Guard with ‘top secret’ clearance admits to abandoning post

BALTIMORE – A former Department of Defence security guard and Army intelligence officer has admitted to abandoning her work station when she was supposed to be monitoring security cameras.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland said in a statement that 41-year-old Shawn Penn pleaded guilty Tuesday to making false claims and statements.

From September 2015 to August 2016, officials say Penn told her employer she’d been working when she was actually elsewhere.

Penn was an active duty Army intelligence officer at Fort Meade while also contracting as a security guard for a Department of Defence facility in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. As part of her security job, she had been given “top secret” clearance.

Penn faces up to five years in prison for each of the five counts she pleaded guilty to.