"..a multimillion-dollar bribery ring involving a former senior U.S. Homeland Security official."

[seafan]

A Hizbullah Mole?

Case against CIA spy shocks counterintelligence community.



David Guralnick / Detroit News-AP

Prouty, in a car in Detroit, the day she pleaded guilty to naturalization fraud; unlawfully accessing a federal computer system; and conspiracy to defraud the United States.




Michael Isikoff and
Mark Hosenball

Nov 13, 2007 | Updated: 7:46 p.m. ET Nov 13, 2007





This is beginning to touch on Sibel Edmonds' information, in my opinion.

.....

Indeed, the bizarre details of the Prouty investigation—which include connections to both Hizbullah and a multimillion-dollar bribery ring involving a former senior U.S. Homeland Security official—could ultimately be cast as a war-on-terror version of the notorious spy cases of Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, Soviet spies who worked for the CIA and FBI respectively.

.....

Prouty, the court papers suggest, may have had a personal motive for seeking information about Chahine and Hizbullah. Her sister, Elfat El Aouar, had by then married Chahine and both of them in August 2002 had attended a "fundraising event in Lebanon." The keynote speakers at the event, according to the court papers, were Chahine and Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Hizbullah, who has been designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist."

Chahine was subsequently charged in two federal indictments. One of them last year accused him of skimming $20 million from his chain of restaurants in Detroit and routing some of that cash to unnamed persons in Lebanon. (Prouty's sister was also charged in that case. She has since pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in prison last May.) In the second indictment last month, Chahine—now believed to be a fugitive in Lebanon—was charged with conspiring with a former senior official of the Homeland Security's office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Detroit to extort funds from former employees of Chahine's La Shish restaurant chain. (Although he has since left the country, his lawyer has denied that Chahine had any involvement in terrorism.) The ICE official, Roy Bailey, was accused of misusing his position to accept "large sums of currency and other property in return for granting immigration benefits," according to a Justice Department press release last month. (Bailey has entered a plea of not guilty.)

.....

[aquart]

1. What do I need to know not to be completely confused?

Because I am. Perhaps a flowchart? A timeline? A bulleted list? I always have trouble when corruption gets intricate.

[murielm99]

3. That's one reason why

it is tough to get grand juries to bring indictments, or regular juries to convict. The more confusing it gets, the more the crooks get away with it.

The * corruption is so deep, it involves so many branches of government and so many players that it is hard to explain to many people. I get confused, too. I am sure that is intended.

We had a case that impacted our county seat, called "The Pizza Connection." It involved organized crime smuggling heroin in pizza ovens and boxes that they sent all over the country. The ovens were delivered to various pizzerias nationwide, and the deliveries looked legit. They were not. The people who tried the case had to provide information that was very detailed. The trial lasted forever. I tried to read the book about the case, but it was so involved that I gave up on it.

Fortunately, they did get convictions.

[aquart]

5. I was on such a grand jury.

They gave us special education in financial crimes so we could follow what was happening and I do mean happening. It is amazing how a records warehouse will burn up upon receipt of a subpoena.

Prosecutors are very skilled in boiling things down: Here's the law. Here's what they did.

And, as grand jurors, we also got to ask questions. Sometimes we were just mean.

[Bitwit1234]

2. bush and cheney are protecting us.. aren't they????

I don't quite know.

[magellan]

4. Is this the woman who was here illegally & yet managed to work for both the CIA and FBI?

If so, I heard a bit about it on MSNBC while making coffee earlier. What can one say anymore except that it's just another infuriating example of how corrupt and inept our government is.

[aquart]

6. Did she have a driver's license?

[flashl]

7. You just got to wonder, what really is HS ICEs' role? n/t

[Supersedeas]

8. will the superficial TV media journalist dare dig into this?