FBI Agent Blasts The Seductive Spy CBS’ 60 Minutes Calls ‘A Patriot’
By Madeline Brooks
Not even the popular American TV show, CBS’ News 60 Minutes, aired Sunday evenings, has escaped the siren call of surrender to Leftist and Jihadist thinking. There was a time when 60 Minutes was seen as providing fair and balanced, independent journalism. But no more.
Lebanese born Nada Nadim Prouty was convicted of immigration fraud for getting into a fake marriage to get a leg up on American citizenship. That one act involved multiple lies told on many occasions and was used as the foundation for her entrance into the FBI and the CIA. She is also accused of being an FBI/CIA infiltrator and of spying on the U.S. for Hezbollah. On March 28, 2010, Prouty was interviewed as a heroine by Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes.
Watch the interview here:
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As you will see, Prouty got pouty on air, shed a few tears, and proclaimed her innocence, citing lie detector tests that she “passed.” Prouty is accused of using her access as an FBI agent to look up information about herself and her relatives, some of whom have ties to Hezbollah. She also is accused of improperly taking classified information home with her and of passing information to sympathizers of Hezbollah.
Her family life is funky with Hezbollah activity. The U.S. government calls her brother-in-law, Talal Chahine, a Hizballah supporter, along with Prouty’s sister, Elfat El Aouar. They were convicted of tax evasion to the tune of 16 million dollars, which was sent in part to Lebanon. In 2005, Chahine fled to Lebanon to escape being arrested under tax evasion charges.
According to blogger Debbie Sclussel, who says she has been following this case for years, and has dug up considerable research on Prouty and her family, Prouty owed Chahine a big favor. Chahine arranged her sham marriage to one of his kitchen helpers. In return, she spied for him. Prouty used the status she had built up with the FBI and CIA to search their data bases, letting Chahine know about the government’s investigation into his activities financing Hezbollah. It is believed that Chahine got his money from drug selling, in addition to his legitimate restaurant business, which may have been used to launder the drug money. Chahine’s son, Khalil, was arrested two times on drug charges, and is serving prison time now for murdering a Christian Arab who offended him by planning to marry a Muslim woman, who had once been his girlfriend.
In the CBS interview with Scott Pelley, Prouty’sinvestigative work on the bombings of the Khobar Towers and the ramming of the U.S.S. Cole is seen as proof of her heroic citizenship. But not necessarily so. Those attacks were done by al Qaida, which is Sunni. Prouty and other family members were part of the Syrian National Socialist Party in Lebanon, a pan-Syria outfit, linked to both Hezbollah and Shiite Iran. As many readers know, Shiites and Sunnis often try to destroy each other. If Prouty were working for a Shiite group, then she would have been using her American identity as a CIA officer to camouflage her Shiite interests, as well as a way to increase her credibility for a higher level of infiltration within the C.I.A, which would then facilitate spying against American interests.
Prouty pleads on 60 Minutes that she agreed to the CIA’s charges against her because she could not afford a lawyer. But surely that claim is bogus. First of all, the court would have appointed a lawyer for her who would represent her for free if she were in need. However, how poor could she have been with a sister and brother-in-law, with whom she was in cahoots, who raked in over 16 million dollars? Something else that doesn’t add up is that she claims not to have known that her brother-in-law had close ties to Hezbollah and most likely sent it money. But she worked with the CIA and even searched its Hezbollah files! How could she not know?
I asked an FBI agent of my acquaintance what he thought of the 60 Minutes show. “Jim,” as he likes to be called for this purpose, has been an FBI agent for over 40 years, and is a former Marine.
Here is what FBI Jim says about 60 Minutes’ portrayal of Nada Prouty.
“60 Minutes is a reflection of the MSM’s leftward slant. Ideological interpretation trumps facts for ideologues. The FBI was grossly negligent in hiring her in the first place. Then the CIA compounded the gross negligence when they did a sloppy background investigation and hired her. The fraudulent marriage should have been discovered and that should have been the end of the story.
As far as the CIA “internal investigation” of her conduct goes, it proved nothing. Polygraphs are not evidence. They are scientifically unreliable and inadmissable as evidence in court because they are unreliable, so when Bob Grenier, the CIA person interviewed, casually mentions that she passed the polygraph, he is being intentionally disingenuous.
It seems to me that she used, with great success, her feminine charms on investigators of the FBI, CIA and 60 Minutes. (However, her attempts to tear up at appropriate points in the 60 Minute act were mostly unsuccessful.) Such a clever, physically attractive, ME, woman should have been interviewed by experienced heterosexual female investigators. Heterosexual men’s judgments on employment should not have been relied upon in any case with such a candidate for the FBI/CIA. The 60 minutes guy looked like he was star struck to me.
I do not believe that she participated in raids in Iraq. At best she came in well after an area was secured. No military officer in his/her right mind would allow a pregnant woman to participate in a dangerous op like a raid. Her alleged exposure to danger was hyped.
My other reaction is that the Left will do anything to continue the narrative of how bad the Bush administration was. It diverts attention from critical analysis of the performance of their guy.
The MSM is simply not to be trusted. Sad when a tabloid newspaper has more credibility than what purports to be a legitimate investigative news source.”
The staff of 60 Minutes and interviewer Scott Pelley granted an undeserved innocence and respect to a very suspicious person and they called her a patriot. If they were fair and balanced they would have also presented a point of view critical of Prouty. What is especially dangerous to our national security is that the CBS show cast aspersions on anyone who sees her differently, creating an unfriendly atmosphere for critical thinking about who is really good for America and who is not. Unless this kind of gross distortion is pointed out and stopped, the door will be thrown wide open to our enemies, and anyone who tries to shut the door will be defamed as a bad person. If a Fifth Column press makes it impossible to even speak up about national security threats, we are in very deep trouble.