Illegally In U.S. Woman Worked for FBI CIA Stole Sensitive Info Related To Hezbollah

A former agent for the CIA and FBI admitted she illegally accessed government computers to obtain classified information about the radical Islamic group Hezbollah.

Nada Nadim Prouty, 37, also confessed that she fraudulently obtained US citizenship years before receiving a security clearance, according to a Justice Department press release. She pleaded guilty to one count each of criminal conspiracy, unauthorized computer access and naturalization fraud. She faces up to 16 years in prison and a fine of $600,000.

In documents filed in federal court in Detroit, Prouty acknowledged overstaying a student visa and then, in 1990, offering money to an unemployed American man to marry her. The couple never lived together. In 1994, she obtained American citizenship after filing false and forged documents.

“It is hard to imagine a greater threat than the situation where a foreign national uses fraud to attain citizenship and then, based on that fraud, insinuates herself into a sensitive position in the U.S. government,” said U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy in a statement announcing a plea agreement with Prouty

In 1997, the FBI granted Prouty a security clearance after hiring her as a special agent and assigned her to the bureau’s Washington field office. She left the FBI in June 2003 and went to work for the CIA “through a series of false representations and use of her fraudulently procured proof of US citizenship,” the press release stated.

While at the FBI, Prouty conducted at least two illegal computer searches. One, in 2000, sought classified information the FBI had on her and two family members. The second, conducted the same month she left the FBI, sought information about Hezbollah, even though she wasn’t assigned to work on cases about the Lebanese militant group.

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Several Bloggers are providing additional details.

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From Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch

Whew. This story has everything: an illegal immigration angle, a Keystone Kops angle, an espionage angle, a moderate-Muslims-condemn-terror-or-do-they angle, and more. It would make a great movie. If this kind of thing doesn’t kill us first.

The illegal immigration angle is of course that illegal immigration is a national security issue, and that illegal immigrants have no business working for the FBI and the CIA. That in turn leads to the Keystone Kops angle: what on earth was the FBI and the CIA thinking, giving this woman key jobs? Of course, no one would dream of asking Nada Nadim Prouty or anyone like her sensitive questions about where they stand on the jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism. Why, you’re automatically a bigot just for thinking that such questions should be asked. But when you don’t ask, of course, and make no effort to investigate in any other way, you don’t get answers.

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Debbie Schlussell has been following this and related stories longer than anyone.

(required reading assignment)

Debbie Schlussell