1 in 5 Flagged CIA Applicants Have Ties to Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda

By: Rachel Pulaski

We already know that Hezbollah is operating inside the United States and along the Mexican border. U.S. businesses are filtering money to the militant group, now a document just released from the Edward Snowden collection reveals that 1 in 5 flagged applicants at the Central Intelligence Agency have ties to Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda. Most of the flagged applicants have repeatedly applied for employment in the CIA.

hezbollah

Washington Times Reported:

The document — released by Mr. Snowden as part of his National Security Agency intelligence dump — said the terrorist groups worked hard to infiltrate America’s top security agencies. CIA officials uncovered thousands of applicants, roughly one in five of a subset, with “significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections,” the document states, as Ynet News reported.

The specifics of those ties were not revealed, but the groups most often cited as attempting to infiltrate the U.S. intelligence network were al QaedaHamas and Hezbollah.

The NSA, in response, launched investigations into 4,000 instances of suspected abnormal staff activity, Ynet News said. Those investigations included the tracking of employee keystrokes on agency computers and the recording of document downloads.

“Over the last several years, a small subset of CIA’s total job applicants were flagged due to various problems or issues,” one unnamed agency official said, as Ynet News reported. “During this period, one in five of that small subset was found to have significant connections to hostile intelligence services and-or terrorist groups.”

 

Thanks for sharing!