DETROIT — An FBI translator who was supposed to be investigating an Islamic State leader in Syria secretly married him in 2014, multiple news outlets are reporting.
According to CNN, 38-year-old Daniela Greene, then a German translator for the FBI's Detroit office, had top-secret security clearance while she was investigating Denis Cuspert, a German rapper who became a recruiter for the terrorist group in Syria. Cuspert reportedly threatened former President Barack Obama and held a severed head in an Islamic State video.
FBI translator goes rogue and marries an ISIS terrorist https://t.co/wMqENNQhna@DrewGriffinCNN has more. https://t.co/4NmGmOMeIf
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) May 2, 2017
CBS News reported that in June 2014, six months into the probe, Greene told her superiors that she was taking a trip to Europe. Instead, she went to Syria to marry Cuspert, aka Deso Dogg and Abu Talha al-Almani, according to court documents.
Soon after the wedding, Greene had a change of heart and escaped to the United States, where she was arrested Aug. 8, CNN reported.
"I was weak and didn't know how to handle anything anymore," she wrote in an email to an unnamed person before she left, according to CNN. "I really made a mess of things this time."
An FBI translator traveled to Syria in 2014 and married a key ISIS operative she had been assigned to investigate https://t.co/4TlVa0PETa pic.twitter.com/8LIdJOah6Z
— CNN International (@cnni) May 2, 2017
Greene, who pleaded guilty to "making false statements involving international terrorism," served two years in federal prison and was released in August 2016, CNN reported.
CBS News reported that "so far, she's declined to speak publicly about her case," which was sealed until May 2015.
Greene, who was born in Czechoslovakia and lived in Germany before she came to the United States, attended Oklahoma's Cameron University and received a master's degree in history from Clemson University in South Carolina, according to CNN.
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