Ex-FBI Agent Accused Of Security Breach DETROIT, Nov. 13, 2007 <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/terror/printable3496101.shtml> http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/terror/printable3496101.shtml Nada Nadim Prouty <http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2007/11/13/image3497730g.jpg> _____
(CBS/AP) A former agent for the FBI and CIA pleaded guilty Tuesday to faking a marriage to win U.S. citizenship, clearing the way to being hired and given security clearances by the two intelligence agencies. Nada Nadim Prouty, 37, emigrated to United States from Lebanon in 1989. She was given U.S. citizenship five years later and began working as a special agent at the FBI's field office in Washington in 1999, according to a criminal information sheet filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit. While working as a special agent, Prouty improperly searched an FBI computer database for information about her relatives and links they might have to the Hezbollah terrorist organization, the criminal sheet showed. She joined the CIA in 2003 and resigned as part of her guilty plea Tuesday, officials said. There's no evidence that Prouty was working as a spy on Hezbollah's behalf, two government officials said. However, "This still continues to be an ongoing investigation," said FBI spokesman Stephen Kodak in Washington. The case raises questions about hiring practices and background checks by two of the nation's most security-sensitive and secretive agencies. "Clearly, something was broken in the system that allowed her to get in, to maintain that type of access for an extended period of time," said CBS security analyst John Brennan. "This case highlights the importance of conducting stringent and thorough background investigations," Stephen J. Murphy, the U.S. attorney in Detroit, said in a statement. "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." Prouty passed a lie-detector test before she was hired by the FBI, which conducted numerous interviews with her relatives and other associates in Beirut and the United States as part of her security background check, Kodak said. But she was not subjected to the more rigorous security screening that the FBI adopted after its 2001 arrest of turncoat Robert Hanssen, who spied for the Soviet Union and Russia over a 20-year period. "She had a complete, full investigation," Kodak said, referring to the FBI's background check on Prouty before she was hired. The CIA largely relied on the FBI's security checks when they hired Prouty, according to a government official familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. "The CIA may have been a little too trusting of the FBI's ability to do a background check, as the bureau's own pre-employment investigation of Prouty would have covered her first years in country," the official said. "That won't happen again." According to the court documents, released in Washington by the Justice Department, Prouty lived in Taylor, Mich., with her sister when her visa ran out in 1990. That summer, she paid off an unemployed U.S. citizen to marry her in a civil ceremony in Detroit. But the two never lived together and the marriage was never consummated sexually, the documents show. Over the next four years, Prouty claimed she was legally married and living with her husband as part of her application for U.S. citizenship. She was naturalized in 1994. In 1999, she was hired as a special agent in the FBI's field office in Washington, where she investigated crimes committed against U.S. residents while overseas. She was not part of investigations into Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla group that the U.S. government has designated a foreign terrorist organization. Prouty was not authorized to search the FBI database, in 2002, for her name and that of her sister and brother-in law. Her relatives were linked to Hezbollah two years later when they joined a senior Hezbollah official at a fundraiser. Prouty's brother-in-law Talal Chanine spoke at that fund raiser in Lebanon alongside Hezbollah's one-time spiritual leader Sheikh Fadlallah, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr. Prouty joined the CIA in 2003. CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield described Prouty as a "midlevel employee" who violated immigration laws long before she was hired by the government. The CIA is cooperating with the investigation, Mansfield said. Prouty pleaded guilty to conspiracy, unauthorized computer access and naturalization fraud. C MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. _____ Former FBI, CIA Employee Pleads Guilty to Computer Crime Grant Gross, IDG News ServiceTue Nov 13, 5:00 PM ET http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20071113/tc_pcworld/139605 <http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20071113/tc_pcworld/139605&printer=1;_ylt=A suyA5cGhMzq.9QOlJOg054RSLMF> &printer=1;_ylt=AsuyA5cGhMzq.9QOlJOg054RSLMF A former employee of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency has pleaded guilty to charges of fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship and accessing a U.S. government computer system to unlawfully find information about her relatives and the Islamic organization Hizballah. Nada Nadim Prouty, 37, originally from Lebanon, also pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government. She was accused of using her fraudulently obtained U.S. citizenship to gain employment with the FBI and CIA, and of using her position in the FBI to check on the information held on family members connected to Hizballah, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The U.S. government considers Hizballah a terrorist group. Prouty faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a US$250,000 fine for the conspiracy charge; one year in prison and a $100,000 fine for the unauthorized computer access charge; and 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the naturalization charge. Prouty "engaged in a pattern of deceit to secure U.S. citizenship, to gain employment in the intelligence community, and to obtain and exploit her access to sensitive counterterrorism intelligence," Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein said in a statement. Prouty first entered the U.S. from Lebanon in June 1989, on a one-year, non-immigrant student visa, according to court documents. After her visa expired, she remained in Taylor, Michigan, living with her sister. As a way to remain in the U.S., Prouty later offered money to an unemployed U.S. citizen to marry her, and on Aug. 9, 1990, she was married. Prouty never lived with her fraudulent husband, but continued to live with her sister, the DOJ said. Prouty later submitted a series of fraudulent documents to federal immigration officials to verify the validity of the fraudulent marriage in order to obtain U.S. citizenship, the DOJ said. She was granted citizenship in August 1994, and the following year, she filed for a divorce. Between May 1992 and November 1994, Prouty was twice employed as a waitress and hostess at La Shish Inc., a chain of Middle Eastern restaurants in Detroit that was owned by Talal Khalil Chahine. During this time, Chahine wrote a letter for submission into Prouty's immigration file attesting to the validity of Prouty's false marriage. Chahine is currently a fugitive believed to be in Lebanon, the DOJ said. He, along with Prouty's sister, Elfat El Aouar, and others were charged in 2006 in the Eastern District of Michigan with tax evasion in connection with a scheme to conceal more than $20 million received by La Shish restaurants and to route funds to Lebanon. Last month, Chahine and others were also charged in the Eastern District of Michigan in a bribery and extortion conspiracy in which federal immigration benefits were allegedly awarded to illegal aliens in exchange for money. In April 1999, Prouty was hired as a special agent of the FBI, and she was granted a security clearance and assigned to the FBI's Washington, D.C., field office to work on a squad investigating crimes against U.S. persons overseas. During her tenure with the FBI, Prouty was not assigned to work on investigations involving Hizballah. In August 2000, Prouty's sister married Chahine, the owner of La Shish. A month later Prouty used the FBI's computerized Automated Case System without authorization to query her own name, her sister's name and that of her brother-in-law, the DOJ said. In June 2003, Prouty accessed the FBI system and obtained information from a national security investigation into Hizballah that was being conducted by the FBI's Detroit field office. Prouty left the FBI and joined the CIA in June 2003. She resigned from the CIA earlier this month, and she has agreed to cooperate with the CIA on any matters the CIA says is necessary to protect U.S. national security, the DOJ said. "This case highlights the importance of conducting stringent and thorough background investigations," said U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy of the Eastern District of Michigan in a statement. "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." _____ C.I.A. Officer Pleads Guilty to Illegal Searches By <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/philip_shenon/ index.html?inline=nyt-per> PHILIP SHENON http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/washington/14cnd-spy.html?_r=1 <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/washington/14cnd-spy.html?_r=1&oref=slogi n&pagewanted=print> &oref=slogin&pagewanted=print WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - A Lebanese-born <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central _intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org> C.I.A. officer who had previously worked as an <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal _bureau_of_investigation/index.html?inline=nyt-org> F.B.I. agent pleaded guilty today to charges that she illegally sought classified information from government computers about the radical Islamic group <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/hezboll ah/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Hezbollah. The defendant, Nada Nadim Prouty, who also confessed that she had obtained American citizenship fraudulently, faces up to 16 years in prison under the plea agreement, which appeared to expose grave flaws in the methods used by both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to conduct background checks on its investigators. Court papers do not say specifically why Ms. Prouty, 37, sought information about Hezbollah, the militant group based in southern Lebanon, from the F.B.I.'s computer case files in June 2003, the month she left the bureau to join the C.I.A. There is no allegation in the documents that she passed information on to Hezbollah or any other extremist group. The plea agreement noted, however, that Ms. Prouty's sister and brother-in-law attended a fundraising event in Lebanon in August 2002 at which the keynote speaker was Sheikh Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Hezbollah. Sheikh Fadallah has been designated by the United States government as a terrorist leader. The plea agreement said that Ms. Prouty specifically went searching in 2003 for computerized case files maintained by the F.B.I.'s Detroit field office in an investigation that centered on Hezbollah although she "was not assigned to work on Hezbollah cases as part of her F.B.I. duties and she was not authorized by her supervisor, the case agent assigned to the case or anybody else to access information about the investigation in question." The C.I.A. would not describe Ms. Prouty's duties at the agency, apart from describing her as a "mid-level" employee, nor would the agency say if she traveled abroad as part of her duties or had been considered undercover. Government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation with reporters, said Ms. Prouty was an "operations" officer at the C.I.A., meaning she was involved in some way in basic espionage work at the agency, not as an analyst or translator. As part of the plea agreement, she agreed to resign from the C.I.A. and give up any claim to American citizenship. "It is fitting that she now stands to lose both her citizenship and her liberty," Assistant Attorney General Kenneth L. Wainstein said in an announcing the guilty plea, which was entered in federal district court in Detroit. Mr. Wainstein, who runs the Justice Department's national security division, said that Ms. Proudy "engaged in a pattern of deceit to secure U.S. citizenship, to gain employment in the intelligence community and to obtain and exploit her access to sensitive counterterrorism intelligence." She pleaded guilty to one count each of criminal conspiracy, which has a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine; unauthorized computer access, which has a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine, and naturalization fraud, which has a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. In her plea agreement, Ms. Proudy, who lived mostly recently in Vienna, Va., close to C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., acknowledged that her crimes began shortly after she entered the United States from Lebanon in June 1989 on a one-year student visa. She acknowledged that after overstaying her visa, she had offered money to an unemployed American man to marry her in 1990, which allowed her to remain in the United States as his wife, although the couple never lived together. She then submitted a series of false and forged documents to obtain American citizenship, which she was granted in 1994. She obtained a divorce the next year and worked in a series of jobs, including as a waitress and hostess in a chain of restaurants in the Detroit area owned by her brother-in-law, Talal Khalil Chahine, who is a fugitive from federal charges in Michigan of tax evasion in a scheme to funnel millions of dollars from his business to people in Lebanon. In 1997, she was hired as a special agent of the F.B.I., which has been under pressure for years to hire more agents and other employees who speak Arabic for terrorism investigations. She was assigned to the bureau's Washington D.C. field office, given a security clearance and placed in "an extraterritorial squad investigating crimes against U.S. persons overseas," the Justice Department said in a statement to reporters. Ms. Prouty acknowledged two sets of illegal computer searches at the F.B.I. The first, in September 2002, involved case files that contained her name, her sister's name or her brother-in-law's name. The second, in June 2003, involved files from the national-security investigation of Hezbollah that was being conducted in Detroit, which has one of the nation's largest Arabic-speaking communities. The court papers say that Ms. Prouty's crimes first became known to the F.B.I. in December 2005 and have been under investigation for nearly two years. The documents suggest that she came under scrutiny as part of an investigation of her brother-in-law, Mr. Chahine. _____ LaShish owner's sister-in-law infiltrated CIA, FBI, prosecutors say Paul Egan / The Detroit News DETROIT -- An illegal alien with links to Hezbollah penetrated the Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI, federal prosecutors in Detroit said today. Nada Nadim Prouty, 37, of Vienna, Va., a sister-in-law of fugitive LaShish Restaurants owner Talal Chahine, pleaded guilty in federal court today to conspiracy to defraud the United States, unauthorized computer access, and naturalization fraud. According to an information unsealed today, Lebanese-born Prouty gained U.S. citizenship in 1994 through a fraudulent marriage, joined the FBI's Washington Field Office as special agent in 1999 and joined the CIA in June, 2003. She resigned her CIA post, described as "mid-level," last week, officials said. Chahine, a fugitive believed to be living in Lebanon, was indicted for tax evasion in 2006 and accused by federal agents of supporting Hezbollah. One of the allegations against Prouty is that while an FBI agent she went into a computer system without authorization in 2003 and obtained information about the Detroit's FBI office's investigation of Hezbollah. "This case highlights the importance of conducting stringent and thorough background investigations," U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy said in a news release. "It's hard to imagine a greater threat than a 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." Prouty, a former LaShish waitress, faces six to 12 months in prison and loss of her citizenship under a plea agreement. The case is prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Chadwell. Hezbollah, also known as the "Party of God," is an Islamic militant group based in Lebanon that has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government since 1997. Hezbollah, in addition to attacks on Israel, claimed responsibility for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon, which killed 258 Americans. The Shiite group has financial ties and other links with Iran. It has political and social welfare functions in addition to military roles. 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