Former FBI and CIA agent illegally accessed data on Hezbollah.

Raw Story:

A former employee of the FBI and CIA, Nada Prouty, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to accessing highly classified information about ongoing terrorism investigations from FBI computers.

Prouty's brother-in-law, Talal Chahine, is a fugitive from US tax evasion charges involving a scheme to send $20 million in cash to Lebanon and is though to have close ties to Sheikh Fadlallah, the leader of the Lebanese paramilitary organization Hezbollah. Hezbollah is regarded as a terrorist group by the United States and a few other nations, although it operates as a legitimate political party within Lebanon, where it runs a television statement and social programs.

Prouty has admitted to looking through FBI databases in 2002-03 for information on Chahine and Hezbollah, even though she was not assigned to those cases or authorized to access the records. Her plea agreement does not accuse her of passing the information along, but that is a primary concern among officials.
Richard Clarke, formerly the chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council, told ABC News, "Right now, the CIA and FBI are both trying to find out what more might she have known, what more might she have passed on to Hezbollah. And was she, in fact, sent here by Hezbollah in the first place to penetrate the United States intelligence services."

The Lebanese-born Prouty worked as an FBI agent in 1999-2003 and as a CIA operations officer in 2003-07.

She was hired at a time when the FBI was under pressure to obtain more Arabic-speaking employees for terrorism investigations. Her case raises serious issues about both hiring practices and computer security within the agencies.

Making the situation more embarrassing for both agencies, Prouty is not even a legal US citizen but obtained citizenship illegally by paying an unemployed American to marry her. As part of her plea agreement, Prouty agreed to give up any claim to US citizenship. She now faces a prison term of up to 16 years -- ten years for naturalization fraud and the other six for criminal conspiracy and unauthorized computer access.

ABC News has more HERE.