FBI employee marries ISIS terrorist she was investigating

An FBI translator traveled to Syria in 2014 and married a key ISIS terrorist she was assigned to investigate.

An FBI translator with top-secret security clearance traveled to Syria in 2014 and married a key Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist she was assigned to investigate, causing a serious security headache to the agency.

CNN reported on Tuesday that the rogue employee, Daniela Greene, lied to the FBI when she told them she was traveling to visit her parents, and instead warned her new husband he was under investigation, according to federal court records.

The man Greene married was Denis Cuspert, a German rapper turned ISIS recruiter, whose growing online influence put him on the radar of counter-terrorism.

In Germany, Cuspert went by the rap name Deso Dogg. In Syria, he was known as Abu Talha al-Almani [the German].

He praised Osama bin Laden in a song, threatened former President Barack Obama with a throat-cutting gesture and appeared in propaganda videos, including one in which he held a freshly severed human head.

Within weeks of marrying Cuspert, Greene, 38, seemed to realize she had made a terrible mistake. “I was weak and didn’t know how to handle anything anymore,” she wrote on July 8. “I really made a mess of things this time.”

She fled back to the US, where she was immediately arrested and agreed to cooperate with authorities.

She pleaded guilty to making false statements involving international terrorism and was sentenced to two years in federal prison. She was released last summer.

‘Endangered Our Nation’s Security’

Justice Department prosecutors charged her with a relatively minor offense, then asked a judge to give her a reduced sentence in exchange for her cooperation.

The FBI, in a statement to CNN, said as a result of Greene’s case it “took several steps in a variety of areas to identify and reduce security vulnerabilities. The FBI continues to strengthen protective measures in carrying out its vital work.”

In court papers filed in US District Court in Washington D.C., prosecutors characterized Greene’s conduct as “egregious,” deserving of “severe punishment.”

Assistant US Attorney Thomas Gillice said Greene “violated the public trust, the trust of the officials who granted her security clearance, and the trust of those with whom she worked and, in doing so, endangered our nation’s security.”

Even though Greene’s “conduct skirted a line dangerously close to other more serious charges,” the prosecutor argued she should receive a lighter sentence because of her cooperation.

Fluent in German, Greene went to work for the FBI as a contract linguist in 2011. It was a job that came with top-secret national security clearance after a grueling vetting process.

Greene was assigned to the bureau’s Detroit office in January 2014 when she was put to work “in an investigative capacity” on the case of a German terrorist referred to in court records only as “Individual A.”

ISIS’ Celebrity Cheerleader

CNN identified “Individual A” as Cuspert using court documents, newspaper articles about his music career and transformation to jihadist, government bulletins, videos and other sources. His identity was ultimately confirmed by a source familiar with the investigation.

A near-death experience in a car accident prompted Cuspert to turn to religion, according to numerous press accounts. In 2010, he quit the rap world and converted to Islam. He traded his hard driving gangsta-style lyrics for Islamic devotional songs called Nasheeds.

In 2012, Cuspert fled Germany, reportedly spending time in Egypt and Libya. The following year, he arrived in Syria, where he would emerge as “ISIS’s Celebrity Cheerleader,” according to a report from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

It was in April 2014, during Greene’s work on the investigation, that Cuspert appeared in a video declaring his allegiance to ISIS and its leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

He called ISIS “the state that no one can stop,” adding, “we will continue to build it until it reaches Washington… Obama!” He then made a throat-cutting gesture with his finger, according to the MEMRI report.

By: World Israel News Staff

FBIISISIslamic terrorSyria