Haft of the Spear

Sources say Nada Nadim Prouty, a Lebanese national and resident of Virginia, entered the United States on a student visa and earned citizenship through a sham marriage.

While officials say there is no evidence of actual espionage and no evidence that she was working as a spy, she used her access as an FBI agent to look up information about herself and her relatives, some of whom may have ties to Hezbollah. She also is accused of improperly taking classified information home with her.

Of course the flip-side of the argument is this: how good can background checks be if she could penetrate both the FBI and CIA (each requires its own, separate investigation and polygraph)?

It is hard to downplay the significance of such a case. As a credentialed Special Agent, and a fully-cleared analyst, the volume and value of information she had access to over her nine years in the system was both deep and far-reaching. Hezbollah scored a double-whammy that I don’t think even the KGB ever managed to pull off: an “intelligence community” agent that punked two counterintelligence scrubs.

Cross-posted at Danger Room.

Update: A response to commenters who take issue with the characterization of Ms. Prouty and the clearance system …

Officials investigating cases like this are loathe to mention in clear and unambiguous terms the full extent of what went on for several reasons. To a certain extent they don’t know the full extent or impact of her actions (one reason why she and almost every “spy” we’ve ever caught is never charged with actual espionage, but ‘conspiracy to commit’ and other more easily provable charges). In order to rectify that situation they include as a part of any plea deal – as was done here – an arrangement to undergo debriefing and polygraph examinations. Had we a more robust counterintelligence capability we wouldn’t need to have such arrangements because at the first hint of trouble we would have had full-spectrum surveillance on her like white on rice. Something to keep in mind the next time someone starts screaming about how we live in a police state.

As to alleged weaknesses in the “whole person” concept when evaluating people for clearances, hey, let’s face it: if they only approved angels the IC would be a very small, paranoid, and useless organization (all jokes aside). A candidate with rare technical skills who admits to taking the glaucoma cure in college is almost assuredly a better value than the middling poli-sci grad who claims to never have taken a drink or even heard of the communist party (the former being smart and human, the latter being a dull-witted liar). A clearance doesn’t mean you’re perfect, it is supposed to mean you’re at lower risk for selling out your country. A weak investigation(s) – as you are likely to get when you contract investigations out to contract body shops who will hire as “investigators” anyone with a pulse – not the whole person concept is the root of the problem here.

I cast no aspersions on any innocent, but it would take a stunning suspension of disbelief to think that someone with links to Hezballah, whose earliest interactions with the government were fraudulent, who made a bee-line for the IC, and once there made all the wrong moves is an ingénue who is being victimized by a racist system.