Security agencies exposed as bumblers

It was shockingly easy for a Lebanese sympathizer of the terrorist group Hezbollah to penetrate both the FBI and CIA and steal secret intelligence. As the facts trickled out in federal court this week, the FBI and CIA appear to have made few strides since 9/11 to end their bumbling.

Nada Nadim Prouty, a former employee of both agencies, pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy, unauthorized computer access and naturalization fraud. While working for the FBI, Prouty accessed classified information about Hezbollah at least twice. She later worked for the CIA. Both agencies tried to downplay the damage and pass the blame to immigration officials, but no one should buy those lame excuses.

Prouty had the necessary citizenship to work for both agencies, but even a cursory background check should have set off alarms. The Lebanese-born woman overstayed a one-year student visa then paid an unemployed American citizen to marry her, even though they never lived together.

And Prouty left more clues to her loyalties. She worked as a waitress for suspected Hezbollah operative Talal Khalil Chahine in a Detroit neighborhood where the terrorist group does fundraising. A year after Prouty was hired by the FBI in 1999, Chahine married her sister. In 2002, he spoke at a Hezbollah event in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Prouty was looking at classified documents dealing with FBI investigations of Hezbollah and Chahine. Not only did she get away with it, she was later hired by the CIA. Exactly what she did with the information hasn't been revealed, but the damage could be greater than we now know. Chahine is a fugitive and his whereabouts unknown.

Even Inspector Clouseau would have cracked this case before the FBI and CIA. After Prouty's plea, U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy said: "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."

That's stating the obvious. The FBI and CIA are supposed to imagine such threats ahead of time and to take appropriate steps to prevent them.

[Last modified November 15, 2007, 21:51:56]