Hezzy spy caught working for FBI and CIA
Great. Just wonderful. She was working for the FBI and CIA in their counter-terrorism division and spent her time nosing around the computer systems looking for information on her relatives:
Nada Nadim Prouty, a 37-year-old Lebanese national and resident of Vienna, Va., pleaded guilty today in the Eastern District of Michigan to charges of fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship, which she later used to gain employment at the FBI and CIA; accessing a federal computer system to unlawfully query information about her relatives and the terrorist organization Hizballah; and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
The announcement was made today by Stephen J. Murphy, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan; Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Willie T. Hulon, Executive Assistant Director of the FBI’s National Security Branch; Brian M. Moskowitz, Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit Office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); and Kurt Rice, Chicago Field Office Special Agent in Charge for the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service.
At a hearing in Detroit before the U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn, Prouty entered a plea of guilty to counts one, two and three of a second superseding information. Count one of the information charges conspiracy, for which the maximum penalty is five years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. Count two charges unauthorized computer access, for which the maximum penalty is one year imprisonment and a $100,000 fine. Count three charges naturalization fraud, for which the maximum penalty is 10 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine, and requires the court to de-naturalize the defendant.
“This case highlights the importance of conducting stringent and thorough background investigations,” said U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy. “It’s 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. I applaud the excellent investigative work of the FBI, ICE and DHS, which led to the successful prosecution today.”
Just one small problem with that last little bit there. Michelle Malkin takes note of an observation made by Debbie Schlussel:
“The FBI and U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy (and before him, U.S. Attorneys Craig Morford and Jeffrey Collins) knew Prouty was a spy for Hezbollah back in 2003, but they allowed her to work for the FBI and CIA for over FOUR Years! They did not remove her from the job until the end of this past September–1.5 years after her brother-in-law was indicted for financing Hezbollah!!!!!!”
And now for the salt in the wound:
FBI fraudster Nada Nadim Prouty not only used a sham marriage to get jobs with access to secret terrorist intelligence - her current husband is a State Department employee who has held sensitive posts in Middle Eastern embassies, The Post has learned.
Her third hubby, Gordon Prouty, 40, now works for the State Department in Washington, a spokesman confirmed Friday night. He had been stationed at American embassies in Egypt and Pakistan.
A Justice Department spokesman, Dean Boyd, refused to comment on Gordon Prouty's job, or say whether he was under investigation along with his criminal wife.
"He's not charged with any wrongdoing in this case," Boyd said.
But the revelation surprised national security watchdogs.
"My God, she's married to one of our people," said Mike Cutler, a former US immigration special agent.
Nada Prouty, 37, admitted last week she faked her first marriage to a Michigan man in 1990, enabling her to get US citizenship that helped her secure jobs with the FBI and CIA. Her star as an agent rose, and officials trusted her to grill al Qaeda sympathizers.
She also confessed to sneaking into government databases for secret information on her sister and brother-in-law, both linked to the Middle East terror group Hezbollah.
One of the agencies credited with busting Prouty is the State Department's diplomatic security service.
I hope the administration isn't looking for a cookie as a reward for finding her. For crying out loud, they knew she was a spy four years ago, and let her stay on. She was trusted to help in counter-terror operations, and for all we know, she was helping Hezbollah the entire time. We know she was trying to find information on her relatives -- probably to scrub them from any records we had. This was a major breach of security. But if you thought that was bad Michelle has more that won't just upset readers. It ought to make you pick up a torch and pitchfork, and call for heads on a platter. See, the CIA seems to be defending her:
In the wake of Nada Nadim Prouty's guilty plea to lying her way into U.S. citizenship and sensitive FBI and CIA jobs, operatives of both agencies disagree whether she breached the government's trust, or just showed poor judgment.
For many in the buttoned-down FBI, a fellow special agent tarnished the bureau's image and betrayed them by living the lie that she was a law-abiding naturalized citizen from Lebanon.
"That can't be glossed over," said John Sennett, a retired agent and former president of the FBI Agents Association. "To get into the FBI under false pretenses is inexcusable. This isn't like lying about your age to join the Navy in December 1941."
But to CIA veterans, where Prouty was recruited as a covert operations officer in 2003, a talented spy merely fudged the truth to win her citizenship.
Prouty, 37, admitted in court that she became a U.S. citizen by hiring an American to marry her. She then joined the FBI in 1999.
"That's not uncommon - people do it all the time," said a dismissive CIA source. The source strongly praised her undercover work in Iraq fighting insurgents, and said at worst she used bad judgment before joining the CIA.
Several other CIA officers also shrugged off her pleading guilty to rifling FBI files for information on family members and a Hezbollah counterterror case in Detroit.
"As far as I can tell, she was just looking out for her family," another senior official said.
(For the record, we don't allow swearing on the site, or we censor it when we feel it's necessary. However, if I lapse into the words I used when I read the CIA's reaction, I'm going to have to redact the damn thing.)
This is positively asinine. If I were the head of the CIA, any agent who defends her would be handed their walking papers. There is no defense of this, and I could give a rat's rear-end whether she did it to protect her family or not. So, for those yay-hoos defending her, is it OK to sacrifice the security of the nation to help one's family out? Would that be all right with them? If the president's brother were kidnapped, and the ransom was to hand over national secrets, using the CIA's logic, I guess it's cool to jeopardize our security then. After all, the president would just be protecting his brother, right?
what sort of @$$ hats do we have working in our intelligence agencies, especially at CIA? I'm serious. I want heads to roll on this one. We're at war, and on the propaganda/information side of that war, we're getting our asses handed to us by our enemy. No wonder why given the CIA's lackadaisical attitude about keeping things secret, and out of the hands of foreign spies.
Publius II
Nada Nadim Prouty, a 37-year-old Lebanese national and resident of Vienna, Va., pleaded guilty today in the Eastern District of Michigan to charges of fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship, which she later used to gain employment at the FBI and CIA; accessing a federal computer system to unlawfully query information about her relatives and the terrorist organization Hizballah; and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
The announcement was made today by Stephen J. Murphy, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan; Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Willie T. Hulon, Executive Assistant Director of the FBI’s National Security Branch; Brian M. Moskowitz, Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit Office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); and Kurt Rice, Chicago Field Office Special Agent in Charge for the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service.
At a hearing in Detroit before the U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn, Prouty entered a plea of guilty to counts one, two and three of a second superseding information. Count one of the information charges conspiracy, for which the maximum penalty is five years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. Count two charges unauthorized computer access, for which the maximum penalty is one year imprisonment and a $100,000 fine. Count three charges naturalization fraud, for which the maximum penalty is 10 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine, and requires the court to de-naturalize the defendant.
“This case highlights the importance of conducting stringent and thorough background investigations,” said U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy. “It’s 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. I applaud the excellent investigative work of the FBI, ICE and DHS, which led to the successful prosecution today.”
Just one small problem with that last little bit there. Michelle Malkin takes note of an observation made by Debbie Schlussel:
“The FBI and U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy (and before him, U.S. Attorneys Craig Morford and Jeffrey Collins) knew Prouty was a spy for Hezbollah back in 2003, but they allowed her to work for the FBI and CIA for over FOUR Years! They did not remove her from the job until the end of this past September–1.5 years after her brother-in-law was indicted for financing Hezbollah!!!!!!”
And now for the salt in the wound:
FBI fraudster Nada Nadim Prouty not only used a sham marriage to get jobs with access to secret terrorist intelligence - her current husband is a State Department employee who has held sensitive posts in Middle Eastern embassies, The Post has learned.
Her third hubby, Gordon Prouty, 40, now works for the State Department in Washington, a spokesman confirmed Friday night. He had been stationed at American embassies in Egypt and Pakistan.
A Justice Department spokesman, Dean Boyd, refused to comment on Gordon Prouty's job, or say whether he was under investigation along with his criminal wife.
"He's not charged with any wrongdoing in this case," Boyd said.
But the revelation surprised national security watchdogs.
"My God, she's married to one of our people," said Mike Cutler, a former US immigration special agent.
Nada Prouty, 37, admitted last week she faked her first marriage to a Michigan man in 1990, enabling her to get US citizenship that helped her secure jobs with the FBI and CIA. Her star as an agent rose, and officials trusted her to grill al Qaeda sympathizers.
She also confessed to sneaking into government databases for secret information on her sister and brother-in-law, both linked to the Middle East terror group Hezbollah.
One of the agencies credited with busting Prouty is the State Department's diplomatic security service.
I hope the administration isn't looking for a cookie as a reward for finding her. For crying out loud, they knew she was a spy four years ago, and let her stay on. She was trusted to help in counter-terror operations, and for all we know, she was helping Hezbollah the entire time. We know she was trying to find information on her relatives -- probably to scrub them from any records we had. This was a major breach of security. But if you thought that was bad Michelle has more that won't just upset readers. It ought to make you pick up a torch and pitchfork, and call for heads on a platter. See, the CIA seems to be defending her:
In the wake of Nada Nadim Prouty's guilty plea to lying her way into U.S. citizenship and sensitive FBI and CIA jobs, operatives of both agencies disagree whether she breached the government's trust, or just showed poor judgment.
For many in the buttoned-down FBI, a fellow special agent tarnished the bureau's image and betrayed them by living the lie that she was a law-abiding naturalized citizen from Lebanon.
"That can't be glossed over," said John Sennett, a retired agent and former president of the FBI Agents Association. "To get into the FBI under false pretenses is inexcusable. This isn't like lying about your age to join the Navy in December 1941."
But to CIA veterans, where Prouty was recruited as a covert operations officer in 2003, a talented spy merely fudged the truth to win her citizenship.
Prouty, 37, admitted in court that she became a U.S. citizen by hiring an American to marry her. She then joined the FBI in 1999.
"That's not uncommon - people do it all the time," said a dismissive CIA source. The source strongly praised her undercover work in Iraq fighting insurgents, and said at worst she used bad judgment before joining the CIA.
Several other CIA officers also shrugged off her pleading guilty to rifling FBI files for information on family members and a Hezbollah counterterror case in Detroit.
"As far as I can tell, she was just looking out for her family," another senior official said.
(For the record, we don't allow swearing on the site, or we censor it when we feel it's necessary. However, if I lapse into the words I used when I read the CIA's reaction, I'm going to have to redact the damn thing.)
This is positively asinine. If I were the head of the CIA, any agent who defends her would be handed their walking papers. There is no defense of this, and I could give a rat's rear-end whether she did it to protect her family or not. So, for those yay-hoos defending her, is it OK to sacrifice the security of the nation to help one's family out? Would that be all right with them? If the president's brother were kidnapped, and the ransom was to hand over national secrets, using the CIA's logic, I guess it's cool to jeopardize our security then. After all, the president would just be protecting his brother, right?
what sort of @$$ hats do we have working in our intelligence agencies, especially at CIA? I'm serious. I want heads to roll on this one. We're at war, and on the propaganda/information side of that war, we're getting our asses handed to us by our enemy. No wonder why given the CIA's lackadaisical attitude about keeping things secret, and out of the hands of foreign spies.
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 4:46 PM
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