Senator Chuck Grassley is pressing the FBI for answers to how a translator for the bureau was able to go to Syria and marry the ISIS operative she was reportedly tasked with investigating.
Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe on Friday asking for documents related to the case, but also for assurances that the bureau is taking steps to prevent future incidents.
The senator also wants an explanation from the Department of Justice on why the translator was offered a plea deal and received a reduced sentence.
“This rogue employee had access to highly sensitive national security information. I’m troubled that a relationship between an FBI employee and a prominent ISIS recruiter went unnoticed, and more troubled that there wasn’t a safeguard to successfully catch this incident,” Grassley said.
Daniela Greene was hired as a contract linguist for the bureau in 2011, and reportedly fell in love with German terrorist Denis Cuspert after tracking his communications for months, according to a report by CNN.
In June of 2014, she filled out a “Report of Foreign Travel” form, claiming she was going to Germany to visit her parents. Instead, she traveled to Istanbul, Turkey and later married Cuspert in a city a few miles from the Syrian border.
Authorities secretly issued a warrant for Greene’s arrest on August 1 of that year.
Cuspert was far from being a small-time figure in the terrorism world. A few short months after he and Greene were supposedly married, the State Department issued a bulletin designating him as a “specially designated global terrorist.” The same bulletin cited Cuspert’s appearance in a video in which he held a severed human head as an example of what happens to people who opposed ISIS.
Grassley’s request has the potential for the public to get a better glimpse behind what happened, as the senator said he expects the “written reply and any responsive documents will be unclassified.”
“It’s important for the public to understand how this happened and how similar problems will be prevented in the future,” Grassley added. “We also need to know how prosecutors settled on the charges in this case. A sentence of two years seems unusually light for such a potential threat to national security.”
