U.S. Intelligence Analyst Handed Classified Info to Hizbullah

Ezra HaLevi - Arutz7 News - November 14, 2007

(IsraelNN.com) U.S. authorities have discovered that an FBI agent and CIA analyst leaked classified information to the Hizbullah terrorist organization via American "Hizbullah sympathizers."

According to CBS news, the female agent, Nada Nadim Prouty, pleaded guilty "to charges involving her disclosure of information" to parties sympathetic to Hizbullah, who then passed it to the Iranian-backed group.

The woman is of Lebanese background and became a US citizen through marriage. CBS says the marriage was faked in order to obtain citizenship.

The plea agreement mentioned, according to the New York Times that Prouty's sister and brother-in-law attended a Hizbullah "fund-raising event" in Lebanon in August 2002. The keynote speaker there was Hizbullah's Sheikh Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah.

The plea also mentioned that in 2003 Prouty searched computerized FBI files on an investigation involving the Hizbullah, though she "was not assigned to work on Hezbollah cases as part of her FBI 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."

There is not enough evidence against her to charge the agent with espionage. But since Hizbullah is considered a terrorist entity by the U.S. State Department, passing information to the group is considered a very serious crime.

The woman was caught when her agency account was flagged due to her conducting several searches unrelated to her assigned cases.

It remains to be seen what sentence will be handed down and how it will compare with the

life sentence