Prouty update (updated)

By Clarice Feldman

David Ashenfelter of the Detroit Free Press has some new information on Ms Prouty and it makes the FBI and CIA look even worse if that's possible.

he has some

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Chadwell didn't indicate why Nada Nadim Prouty, a Lebanese immigrant who once lived in Taylor, wanted the information or what she did with it. But he said four of the inquiries involved files containing the names of confidential FBI informants.

In another development, a federal official familiar with the case said the CIA had access to derogatory information about Prouty before the FBI hired her in 1999, but failed to disclose it when the FBI contacted the CIA during a background check.

Had the information been disclosed, the official said, the FBI might not have hired her. More perplexing, the official said, is why the CIA hired Prouty away from the FBI.

The CIA declined comment...

h/t:TS

Update (hat tip: Ethel C. Fenig):

Josh Meyer of the Los Angeles Times adds details:

In court documents and interviews, federal authorities said that as part of a criminal conspiracy, Nada Nadim Prouty, 37, illegally accessed top-secret FBI investigative files on five occasions and most likely shared the information with the suspected Hezbollah operative. When she pleaded guilty to unauthorized computer access and naturalization fraud charges three weeks ago, authorities revealed only that Prouty had accessed the FBI's Hezbollah files once, and said nothing about her sharing information about ongoing investigations with anyone else.

On Wednesday, prosecutors said Prouty illegally accessed the FBI's Hezbollah investigative files in 2002 and 2003, at a time when she was a Washington, D.C.-based FBI field agent who was not working Hezbollah cases. Prouty accessed them electronically, "without authorization and in excess of her authorized access," the prosecutors said in a court filing.

At the time, her sister's husband, Talal Khalil Chahine, 51, was under investigation by the FBI in Detroit for his suspected ties to Hezbollah. The Lebanon-based group was designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization in 1997. [....]

Of particular concern: Prouty at least twice accessed case files that contained an identification number for a "classified human source of information" being used by the FBI in Hezbollah investigations, the court filing said. That means that she could have compromised an undercover informant or witness who was working with the FBI, according to the official.