Susan Lindauer

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Susan Lindauer
Born (1963-07-17) 17 July 1963 (age 49)
Occupation Author, journalist, activist
Parents John Howard Lindauer
Jackie Lindauer (1932–1992)
Relatives Andrew Card (second cousin)

Susan Lindauer (born 17 July 1963) is an American journalist and antiwar activist.

In 2003 she was accused of conspiring to act as an unregistered agent for the Iraqi Intelligence Service and engaging in prohibited financial transactions with the government of Iraq under Saddam Hussein.[1][2][3] Lindauer was found mentally unfit to stand trial in two separate hearings. During her incarceration she won the right to refuse forced antipsychotic medication which the United States Department of Justice claimed would render her competent to stand trial.[4][5] She was released in 2006 and all charges were dropped in 2009.[6]

Contents

Personal life [edit]

Lindauer is the daughter of John Howard Lindauer II, the newspaper publisher and former Republican nominee for Governor of Alaska.[6][7] Her mother was Jackie Lindauer (1932–1992) who died of cancer. In 1995 her father married Dorothy Oremus, a Chicago attorney who along with other members of her family owned the largest cement company in the Midwest.[7]

Lindauer is also a second cousin of former White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card.[8]

Education and employment [edit]

Lindauer attended East Anchorage High School in Anchorage, Alaska, where she was an honor student and was in school plays.[9] She graduated from Smith College in 1985. She earned a masters degree in public policy from the London School of Economics.[2] She worked as a temporary reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1987, and as an editorial writer at the The Everett Herald in Everett, Washington until 1989. She then was a reporter and researcher at U.S. News & World Report in 1990 and 1991.[7][9][10][11]

She then worked for Representative Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon (1993) and then Representative Ron Wyden, D-Oregon (1994) before joining the office of Senator Carol Moseley Braun, D-Illinois, where she worked as a press secretary and speech writer.[7][10] In 2003 she was working for Representative Zoe Lofgren, D-California.[12]

Other activities prior to arrest [edit]

Lindauer claims she was conducting peace negotiations with representatives of Muslim countries (including Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, and Yemen) in New York. According to transcripts Lindauer presented to the New York Times in 2004, these included meetings with Iraqi Muthanna al-Hanooti, another peace activist later accused of spying. Lindauer also says that the U.S. intelligence community was aware of these meetings and monitoring her.[2] (She also discussed them directly in communications with Card.)[13]

Richard Fuisz met with Lindauer weekly since 1994. He said that he had banned her from his office after September 11, 2001, when her ideas became "malignant" and "seditious".[2] Lindauer later claimed that she had been a CIA asset during this period.[14]

Arrest [edit]

On January 8, 2003, she delivered a letter to Andrew Card. In her letter, she urged Card to intercede with President George W. Bush to not invade Iraq, and offered to act as a back channel in negotiations. Andrew Card is her second cousin. Her first politically related contact with former Chief of Staff was around 2001.[2]

On March 11, 2004, Lindauer was arrested in Takoma Park, Maryland by five agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).[2] She was taken to the FBI office in Baltimore. Outside of this office, she told WBAL-TV: "I'm an antiwar activist and I'm innocent. I did more to stop terrorism in this country than anybody else. I have done good things for this country. I worked to get weapons inspectors back to Iraq when everybody else said it was impossible."[15] Lindauer later said she was charged under the PATRIOT Act.[16]

Lindauer was charged with "acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government". The indictment alleged that she accepted US$10,000 from the Iraqi Intelligence Service in 2002. Lindauer denied receiving the money, but confirmed taking a trip to Baghdad.[2] Lindauer was also accused of meeting with an FBI agent posing as a Libyan, with whom she spoke about the "need for plans and foreign resources to support resistance groups operating in Iraq."[12] Lindauer says she came to this meeting because of her interest in filing a war crimes suit against the U.S. and U.K. governments.[2]

Congresswoman Lofgren released a statement saying she was "shocked" by the arrest, that she had no evidence of illicit activities by Lindauer, and that she would cooperate with the investigation.[12] Robert Precht, Dean of the University of Michigan Law School, said the charges were "weak" and that Lindauer was more likely to be a "misguided peacenik".[17]

Incarceration and legal action [edit]

She was released on bond on March 13, 2004, to attend an arraignment the following week.[3] Sanford Talkin of New York was appointed by the court as Lindauer's lawyer.[13]

In 2005 she was incarcerated at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas, for psychological evaluation. At Carswell She was then moved to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.[18] In 2006, she was released from prison after judge Michael B. Mukasey ruled that Lindauer was unfit to stand trial and could not be forced to take antipsychotic medication to make her competent to stand trial.[6][18] He noted that the severity of Lindauer's mental illness, which he described as a "lengthy delusional history", weakened the prosecution's case. In his decision he wrote, "Lindauer ... could not act successfully as an agent of the Iraqi government without in some way influencing normal people .... There is no indication that Lindauer ever came close to influencing anyone, or could have. The indictment charges only what it describes as an unsuccessful attempt to influence an unnamed government official, and the record shows that even lay people recognize that she is seriously disturbed."[1] On the question of Lindauer's sanity, Richard Fuisz commented in 2004: "She's daft enough that we could be sitting here, like we are now, and she might see a parrot fly in the window, flap its wings and land right here on the table. But she's also smart enough not to necessarily say anything about it."[2]

At a hearing in July 2008, Lindauer told reporters that she had been a CIA asset, and said she had "been hung out to dry and scapegoated".[14]

In 2008, Loretta A. Preska of the Federal District Court in New York City reaffirmed that Lindauer was mentally unfit to stand trial—despite Lindauer's insistence to the contrary.[7][19] Preska ruled that Lindauer's belief in her connection to the intelligence community was evidence of her insanity.[20]

In testimony before Judge Mukasey on May, 9, 2006, Dr. Colin Vas from Carswell FMC admitted that over seven months of incarceration, staff observed no signs of hallucinations and no signs of hearing voices, nor any depression or bipolar disorder. Carswell reported that Ms. Lindauer walked 4-6 miles on the track every day, and consistently participated at "indoor recreation activities." Ms.Lindauer also spent many hours at the prison law library studying up on her case. In its monthly reports, Carswell wrote: "Good physical health. Socializes well. Good intellectual functioning." And "no behavioral problems." [21]

On January 16, 2009, the government decided to not continue with the prosecution saying "prosecuting Lindauer would no longer be in the interests of justice."[6][22]

Antipsychiatrist Thomas Szasz criticized the government's treatment of Lindauer and referred to her captors as "torturers".[23]

Book and subsequent claims [edit]

Lindauer has written a self-published book about her experience, Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover-Ups of 9/11 and Iraq.[24] Lindauer claims that for a number of years she had worked for the CIA and DIA undertaking communications with the Iraqi government, serving as a back-channel in negotiations. She started making visits to the Libyan mission at the United Nations in 1995,[10] lasting until 2001, some of the meetings were talks with Iraqi Intelligence Service officials at the United Nations.[2]

References [edit]

  1. ^ a b United States of America v. Susan Lindauer (United States District Court for the Southern District of New York September 6, 2006) (“Susan Lindauer is charged in four counts with conspiring to act and acting as an unregistered agent of the government of Iraq, in particular the Iraq Intelligence Service ("IIS"), from October 1999 until February 2004, and engaging in various forbidden financial transactions with that government during that period, apparently in connection with her alleged role as agent of that government.”). Text
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j David Samuels (August 29, 2004). "Susan Lindauer's Mission To Baghdad". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-11-07. 
  3. ^ a b "Suspect in Iraq Spy Case Released. Lindauer, a Takoma Park Antiwar Activist, to Be Arraigned Monday.". Washington Post. March 13, 2004. Retrieved 2009-01-26. 
  4. ^ Overriding Mental Health Treatment Refusals: How Much Process is Due; Brakel, Samuel Jan; Davis, John M. 52 St. Louis U. L.J. 501 (2007–2008).
  5. ^ Unreasonable: Involuntary Medications, Incompetent Criminal Defendants, and the Fourth Amendment; Klein, Dora W. 46 San Diego L. Rev. 161 (2009)
  6. ^ a b c d "Case Dropped Against Md. Woman". Washington Post. January 17, 2009. Retrieved 2010-12-29. 
  7. ^ a b c d e "Ex-journalist in spy case unfit for trial". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. September 16, 2008. Retrieved 2009-01-26. 
  8. ^ Lindauer, Susan (2011-02-17) Tea Party Crashes: The Most Unpatriotic Act, LewRockwell.com "My crime was delivering a warm-hearted letter to my second cousin White House Chief of Staff, Andy Card, which correctly outlined the consequences of War."
  9. ^ a b "Suspect is remembered as worldly". Anchorage Daily News. March 13, 2004. Retrieved 2009-01-26. 
  10. ^ a b c Dao, James (March 12, 2004). "An Antiwar Activist Known for Being Committed Yet Erratic". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-06-11. 
  11. ^ "Neighbor Seemed Activist, Not Agent". Washington Post. March 12, 2004. Retrieved 2009-01-26. 
  12. ^ a b c Amy Keller, "Hill Aide Subpoenaed In Spy Case", Roll Call, 29 March 2004; accessed via ProQuest.
  13. ^ a b Rick Anderson, "From 'Spy' to Psychotic: The latest on the very strange story of former Seattle journalist Susan Lindauer", Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 15 February 2006.
  14. ^ a b Alan Feuer (18 June 2008). "Antiwar Activist Returns To Court for Iraq Spy Case". New York Times. Retrieved 2013-01-01. "'I was an asset — I was supervised by people with ties to intelligence,' Ms. Lindauer told a group of reporters in a hallway after the hearing ended. 'I had a long-term relationship with these people, and I am horrified I have been hung out to dry and scapegoated.'" 
  15. ^ Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, "Ex-Aide Accused of Being an Agent for Iraq: Federal indictment alleges the woman spied for Baghdad on Iraqis living in the U.S. during the run-up to the war. She claims innocence." Los Angeles Times, 12 March 2004.
  16. ^ "Susan Lindauer Interviewed by Michael Collins", Scoop, 10 March 2009.
  17. ^ Melissa Block and Allison Aubrey, "Analysis: Federal prosecutors charge a Maryland woman with spying for Iraq", All Things Considered, National Public Radio, 11 March 2004; accessed via ProQuest.
  18. ^ a b Hartocollis, Anemona (September 9, 2006). "Ex-Congress Aide Accused in Spy Case Is Free on Bail". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-01-26. 
  19. ^ Weiser, Benjamin (September 16, 2008). "Woman Accused of Iraq Ties Is Ruled Unfit for Trial Again". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-02-06. 
  20. ^ Michael Collins, "American Kafka: Susan Lindauer Demands 'The Trial'", Scoop, 4 October 2008.
  21. ^ "[1]"
  22. ^ Neumeister, Larry (January 16, 2009). "Case dropped against aide accused of helping Iraq". Associated Press. Retrieved 2010-12-29. 
  23. ^ Thomas Szasz, "The Shame of Medicine: The Depravity of Psychiatry", Freeman 59 (6), July/August 2009; accessed via ProQuest. "After 'hospitalizing' Lindauer for 18 months, her 'medical' torturers concluded that, although she was still mentally ill and incompetent to stand trial, she no longer needed psychiatric 'care.'"
  24. ^ Lindauer, Susan. "Extreme Prejudice". Retrieved 2010-12-01. 

External links [edit]

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Susan_Lindauer&oldid=555569616"