Unnamed intelligence officials hoping to spin the Nada Prouty none-dare-call-it-espionage story into a non-issue are out with both guns blazing to discount the roles she played and consequently the damage she may have caused. Cue NBC News...
Keep in mind, Prouty wasn't exactly Googling for ex-boyfriends. She was searching to see "whether family members had been linked" to Hezbollah -- and with good reason. Her brother-in-law, Talal Khalil Chahine, "is currently a fugitive believed to be in Lebanon. He, along with Prouty’s sister and others, was charged in 2006 by the
U.S. attorney in Detroit with tax evasion in connection with a scheme to conceal more than $20 million in cash... and to route funds to persons in
Lebanon with links to Hezbollah." The sister is currently serving 18 months in the federal pen.
This same official is quick to mention to NBC – apparently with a straight face - that the CIA and FBI "have a good record in prosecuting spies, particularly in their own agencies." Never mind guys like him and him. And never mind that the whole raison d'etre of a counterintelligence capability is to stop spies from infiltrating your intelligence services in the first place.
Prouty was one of the literal handful of FBI Special Agents who knew
Arabic and was familiar with the Middle East prior to 9/11; she was later one of the precious few Arabic speakers the CIA had on station in
Iraq interrogating detained al-Qaeda operatives. Assessing the negative impact she may have had on our intelligence capabilities has nothing to do with where she fell out on the government pay scale and everything to do with the fact that she was a vital cog in the machine. If this sounds familiar – skilled woman working a hard intelligence target that lots of people relied on and who was in bed with the adversary from the beginning – it's because that's the story of another spy, the Cuban mole Ana Montes.
-- Michael Tanji, cross-posted at Haft of the Spear
