A gunman was wounded in a shootout early Monday night involving an FBI agent at CIA headquarters outside Washington, the FBI said in a statement.
According to the FBI, the man got out of his vehicle, was “hired by police officers” and wounded around 6:00 pm. The man was taken to hospital following the episode previously reported on by NBC News. The hospital was not named.
“The FBI takes seriously any shooting incident involving our agents or task force members,” Samantha Shero, a public affairs officer with the FBI’s Washington Field Office, said in an email. “The review process is thorough and objective and is carried out as quickly as possible under the circumstances.”
A CIA spokesman said the agency’s headquarters remained secure and referred questions to the FBI, which released limited details. It wasn’t immediately clear whether agents or officers were injured.
The agency’s secure campus in Langley, Virginia has served the agency since 1961. The complex is closed to the general public and only accessible to those with security clearances or by special arrangement. The CIA website offers virtual tours of 32 locations in the complex, from the outdoor cryptos sculpture with an encoded message to a bust of former President George HW Bush, who served as CIA director from January 1976 to January 1977. The complex was named after him in 1999.
Only last month a lone driver rammed officers in the Capitol when heavy security measures were put in place after the January 6 riot subsided on the premises. One officer died and another was injured.
Monday’s episode at CIA headquarters mirrored a 1993 campus shootout when a Pakistani man killed two CIA employees who had stopped in traffic outside the agency’s headquarters. The man, Mir Aimal Kasi, who also wounded three others, later said he was angry about the CIA’s activities in Pakistan and other Islamic nations. He was executed by lethal injection in 2002 after years of evading law enforcement in Pakistan. Virginia has since abolished the death penalty.
