Immigration Felony of Marriage Fraud: National Security Nightmare
Mike Cutler

Nada Nadim Prouty is a Lebanese citizen who was admitted to the United States as a student, overstayed her visa and then acquired resident alien status through a fraudulent marriage. She never lived with her "husband" but entered into the marriage as a business deal; he was to be paid (reports say he never was) and she did receive a green card.

She then worked at the FBI - where she conducted unauthorized searches to ascertain what they had on her, her sister, her brother-in-law (an alleged Hezbollah financier) and Hezbollah - and later worked at the CIA. While it is understandable that the FBI and CIA want to sweep this badly bungled case quickly out of view, the question that needs to be asked is…what is being done to make certain this does not happen again?

Marriage fraud is a pervasive problem and one that the government lacks the resources and apparent resolve to tackle. This vulnerability has been well documented in ever so many GAO and OIG reports, yet virtually nothing has been done to address this major gap in the immigration system that, as we see in this case, has significant national security implications.

In various newspaper accounts of the case, CIA officials nearly trivialize this serious situation. Those quoted make it seem as though immigration fraud is no big deal because it is a common ploy used by aliens to acquire green cards and United States citizenship. Indeed, this is true; but a slightly-overlooked fact is that it is also a felony, the CIA should know and respect this, and as pointed out above, it can lead to a national security nightmare.

Nada Nadim Prouty was not an informant; she was an officer. Why is her status important? Most informants have criminal histories and, in fact, to assist us we often convince them to do so by reducing the amount of jail time they normally would be sentenced. In some rare cases, “Sâ€