The Spy Who Came In Through The Front Door

Intelligence:

n an embarrassing breach of national security, a former metro Detroit woman whose family is suspected of having links to a Lebanese terrorist group got sensitive jobs at the FBI and CIA despite being an illegal immigrant, authorities said Tuesday.

Worse, they said, Nada Nadim Prouty, 37, of Vienna, Va., used her position at the FBI to access a classified computer system to find out whether she or her family members -- including fugitive La Shish restaurant chain owner Talal Chahine -- were being investigated for terrorist activities. She also took home classified FBI information.

Prouty accessed the system a second time to find out about a Detroit-based investigation involving Hizballah.

Prouty, who resigned from the CIA last week, pleaded guilty to the charges Tuesday in Detroit.

Although there is no evidence that Prouty was a Hizballah operative, the episode raised questions about how she cleared multiple federal background investigations to acquire U.S. citizenship and land jobs at two of the nation's most sensitive intelligence agencies without someone discovering that she had engaged in marriage fraud to become a citizen.

Partly due to general institutional incompetence and probably partly due to PC attitudes.

And likely due too as Allah says to our woeful lack of Arabic speakers.

It's been six years since 2001. We're still short on Arabic speakers? We could be graduating our third class of a dedicated four-year intensive immersive language training college by now.

Heh: Yes, it's been more than four years since 2001, as I first wrote.

No, no cocktail. I just haven't eaten and I'm a bit goofy from starvation.

posted by Ace at 08:54 PM

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