There’s only one thing stranger than Monday’s catastrophe at the NSA headquarters, in which two people, reportedly on a coke-fueled joyride, drove through a checkpoint near the agency’s entrance, leaving one dead and the other hospitalized: the Internet’s conspiracy theories about the ordeal.
Getting to the truth of the matter is complicated by the fact that early news reports widely identified the pair as cross-dressing men—a wig was prominently visible at the scene of the accident—though later local news reports say both identified as transgender women. Law enforcement representatives have stressed they see no connection to terrorism. Instead, they say that this was a simple case of two Baltimore women visiting a man in a cheap motel, stealing his Ford Escape in the wee hours of the morning, hopping on the highway and, with cocaine still in their systems, accidentally taking the Fort Meade, Md., exit toward the restricted entrance to the National Security Agency, where they crashed into a police cruiser.
The Internet, of course, has long been history’s greatest hub for people to theorize wildly about events they don’t fully understand. And the NSA, whose stunning surveillance powers have been partially revealed in recent years by former systems analyst Edward Snowden, is a ripe subject. So here’s a handful of theories about what seems to be a mostly-closed case.
1) The government is covering up the fact that this was an attempted terrorist attack:
Sounds like there is a possibility he was a legitimate domestic terrorist (e.g. fuck the NSA i am doing something myself) and they are downplaying his motives to not make him a martyr.
OnSpeakerCrab, Reddit
2) The two actually work for the government, perhaps?
Maybe it’ll come out that these two were government officials, […] it’s like our government is out of control.
Rob Dew, Infowars
3) “Ramming” the police cruiser was a deliberate nod at chapter 8 of the Bible’s Book of Daniel, in which a ram symbolically defeats a one-horned goat.
“What the heck can this symbolism of two men dressed as women be?” asks YouTuber TheGroxt1, who patiently explains how everything ties into a mural prominently displayed at the United Nations headquartered. To top it off, he’s captured the image of what appears to be a duck kissing a baby alligator on the nose—he identifies them as an eagle and a dragon—hidden in the Google Maps satellite image of Ft. Meade.
TheGroxt1
TheGroxt1, YouTube
4) The driver shot someone on the NSA campus, which went unreported, then tried to escape.
Using a throwaway account due to where I work. […] So far the chatter is saying this guy shot someone on the ft. Meade side, then tried escaping through the nsa gate off of 295 (cause that’s smart). He rammed a nsa police suv and the police responded with shooting the suspect.
worker123456, Reddit
5) The two weren’t “cross-dressing”—they were secret Muslims
2 men dressed as women and so far no one in this thread has made the obvious connection to men wearing traditional Muslim attire? Terrorists have a history of wearing burkas.
It’s the ultimate disguise.
If it comes out that a couple of cross-dressing white guys were trying to fool the gate guards, I’ll eat my shoes.
Answer, abovetopsecret.com
6) It’s just a general hoax. Didn’t happen.
“Already it looks like it’s pretty fucking hoaxy,” opines YouTuber Truth Virus as he watches Fox News coverage of the scene. “Fucking cop, eating food,” he says when the camera shows someone eating. He then describes the sectioned-off crime scene as having “a bunch of fucking bullshit tape all around it.”
Truth Virus, YouTube
7) The two had stolen NSA documents and were almost home free.
“A woman was attempting to leave with NSA documents with one accomplice. The car left the compound and was engaged by security at the last gate,” speculates 1SwtWrld on a godlike productions forum.
“Based on my interpretation of the Google Earth aerial (and the position of the vehicle/body), it does appear that this car was attempting to leave the compound…not enter it,” agrees aveUSa. “These people were attempting to flee the facility at what appears to be the Samford Road checkpoint. Skid marks are very difficult to see, but the positioning of all the official vehicles surrounding the perp vehicle look to me like they were blocking the exit, and I’m guessing that police SUV rammed them.”
Photo via Laurel L. Russwurm/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Jason Reed