Just landed in my inbox:

ADC to Honor Helen Thomas at Convention and Inaugurate Journalism Scholarship

Now, questioning her 10th President, Helen Thomas continues to be a role model for young journalists throughout this country. At this year’s National Convention, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee will inaugurate a journalism scholarship in Helen Thomas’ name to be awarded to outstanding college students majoring in journalism. Helen Thomas will address the convention and more details about the scholarship application will be available soon.

Flashback: Tony Snow to Helen Thomas…”Thanks for the Hezbollah view.”

Al-Jazeera television station has admitted to “unethical” behavior in its coverage of the release of convicted Hezbollah terrorist, Samir Kuntar, from an Israeli prison following a prisoner exchange deal with the Lebanese militant group.

The Arabic news channel’s public acknowledgement came as a response to an avalanche of Israeli criticism and a threat issued by the Government Press Office (GPO) to boycott Al-Jazeera news channel as a response to the program it aired last month. The controversial program broadcasted footage of the homecoming celebration and birthday party held for Kuntar upon his return in which he was hailed a “pan-Arab hero”.

Is that remorse or business sense? The article (in the Arabic paper Asharq al Awsat) points out that the Israeli GPO threatened to yank Al-Jazeera’s Jerusalem privileges over the incident. As it is, the GPO will “no longer go out of its way to extend courtesy services, including providing assistance in obtaining speedy visas for the Arabic news channel’s employees.”

Takin’ a hard line there. No more speedy visas for al-Jazeera!

That’ll teach ‘em.

______________

{Post by See-Dubya}

The Bush administration is accusing the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of providing cash and refuge to the militant Islamist group Hezbollah of southern Lebanon.

An investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) names Venezuelan diplomat Ghazi Nasr al Din and Venezuelan-Arab businessman Fawzi Kanan as key links between the two.

“It is extremely troubling to see the government of Venezuela employing and providing safe harbor for Hezbollah facilitators and fundraisers,” said Adam Szubin, political affairs director of OFAC.

Cautionary note: there’s a difference in saying members of Chavez’s government are helping terrorists, and that Chavez himself is. There’s no evidence of the latter, and (for what it’s worth) he denies it. On the other hand, he has to know what’s up, and he just promoted Ghazi Nasr al Din to a new position where he continues his Hezbollah liaison.

Here’s the OFAC report–it’s been out there since June 18th. Excerpt:

Ghazi Nasr al Din is a Venezuela-based Hizballah supporter who has utilized his position as a Venezuelan diplomat and the president of a Caracas-based Shi’a Islamic Center to provide financial support to Hizballah. Nasr al Din served until recently as Charge d’ Affaires at the Venezuelan Embassy in Damascus, Syria, and was subsequently appointed the Director of Political Aspects at the Venezuelan Embassy in Lebanon.

Nasr al Din has counseled Hizballah donors on fundraising efforts and has provided donors with specific information on bank accounts where the donors’ deposits would go directly to Hizballah.

Ghazi Nasr al Din has met with senior Hizballah officials in Lebanon to discuss operational issues, as well as facilitated the travel of Hizballah members to and from Venezuela. In late January 2006, Nasr al Din facilitated the travel of two Hizballah representatives to the Lebanese Parliament to Caracas to solicit donations for Hizballah and to announce the opening of a Hizballah-sponsored community center and office in Venezuela. The previous year, Nasr al Din arranged the travel of Hizballah members to attend a training course in Iran.

Here’s the other guy, who’s not a government employee but who’s sending money and helping with operations and travel (he runs two travel agencies):

Fawzi Kan’an is a Venezuela-based Hizballah supporter and a significant provider of financial support to Hizballah. Kan’an has facilitated travel for Hizballah members and sent money raised in Venezuela to Hizballah officials in Lebanon.

Kan’an has met with senior Hizballah officials in Lebanon to discuss operational issues, including possible kidnappings and terrorist attacks. Further, Kan’an has also traveled with other Hizballah members to Iran for training.

If you still buy your gas at Chavez-owned CITGO, may I ask why?

Big Hezbollah fan, are you?
______________________

MORE: Chavez’s army is apparently getting tired of dealing with his issues.

I agree with DPUD: it’s time for a little tough love, Generals. You may need to stage an intervention.
______________________

{Post by See-Dubya}

Finally, justice for the 241. And no guilt, no regrets over the hit on the evil jihadi who murdered so many innocent and honorable Americans in the name of Islam:

Barbara Rockwell has a soft way about her. Light brown hair swirls around her face, adorned by oval-framed glasses and gold elephant earrings.

Her voice is comforting and doesn’t become loud or sound angry when she takes delight in a certain man’s death.

“The fact that he got blown up in a car,” Rockwell said, pausing, “I don’t know who did it, but I’d like to thank him.”

The man against whom she has held this grudge for more than 24 years was a Hezbollah commander named Imad Mughniyeh. The reason she held it is that her son, Marine Cpl. Michael Caleb Sauls, along with 240 other U.S. servicemen, was killed in a barracks bombing that Mughniyeh directed on Oct. 23, 1983, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Her son was 20.

The phone in Rockwell’s Virginia Beach house woke her that morning. It was her neighbors, saying they were coming over for coffee. She thought that was weird. They turned on the TV, and that’s how she found out.

“Michael would be 43,” Rockwell said Friday morning. “It would have been nice to see what his children would have been like, or what he would have done. He could have done anything.”

In a backroom of the Southeastern Virginia Training Center, where she works with people with disabilities, Rockwell held a framed photo of Michael. He was about to board a Jeep in front of the building that served as the barracks. Even then, pockmarks dotted the outside walls. Rubble and pulverized concrete covered the sidewalk. Michael wore a camo helmet with this shirt sleeves rolled above his elbows and a whole-faced, tooth-showing smile.

That’s why, when she read the news story Thursday morning that Mughniyeh had been assassinated in a car bombing, Rockwell didn’t feel bad about feeling good.

“It just seemed like a special day, didn’t it?” she said. “Do I feel a little vindicated that he was blown up? Oh, yeah. I hope he heard the ticking before he was blown up.”

***

Caroline Glick write about what Mughniyeh was plotting next:

It is quite possible that terror master Imad Mughniyah was not killed Tuesday night in Damascus for his past crimes, but to prevent him from carrying out additional attacks in the future.

On January 30, French security services raided a Paris apartment and arrested six Arab men. Three of the men — two Lebanese and one Syrian — were travelling on diplomatic passports. According to the Italian Libero newspaper, the six were members of a Hizbullah cell. Seized documents included tourist maps of Paris, London, Madrid, Berlin and Rome marked up with red highlighter to indicate routes, addresses, parking lots and “truck stopping points.”The maps pointed to several routes to Vatican back entrances.

Libero’s report explained that the “truck stopping points” aligned with information the French had received the week before from Beirut. There, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah convened a conference of his senior terror leaders where he ordered them to activate Hizbullah cells throughout Europe to kidnap senior European leaders.

The day of the arrests, French Defense Minister Herve Morin was meeting with his American counterpart Defense Secretary Robert Gates and with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington on a previously unannounced visit. During his public appearances, Morin criticized the US Intelligence Directorate’s National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program from November. Morin stated, “Coordinated information from a number of intelligence services leads us to believe that Iran has not given up its wish to pursue its [nuclear] program,” and is “continuing to develop” it.

Other recent reports relayed French concern that their embassy in Beirut is being targeted for attack by Hizbullah. On January 15 terrorists targeted a US embassy car in Beirut killing four and wounding sixteen. This week, French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s chief of staff told L’Express newsweekly that the threat of terror against France “remains quite high.”

All of the feared terror attacks against French and European targets have the classic earmarkings of Hizbullah operations chief and Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer Imad Mughniyeh. Mughniyeh was the pioneer of embassy bombings and high-profile kidnappings.

Most of the reports of his death treated Mughniyeh as a has-been. Coverage was devoted to his attacks against American, Israeli and Jewish targets in the 1980s and early 1990s. Yet at the time of his death, Mughniyeh remained one of the most dangerous and prolific terror operatives in the world.

And what we must understand moving forward:

His work revealed the inconvenient truth so fervently denied by policymakers and politicians throughout the Western world. He showed that for the jihadists there is no distinction between terrorists who attack in Israel or Jewish targets abroad and those who attack non-Israeli and non-Jewish targets. Moreover, his work as an Iranian agent demonstrates Iran’s central role in sponsoring jihad throughout the world.

Mughniyeh’s legacy is not simply a laundry list of massacre and torture. It is the nexus of global terror. While it is a great thing that he is dead, it must be understood that his death is insufficient. Hundreds of thousands converged in Beirut to celebrate his life’s work. The West must understand the significance of that work and unite to destroy it — layer after layer.

You’ve read by now that Hezbo killer Imad Mughniyeh is reportedly dead. May he rot, rot, rot in hell. If you look at which blogs are buzzing about this very significant event, you won’t find many liberal blogs rejoicing.

Of course not.

These ostriches are, and always have been, blind to our jihadi enemies–and the American lives lost in the war that started long before 9/11 and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. They’ve been deaf to the outrage of American victims’ families whose loved ones died in Hezbo-plotted and Hezbo-executed attacks, including the:

* Bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia killing 19 U.S. servicemen (1996)
* Abduction, torture and death of CIA Station Chief William Francis Buckley in Lebanon (1985)
* Hijacking of TWA Flight 847 killing U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem (1985)
* Bombing outside U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut killing 24 (1984)
* Car bombing of U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut killing 241 U.S. servicemen (1983)
*Car bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut killing 63 people, including 17 Americans (1983)

Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem, RIP

Instead, we find the Left rallying for the Hezbo killers, like they did two summers ago:

Black, red, brown, white!
We support Hezbollah’s fight!
We support Hezbollah’s fight!
We support Hezbollah’s fight!
We support Hezbollah’s fight!
Black, red, green, blue!
Black, red, green, blue!
Black, red, green, blue!
Black, red, green, blue!
We support Hamas too!
We support Hamas too!
We support Hamas too!
We support Hamas too!

Keep the families of the victims of Imad Mughniyeh and his evil henchmen in your thoughts and prayers today.

And keep your heads out of the sand.

***

More background:

William Rich Higgins
Robert Dean Stethem
William Francis Buckley
Honor the 241

Read Andy McCarthy’s post: Who Mughniyeh was.

And from PJM: Another setback for Iran’s intelligence agency.

Spinelli herself has now ‘fessed up. Via Stars and Stripes (hat tip – Dev):

A Marine captain assigned to the Okinawa-based 1st Marine Aircraft Wing pleaded guilty Tuesday to faking a marriage to gain U.S. citizenship.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, Capt. Samar Khalil Nabbou Spinelli, 39, formerly of Lebanon, admitted in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan that she paid a Detroit-area man in 1990 to marry her so she could stay in the U.S. after her student visa expired and eventually become a citizen.

She also admitted to conspiring with two other Lebanese women to commit citizenship fraud and passport fraud, according to U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy.

Spinelli faced a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the conspiracy charge and 10 years and a $250,000 fine for passport fraud, according to a Justice Department announcement. However, under a plea agreement her sentence will be limited to 6 to 12 months in prison and separation from the Marine Corps, according to Murphy’s announcement. She also faces deportation.

A date for sentencing has not been set.

According to court documents, Spinelli entered the United States in 1989 on the student visa and resided in Taylor, Mich. She lived with Elfat El Aouar and Nada Nadim Prouty, two other Lebanese women who also were charged in the conspiracy. She then entered into a fraudulent marriage with the brother of a Michigan man who’d married Prouty.

Pay attention:

According to the U.S. attorney handling the cases, Spinelli was in her second tour of combat in Iraq when she was called back to answer the citizenship fraud charges. She was transferred to Okinawa with her current husband, also a Marine captain, and their two children while the investigation proceeded.

Marine officials on Okinawa say no decision has been made whether to charge Spinelli under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

“The Marine Corps is in contact with the U.S. Attorney’s office and expects to receive evidence regarding the case against Capt. Spinelli,” said spokesman 1st Lt. Garron Garn. “The Marine Corps will determine at a future date what action is appropriate after reviewing the evidence.”

He said Spinelli is a logistics officer.

Court documents say over the years Spinelli vouched for Prouty to immigration officials and federal employers. Spinelli knew that Prouty committed fraud to become a citizen and was ineligible to work as a federal agent, according to the documents.

“With so many honest and hard-working immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship, with all the rights and privileges that confers, we cannot permit those who obtain this precious right by fraud to remain unchallenged,” Murphy is quoted as saying on the U.S. Justice Department Web site.

According to Murphy, others involved in the conspiracy include El Aoura’s fugitive husband, who was charged last year with tax evasion in a scheme to conceal more than $20 million in cash destined to people in Lebanon with ties with Hezbollah. Spinelli has not been named in that case.

This case is a stark illustration of the immigration-national security nexus. Lax enforcement against visa overstayers plus lax enforcement against marriage shams plus lax oversight in our military and intelligence agencies = gaping Jihad Jane loopholes.

I’ll repeat the question I asked when the Prouty plea came down: How many more?

Good.

***
Ugh. This is bad on many levels. W. Thomas Smith, Jr., a former Marine and milblogger who writes at National Review Online’s The Tank (and whose work in Iraq I’ve praised and linked to here), posts a long-winded defense of bogus, shoddy reporting he published while he was in Lebanon earlier this fall. It’s painful to read because he takes nearly 1,400 words to get to the main points:

1) He claimed he had seen “some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen” at a “sprawling Hezbollah tent city” when, in fact, he hadn’t seen 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen.

2) He reported that 4,000-5,000 Hezbollah gunmen had been “deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling ‘show of force,’” when, in fact, there is no evidence that a deployment of 4,000-5,000 Hezbollah gunmen to Christian areas of Beirut ever took place.

As you read the explanation, ask yourselves this: If Thomas Beauchamp had written it instead of Thomas Smith, would you buy it?

Kathryn Lopez, to her credit, immediately* disclosed (see update above) the controversy to readers. Contrary to the TNR editors, she thanked the reporter who first questioned Smith’s account, instead of trashing critics. Writes Lopez:

Bottom line: NRO strives to bring you reliable analysis and reporting — whether in presenting articles, essays, or blog posts. Smith did commendable work in Lebanon earlier this year, as he does from S.C. where he is based, as he has done from Iraq, where he has been twice. But rereading some of the posts (see “The Tank” for more detail) and after doing a thorough investigation of some of the points made in some of those posts, I’ve come to the conclusion that NRO should have provided readers with more context and caveats in some posts from Lebanon this fall. And so I apologize to you, our readers.

I thank Smith for his good, brave work. He’s a smart, reliable reporter with a great patriotic spirit and sense of service. We owe him and our readers better — we should have gotten you more context and information before a post or two went live. It’s understandable how it happened — the nature of blogging being what it is — but given what an underreported tinderbox we’re talking about, especially, we owed you more. We weren’t blogging about Dancing with the Stars there.

So I’m grateful to the reporter who contacted Smith with questions. He brought them to my attention. We did due diligence. We’ve reported this back to him. And now we’re reporting back to you.

The problem is that “more context” and “caveats” aren’t what was needed. Just the facts would have sufficed. Smith’s work in those posts was not “good” or “brave.” And “the nature of blogging” doesn’t excuse the phenomenal errors. Given Smith’s admissions, “reliable” is not a word that should attach to his Lebanon reporting.

We are all fallible. We all make mistakes. But these were not small mistakes. They were XXL ones.

Moreover, online journalists and bloggers can’t have it both ways: They can’t ask for mainstream media parity when their reporting is dead-on and ahead-of-the-curve–and at the same time hide behind the “well, I was just blogging” excuse if their reporting turns out to be as ill-sourced and wrong-headed as the legacy media’s. Also note: In one of the tainted posts, the headline isn’t “Blogging from Lebanon.” It’s “Reporting from Lebanon.”

The nutroots are having a field day. And yes, points like this one made in the Huffington Post are going to sting:

Smith wrote at least five posts in September and October on The Tank attacking the Beauchamp stories, including the following comments: “It would have been virtually impossible for the things Beauchamp said happened to have played out the way he says they did” on September 10; and “Scott Thomas Beauchamp was either a fictitious character or a liar” on October 27.

An American journalist in Lebanon piles on. And you can be sure this story will get tons more coverage on the left side of the blogosphere in the next few days than the TNR debacle has gotten over the last five months. The liberal media will prop up this case to blunt criticism of TNR’s handling of the Beauchamp scandal. They’ll ignore the fundamental difference in how the two magazines have handled their respective situations. They’ll ignore the slander and the cover-up at TNR, and comfort themselves with a blanket of false moral equivalence.

The worst aspect of the case, however, is that it will give cover to Hezbollah-sympathizing media propagandists and their puppet masters–the fauxtographers, the ambulance manipulators, and the evil-enabling stage managers of the Theater of Jihad.

We must fight the propagandists with incontrovertible truth, not more propaganda.

The illegal immigrant with Hezbollah ties who faked a marriage to get U.S. citizenship, and then landed jobs as a top-level federal agent, has a former sister-in-law who pulled the same scam and is now a Marine officer, The Post has learned.

Commissioned Officer Samar Khalil Nabbou Spinelli married the brother of the sham first husband of disgraced former FBI and covert-ops CIA agent Nada Prouty, according to a tangled trail of public records.

The Lebanese women, who came to the United States on nonimmigrant visas, wed Michigan brothers Christopher and Jean Paul Deladurantaye in 1990, records show…

… Spinelli enlisted in the Marine in 1990 and rose to the rank of commissioned officer, which required US citizenship.

Nada Prouty used Spinelli, who is now remarried to a Marine, as a reference when she applied for an FBI job in 1997.

In court last week, Nada Prouty, who had been indicted earlier in the month, admitted she duped the FBI and CIA with her ill-gotten citizenship papers.

Spinelli – along with Nada Prouty’s sister and her Hezbollah-connected husband, Talil Kahil Chahine – was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the feds’ case against Nada Prouty.

She’s the only named co-conspirator who is a military officer.

The Post reports that Spinelli is currently stationed in Japan.

Hey, no big deal, though. The Bush Pentagon approves of immigration fraudsters in the military, remember?

***

The case of Nada Nadim Prouty is a Bush national security nightmare. If the Democrats weren’t themselves such open-borders incompetents, they could be screaming at the tops of their lungs about this story’s flabbergasting implications–and justifiably embarrassing the hell out of the White House. Instead, the story has gotten nearly zero traction.

The New York Post reports more damning details today:

FBI fraudster Nada Nadim Prouty not only used a sham marriage to get jobs with access to secret terrorist intelligence – her current husband is a State Department employee who has held sensitive posts in Middle Eastern embassies, The Post has learned.

Her third hubby, Gordon Prouty, 40, now works for the State Department in Washington, a spokesman confirmed Friday night. He had been stationed at American embassies in Egypt and Pakistan.

A Justice Department spokesman, Dean Boyd, refused to comment on Gordon Prouty’s job, or say whether he was under investigation along with his criminal wife.

“He’s not charged with any wrongdoing in this case,” Boyd said.

But the revelation surprised national security watchdogs.

“My God, she’s married to one of our people,” said Mike Cutler, a former US immigration special agent.

Nada Prouty, 37, admitted last week she faked her first marriage to a Michigan man in 1990, enabling her to get US citizenship that helped her secure jobs with the FBI and CIA. Her star as an agent rose, and officials trusted her to grill al Qaeda sympathizers.

She also confessed to sneaking into government databases for secret information on her sister and brother-in-law, both linked to the Middle East terror group Hezbollah.

One of the agencies credited with busting Prouty is the State Department’s diplomatic security service.

Gordon Prouty was a foreign service officer under Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In 1999, he transferred from Cairo to Islamabad, Pakistan, a State Department document shows.

Heckuva job.

***
CIA officers are defending Prouty–and shrugging their shoulders at her immigration fraud scheme – via NYDN:

In the wake of Nada Nadim Prouty’s guilty plea to lying her way into U.S. citizenship and sensitive FBI and CIA jobs, operatives of both agencies disagree whether she breached the government’s trust, or just showed poor judgment.

For many in the buttoned-down FBI, a fellow special agent tarnished the bureau’s image and betrayed them by living the lie that she was a law-abiding naturalized citizen from Lebanon.

“That can’t be glossed over,” said John Sennett, a retired agent and former president of the FBI Agents Association. “To get into the FBI under false pretenses is inexcusable. This isn’t like lying about your age to join the Navy in December 1941.”

But to CIA veterans, where Prouty was recruited as a covert operations officer in 2003, a talented spy merely fudged the truth to win her citizenship.

Prouty, 37, admitted in court that she became a U.S. citizen by hiring an American to marry her. She then joined the FBI in 1999.

“That’s not uncommon – people do it all the time,” said a dismissive CIA source.

And get this:

Several other CIA officers also shrugged off her pleading guilty to rifling FBI files for information on family members and a Hezbollah counterterror case in Detroit.

“As far as I can tell, she was just looking out for her family,” another senior official said.

The document of the day is a press release from the Justice Department announcing, “Former Employee of CIA and FBI Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy, Unauthorized Computer Access and Naturalization Fraud.” A Lebanese illegal alien was working for the Bush FBI and CIA, got into our computer systems, got access to info about her Lebanese relatives and the terrorist group Hezbollah, arranged a sham marriage (where have we seen that before), and nosed around in bribery and extortion conspiracy probes. Debbie Schlussel, Jihad Watch, and Allah have full coverage of Nada Nadim Prouty’s guilty plea and the appalling security lapses involved.

Debbie Schlussel points out: “The FBI and U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy (and before him, U.S. Attorneys Craig Morford and Jeffrey Collins) knew Prouty was a spy for Hezbollah back in 2003, but they allowed her to work for the FBI and CIA for over FOUR Years! They did not remove her from the job until the end of this past September–1.5 years after her brother-in-law was indicted for financing Hezbollah!!!!!!”

And Robert Spencer notes, “This story has everything: an illegal immigration angle, a Keystone Kops angle, an espionage angle, a moderate-Muslims-condemn-terror-or-do-they angle, and more. It would make a great movie. If this kind of thing doesn’t kill us first.”

The Bush administration’s cavalier attitude toward illegal aliens in its employ should be no surprise, of course. The Pentagon has allowed known illegal alien fraudsters to remain in the military as a matter of policy. And remember the illegal alien working in the White House who got his picture taken with the Cheneys?

When I broke that story in 2003, I ended my piece with this question for President Bush:

[I]f his own guardians can’t keep low-level, illegal border-crossing impostors out of the White House backyard, how in the world can we count on his administration to keep far more sophisticated, illegal alien evildoers…out of ours?

Answer: We can’t.

How many other illegal aliens and jihadi sympathizers are working in sensitive positions in the shamnesty-promoting Bush administration?

Could the crony-riddled DHS even tell us if they tried?

Michael Cutler underscores a point I’ve also made repeatedly in reporting on the illegal immigration-national security nexus:

United States citizenship opens all sorts of doors to those who do not wish to share the “American Dream” but rather create a nightmare for our nation and our citizens. United States citizenship enables the alien who acquires United States citizenship to be able to work at any job he or she is qualified to do. It enables the person in question to be given security clearances that provide access to highly sensitive intelligence and enables such individuals to embed themselves in our nation and hide in plain sight among us…This is why it is patently absurd to think that as the President and other open borders advocates have continually said that if we allowed those aliens into our country who simply want to work and do the jobs “Americans won’t do,” we will be safer because then law enforcement and the intelligence community can focus on the terrorists who seek to enter our country to do us harm. Here is a startling clear example of a terrorist who apparently wanted to do nothing more serious than get a job. She was facilitated in her quest to embed herself in our country by a division of DHS, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in providing her with United States citizenship even though she had committed naturalization fraud.

And before you tell me I’m being too hard on the White House, can you imagine what your blood pressure level would be if this happened under the Clinton administration?

***

I’m reprinting the whole DOJ press release because it deserves your attention:

Nada Nadim Prouty, a 37-year-old Lebanese national and resident of Vienna, Va., pleaded guilty today in the Eastern District of Michigan to charges of fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship, which she later used to gain employment at the FBI and CIA; accessing a federal computer system to unlawfully query information about her relatives and the terrorist organization Hizballah; and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

The announcement was made today by Stephen J. Murphy, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan; Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Willie T. Hulon, Executive Assistant Director of the FBI’s National Security Branch; Brian M. Moskowitz, Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit Office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); and Kurt Rice, Chicago Field Office Special Agent in Charge for the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service.

At a hearing in Detroit before the U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn, Prouty entered a plea of guilty to counts one, two and three of a second superseding information. Count one of the information charges conspiracy, for which the maximum penalty is five years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. Count two charges unauthorized computer access, for which the maximum penalty is one year imprisonment and a $100,000 fine. Count three charges naturalization fraud, for which the maximum penalty is 10 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine, and requires the court to de-naturalize the defendant.

“This case highlights the importance of conducting stringent and thorough background investigations,” said U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy. “It’s hard to imagine a greater threat than the situation where a foreign national uses fraud to attain citizenship and then, based on that fraud insinuates herself into a sensitive position in the U.S. government. I applaud the excellent investigative work of the FBI, ICE and DHS, which led to the successful prosecution today.”

“It is a sad day when one of our public servants breaches our security and trust,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth L. Wainstein. “This defendant engaged in a pattern of deceit to secure U.S. citizenship, to gain employment in the intelligence community, and to obtain and exploit her access to sensitive counterterrorism intelligence. It is fitting that she now stands to lose both her citizenship and her liberty.”

“We became aware of this compromise in December 2005 and moved to address any further damage,”said Willie T. Hulon, Executive Assistant Director of the FBI’s National Security Branch. “The FBI worked closely with other agencies to investigate this matter. We continue to evaluate our security practices and will make any necessary changes.”

“Nada Proudy’s guilty plea should serve as a solemn warning to those who say they’ve pledged their allegiance to the United States and then make the conscious decision to place America’s interests at risk,” said Brian M. Moskowitz, Special Agent in Charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in Detroit. “Becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen is an honor and a privilege. ICE will do everything in its power to see that those who achieve this honor by fraud and deception are brought to justice.”

Naturalization Fraud

According to documents filed in court by the government, Prouty first entered the United States from Lebanon on June 24, 1989, on a one-year, non-immigrant student visa. After her visa expired, she remained in the country, residing in Taylor, Mich., with her sister, Elfat El Aouar, and an individual named Samar Khalil Nabbouth. In order to remain in the United States and evade U.S. immigration laws, Prouty later offered money to an unemployed U.S. citizen to marry her. On August 9, 1990, Prouty married the U.S. citizen. As planned, Prouty never lived with her fraudulent “husband,” but continued to live with her sister and Nabbouth.

Prouty later submitted a series of false, fraudulent and forged documents and letters to federal immigration officials to verify the validity of the fraudulent marriage in order to obtain permanent residency status, and, later, U.S. citizenship, thereby committing naturalization fraud. On Aug. 5, 1994, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service granted Prouty U.S. citizenship under the name “Nada Nadim Deladurantaye.” The following year, she filed for a divorce from her fraudulent husband, and later obtained a U.S. passport, which she used to travel overseas.

Talal Khalil Chahine

According to court documents, from May 1992 through April 1993, and again, from August through November 1994, Prouty was employed as a waitress and hostess at La Shish Inc., a chain of Middle Eastern restaurants in Detroit that was owned by Talal Khalil Chahine. During this time, Chahine wrote a letter for submission into Prouty’s immigration file attesting to the validity of Prouty’s false marriage.

Chahine is currently a fugitive believed to be in Lebanon. He, along with Prouty’s sister, Elfat El Aouar, and others were charged in 2006 in the Eastern District of Michigan with tax evasion in connection with a scheme to conceal more than $20 million in cash received by La Shish restaurants and to route funds to persons in Lebanon. Last month, Chahine was also charged in the Eastern District of Michigan, along with a senior ICE official in Detroit and others in a bribery and extortion conspiracy in which federal immigration benefits were allegedly awarded to illegal aliens in exchange for money.

Employment at FBI and CIA

In April 1999, through a series of false representations and use of her fraudulently procured proof of U.S. citizenship, Prouty, then known as “Nada Nadim Alley,” obtained employment as a special agent of the FBI. It was a prerequisite to FBI employment that she be a U.S. citizen. As a special agent with the FBI, Prouty was granted a security clearance and assigned to the FBI’s Washington Field Office to work on an extraterritorial squad investigating crimes against U.S. persons overseas. During her tenure with the FBI, Prouty was not assigned to work on investigations involving the international terrorist group Hizballah.

In August 2000, Prouty’s sister, Elfat El Aouar, entered into a marriage with Talal Khalil Chahine, the owner of La Shish Inc. In September 2000, Prouty, while employed as an FBI special agent, used the FBI’s computerized Automated Case System (ACS), without authorization, to query her own name, her sister’s name, and that of her brother-in-law, Talal Khalil Chahine. In addition, on or about June 4, 2003, Prouty accessed the FBI’s ACS and obtained information from a national security investigation into Hizballah that was being conducted by the FBI’s Detroit Field Office.

According to court documents, in August 2002, Prouty’s sister, Elfat El Aouar, and her brother-in-law, Talal Khalil Chahine, attended a fundraising event in Lebanon where the keynote speakers were Chahine himself and Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah. Sheikh Fadlallah had previously been designated by the U.S. government as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist based upon his status as a leading ideological figure with Hizballah.

In June 2003, through a series of false representations and use of her fraudulently procured proof of U.S. citizenship, Prouty, then known as “Nada Nadim Prouty,” voluntarily left her position with the FBI and obtained employment with the CIA. It was also a prerequisite to CIA employment that she be a U.S. citizen.

On Nov. 6, 2007, Prouty resigned her position at the CIA. Pursuant to the terms of her plea agreement, she has agreed to fully and truthfully cooperate with the CIA on any matters the CIA deems necessary to transition Prouty out of its employment in a manner consistent with safeguarding the national security of the United States. This cooperation includes participation in debriefing and polygraph interviews.

The ongoing investigation into this matter is being conducted by the FBI and ICE, with assistance from the U.S. Department of State, Diplomatic Security Service, and the Internal Revenue Service.

The case is being prosecuted by Eric M. Straus, Chief of the National Security Unit, and Kenneth R. Chadwell, Assistant U.S. Attorney, from the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Michigan, as well as Mark J. Jebson, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney and Senior Assistant Chief Counsel for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Prior blog post and related links on La Shish here.

***

Bruce Kesler notes:

Blog reports about Marvin Kalb’s Harvard Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy study, The Israel-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict, (40-page PDF) are quoting heavily from the report on the study at World Politics Watch, How the Media Partnered With Hezbollah: Harvard’s Cautionary Report.

The World Politics Watch summary is accurate, and telling, of the biased impact of coverage provided by the Western and Arab media.

However, the World Politics Watch concluding paragraphs are stronger than Kalb’s study. World Politics Watch calls for vigilance and responsibility by Western reporters, and even moreso by their editors and the talking heads at home, not to be taken in, not to permit themselves to be part of propaganda exercises by our enemies, and to more clearly label any such reports as such and say what’s missing.

In the actual study, Kalb’s conclusions bemoan the suspicions of MSM coverage roused by bloggers who exposed fake reporting and photography. All that Kalb, weakly, says about the ethical and professional irresponsibility of the major media is, “The challenge for responsible journalists covering asymmetrical warfare, especially in this age of the Internet, is new, awesome and frightening.”

Kalb doesn’t mention that there is only one allowable prescription for the major media, to stick by professional standards rather than sensationalist irresponsibility. It also wouldn’t hurt if the MSM displayed some ethical standards, recognizing the difference between right and wrong, between friend and foe.

HEZBOLLAH LEADS WORK TO REBUILD, GAINING STATURE
———
Filling Void in Lebanon
———
Militia Moves Fast With Bulldozers and Pledge of Cash From Iran

Is this a joke, a parody, somebody’s idea of turning the moral realm on its head and portraying a genocidal guerilla army as a cross between the Lady Bountiiful, Santa Claus and the Army Corps of Engineers?

Nope. It’s the headline of the lead “news” story in today’s NYT. With Iran pouring cash into Hezbollah coffers for reconstruction projects in Lebanese towns that Hezbollah itself turned into battlegrounds by hiding its men and munitions in backyards, apartment houses and “hospitals,” the Grey Lady really dons the full-metal-hijab for Hezbollah this time, pushing the old “social services” story as the terror org’s means of “gaining stature.” The not-so-subtle subtext rationalizes Hezbollah’s support among what you might call ordinary Lebanese people: Hezbollah delivers tangible aid and comfort, so why shouldn’t “ordinary” Lebanese people give Hezbollah their undying devotion?

If this excuse for supporting terrorists sounds familiar, it is. When Hamas won its electoral victory in the PA, the snap-consensus, from our president to our pundits, was that the Hamas victory was due to Hamas “social services”–and not at all that the PA people supported Hamas’s genocidal campaign against Israel’s very state of being.

But think about it: If the Lebanese and the Palestinians could learn to love Hezbollah and Hamas just because of “social services,” wouldn’t the greatest supplier of social services in the world–the United States taxpayer–be positively adored? In Iraq, thanks to the bravery and dedication of our troops, America has supplied more “social services”–schools, water works, hospitals, elections, electricity, air conditioning, bubblegum–than we can even imagine. But our “social services” don’t seem to gain us “stature,” or even improve our image–because no one likes what’s inside. Not so when it comes to our terrorist enemies in the region, whose appeal, through and through, is colossal.

The frontpage below, harkening back a few days to the media’s and the EU’s overreaction to Israel’s “overreaction,” is a parody. I think. (From The People’s Cube via Gates of Vienna

If I seemed annoyed tonight on The O’Reilly Factor when Mr. O. said it doesn’t matter what really happened at Qana, well, yes, I was annoyed.

The truth matters.

Thank God for persistent bloggers and non-dhimmis digging and scrutinizing and asking questions the blinded, blase MSM won’t care to ask.

Remember Pallywood.

And the Big Jenin Lie.

And the Iraqi museum looting hype.

And CNN’s deal with Saddam. And Nic Robertson, Hezbollah tool.

And the NYTimes’ news-stagers and sycophants.

And photo-staging suspicions in Ramadi.

And rampant insurgent photo propaganda everywhere.

That is the context in which people who refuse to sit back and swallow the Theater of Jihad are viewing Qana. Reuven Koret at Israel Insider goes behind the scenes:

Lebanese rescue teams did not start evacuating the building until the morning and only after the camera crews came. The absence of a real rescue effort was explained by saying that equipment was lacking. There were no scenes of live or injured people being extracted.

There was little blood, CNN’s Wedeman noted: all the victims, he concluded, appeared to have died while as they were sleeping — sleeping, apparently, through thunderous Israeli air attacks. Rescue workers equipped with cameras were removing the bodies from the same opening in the collapsed structure. Journalists were not allowed near the collapsed building.

Rescue workers filmed as they went carried the victims on the stretchers, occasionally flipping up the blankets so that cameras could show the faces and bodies of the dead.

But Israelis steeled to scenes of carnage from Palestinian suicide bombings and Hezbollah rocket attack could not help but notice that these victims did not look like our victims. Their faces were ashen gray. While medical examination clearly is called for to arrive at a definitive dating and cause of their deaths, they do not appear to have died hours before. The bodies looked like they had been dead for days.

Viewers can judge for themselves. But the accumulating evidence suggests another explanation for what happened at Kana. The scenario would be a setup in which the time between the initial Israeli bombing near the building and morning reports of its collapse would have been used to “plant” bodies killed in previous fighting — reports in previous days indicated that nearby Tyre was used as a temporary morgue — place them in the basement, and then engineer a “controlled demolition” to fake another Israeli attack.

The well-documented use by Palestinians of this kind of faked footage — from the alleged shooting of Mohammed Dura in Gaza, scenes from Jenin of “dead” victims falling off gurneys and then climbing back on — have merited the creation of a new film genre called “Palliwood.”

There is increasing evidence that the Kana sequel is another episode in this genre, a variety which might be called Hezbollywood. The Hezbollah have evidently learned their craft well.

EU Referendum looks closer. Dan Riehl looks closer. Allah Pundit looks closer. Ms. Understimated looks closer.

Why doesn’t some MSM hotshot stop smoking figurative hookah with Hezbollah and do some actual journalism? Who the hell is that Green Helmet holding up those poor dead babies as props and why does he always seem to show up where the jihadi propagandists need a helping hand?

Larry? Christiane? Nic? Anderson? [Fill-in-the-blank network anchor]? Anyone? Anyone?

***

Gerard Van der Leun is must-must-read on the weaponization of children. We need more antidotes to moral equivalence like this:

If you aren’t sure exactly who has the moral high ground in the current struggle in Lebanon, you might reflect that while it is possible to see a grown man on the Lebanese side of the struggle dangle a shredded child by an ankle for the world’s cameras, you don’t ever see that sort of thing at an Israeli funeral, do you?

And while you might be feeling very, very bad for the dead and dangled child, you might also ask yourself where the pictures of all the dead Hezbollah and Hamas warriors are? Don’t see many of those, do you?

Or perhaps you do, if you ask yourself what sort of man could hold up a dead child by the ankle to be photographed. Or what sort of man could seek out and take the picture and make sure it got out to the ever accommodating Associated Press?

Because you do see the “brave” terrorist warriors in these pictures after all. They’re the ones digging up the kids, and holding them up for the feast of the cameras. Indeed, the terrible truth that we in the West cannot confront is that, in some instances, they’re the ones that are killing the kids in the first place. As we know if we are honest with ourselves at this stage, there is nothing too base and too vile for the proud “warriors” of Islam to do in the service of their anachronistic god; their banner is the Bloody Shirt, and they will never have enough blood to quench it. And any blood, as long as it is not theirs, will do.

JPost notes that a missile attack on Tel Aviv remains a real threat.

IDF destroys 2,000 Hez rockets. How many more left to go?

Hizbullah “sleeper” terror cells set up outside Lebanon with Iranian assistance have been put on standby The Jerusalem Post learned on Sunday, and are likely planning attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets throughout the world.

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) confirmed to the Post Sunday night that it had instructed embassies, consulates and Jewish institutions it was responsible for abroad to raise their level of awareness in light of the conflict in the North.

I repeat: It’s our problem, too.

At the Counterterrorism Blog, Walid Phares reports on Hezbollah’s Iranian war in Lebanon and the indefatigable Steve Emerson spotlights “Al-Mabarrat – A Hezbollah Charitable Front in Dearborn, MI?”

Via LGF, look what Hezbollah is inserting into its Katyusha terror rockets.

Who runs Lebanon? All Things Beautiful ponders, with a rich link round-up.

Don’t miss video footage of our troops helping with the evacuations in Lebanon at Blackfive. Our troops are targets of Hezbollah, too.

I’m giving Diana West the last warning words tonight:

Osama Siblani, the publisher of Dearborn’s Arab American News, considers members of Hezbollah — along with Hamas and other jihadist groups — freedom fighters. And, as Mr. Siblani tells it to the Detroit News, he’s not alone: “If morally supporting Hizbollah or associating with [Hezbollah spiritual leader Muhammad Hussein] Fadlallah is a crime, ‘there is not going to be enough buses to haul the people out and take them to jail.’”

Mr. Siblani was speaking before the Israeli offensive began. But not before the 1983 Hezbollah bombings in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 241 U.S. servicemen, 63 U.S. Embassy personnel and 58 French paratroopers. And not before the 1984 Hezbollah torture-murder of CIA station chief William Buckley in Lebanon. And not before the 1985 Hezbollah hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and the torture-murder of Navy diver Robert Stethem. And not before the 1988 Hezbollah torture-murder of Lt. Col. William Higgins. And not before the Hezbollah bombings of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, killing 29; the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 96; or the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing 19 U.S. servicemen.

American sympathy for Hezbollah profanes the American dead. In our wide-open society, however, such allegiance isn’t considered beyond the pale. But it should be. And it could be. I have long argued that the “war on terror” is an amorphous term — sacrificing clarity for fuzzy political correctness. What if we, as a nation, belatedly declared war on specific jihadist groups — al Qaeda and Hezbollah and other organizations dedicated to our destruction? This would have the tonic effect of clarifying not only our enemies’ identity, but our own.

We can’t fight if we don’t know who we’re fighting. We can’t win if we don’t know who we are.