Susan Lindauer

Infobox Person
name = Susan P. Lindauer


image_size = 150px
caption = Lindauer circa 2000
birth_date = Birth date and age|1963|7|17|df=y
birth_place =
death_date =
death_place =
relatives = Andrew Card, cousin
occupation = Activist
spouse =
parents = John Howard Lindauer
children =

Susan P. Lindauer aka Symbol Susan (born 17 July 1963) is an American journalist accused of conspiring to act as a spy for the Iraqi Intelligence Service and engaging in prohibited financial transactions involving the government of Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

The prosecution claims that she accepted $10,000 for the work. The exact charge was that she acted as an unregistered agent of Iraq, something akin to an unregistered lobbyist, as well as conspiring to commit espionage. Although news headlines frequentlyFact|date=September 2008 refer to her as "accused spy", more precise journalistsWho|date=September 2008 note that the actual charges carefully avoid accusing Lindauer of espionage.

Lindauer faces up to 25 years in prison on the most serious charge and five years on the lesser charge if she is convicted. Her case is currently open, though inactive because she is declared incompetent to stand trial. In 2008, Lindauer tried to persuade a different judge, Loretta A. Preska, that she was now competent to stand trial. On September 16, 2008, Judge Preska ruled that she was still incompetent, citing Lindauer's “lack of connection with reality” and the testimony of a government psychiatrist who said that Ms. Lindauer claimed to have special powers and that she had indicated she once met with Osama bin Laden, who disclosed to her the location of a bomb.

Early years

She is the daughter of John Howard Lindauer II, the newspaper publisher and former Republican nominee for Governor of Alaska. Susan's mother was Jackie Lindauer (1932-1992) who died of cancer in 1992. 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.

Education and employment

Lindauer graduated from Smith College in 1985. She earned a Masters Degree in Public Policy from the London School of Economics. She worked as a business reporter at the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer", and editorial writer at the "The Herald" in Washington state, before joining the staff of "U.S. News & World Report".cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title= An Antiwar Activist Known for Being Committed Yet Erratic |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9804E0DF103EF931A25750C0A9629C8B63 |quote=Ms. Lindauer also worked as a reporter, freelance writer or researcher at The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Fortune Magazine and U.S. News & World Report. Spokesmen for those publications said her employment was so short few people remembered much about her. Ms. Lindauer took jobs as a press secretary or speechwriter with Democratic members of Congress, including Representatives Peter A. DeFazio and Ron Wyden of Oregon in 1993 and 1994, Senator Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois in 1996 and Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, for eight weeks in 2002. |publisher=New York Times |date=March 12, 2004 |accessdate=2008-06-11 ]

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/speech writer.

After leaving Capitol Hill, Lindauer claims she worked as a back-door channel between the United States and Libya to start negotiations for the Pan Am Flight 103 trial, working closely with American agencies from 1995 onwards. In the course of that effort, she claims she established special contacts in difficult to reach Arab countries, including Iraq, Egypt and Yemen, for the purpose of achieving cooperation on anti-terrorism. After Libya handed over the two men for the Pan Am Flight 103 trial, Lindauer claims she applied the same conflict resolution strategies to help persuade Iraq to accept the return of the weapons inspectors according to the terms and conditions demanded by the United States. Many have found these claims to be highly questionable, and her claims have at least partially contributed to her being judged as psychotic and unfit to stand trial. Lindauer however has claimed in interviews that she can prove her claims if given the chance.

Arrest

Lindauer was arrested on Thursday, 11 March, 2004 in Takoma Park, Maryland and charged with "acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government". The indictment alleged that she accepted US$ 10,000 from Iraqi intelligence services in 2002. Lindauer denies receiving the $10,000, but admits taking a trip to Baghdad.

She [http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/0710/LindauerToCardLetterJan2003.pdf delivered a letter] to Andrew Card, who is her second cousin and former Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush. The letter urged the White House not to invade Iraq, and outlined several likely consequences of a War in Iraq, including the resurgence of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda forces inside Iraq, and the emergence of Iran as a major regional power broker. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Ex-Senate aide charged with giving Iraq secrets |url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4506229 |quote=A former news reporter and press secretary for four members of Congress was charged Thursday with being a paid Iraqi intelligence agent and trying to contact her distant cousin — the White House chief of staff — to alter U.S. policy. |publisher=NBC News |date=March 11, 2004 |accessdate=2008-06-11 ] [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title= Ex-Congressional Aide Accused of Working With Iraqi Intelligence Before War |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E4DC103EF931A25750C0A9629C8B63 |quote=Federal prosecutors charged a former Congressional aide on Thursday with working with the Iraqi intelligence service before the war, and investigators said she had sought to influence American policy by presenting herself to a highly placed relative, Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, as an intermediary. |publisher=New York Times |date=March 12, 2004 |accessdate=2008-06-11 ]

Lindauer contends that her U.S. file was turned over to a Grand Jury just days after she approached Senator Trent Lott's office about how to contact the Presidential Commission on Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence regarding the work that she had done for the previous 7 years for the United States.

In late 2005, Lindauer was found incompetent to stand trial, a political solution to the indictment, and was sent to Carswell Federal Prison on a Texas military base for a psychiatric evaluation. The prosecution asked to forcibly drug Lindauer with needle injections of Haldol. She was released from prison in September 2006 after a federal judge, Michael B. Mukasey of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, ruled that she could not be forced to take anti-psychotic medication in an effort to make her competent to stand trial.

Judge Mukasey stated that Prosecution testimony supporting forcible drugging had been vicious and excessive. He also criticized the strength of the government's case against Lindauer in total, saying that the legal standard for forcibly administering medication requires a strong government interest in prosecution, and that the government has not established that standard in this case.

According to Judge Mukasey, "there is no indication that Lindauer ever came close to influencing anyone or could have." The indictment, he said, describes an attempt to influence an unnamed government official as unsuccessful. He stated that at least a half-dozen mental health professionals, including a psychiatrist retained by the government, have found Lindauer incompetent to stand trial-- though the Court denied Lindauer's repeated requests for a Competency Hearing, and failed to issue subpoenas for witnesses who nonetheless contacted the Court to validate her story. He also expressed humanitarian concerns about forcing Lindauer to take medication, which, he said, "necessarily involves physically restraining defendant so that she can be injected with mind-altering drugs."

Lindauer is currently free on bail. She is still officially considered incompetent to stand trial. Although her case is still pending, legal expertsWho|date=September 2008 have observed that the Mukasey decision seriously weakened the prosecution and that the case would be highly unlikely to go to trial.

Urban legend

It has been notedWho|date=September 2008 that one of the senders of the Markovian parallax denigrate, a name which refers to an apparently random series of articles posted to Usenet on August 5, 1996, used the name "Susan Lindauer". This spurred much wild speculation at the time of Lindauer's arrest among conspiracy theorists that these messages were a form of encoded information.

There is no compelling evidence that Lindauer had anything to do with these articles (they appear to have originated from Madison, Wisconsin), or that the articles had any meaning at all.Fact|date=September 2008

References

Further reading

* New York Times; August 29, 2004; Susan Lindauer's Mission To Baghdad. One woman seemed to believe she could open a secret back channel between the U.S. government and Saddam Hussein's regime. The White House wasn't interested. The F.B.I. was.
* Washington Post; March 13, 2004; Suspect in Iraq Spy Case Released; Lindauer, a Takoma Park Antiwar Activist, to Be Arraigned Monday. A former congressional staffer accused of aiding spies for Saddam Hussein before the U.S.-led war with Iraq was released from federal custody yesterday as some residents of Takoma Park, her home city, voiced differing reactions to the unique case, including puzzlement, anger and indifference. Susan P. Lindauer, 40, a self-described antiwar activist who was a press aide to several Democratic members of Congress in the 1990s, appeared at a detention hearing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore and was released to the custody of her father. It was unclear where the two planned to go. But ...