PoliticalWarfare.org

A Druze legend as part of FBI/CIA penetration?

Nada Nadim Prouty, the suspected Hezbollah spy in both the FBI and CIA, had told friends and acquaintances as far back as 1999 that she was a Druze, but FBI sources tell me that she is actually a Shi'ite Muslim.

This is an important difference, as many Druze of her home country of Lebanon were allied with the Christians (and many Israeli Druze serve in the Israeli military), while most Lebanese Shi'ites identify with Hezbollah.

Hezbollah or its precursor was responsible for the 1983 truck bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, in which more than 240 Marines were killed; and the bombing that same year of the American Embassy in the Lebanese capital, killing 63. The Beirut Memorial Online says that the entire Middle East contingent of the CIA was wiped out in the blast.

Nada Nadim Al-Aouar, as she was known by her maiden name, arrived in the US at about age 19 in 1989 on a student visa. I met her in 1999, when she was one of only seven FBI special agents who spoke fluent Arabic. She was married to her second husband, a colleague of mine who was a former Marine. He has not been implicated in any wrongdoing. At the time, she had said that she was Druze and that she was not Muslim.

This distinction is important, and it underscores why religion can be an important factor in a full background investigation of an individual seeking a US government security clearance. It's not a question of discrimination, but of protecting the government from individuals with divided loyalties.

US counterintelligence generally does not assign Jewish agents to watch and counter Israeli Mossad operations that negatively affect American interests. At least one intelligence agency is said not to assign Catholic agents to monitor the Vatican's quiet diplomatic and intelligence operations. (As a Catholic I have no problem with it; the policy not only safeguards against divided loyalties, but it also keeps individuals above suspicion.) So too must the FBI ensure that it is not unduly affected by people with ethnic or religious loyalties that might reasonably be suspected of being divided when it comes to terrorist movements.

That's why knowing the religious affiliations of a person being issued a security clearance - and knowing the cultural context of a government agent's religion - is so important. Our ignorance of the issue, and the political correctness that prevents us as a nation from understanding it, has struck us again.

How did Nada Nadim Al-Aouar burrow into the FBI and CIA the way she did? (I know some of the story, but it's of a prurient nature that I'll leave to the sensationalists to break.) 

How did FBI/CIA infiltrator color US understanding of the enemy?

After looking at the mess the FBI made of part of the Hanssen espionage damage assessment, it might be too much to ask for the Bureau to make a proper assessment of how former Special Agent Nada Nadim Prouty may have warped US understanding of the Islamist enemy.

Prouty is the illegal alien who became one of the FBI's only Arabic-speaking special agents in the 1990s and went on to become what agency insiders are pooh-poohing as a mere "mid-level official" at the CIA.

Prouty pled guilty to crimes relating to stealing classified information on behalf of relatives in Hezbollah. US official response has been appalling, practically ruling out the idea that she was a spy for the terrorist organization (or for its main state sponsor, Iran),

Are the CIA and FBI in denial AGAIN? Is anybody in the counterintelligence business any more? Does the US still cling to the Cold War idea of counterintelligence as working or defending against the intelligence services of foreign governments - thus not treating terrorist organizations with their own intelligence services as counterintelligence threats?

I don't know, but something tells me that the answer isn't a good one. Prouty was at the center of the United States' most sensitive counterterrorism investigations in the late 1990s, at home and abroad, when she was one of only 7 (that's right: seven) FBI agents who could speak Arabic. Her pre-911 influence within the US counterterrorism, counterintelligence and intelligence communities is likely to have been considerable.

A Google News search doesn't show it, so we'll break some news here: Prouty told her closest friends in the 1990s that she was of Druze background in Lebanon. By inference, she would not have been an Islamist; the Druze split with Islam centuries ago and many are allied with Lebanese Christians and even with Israel. However, many Druze also support Hezbollah.

Prouty was one of the FBI's hottest agents at the time: hard-charging, tall and in excellent physical condition, and known to carry her Bureau-issued weapon in the most casual of dress. Prior to 9/11, when presented with evidence of Islamist networks in the Washington, DC area, she dismissed the evidence as of little importance. Those close to the matter trusted her judgment at the time, though after 9/11 US authorities, under the direction not of the FBI but the Justice Department, raided the offices in those networks, made several arrests, and got several terrorist-related convictions.

Bottom line: As with the Ana Belen Montes case of Cuban penetration of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI and CIA must do fundamental and sweeping damage assessments of how Prouty might have colored American perceptions of the terrorist threat in ways damaging to this country.

FBI agent: Saddam used WMD as deception against Iran

Did Saddam Hussein slam-dunk CIA Director George Tenet with a deception operation aimed at Iran? It looks that way.

Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program was a deception to deter Iran, an FBI agent who spent nearly a year with the dictator says in a new book.

If true, the deception was one of the costliest mistakes in human history.

Special Agent George Piro befriended Saddam in what is described as a successful interrogation that yielded confessions about mass murder and about the WMD program that the US used as a pretext to invade in 2003.

Prominent intelligence writer Ronald Kessler authored the book, The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack. Kessler interviewed Piro who provided the account for the story.

Piro's account calls for an immediate classified and public assessment of how the US intelligence community detects and neutralizes deception. I don't think the community has been very willing to confront the issue, or to fix its own bureaucratic cultural biases in order to defend against such ruses. Higher education does little to fix the problem either, with the exception of places like The Institute of World Politics, where our new Master's degree program in strategic intelligence prepares current and prospective intelligence officers like no other school.

Bloggers respond to my new magazine on global stability solutions

With the role of the private sector growing in the global stability field, I'm enthused to announce a new magazine devoted to the subject. One of the reasons for my enthusiasm is because I'm the editor. Another reason is that everyone from Mother Jones to Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show are choking on it.

Serviam's first issue just came out and has already been getting attention in the blogosphere. The magazine's name is Latin for "I will serve," and it stresses service to humanity through private sector solutions. Our lead editorial describes the publication's purpose.

Here's the link to our homepage, with info on the publication and how to subscribe.

Now for the fun: We're already getting some irreverent treatment among the bloggers at Wired, Mother Jones and Gawker. They compare our happy little magazine to Soldier of Fortune. In the words of the Mother Jones blogger, Serviam is a "sleeker, tamer version of SOF."

Not really, but we'll take that as a compliment considering the source. Gotta love the Mother Jones coverage:

It was only a matter of time before an entrepreneurial publisher seized on the private military contracting boom—and all those untapped ad dollars—in order to give Soldier of Fortune, long the preeminent mag for hired guns, a run for its money. That time has arrived and the mag is called Serviam (Latin for "I will serve"). Edited by conservative author and think tanker J. Michael Waller and published by EEI Communications (whose president, James T. deGraffenreid, is a board member of Frank Gaffney's hawkish Center for Security Policy), the magazine bills itself as a provider of "accurate and actionable information about private sector solutions to promote global stability." Serviam is a sleeker, tamer version of SOF, which, like the companies it caters to, is seeking to soften the mercenary image, casting soldiers-for-hire as international peacekeepers.

To hear Waller tell it in his inaugural editor's note, private security firms are as central to America's heritage as the pilgrims themselves.

Ephemerist, in his own blog, says our magazine will "make a great Christmas present." But I infer from the tone of his comment that he isn't really serious. BlogforDemocracy calls us "completely terrifying." The fan club of Keith Olbermann says Rachel Maddow talked about Serviam on the November 1 MSNBC show.

Many are upset that we actually show Captain John Smith of Jamestown and Captain Myles Standish of Plymouth for what they were: retired professional soldiers-turned-private security contractors who led the civilians to safety in America where they built a new society.

Gawker, based in Manhattan, is horrified about our historical review that asserts that America owes its first Thanksgiving to the 17th century's version of Blackwater. We're told by Very Important People in New York City that we've hit the big time with Gawker.

Pulling a chunk out of Ephemerist's comment, Gawker writes, "did you know that if not for mercenaries—sorry, Private Security Contractors—there would have been no Thanksgiving? It's true! Myles Standish was basically the forefather of Blackwater. Also, Capt. John Smith. PSCs are basically as American as apple pie. Yeah. Apple pie that shoots you."

Now that's a neat idea!

Sharon Weinberger, blogging on Wired magazine's "Danger Room," comments, "Will Serviam someday rank among the names of other well known defense titles, like Aviation Week & Space Technology or Jane's Defence Weekly (and with duly noted bias, I'll add in Defense Technology International). I have no idea, but I wish them luck!"

Bloggers Aaron R. Linderman and Christopher Fulford, on Statecraft & Security, find Serviam to be "interesting, innovative and enlightening." Watch those two - they're going places.

To top it off, Blackwater - an advertiser in Serviam - announced the launch of the magazine in its hot Blackwater Tactical Weekly newsletter.

Iraqi shark rumor blames Americans

Every once in a while a story surfaces of Iraqis suspecting Americans of offbeat or bizarre feats. We should never underestimate suspicions, because many Iraqis (and others) sincerely believe in them.

The latest is the report of a shark caught in an irrigation canal by the Euphrates River, 160 miles from the sea. Reuters reported from Nassiria on October 30 that a man and his two sons were fishing in the river and discovered they had caught a two-meter-long shark in their net.

According to Reuters, "Locals blamed the US military for the shark's presence.

"Tahseen Ali, a teacher, said there was a '75 percent chance' Americans had put the shark in the water. 'This is very frightening for us. Our children always swim in the river and I believe that there are more sharks. I believe that America is behind this matter,' said fisherman Hatim Karim."

While it's easy to brush off such rumors, such suspicions are dangerous to US interests. Left unaddressed, they tend to multiply and often cannot be refuted by reason or facts. Iraq and many Arab societies (as well as much of humanity as a whole) tend to place great faith in rumors, whose impact is difficult to counteract.