A Spy For Hezbollah

Penetrating secret agencies like the FBI and CIA can be done two ways. Way number one is for clueless or corrupt politicians to pervert the agencies' missions, in order to do the bidding of foreigners - say, similar to the way California Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher used to exercise his influence on behalf of the Taliban, pre-9/11.

Then there's way number two:

An illegal immigrant from Lebanon with relatives linked to the militant Islamic group Hezbollah paid a U.S. citizen to marry her and then lied her way through national security background checks to become an agent for the FBI and the CIA. She used her position to secretly access government computers for information about her relatives and a U.S. investigation into the group, authorities said Tuesday.

Nada Nadim Prouty, a 37-year-old Lebanese national, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, unauthorized computer access and naturalization fraud in federal court in Detroit and agreed to cooperate with authorities in an ongoing investigation into the security breaches.

...At the time, Prouty's brother-in-law, who owned a Detroit restaurant where Prouty once worked as a waitress, was suspected of having strong ties to senior Hezbollah officials in Lebanon, where the group is headquartered.

...Prouty came to one of those enclaves in Michigan in 1989 on a one-year, non-immigrant student visa. After overstaying her visa, she obtained a fraudulent marriage in 1990 by paying an unemployed U.S. citizen in Detroit to marry her, the court records state.

From there, Prouty lied her way into obtaining U.S. citizenship, and worked as a waitress and hostess for a Middle Eastern restaurant chain called La Shish Inc. that was owned by suspected Hezbollah operative Talal Khalil Chahine. Chahine even wrote a letter for submission into Prouty's immigration file attesting to the validity of Prouty's false marriage, the court papers said.

...The next year, Prouty's sister, Elfat El Aouar, married Chahine. And less than a month later, Prouty accessed the FBI case management system "without authorization, and beyond her authorized access" to query her own name and that of her sister and Chahine. She also began taking "an unknown quantity" of classified information home with her, against FBI policy, the court records state.

In August 2002, Prouty's sister and Chahine attended a fundraising event in Lebanon where the keynote speakers were Hezbollah leader Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah and Chahine himself.

The next summer, Prouty illegally accessed the FBI computers again. This time, she accessed an automated case system for information about a national security investigation into Hezbollah that was being conducted by the FBI's Detroit field office, the court records show.

Later that year, Prouty joined the CIA, where she remained until earlier this month.

...Now a fugitive believed to be in Lebanon, Chahine was charged in Michigan in 2006, along with Prouty's sister and others, with tax evasion in connection with an alleged scheme to conceal more than $20 million in cash received by La Shish restaurants and to route funds to Lebanon, according to a Justice Department statement.