Mughniyeh's Angels

The world is learning just how dangerous arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh was. His victims numbered in the thousands. His terrorist crimes were conducted on several continents with the extensive collaboration of Iranian embassies, logistical support, intelligence and operatives around the world. He may have had ties to al Qaeda. Mughniyeh reportedly attended meetings between Iranian President Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Assad, and he wasn’t there because they needed another poker hand. The Iranian Foreign Minister attended Mughniyeh’s funeral today.

It’s time to recall a November 2007 column on this blog suggesting that Mughniyeh and his operatives placed moles in the FBI, CIA and American armed forces. We now know that he was hunting Western targets for 25 years. Mughniyeh made use of Hizbullah and Iranian “assets” in various place around the world, and they were used to attack Israeli and Jewish targets in Argentina in the 90’s. Presumably, Iran and Hizbullah’s reach and resources have grown since then, particularly in Latin America. The insertion of moles, agents and sleeper cells in “countries of interest” makes perfect sense.

Isn’t it curious that nothing has been heard recently about the two possible moles, FBI/CIA employee Nadia Nadim Prouty (pictured) and her sister-in-law, U.S. Marine Captain Samar Khalil Spinelli? Prouty was caught going through FBI files on Hizbullah fundraising. At some point in her career, according to published accounts, she was working for the CIA in Iraq interrogating “high-ranking al-Qaeda detainees.” Her sister, Samar, rose to the rank of captain in the U.S. Marines and served two tours in Iraq.

Knowing what we know about Mughniyeh and his relationship with Iran, might it be possible – maybe even likely -- that he dispatched these two Lebanese women to infiltrate U.S. intelligence agencies?

And now for speculation in the realm of spy novels: Maybe so little has been heard about the two sisters because some enterprising intelligence service was busy in recent years following Nadia and Samar’s information “up the food chain,” eventually to the headrest of a Mitsubishi Pajero car on a residential street in the upper-class Damascus neighborhood of Kafar Soussa.

Nah, it sounds like fiction.

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