Homeland spy scandal: FBI translator sneaked into Syria to marry IS terrorist
AN FBI translator travelled to Syria and secretly married an Islamic State terrorist she had been assigned to investigate, it emerged today.
The agent, named as Daniela Greene, had a top security clearance at the time she went rogue.
She reportedly lied to her bosses about where she was going when she sneaked into Syria to marry Denis Cuspert — a German rapper turned IS propagandist also known as Deso Dogg.
According to court records, she told him he was under investigation by US authorities. But within weeks of the wedding Greene, 38, appeared to have realised she had made a mistake and fled back to the US.
The saga echoes spy series Homeland, starring Claire Danes as a CIA agent who falls in love with a US marine, played by Damian Lewis, whom she suspects to be a “turned” al Qaeda terrorist.
When Greene returned she was arrested. She agreed to co-operate with the authorities in return for a two-year jail sentence for a guilty plea to making false statements involving international terrorism. CNN reported that Greene, who was born in the Czech Republic, was released last summer and now works in a US hotel.
Today questions were being raised over her comparatively lenient sentence. John Kirby, a former State Department official, said: “It’s a stunning embarrassment for the FBI, no doubt about it.” He said he suspected Greene’s entry into Syria required the approval of IS chiefs.
“For her to be able to get in as an American, as a woman, as an FBI employee, and to be able to take up residence with a known IS leader, that all had to be coordinated,” he added. Prosecutors branded her conduct “egregious” and deserving of “severe punishment,” according to papers from the US district court in Washington DC. Greene’s location has not been identified for her own safety. “If I talk to you my family will be in danger,” she told CNN.
Her lawyer Shawn Moore was quoted saying: “She was just a well-meaning person that got up in something way over her head.” Assigned to the FBI’s Detroit office in 2014, Greene was put on the case of Cuspert, who gained notoriety in 2011 when he posted a fake video on Facebook supposedly showing US soldiers raping a Muslim woman. He also appeared on IS propaganda making a throat-cutting gesture aimed at Barack Obama.
Court records reveal Greene told the FBI she was going on holiday to visit her family in Germany in June 2014. Instead she flew to Turkey and travelled to Gaziantep near the Syrian border. There, she met up with Cuspert, who was known in Syria as Abu Talha al-Almani. However, by July she had emailed a friend saying she was having second thoughts.
In 2015 the US Department of Defense reported Cuspert had been killed in an airstrike near Raqqa. However, last year the Pentagon said the initial assesment was wrong and he survived.