other federal agency, it could withhold the disclosure because of a sweeping 1959 law that allows it to keep almost everything secret.
[...] This week, the NSA told Buzzfeed News it would “process” a formal request for Shea’s financial disclosures forms, “expeditiously.” If the NSA releases those forms, they might reveal more about the business interests of her and her husband.
