Copyright © 2010 Susan Lindauer
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1453642757
ISBN-13: 9781453642757
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62345-888-1

Any views, commentary or opinions expressed
in this book, or description of events
are those of the author.
They do not necessarily represent the views, opinions or commentary
at Create Space, its parent company or affiliates,
or any of its employees

CONTENTS

Deepest Thanks

Prologue by Brian Shaughnessy, attorney U.S. vs. Lindauer

1   The War on Truth

2   Advance Warnings About 9/11

3   Peace Asset

4   A Secret Day in the Life of an Asset

5   Iraq’s Peace Overtures to Europe and the United States

6   9/11: A Pattern of Command Negligence with Michael Collins

7   September 11, 2001

8   Iraq’s Cooperation with 9/11 Investigation

9   Iraq’s Contribution to 9/11 Investigation Part 2

10   Blessed Are the Peacemakers

Part 2: When Truth Becomes Treason

11   The Old Potomac Two Step

12   The Battle For Peace

13   The Last Days

14   Good Night, Saigon…

15   Warning. This Message Contains Democracy

16   The Crying Game

17   The Patriot Act

18   The Case of the Missing Trial

19   Secret Debriefings and the “New Psychiatry”
(A Little Intelligence War)

20   Incompetent to Stand Trial

21   The Bright Secret

22   Carswell Prison

23   If at First You Don’t Succeed, Shoot the Hostage

24   Corruption at Carswell

25   Prison Diary

26   The Friendly Skies of “Con Air”

27   Extreme Prejudice

28   Metropolitan Correctional Center

29   The Last Man

30   Illegitimus Non Carborundem Est

31   American Cassandra

32   Vindication

33   “Off with Her Head,” the Red Queen Said

34   Dialogue! Dialogue! And Democracy!

Affidavit of Parke Godfrey

Affidavit of Thayer Lindauer

Appendix

End Notes

DEEPEST THANKS

My life has been blessed by a number of individuals who profoundly impacted the course of my direction and adventures. For every burden I have faced, there has been a partner in fortune to master the challenge.

All my thanks go to my beloved friend and companion, JB Fields, for his courage to fight unbeatable forces. To activist Janet Phelan, blog journalist extraordinaire Michael Collins, and all time best radio host Michael Herzog, for championing my story and defending Constitutional liberties for all Americans. You are truly awake and vigilant.

To my heroic Uncle Ted Lindauer, for fighting bare knuckled to win my release from Carswell. To Brian Shaughnessy and Tom Mattingly, for recognizing the strengths of my legal defense and carrying my dirtied banner when others dismissed my claims. To Parke Godfrey and Kelly O’Meara, for daring to speak Inconvenient Truths. To the women of M-1 at Carswell—Nancy Zaia, Sharon, Jessica, Renee, Toie and Karen—for reminding me always of the power of transcendence. To Sarah Yamasaki for singing on the rooftop of M.C.C. as if all of our lives depended on your songs—which they did.

Above all, I send my greatest love to Paul Hoven and Dr. Richard Fuisz, whose exuberance and vision launched me on the greatest quest of discovery to create my own life. Whatever happened afterwards, these men encouraged my passion and endurance for almost a decade, challenging me to stand strong for my values and face what I must.

To you most of all, for sharing my greatest adventures, Carpe diem!

FORWARD

My law firm defended Ms. Susan Lindauer against federal charges of acting as an unregistered Iraqi Agent in conspiracy with the Iraqi Intelligence Service. I assure you that Ms. Lindauer’s story is shocking, but true. It’s an important story of this new political age, post-9/11.

As her attorney, I maintained very high legal standards for validating Ms. Lindauer’s claims that she worked as a U.S. Intelligence Asset, supervised by members of the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency. Before agreeing to represent her, I took steps to corroborate her story through independent sources that I considered to be extremely high caliber. Those included former Congressional staff, international journalists, and several U.S. and Scottish attorneys involved with the Lockerbie Trial at Camp Zeist. I know some of these people socially and professionally. Ms. Lindauer’s story checked out. She has an extraordinary personal history, and I believe it’s true.

Vetting her story was much simplified by the extensive records available in her legal discovery. Those included original documents and transcripts from FBI wire taps of 28,000 phone calls; 8,000 emails; and hundreds of captured faxes that are date and time stamped to prove transmission. When, for example, Ms. Lindauer claims that her CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz, paid her $2,500 in October, 2001 for her work on the 9/11 investigation, she’s got the personal check to prove it. When Ms. Lindauer claims to have delivered papers on Iraq’s probable lack of illegal weapons to the home of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who lived next door to Dr. Fuisz, she’s got the FBI photo copy of the manila envelope to vouch that she did it. She’s also got copies of the original papers with handwritten notes delivered to Secretary Powell the week before his speech at the United Nations, provided by the FBI for her prosecution.

Her portfolio smartly repudiates claims that Intelligence Assets made no attempt to correct faulty intelligence on Capitol Hill before the War. Indeed, FBI records show that she worked night and day around the clock to do just that. When Republican leaders decided to invent a new story about the 9/11 warnings, Pre-War Intelligence and Iraq’s contribution to the 9/11 investigation, Ms. Lindauer’s activism and her reputation for truth-telling, vis a vis Lockerbie, got in their way. For the deception to succeed, they had to take her down.

In my opinion as her attorney, Ms. Lindauer was always competent to stand trial, only the Justice Department wanted to avoid embarrassing revelations from her case.

Brian Shaughnessy July 1, 2010

CHAPTER ONE:

THE WAR ON TRUTH

He who tells history must tell it for all, not only for himself.
–Arab saying

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought
to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and
denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
It works the same in any country.”
–Herman Goering. The Nuremberg Trials 1946

“Hey kid, remember— When they come to kill you, scream your head off.”

It was an eerie premonition, those last words by my intelligence handler, Paul Hoven, in the doorway of his apartment. Or perhaps it was a matter of fate, predestined and unalterable. Had we all seen the eventuality of this day and laughed our way to the other side of its meaning? Like an outlaw from the old West who understands that eventually he’s got to hang for robbing those trains. Or a spy who knows his life has memorialized too many inconvenient truths.

Yet when the day arrived, it caught me fully off guard. I heard the heavy pounding on my door early that morning. I wrapped myself in a bathrobe and hurried to the window. A crowd of men in flak jackets had gathered on my front porch. I could see more federal agents in the yard.

“Susan Lindauer— FBI. Open the door. We have a warrant for your arrest.”

For a few crucial moments, I was too stunned to act.

“Open this door immediately. This is the FBI.”

Actually I couldn’t. Quite mysteriously the door jamb had broken about three weeks earlier. The door swung on the air, so that I had no choice but to barricade it shut with plywood and nails.[1] Among friends I speculated that federal agents cracked the door frame during one of those warrantless searches on the Patriot Act that Congress was so jazzed about.

Suddenly my paranoia did not appear so irrational after all. I pointed to the other side of my house, and started to back out of my living room. I needed to get dressed.

That made them very, very angry.

“WE ARE THE FBI. OPEN THIS DOOR OR WE WILL BREAK IT DOWN.”

“What? You already broke it. You’re going to break it again?” I shook my head at the FBI agents staring back through my window. “No! You have to come to the side door.”

I turned on my heels and fled. A stampede of agents raced to the door off my bedroom, as I cautiously pulled it open. A whole team of feds forced their way inside. Now I started shaking.

“What exactly are you doing here? May I see some identification?”

“Susan Lindauer, I am Special Agent Chmiel. You are under arrest on the Patriot Act. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say, can and will be used against you in a federal court of law—”[2]

The FBI’s presence in my bedroom hit me like a dirty punch in the gut. At the mention of the Patriot Act, however, I knew this was serious trouble, and it could be scary trouble. Still, I had no idea that my arrest was connected to Iraq or my Pre-War Intelligence activities. I had no inkling what illegal actions the government had clocked against me. I was waking up to make coffee. I was not a bank robber, a drug dealer, or a murderer. I had a couple of minor speeding violations. That’s it.

My arrest would prove distinctive in two critical ways.

First, I was one of only three U.S. Assets covering the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations before the War, granting me vast primary knowledge of Pre-War Intelligence as a direct participant in some of the events. I would soon discover that all three of us got arrested as “Iraqi agents” when Congress and the White House decided to cook the intelligence books.

More notoriously, after Jose Padilla, I was now distinguished as the second non-Arab Americans to discover the slippery and treacherous legal terrain of the Patriot Act. By invoking the Patriot Act against me, the Justice Department used the same tools to smash political dissension against Republican war policy that Congress enacted to break terrorists. The message was simple. Oppose the Grand Old Party and you become an “Enemy of the State.”

It was especially ironic because my line of specialty— for almost a decade— was anti-terrorism.

The FBI hustled me to a sedan in handcuffs, and we drove off towards Baltimore, gambling it would be out of range of the Washington media. I kept it light, joking about the fingerprint machine that scanned thumb prints straight onto a computer screen. Pretty cool technology, I guffawed. I was waiting for the punch line, confident that somebody extremely high up would quickly receive an angry phone call, telling the FBI they’d made a hugely embarrassing mistake. Obviously they didn’t know who I was. I tried to keep the mood friendly, no hard feelings when they got the order to release me. I was sure the situation would change momentarily. I could be magnanimous for an hour or so.

Keep dreamin’ baby.

My expectations changed radically and abruptly when Special Agent Chmiel sat me down with a copy of my full indictment.[3] His finger shook slightly as he pointed to the bottom line: 25 years in prison under Federal Sentencing Guidelines. (Mandatory sentencing got set aside and reduced to “recommendations” by the U.S. Supreme Court[4] in December, 2004, nine months after my arrest). A powerful surge of horror exploded in my heart. I stared numb and disbelieving at the rundown of the charges, trying to determine who the hell had ordered my arrest. I felt a jolt like a heart attack when I realized that everybody I ever trusted had betrayed me on a massive scale.

Stunned, I demanded to know what exactly I had done wrong? The FBI Agent replied glibly that my attorney would explain my criminal actions later. Need I say, that was hardly satisfactory after suggesting I might spend 25 years in federal prison for violating the Patriot Act—a 7,000 page document that I happened to know nobody on Capitol Hill actually read before voting to approve.

Almost immediately my arrest began to expose the dilemma for defendants on the Patriot Act. If you rob a bank, or smuggle drugs into the U.S., or commit a violent robbery, then the accused person can recognize what actions constitute that particular crime. When a person gets indicted on the Patriot Act, what does that actually mean? What triggers the criminal action which the Patriot Act seeks to punish? I had no idea. The FBI Agent could not explain it either. That struck me as grossly unfair. I mean, if you’re going to spend 25 years in prison, you have a reasonable right to know why.

The government’s position was not strengthened by the disingenuous nature of the few specific actions detailed by the Justice Department. For example, I was formally accused of “Organizing Resistance to the United States”[5] in Iraq. My mind flashed back to the previous summer, and my brief encounter with an under-cover FBI agent, presented as a “Libyan Agent” in the indictment, a false flag to inflame the media. Quite the contrary, I recognized he was some form of American Intelligence—and teasingly, I called him out the way that spooks do. We have our ways of letting each other know that we know, even if someone’s on cover.

And what plot did we hatch that posed such grave threat to the Occupation? Why, we discussed the critical importance of promoting free elections and free political parties in Iraq, and how Iraqi detainees should not suffer torture or sexual abuse, and should have access to attorneys to protest their detentions by American soldiers.[6] Here the Republican leadership was bragging about the U.S. liberation of Baghdad, while I faced years in prison for supporting genuine democratic reforms and human rights inside the “New Iraq.” It screamed hypocrisy.

Another federal agent interrupted the conversation. They were ready to take me to Court. He warned that a small group of journalists waited outside the building for my perp walk. I would be photographed in handcuffs on my way to Court.

I saw Paul Hoven’s face framed tight in his doorway that last time we said goodbye— forever, though I didn’t know it yet. The smiles and warmth had gone. I saw him deadly serious now. And I heard him again:

Scream your head off, Susan!

Federal agents shoved open the door of the FBI Baltimore office. A huddle of local journalists with a couple of TV cameras rushed into position:

Scream!

I took a deep breath, holding it until I got directly in front of them. Then I shouted:

“I am an Anti-War Activist and I am innocent!” I yelled. “I have done more against terrorism than anybody. Everything I have done was always good for the security of the United States and good for security in the Middle East.”[7]

The FBI Agents grabbed me from behind, and shoved me faster towards a black sedan. They thrust me in the backseat and slammed the door. I gazed out the window into the horrified eyes of a camera man, who followed us when I cried out.

For one moment, one photo-journalist recognized that something terribly wrong was happening in America. He got a glimpse of the truth, but it was enough. Television footage of my arrest beamed around the world. I know from friends in Canada, France and Taiwan who saw it. He took my story to the White House door, summoning the Washington and international press corps en masse. For one moment, a single camera man showed the White House the force that journalistic freedom can unleash as a check on tyranny.

For one moment, we almost won.

Much later media pundits would decry the administration’s policy of crushing dissent in the intelligence community, attacking the patriotism of individuals who opposed the Republican War policy in Iraq. Unhappily, those pundits saw nothing awkward or contradictory about Capitol Hill’s practice of systematically tearing down the CIA to take the blame for “faulty” pre- war intelligence. The Intelligence Community would be demoralized for years afterwards. The GOP would leave it gutted in ashes.

On the morning of my arrest, I saw with total clarity that I was the first casualty of the Republican War on Truth. I recognized that my indictment was a political smoke-screen to shut me up, because I possessed first-hand knowledge of events that Republican leaders desperately wanted to hide from the American public. Even so, I had no idea how far afield of our Constitution they would go to protect their grip on power.

What those TV cameras captured in their sound-bite was the head-on collision of my double life as a clandestine, back-channel Asset in counter-terrorism for the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency—and my public life as an Anti-War activist-as seen by friends, neighbors and family. In truth, I was both women. On that fateful morning, I had no idea that construct of duality in my life would prove more difficult for the Court to understand than the prospect of my innocence. Explaining that duality would become my hardest battle. On the morning of my arrest, I had no idea how difficult or frightening that fight would become.

My FBI Agents sped off to the Federal Courthouse in Baltimore. Shaken by my outburst, they hardly spoke on the drive. I was dumped unceremoniously in the custody of court bailiffs to wait for a court-appointed attorney to fight for my bail. Meanwhile, the Feds skulked off to devise a new strategy for containing the GOP’s “Susan Lindauer problem,” which was already backfiring on the White House and Capitol Hill.

In a tiny holding cage, I examined the federal indictment more closely, while I waited for the extradition hearing that would transfer my case to Chief Justice Michael B. Mukasey in the Southern District of New York in Manhattan.

A metal desk was bolted to the floor with a bench seat. The cage door locked directly behind me, allowing perhaps two feet of standing space. A guard shoved a roll of bread with something like turkey and mayonnaise through a slot in the door, along with some potato chips and a can of soda. I took a bite, and couldn’t eat.

Locked inside such a claustrophobic space, my breathing got rapid, and I experienced a roller coaster of emotions. I kept thinking to myself how the media would react when they discovered that I had not exaggerated my involvement in anti-terrorism. I’d been active since 1993. And here the Justice Department had locked me up in a jail cell like some criminal! What incompetence that the Justice Department didn’t know who I am! Somebody didn’t do his homework!

Or maybe they did. A whisper nagged at the back of my brain. They obviously knew my second cousin on my father’s side was Andrew Card, Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush. And it struck me as highly improbable, extraordinary even, that the Justice Department would admit no prior knowledge of my extensive work in anti-terrorism, going back to the first World Trade Center attack in 1993.

What did my intelligence handler say, when I complained about heavy surveillance that sometimes got excessive or rough? “Don’t get all high and mighty on us, Susan! If they’re not tracking you—based on all of your contacts in the Middle East—they’re not doing their jobs.”

Oh, they understood what they were doing alright. This was a political hit. I knew first-hand where all the bodies were buried in a graveyard of national security initiatives that looked nothing at all like what Americans were told. Much later, KBOO Radio in Portland, Oregon—part of the vanguard media—wryly observed that I worked for the Company that made the shovels.

They had to take me out so they could reinvent the truth. It was that simple.

I looked more closely at the indictment—“Acting as an Unregistered Iraqi Agent” in “conspiracy with Iraq’s Intelligence Service.”[8] Not espionage, I determined quickly.

That satisfied me somewhat. The Justice Department wasn’t so stupid as to accuse me of trading state secrets, which would be grossly inaccurate.

But $10,000 from the Iraqis?[9] The Feds understood more than they pretended. Locked in that tiny holding cage, I got so angry that I shouted for a bailiff to protest. I wanted to tell the bailiff the indictment was loaded with excrement. There was no other way to describe it. I had yet to learn that filing criminal charges against an individual was relatively simple. Everybody said you could indict a ham sandwich in New York City. Getting charges dismissed proved infinitely more difficult, however. Federal prosecutors typically do not enjoy confessing publicly that they read the evidence wrong.

Oh but I would have a few things to say when we got to Court!

For starters, after 9/11, Israel was the only foreign government trolling to buy national security documents in Washington. Iraq didn’t need them. Baghdad already had the best. They had the most devastating access in the Middle East. Powerful stuff. Israel coveted that access hungrily for what their arch enemy in Baghdad could reveal. If Iraq didn’t have it already, Saddam’s government would know how to get it.

The real treasure hunt after 9/11 was for financial or banking documents that would expose the cash network for key figures tied to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Iraqi officials boasted that they had financial documents of extraordinary value that would prove a Middle Eastern connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing and the first strike on the World Trade Center in 1993. If so, Baghdad had not overstated the value of its cache. They wanted to trade that intelligence as part of a comprehensive settlement to lift the sanctions.

By the summer of 2001, back channel talks with Iraqi diplomats in New York were far advanced, under the watchful eye of the CIA. The peace framework developed from November 2000 through March 2002[10] created an option that defined what future U.S.-Iraqi relations might look like in a post-sanctions world— without penalizing the United States for supporting brutal U.N. sanctions for 13 years. It asked critical questions of what Baghdad would give the United States to prove its commitment to behave like a responsible neighbor in the region.

After 9/11, Baghdad brought these papers to the table.[11] Those papers potentially qualified as the most significant contribution to successful global anti-terrorism efforts by any nation in the world. Baghdad’s intelligence on terrorism was that good. Really, it was the best.

My U.S. Intelligence handlers had been informed immediately, which sort of explains how Israel would have heard the news.

And so a Mossad contact had phoned repeatedly while I was on a trip to Iraq, telling my housemate, Allison H— that they would deliver a “suitcase full of cash anywhere in the world to get those documents.”

“Susan’s traveling in Milan,” Allison told him.

“No. She’s not. She’s nowhere in Italy.”

“But how do you know that? Who are you? Why did she leave Italy?” Allison was floored.

“Tell her it’s Roy. If she calls, tell her we’ll meet her anywhere in the world. Any city at all. We will come to her. We’ll bring a suitcase full of cash.”

The truth of my travel itinerary to Baghdad had been concealed from all but a few of my friends in Washington. My CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz, received approximately 30 to 40 phone calls informing him of the dates of my trip, and nagging for payment for a series of outstanding debts, mostly connected to the Lockerbie Trial. Mind you, I was absolutely desperate to receive payment before my departure. I pushed hard to get it.

I also begged Dr. Fuisz to follow through on Congressional promises of payment for my extensive work on Lockerbie, tied to the hand over of the two Libyans. Leaders in Washington and London had made grand speeches at press conferences, promising spectacular rewards for my work. Unhappily for Assets, those promises were forgotten as soon as the TV cameras packed up. It was all an empty publicity stunt, a public fraud.

Only I was real flesh and blood, and I needed to get paid. I needed to buy groceries. It was Dr. Fuisz’s job as my handler to make that happen—which accounted for the high volume of phone calls before my trip to Baghdad. My urgency and desperation was so great that even the Israelis heard gossip about it. The Mossad acted to fill the gap, while the notorious Beltway Bandits in Washington poached off Black Budget earmarks for the 9/11 investigation.

And for good cause.

In Baghdad, I expected to meet top ranking Iraqi officials, in part to discuss the acquisition of those documents—which Iraq would only turn over to the FBI or Interpol—in other words, only credible law enforcement, no spooks. Still, I had the papers in my reach. That whet some appetites in the intelligence community. Just not appetites in the Bush Administration, unfortunately, though I did not understand that in March 2002.

And so an Israeli agent urged me to name my price. Any price.

I turned him down after my trip to Baghdad.

A suitcase full of cash… No matter how badly I needed that money— and I was hanging by a thread financially, at this point — I could never sell documents affecting national security to a foreign government. Cash transactions go on more frequently than anybody wants to admit. Not the sale of U.S. documents, which is strictly verboten and punishable by endless years in prison. Trafficking in foreign documents like those from Baghdad goes on all the time, however. To stay so pure requires a certain naiveté that clashes with the ruthless nature of intelligence-gathering. It reflected my own distaste for the Mossad, certainly. With regards to this indictment, however, it might have been my salvation.

In that holding cage I resolved that I would challenge the Court: If I would not accept a suitcase full of cash from a friendly ally like Israel—non traceable income with no taxes that might add up to a couple million dollars, if the Samsonite luggage was large enough – why oh why would I take $10,000 from the Iraqis—who were desperately cash poor under UN sanctions? Obviously I hadn’t, and no evidence suggested I had. Mercifully, Allison had no spook ties. Nobody could stop her from testifying.

Oh but pride goeth before the fall, doesn’t it? Israel would have taken the financial records on Al Qaeda. They would have paid any price for them. They would have shut down the financial pipeline to Osama’s network, and stopped the flow of funds used in other attacks today in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mombai, the Philippines and the Anbar Province of Iraq. I was just so pure that I could not allow myself to be “corrupted.”

I had no idea when I turned down Israel’s generosity that America would refuse to accept such critical intelligence. I could not fathom that Washington would reject documents that would pinpoint the inner workings of Osama bin Laden’s financial network, and incidentally show a pattern of Middle Eastern involvement in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1993 World Trade Center attack. It left me baffled and bewildered, more so because it was never explained.

The White House was more interested in launching war in Iraq than protecting our country from terrorism. They would not accept those papers strictly because they came from Baghdad—even though sources in Baghdad promised to deliver those papers promptly to an FBI Task Force, as good faith for its other commitments in our back-channel talks. The United States left that money in circulation.

Such calculated indifference, despite so much grandstanding after 9/11, broke my heart irrevocably. It qualified as massive public fraud, which endangers our country and the global community to this very day. In the end, that deception destroyed my relationship with the two men I loved and respected most in the world, Paul Hoven and Dr. Richard Fuisz, my “handlers” or “case officers,” who supervised my work with Libya and Iraq from 1993 to 2002. I would have done anything for either of those men. In the end, I could not understand why my successful efforts to win Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation cost me their friendship. And they were prohibited from explaining. In my heart, I have clung to the hope that they were just as perplexed and baffled as I was.

For truly I was the last to know.

Israel had always known.

And so the Mossad tried to acquire the papers directly from me.

How could Washington have acted so irresponsibly to shun Iraq’s cooperation, with such high stakes in play? In that tiny holding cage, I wanted to shout at the bailiffs, like I’d shouted to myself many times, stupefied by the loss of it.

How could they do such a terrible thing to all of us? They hurt everybody.

I dared not examine those questions too long. Self pity would not free me from that cage. I would have to hold myself together, and stay focused and calm, if I wanted to wrestle control of the situation. I would have to get over my emotional shock. I could beat the Justice Department, if I kept my wits about me.

I brought my mind back to the terrible document in front of me—the federal indictment that carried a maximum 25 year prison sentence.[12]

“Acting as an Unregistered Iraqi Agent.”[13]

Fuck you, motherfuckers!

Straight off the top, I had a worthy and reliable rebuttal to that accusation. For close to a decade, I had performed as a U.S. Asset covering Iraq at the United Nations, with oversight by U.S. Intelligence. I’d been recruited as a back-channel in the early 1990s, because of my anti-sanctions activism. They sent me to the Libya House in May, 1995 and the Iraqi Embassy in August, 1996. They supervised everything I did, debriefing every conversation after my visits to the Embassies.

We specialized in anti-terrorism, and my bona fides were some of the best. Our work in the 1990s set the bar awfully high, as a matter of fact. It would be fairly simple to prove, because I had played a public role in identifying my CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz as a crucial source of knowledge in the bombing of Pan Am 103. My efforts had been well documented during the trial of the two Libyans at Camp Zeist. Scottish attorneys for the Lockerbie Defense could testify to Dr. Fuisz’s intelligence background and our long-established working relationship together. My defense would be much simplified by that validation.

Wouldn’t it be fun to bust the Justice Department in court! I’d slam prosecutors to the wall for bringing such outrageous charges against me. “Foreign agent,” indeed. After all my contributions as an Asset, I would never be so generous as to accept a plea bargain in this case. We’d go to trial. I’d make the Prosecutor grovel with apologies to the Court and the media for daring to accuse me of criminal activity. They’d eat crow for this!

The whole thing struck me as foolish—except the holding cage felt awfully real.

And what was this accusation: “Conspiracy with Iraq’s Intelligence Service?”[14]

The indictment listed two co-defendants, Raed Noman Al-Anbuke and Wisam Noman Al-Anbuke. I’d never met either of them, nor heard their names spoken. Only later would I learn that the Anbuke brothers were also Assets covering the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations in New York. The sons of an Iraqi diplomat, they agreed to help the FBI track visitors to the Embassy. Their cooperation had been fairly innocuous, videotaping guests at Embassy events, nothing terribly dramatic.

The Justice Department had exploited them with promises that the brothers could stay in America after the invasion. When the FBI had no more use for the boys, they got arrested as “Iraqi Agents”—along with another brother and sister accused of no crimes at all. The whole family got thrown in prison at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, in attempt to coerce confessions from the brothers. The tactic of arresting innocent family members on the Patriot Act smacked of Saddam Hussein’s own brutality. It was fairly disgusting.

I could see now the Justice Department had made a clean sweep, arresting all three of us who covered Iraq at the United Nations before the War. It struck me as awfully convenient that those of us with birds-eye views inside the Embassy should all be gagged and silenced by phony indictments. Meanwhile, Washington officials would be liberated to bombard the air waves with false reports about the mediocrity of our Pre-War Intelligence reporting.

Such rubbish!

For my part, I had been a vocal anti-war activist, campaigning aggressively against the invasion on Capitol Hill and at the United Nations, with a trove of documents and FBI wire taps to prove it. For heaven’s sakes, I stood formally accused of telling U.S. officials that war would be disastrous. And yet in this New World Order, my indictment on the Patriot Act effectively gagged me from publicly disclosing any part of my warnings to White House officials and members of Congress. While I faced prosecution, those same leaders on Capitol Hill vigorously complained to the public that Assets like me had not come forward. Their verdict was unanimous. My failure to speak was responsible for the war-time catastrophe facing our nation. A very clever strategy! And totally dishonest.

My eye stuck on the first “overt act” of conspiracy. “On or about October 14, 1999, Susan Lindauer aka “Symbol Susan,” met with an officer of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in Manhattan.”[15]

“Symbol Susan?” I rolled my eyes. Somebody at the Justice Department had a sense of humor. I was a “symbol” alright. The Justice Department intended to scare the Intelligence Community out of criticizing the Republican leadership about its war policy. They made a bold example of me, flaunting the brutality that could crush anybody who dissented from Republicans on national security policy. Fine, then. Let them call me “Symbol Susan.” I’m made of tougher stuff than that. While they’re at it, I thought, let them explain in front of a jury how they scapegoated me for accurately forecasting the horrific consequences of this War. Let them show the world how they mistreated those of us who got it right.

Now that first “overt act of conspiracy” on October 14, 1999 intrigued me very much. It was so long ago, yet so definite and precise. For the first time that morning of my arrest, I smiled. Yes, I was still shell-shocked, but I began to see how easily the indictment could be torn apart. Shredded, really.

October 14, 1999. Those bastards got that date from me! I reported it to Paul Hoven, one of my intelligence handlers, when I warned him that Iraqi diplomats in New York had requested my help in locating a top Republican official to receive major financial campaign contributions for the 2000 Presidential election. Those poor bastards in Baghdad wanted to shower George Bush with campaign cash, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, in the hope that once victorious, he would reciprocate by lifting the sanctions.[16]

The sincerity of Iraq’s good will towards the Republican leadership poignantly illustrated the greatest tragedy of the War: Saddam’s government urgently desired to reconcile with the United States, and prove its loyalty as an ally to Washington. Baghdad yearned for days past, when Iraq had been strategically positioned as a buttress to Islamic radicalism in Iran. Then, Baghdad’s progressive views towards women and moderate Islamic attitudes had been highly prized. Alas, in October, 1999, U.S. Intelligence demanded that I block them. My DIA handler, Paul Hoven threatened to bomb Baghdad himself if Iraqi officials gave money to the Republican Party.[17] I described Iraq’s desire to contribute to Republican coffers in two letters to my second cousin, Andrew Card, Chief of Staff to President Bush, on March 1, 2001 and December 2, 2001. That explains how Republican leaders learned of Iraq’s attempt.

In my holding cage, I scorned them all. See you in court, Mr. Prosecutor! (Not likely!)

I scanned the indictment a little further—“On or about September 19, 2001, Susan Lindauer met with an officer of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in Manhattan.”[18]

That would be my part in the 9/11 investigation— and me a first-responder, like the fire fighters at Ground Zero, taking appropriate steps to secure Iraq’s cooperation with global anti-terrorism objectives.

Yet now the Justice Department declared it a crime to contribute to a terrorist investigation? And they dared to cite the U.S. Patriot Act in order to do it? Tell it to a jury, Mr. Prosecutor! While you’re at it, explain that to Congress!

My confidence grew bolder. I read other dates in January and February, 2002, when I met with Iraqi diplomats at a hotel close to the United Nations.[19] These were marathon sessions to finalize Iraq’s agreement to resume weapons inspections, according to rigorous standards for maximum transparency demanded by the United States, before the matter got handed over to the United Nations. The U.S. demanded that Baghdad agree to weapons inspections “with no conditions,” the operative phrase for “unconditional surrender.”[20] It was entirely legitimate on my part, supervised by my CIA contacts and designed to guarantee Iraq’s performance. Our back channel dialogue from November 2000 to March 2002 made weapons inspections a successful reality.[21]

Gleefully, I noticed that some of the dates in the indictment were flat wrong. I was confident that I could prove I was at my home in Maryland on several of those days.

As an Asset with a long history of close relationships to Iraqi diplomats, I had a serious advantage over the Justice Department. I understood how they’d jumped to the wrong conclusions. My diplomatic contact in New York had a girlfriend named “Susan,” a young American who worked at the United Nations. How delicious that the FBI should have gotten us confused! Apparently this Iraqi diplomat had shared some inexpensive lunches with this other Susan, while I was safely tucked 200 miles away in Maryland, out of danger of prosecution. Such poor intelligence! The claws of my Cheshire cat struck back. I would teach the FBI not to mess with Assets cooperating with other Agencies. They would never want to do this again.

And the coup de gras: “On or about January 8, 2003, Susan Lindauer delivered to the home of a United States Government official, a letter in which Lindauer conveyed her established access to, and contacts with, members of the Saddam Hussein regime, in an unsuccessful attempt to influence U.S. foreign policy.”

That was actually my 11th letter to Andy Card, Chief of Staff to President Bush. The same letter also got hand delivered to the home of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who lived next door to my CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz.

Interestingly, the indictment made no mention of the previous 10 letters to Andy Card, outlining the progress of our back channel talks on resuming the weapons inspections. Secretary Powell received several of those reports, as well.

But by God, the Justice Department finally got something right in its indictment! I had warned my second cousin, Andy Card—and Secretary Powell and members of Congress in both parties— that war with Iraq would prove disastrous for U.S. and Middle East security. Invading Iraq would be simple. Occupation would be brutal. There would be no roses in the streets for American soldiers. We would face an angry and tenacious enemy not afraid to die for God, in order to throw us out of their country. It would raise Iran as a regional power, and fire up an insurgency modeled on Al Qaeda. Here’s an excerpt from that letter to Andy Card that the Justice Department judged to contain treasonous ideology:

“Above all, you must realize that if you go ahead with this invasion, Osama bin Laden will triumph, rising from his grave of seclusion. His network will be swollen with fresh recruits, and other charismatic individuals will seek to build upon his model, multiplying those networks. And the United States will have delivered the death blow to itself. Using your own act of war, Osama and his cohort will irrevocably divide the hearts and minds of the Arab Street from moderate governments in Islamic countries that have been holding back the tide. Power to the people, what we call “democracy,” will secure the rise of fundamentalists.”[22]

Mind you, I wasn’t the only one offering up that analysis. Others in the intelligence community, amongst a few experts interviewed all too briefly on the 24 hour news channels, reached the same conclusions. Kudos to all! We might have been the minority, but we foresaw that Occupation would turn Arab opinion sharply against the U.S. The groundswell of popular support that America enjoyed after 9/11 would be thrown away. Once the international community witnessed the chaos of U.S. mis-management and the brutality at Abu Ghreib, we would be finished as the world’s favorite. The cycle of destruction and death in Iraq would prompt the Arab community to rank George Bush as a greater danger to Arab peoples than Osama bin Laden. Young jihadis fighting Occupation would emerge as heroes defending their peoples against western tyranny.

My letter to Andy Card would become a reality show on the nightly news, known as “Today in Iraq.”

And they wanted to punish me with prison for daring to tell America’s leaders the truth? For getting it right? I was “Symbol Susan,” indeed.

I could not have been prouder.

I had a broader perspective. I recognized the fear of my enemy. I saw their weakness. And with total clarity, I understood exactly what the Government was trying to hide.

This was no mistake.

What pundits could not know was that thirty days before my arrest, I had contacted the senior staffs of Senator John McCain, future Republican Presidential nominee from Arizona, and former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi.[23] I had formally requested to testify before the newly appointed Presidential Commission investigating Pre-War Intelligence. In fact, I’d practically demanded the right to testify.

With unbridled enthusiasm, I informed Senate staffers that I was one of the very few Assets “on the ground,” covering the Iraqi Embassy for seven years.

If Congress wanted to study Pre-War Intelligence, they had better talk to me.

From my perspective, Pre-War Intelligence looked pretty outstanding— at least the part that wasn’t politicized and sold as hamburger meat to the American people. I wanted to testify that real intelligence from the field appeared to have been deleted from Congressional talking points. Factions ruled the intelligence community, like any other politically active body, but the dynamic of internal squabbling and debate had been healthy and vigorous in the run up to War. Dissension and debate come with the territory—if you appreciate vitality in democracy.

Alas, Congress was singing from a different hymn book. Having forced a horribly unpopular war on the American people, they cringed from responsibility for their poor decision making. They vigorously battled to blame Assets for the War. Never mind that from what I sat—behind bars— there was almost no similarity in what Assets told the intelligence community, and what Congress and the White House told the American people that we told the intelligence community.

In February 2004, I was blissfully in the dark about that strategy to reinvent history. Hearing about the new blue ribbon commission on Pre-War Intelligence, I rushed to inform Senate staffers that I had a great deal to say.

FBI wire taps captured my phone calls to Senator Lott’s office, including conversations with his Chief of Staff and Legislative Director. What follows is the official FBI transcript for just one of those conversations on the evening of February 2, 2004, this one with Mitch Waldeman, the legislative aide covering Iraq—a few weeks before my arrest.[24]

WALDEMAN: “Senator Lott’s office. Mr. Waldeman speaking.”

(Followed by niceties of introduction)

LINDAUER: “Well, I have enormous respect for Senator Lott. I know you love this country. I am in possession of information which now is turning out to be maybe painful…, very painful to the Republican Party.”

WALDEMAN: “Hmph hmph, hmph hmph.”

LINDAUER: “That’s why I’m coming to you. Um, I was acting as a back-door between Iraq and the White House…”

WALDEMAN: “Hmph hmph.”

LINDAUER: “And I happen to know, for example, that Iraq offered for two years to allow the return of weapons inspectors. And after September 11th, for example, they offered to allow the FBI to come to Baghdad to interview human assets in the war on terrorism.”

WALDEMAN: “Hmph hmph”

LINDAUER: “Including al-Anai. And the White House refused to do that, and the White House perhaps misrepresented, ah, you know…”

WALDEMAN: “Hmph.”

LINDAUER: “Iraq was behaving like an innocent country that did not possess weapons of mass destruction.”

WALDEMAN: “Hmph hmph.”

LINDAUER: “And Iraq was very eager, ah, that Iraq believed it had information on Oklahoma City and that it was able to provide break-through information for us that they thought we would reward them for. Now I would not have been doing those interviews. The FBI would have been doing it.”

WALDEMAN: “Hmph hmph.”

LINDAUER: “So the FBI would have determined the real quality of the information…”

WALDEMAN: “Yeah.”

LINDAUER: “I’m not trying to say I would have been inserting myself into that. I had been involved in the Lockerbie negotiations, and that’s how I got involved in this.”

WALDEMAN: “Hmph hmph.”

LINDAUER: “Now the question is (slight laugh), and maybe this is something you need to think about. Am I overstating the importance of what I know? I don’t think I am.”

WALDEMAN: “Hmph hmph.”

LINDAUER: “I’m not eager to create a crisis for the sake of creating unhappiness.”

WALDEMAN: “Hmph hmph.”

LINDAUER: “Let’s not say crisis. Let’s not say unhappiness. At the same time, does Congress need to know this? Where are my obligations?”

WALDEMAN: “Right. Were you working for the Government at the time?”

LINDAUER: “I’m not on the Secrets Act. However I have been an Asset.”

WALDEMAN: “Okay. Right. Oh my.”

LINDAUER: “On the other hand, this was not a failure of U.S. Intelligence.”

WALDEMAN: “Right.”

LINDAUER: “And it’s being portrayed that way.”

WALDEMAN: “Let me ask you. Who else have you spoken with?”

LINDAUER: “I called Mr. Gotschall first. (another senior staffer in Senator Lott’s office). It’s because of my enormous and profound respect for you, for your office and your integrity and also that you are concerned about National Security. You know, Presidential politics is…”

WALDEMAN: “Right.”

LINDAUER: “You know.”

WALDEMAN: “Messy.”

LINDAUER: “It’s messy.”

WALDEMAN: “(Laughs). Right.”

LINDAUER: “And I’ll tell you something else, Andy Card is the person who received all this information. He is my cousin. So you can be sure he got it.”

WALDEMAN: “Oh my.”

LINDAUER: “You can be sure he got it.”

WALDEMAN: “Okay.”

LINDAUER: “So we can’t say that the President didn’t know because…”

WALDEMAN: “Right. How would you recommend we approach this dialogue?”

LINDAUER: “I was hoping you could tell me.”

LINDAUER: “Um, I will tell you something else, that Iraq, right before the War, was also offering Democratic reform.”

WALDEMAN: “Hmph hmph.”

LINDAUER: “They were offering to hold elections. The Iranians had made a statement. They were floating an idea that had come from the Iraqis. To allow the United Nations to monitor free elections in Iraq with free opposition parties, free opposition newspapers, ah, free opposition headquarters.”

WALDEMAN: “Yeah.”

LINDAUER: “You can argue whether this stuff is good or not, but we always were on the right track. I helped negotiate that, and the things we were negotiating were good things.”

WALDEMAN: “And you thought that they were substantive, obviously?”

LINDAUER: “They were substantive.”

WALDEMAN: “Yeah.”

LINDAUER: “And there was also, ah, U.S. oil.”

WALDEMAN: “Hmph hmph.”

LINDAUER: “Iraq offered to give the United States the LUKoil contract. The United States could have had all the oil that it wanted.”

WALDEMAN: “Right.”

LINDAUER: “It points to a vendetta.”

WALDEMAN: “Hmph hmph.”

LINDAUER: “An obsession with going after Saddam Hussein and the problem is, is that all the real criteria for the war fell apart.”

WALDEMAN: “Hmph hmph. Hmph hmph. Do you think there’s an opportunity now that the President has called for a commission that some of this will come out?”

LINDAUER: “No.”

WALDEMAN: “Part of that?”

LINDAUER: “They’ll absolutely never let this out. And see, that’s the problem. I feel an obligation to do something. It seems obvious I have to tell. I’m just not somebody who ever reacts on a knee-jerk basis.”

WALDEMAN: “Well I appreciate you calling. I mean this is (sighs). I guess I would say that just over the course of the past year, I’ve actually heard bits and pieces of similar–”

LINDAUER: “Hmph hmph.”

WALDEMAN: “Similar things.”

LINDAUER: “Probably things that I had done (unintelligible).”

WALDEMAN: “Ah, maybe.”

LINDAUER: “Yeah.”

WALDEMAN: “Maybe. Bits and pieces and ah…Some of it actually. I mean there was some public discussion of on-going negotiations. There was never really any, any public debate or discussion over the substance of what they potentially led to and…”

LINDAUER: “Hmph hmph.”

WALDEMAN: “And so it, I mean, I think there was a general sense that some of that was going on, certainly was going in the past administration, as well.”

LINDAUER: “Yes.”

WALDEMAN: “Let me talk with Bill and give you a call.”

LINDAUER: “Okay, thank you.”

Hanging up the phone that evening on February 2, I felt excited. It appeared that Senator Lott’s staff probably had received debriefings as our back channel talks progressed on resuming the weapons inspections. Waldeman had some knowledge of the range of Iraq’s peace offerings. Critically, he admitted knowing that our talks originated during the Clinton Administration, which betrayed long term awareness of the project.[25]

Quite rightly I believed I had set a chain of events in motion on Capitol Hill. I envisioned Congressional staff rushing to get subpoenas for my testimony. At worst, I expected to be forced to give closed door testimony, which would strategically restrict public access to knowledge about our comprehensive peace framework before the War. That irked me. I had not decided how I would handle that.

I was right about the subpoenas, for sure. Within a couple of days of my conversations with senior staff for Senator Lott and Senator McCain, Republican leaders hurriedly convened a grand jury in New York, rushing to subpoena witnesses so they could indict me before I started talking to the media.

It’s kind of funny, if you’ve got a sick sort of humor.

The rest, as they say, is history. On March 11, 2004, I got arrested as an “Iraqi Agent.”[26]

FBI Special Agent Chmiel told me the grand jury debated my charges for a full month before handing down my indictment. Ergo, by the FBI’s own admission, my Asset file got turned over to the grand jury just a few days after my request to testify at Congressional hearings.

For one brief moment in that cage, I sympathized with the Republican predicament. If I had invented such a fabulous lie to justify going into a disastrous War, I would not want anyone to know the truth, either. I especially would not want anyone to know how easily the War could have been avoided altogether. Nor would I want voters to learn about the failures of Republican terrorism policy, thrown up as a bulwark to appease Americans for the cock-up in Iraq.

I would be afraid of me, too.

By this time I was composed. I had my legal strategy mapped out, with a list of witnesses sketched on the back of my indictment.

I vowed to myself that I would fight to the end.

I almost felt sorry for them.

CHAPTER 2:

ADVANCE WARNINGS
ABOUT 9/11

“Like Desperados Waiting for a Train…”
—Guy Clarke

I was locked in a holding cage, and the truth was locked up with me.

It wasn’t just Iraq that frightened them. Our team also gave advance warning about a 9/11 style of attack throughout the summer of 2001. And I carried the message.

That scared them a helluva lot more

I thought back to August, 2001 and the crucial weeks before the September 11 strike.

I was talking by phone to Dr. Richard Fuisz, my CIA handler, about Robert Mueller’s nomination to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[27] Our conversation burned my heart as I sat shackled in that tiny cell, waiting for a Judge to throw my bail like I was some criminal.

Bastards.

“There’s never been a terrorist investigation that sonovabitch didn’t throw!” It was the day of Mueller’s Senate confirmation hearings. I could not know how accurately I had just nailed the mark. Or that I would be a primary target of the FBI’s next terrorism cover up!

“Lockerbie, yeah.” Dr. Fuisz agreed with me. “Mueller changed directions when Congress wanted to salvage Syria’s reputation and shift the blame to Libya.”[28] (Mueller headed the Justice Department’s Criminal Division during the Pan Am 103 investigation, a.k.a Lockerbie.[29]) Dr. Fuisz and I believed that Libya was wrongly blamed for the bombing that exploded over the roofs of Scotland, killing 270 people.

“What else?”

“The Oklahoma City bombing. Isn’t Mueller one of the key figures who decided Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols acted alone?[30] We all know that’s crap. Why would anyone reward McVeigh’s megalomania as the sole conspirator? Mueller is the Arlen Specter of anti-terrorism.”

“Mueller plays to the politicians. That’s why his nomination will sail through Congress.” Dr. Fuisz told me.

Admittedly, most Americans would vigorously object to characterizing Mueller as a shrewd political animal. My views are frequently more idiosyncratic than the general public. However, this conversation about Mueller’s confirmation hearing accounts for why I recall the timing of events so precisely, and with such clarity, in the weeks before 9/11. I can pinpoint my actions to the day of the week because of this hearing.

With regards to the Oklahoma City Bombing, Mueller would reopen the investigation of a possible broader conspiracy in 2005. I could not know that in August, 2001.[31]

“You want me to crash the nomination hearings this afternoon? Lay a little truth on Congress?”

“No. No, it’s too late for that.”

“Too late for the hearings? Or too late to stop the attack?”

“Both, I think.”

“You think it’s that soon???”

“I think it could be.”

It was the 2nd of August, 2001. I was aghast.

The phone got quiet for a moment.

“We can’t do nothing, Richard.”

“Of course not.”

His snappish reply spoke volumes about the depths of his concern. We’d worked together for seven years by this time, and we could read each other without speaking, if necessary. It would all be communicated in our eyes, messages between us that nobody else could decipher. According to Dr. Fuisz’s way of thinking, anger gained power and force as leverage, when it was controlled and focused. I believed him. He had dealt with some of the most dangerous men on the planet. My relationship with my other handler, Paul Hoven was much more explosive. He pummeled his opponents with expletives. Paul carried a well of rage in his heart from Vietnam. And I was a peace activist turned Asset, covering Iraq and Libya at the United Nations in New York.

It made for some interesting strategy meetings. But Paul and Dr. Fuisz were like older brothers to me. They might growl at me, or treat me like a kid sister who got troublesome. But they never let me down. They shared the jubilation of my victories. They pushed me back if I veered down the wrong track.

But until September 11 broke our hearts, we were all incredibly close.

“I’m going to New York. I’ll ask the Iraqis again. I’ll push them hard, Richard.”

“What? When are you going?” Alarm saturated his words.

“I’m going this weekend.”

“No, no, no. This weekend? Don’t go to New York, Susan. Don’t go.”

“It’s just the weekend. The day after tomorrow. I’ll be up and back.”

“God damnit. I don’t want you to go— I don’t think that’s wise.”

“I’ve got to make one last trip. I’ve been pushing Iraq all summer, Richard. I’ve got to find out if they heard anything from Baghdad. After that, I won’t go back.”

“Yeah, don’t. I don’t want you going back again.”

“And for God’s sakes, Susan, don’t stay overnight. This situation is very dangerous. Get in and get out. Speaking of Mueller’s confirmation—what if this happens before he’s confirmed? There might not be an FBI Director when this goes down. Jesus, what would that mean?”

“You think this attack might happen before he’s confirmed? Oh fuck. That would be like, the end of August? Or September?”

“Yeah, it’s definitely possible.”

“Richard— Am I to understand that you believe this attack is “imminent?”

“Yes, I do.”

“What are we going to do? We’ve got to tell somebody.”

“I don’t know yet.”

I could feel that tension again. It meant he was thinking. And frustrated.

“I’ll come by Monday (August 6th) as soon as I get back from New York. We’ll figure it out. OK?”

“Good. OK Listen to me. I’ve told you before. We’re looking for anything at this point. Even something very small. They might drop something that appears totally irrelevant from where you’re sitting. You might not even understand what it means.”

“I got it. I got it.”

“No, listen to me. Don’t filter this stuff. Don’t wait to see if you can confirm it. Give it to me. We’ll confirm it. Just get it. Don’t try to figure it out by yourself.”

“I understand.”

Our anxiety had been growing since the previous summer. The Lockerbie Trial at a special international court at Camp Zeist in 2000 got us thinking about what the next terrorist strike would look like. The bombings of Pan Am 103 on December 21, 1988, which killed 270 people, and UTA (French airlines) in September, 1989 had been the last attacks involving airplanes before September 11, 2001. Throughout the Trial of the two Libyans, our team worried openly that the pathetic display by Scottish Prosecutors would inspire a sort of “tribute attack” to the success of Lockerbie.

The problem is that while most Americans refuse to accept Libya’s innocence, terrorist groups have always known the truth. And they can’t figure out why the United States has been protecting the real culprits.

Famed terrorist Abu Nidal freely proclaimed his role in the bombing of Pan Am 103,[32] on behalf of the Fateh Revolutionary Council. He steadfastly disputed that the two Libyans executed the attack. Translated as “father of the struggle,” Abu Nidal founded one of the first and most feared global terrorist organizations committed to hijacking airplanes and extorting multi-million dollar ransoms. Nidal was credited with launching terrorist strikes in 20 countries that killed or wounded 900 people over two decades.[33] He joined the civil war in Beirut in the 1980s, teaming up with Islamic Jihad (later known as Hezbollah) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command (PFLP-GC). After Beirut, he holed up in Libya until 1998.

After his death in a shoot out with Iraqi Intelligence in Baghdad in July 2002,[34] there was much talk of Nidal’s confession to the Lockerbie conspiracy. His family and friends acknowledged his central role in the bombing of Pan Am 103, and expressed regret that an innocent Libyan had got convicted for Nidal’s crime.

Britain and the U.S. have refused to accept Nidal’s confession. The question is why?

The real masterminds of the Lockerbie bombing were professionals, not baggage handlers or airplane ticket agents like Libya’s two men, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fahima. They played high stakes terror games at the master level through a vast and highly dangerous network of accomplices. Blaming Megrahi, because of prejudice towards his Libyan nationality, was absurd and racist. It surprised nobody when his so-called accomplice, Fahima, got acquitted in January, 2001. The only shocker was that Megraghi did not go free with him.

Scottish prosecutors made such a poor showing at Trial that the failure of the Scottish Court was gossip throughout the Arab world.

In Dr. Fuisz’s opinion, the politicization of Lockerbie and the weakness of the Court’s forensic evidence carried much greater hazards. In the months before 9/11, Dr. Fuisz frequently bemoaned how the United States had seriously damaged its credibility in terrorist circles, as a consequence of Lockerbie. Terrorist groups now questioned if, for all the mighty resources of U.S. Intelligence, the United States was too stupid to catch the real terrorists. Or else the U.S. was afraid, because the real terrorists are “too big.”

Either of those beliefs would create a powerful and irresistible provocation for the upcoming generation of jihadis, Dr. Fuisz argued. Younger terrorists watching the Lockerbie Trial would be inspired to launch some sort of tribute to the heroes who came before, and were too great to take down. Tribute attacks are fairly common in those circles. Dr. Fuisz feared this judicial fiasco would be the ultimate temptation.

On that basis, our team mapped out an extreme threat scenario that the next major attack would most likely involve airplane hijackings or airplane bombings.

On August 2, 2001, during Robert Mueller’s confirmation hearing, Dr. Fuisz and I suspected our worst strike scenario was about to hit the mark with devastating accuracy.

None of us wanted to be right. We fervently believed, however, that a major terrorist conspiracy was actively in play.

I remember it all so vividly, like a home movie playing before my eyes, winding back and starting again. So painful to watch. So disappointing in its aftermath.

In April, 2001 I received a summons to visit Dr. Fuisz at his office in Great Falls, Virginia. We met weekly anyway. On this occasion, he rang my home and asked me to come straight away. He inquired when I planned my next trip to the United Nations in New York. He wanted to talk before I left, and he wanted me to go soon.

My back channel to Iraq and Libya existed to communicate messages back and forth from Washington, since those countries had no official ties with the United States. In our unique capacity, my team kept a special line open for intelligence on terrorist activities that Tripoli or Baghdad might uncover, and need to share with the West. Even under sanctions and global isolation, the importance of intelligence to block terrorism was recognized as a necessary exemption to U.S. foreign policy. I was designated as the covert recipient for such communications, heavily supervised by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency.

And so I visited Dr. Fuisz immediately. He instructed me to demand that Libya and Iraq must hand over any intelligence regarding conspiracies involving airplane hijackings or airplane bombings. He insisted that I warn Iraqi diplomats that Baghdad would suffer a major military offensive— worse than anything Iraq had suffered before— if the U.S. discovered Saddam’s government had possessed such intelligence and failed to notify us through my back channel.

Admittedly, I was reluctant to deliver such a harsh message. I have always been an anti-war activist. My opposition to violence on both sides accounted for my success in dealing with the Arabs. I don’t issue threats, only appeals to avoid confrontation and aggression. So on my next trip to New York, I soft pedaled Dr. Fuisz’s message. I asked diplomats to send cables to Baghdad and Tripoli, keeping an eye out for possible airplane attacks. But I made no threats of violent reprisal against either nation.

When I got home to Washington, I met with Dr. Fuisz, who demanded to know how Iraq particularly responded to his threat. I had to admit that I stopped short of his full message. But I assured him that I had requested their cooperation.

At that point, Dr. Fuisz became enraged. In all of our years together, I recall no other time that he lost his temper and shouted at me. He stormed up and down the room, letting loose a tirade punctuated with colorful obscenities too profane and violent to repeat. Dr. Fuisz demanded that I must return to New York immediately. I must not be polite or kind. I must tell Iraqi diplomats exactly what he said. “The United States would bomb Baghdad back into the Stone Age, worse than they’ve ever been bombed before, if they discovered a terrorist conspiracy involving airplane hijackings or airplane bombings and failed to notify us. They would lose everything. We would destroy them.”

Except Richard was more anatomically descriptive.

There was one more point that Dr. Fuisz was adamant I must communicate: “Those threats originated at the highest levels of government,” and I quote, “above the CIA Director and the Secretary of State.”

Those were his exact words. And it was not ambiguous. It could only mean President George Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Dr. Fuisz was not pacified until I promised to deliver his message with all the force that he communicated. He expressed tremendous satisfaction that I would make sure Iraq understood the warning came from the CIA itself—not from him or me— backed by military and political forces at the highest levels of government “above the CIA Director and Secretary of State.”

The highest geo-political stakes were in play.

Right then I recognized that Richard was motivated by more than a desire to check our trap lines on the terrorist circuit.

Something was moving.

In late April, 2001, Dr. Fuisz was already onto it. He fired back proactively to discourage Arab governments from supporting the conspiracy. Without knowing more, I was determined to help. And so, in May, 2001, I returned to New York and delivered that message exactly as he dictated.

Tension built throughout the summer of 2001. Practically every week, we discussed the 9/11 strike. Only now the threat scenario became more detailed. By June, our focus turned to the World Trade Center.

It sounds uncanny, but our team understood exactly what was going to happen. Our belief in that target was very precise. We believed the attack would finish the cycle started by Ramzi Youssef in the 1993 World Trade Center attack. We fully expected the modus operenda would be airplanes seized by hijackers and used as trajectory weapons to strike the Towers— We also discussed the possibility that a miniature thermo-nuclear device might raze the buildings. That’s why Dr. Fuisz wanted me to stay out of New York. Nobody worried that I might get hurt if the Towers collapsed. My handlers worried about exposure to military grade contaminants in the dust or air, including possible radiation.

Exactly how Dr. Fuisz knew so much, I cannot say. Throughout June and July of 2001, he continued to prod and push hard for any fragment of actionable intelligence from Iraq. After our first conversation in April, he never asked about Libya at all.

Over and over again, Dr. Fuisz demanded that I threaten Baghdad—not Libya— if the strike occurred. There’s no question that months before 9/11, a cabal of pro-War neo-Conservatives at the top of the government was already prepping the Intelligence Community to accept War with Iraq in the aftermath of the strike.

As of May, 2001, Iraqi diplomats had an immediate solution. From the opening days of the Bush Administration, Baghdad had agreed to allow the FBI to send an Anti-terrorism Task Force into Iraq—to monitor radical Jihadis that might attempt to exploit Baghdad’s weakened central authority to launch terrorist strikes on its neighbors. The CIA made this demand through my back channel following the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, in October, 2000. Iraq agreed to show good will towards Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

See how badly CNN and Fox News got it wrong?

When confronted with the 9/11 scenario, Iraq placated the U.S. masterfully: “Perhaps this would be the appropriate moment for the FBI to start its work—” the diplomat suggested. “If the United States is very worried, the FBI should come right away.”

The world knows that never happened. At the time, I made excuses that the newly ensconced Bush Administration was still getting its footing on foreign policy. Over the summer, Iraq continued to invite the FBI, as U.S. warnings persisted. And I expressed frustration for the slow learning curve of the Bush Administration, which felt unnatural after eight years of rapid and decisive policy-making by the Clinton White House.

The 1990s have been called the Halycon Years of U.S Intelligence. From my perspective as an Asset, the arrival of George Bush felt like driving a high performance Maserati after some fool pours lower grade oil into the engine— and it starts clunking and sputtering and seizing up. You don’t know if the car will keep running until the mechanic’s ready to work on the problem— or if the car will die on the street.

That was Republican Policy on anti-terrorism before 9/11.

Our problem was the CIA had to keep driving that car no matter what. And we had to block terrorist threats against the U.S, regardless of whether the White House was responsive to warnings about those threats— or not.

Before 9/11, the answer was “not.” I doubt I was alone in feeling frustrated.

Throughout June and July, Dr. Fuisz beseeched me not to filter intelligence, or test its accuracy before informing him. During our meetings, he would painstakingly explain how urgently he needed to collect even fragments of actionable intelligence, whether any of it made sense to me or not. He begged me to hold nothing back. He appeared to be frantically searching for anything at all to pre-empt the strike. In fairness, this faction of CIA and Defense Intelligence urgently wanted to block 9/11.

Our threat of retaliation against Iraq struck me as a high stakes gambit, however. I’d cultivated diplomats at the Iraqi Embassy since August, 1996. These were professionally productive relationships that I would not have destroyed for any reason. Concurrently, our back channel was working to build a comprehensive framework that would secure all U.S. objectives in any post-sanctions period. That included a hefty commitment for Baghdad’s support of global anti-terrorism efforts.

Memories of it break my heart still.

On August 2nd, I reassured Dr. Fuisz again.

“I understand what you guys want. I’ve been pushing Iraqi diplomats all summer for intelligence on this attack, Richard. They know what’s up?”

“Tell those fuckers again. They’ve never been bombed the way we’re going to bomb them. Understand? If they know something, they’d better tell us. Or we will fuck them. They’ve never been fucked like that before. Make that clear.”

I promised. August 4th would be my last trip to the Iraqi Embassy and the Libya House before that fateful September morning.

Afterwards, I would ache wondering if I had misinterpreted a subtle cue. If I had pushed my contacts hard enough. If I could have pushed harder for Republicans to get off the dime and send the FBI into Baghdad. Above all, I would regret that I did not go back to New York after early August. For years, I would regard the 9/11 strike as my personal failure. On many black nights I would question if Paul and Richard thought so, too. Those doubts would torment me, as I suspect in my heart it tormented them.

For you see, stopping that attack was my job. I’d been a back channel for anti-terrorism intelligence for years. That was the biggest part of my life.

And this time I could not do it.

To all the families, I am very sorry. But Americans would be wrong to conclude that our team did not take that threat very, very seriously. Throughout the summer of 2001, ferreting out actionable intelligence to stop that hijacking conspiracy was our greatest priority.

To appreciate the gravity with which I regarded Dr. Fuisz’s instructions and paranoia, you must first understand his CIA credentials.

As a matter of policy, the CIA never acknowledges the identity of its officers. However I received an extensive debriefing on Dr. Fuisz’s background from my other handler, Paul Hoven, at the time of our introduction in September, 1994. If we were going to work together, I had a legitimate “need to know” whom I was dealing with. Over the next eight years, his bona fides got corroborated repeatedly by my Libyan and Arab sources— and by Dr. Fuisz himself.

Much of his actions in the Middle East were shrouded in secrecy. However, his own curriculum vitae provided some tantalizing clues.

His company, Folkon Ltd. claimed to “perform diverse services in the Middle East, including Syria and the U.S.S.R. from 1980-1990.”[35]

A second off-shore company called Oil Field Services, Ltd., based in Bermuda, “supplied manpower and technical assistance to the Syrian oil industry from 1989-1990, with offices in Damascus, Syria.”[36]

And finally, Medcom Inc. founded by Dr. Fuisz in 1970 “specialized in medical military training throughout the Middle East and North Africa.” Medcom “trained thousands of Arab nationals in professional skills,” mostly in Saudi Arabia.[37]

Scratch that surface and Dr. Fuisz had been a top CIA operative in Syria and Lebanon in the 1980s, something he admitted proudly. In private conversations, he described how his team in Beirut coordinated the hostage rescue of AP journalist, Terry Anderson; Anglican emissary, Terry Waite et al in Lebanon. It was Dr. Fuisz’s team that located the make-shift prison cells in the back alleys of Beirut, and called in the Delta Force for a daring rescue. Outrageously the rescue got postponed for several months in the original “October Surprise—” until weeks before the 1988 Presidential election of George H. Bush, Sr. Dr. Fuisz never forgave the CIA for using the hostages in Lebanon as trump cards for politicians in Washington.

In the urgent search to locate the hostages’ whereabouts, Dr. Fuisz had become a first-hand protagonist to the events building up to the bombing of Pan Am 103.[38]

The CIA fought desperately to block his testimony in the Lockerbie Trial. As a compromise, when Dr. Fuisz gave his deposition at the Federal Courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S. District Judge White sealed his testimony.[39] The Lockerbie Defense was barred from revealing any part of his deposition inside the United States. It could only be read overseas.[40]

Even so, Scottish solicitors were barred from reviewing the deposition in total, because parts of it are double-sealed. What’s more the Court took the unusual step of prohibiting U.S. attorneys who conducted the deposition in Virginia from conveying critical information of what the double-seal contains to their Scottish colleagues. Thus, Scottish solicitors have no idea of the value of Dr. Fuisz’s testimony. Only a Scottish Judge can unlock it and review the entire document.

And they should. Because the double seal contains the names of 11 men who participated in the Lockerbie conspiracy.

Why the cloak and daggers? Because a few weeks after we met in 1994, Dr. Fuisz was declared legally out of reach on national security matters. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued a definitive court ruling on October 14, 1994 in Washington, DC: “The claims of state secrets privilege asserted by the United States [regarding Dr. Fuisz] shall be and is hereby UPHELD.”[41]

“Information described in the United States’ ex parte, in camera classified submission shall not be subject to discovery or disclosure by the parties during all proceedings in this action, and shall be excluded from evidence at trial.”

“As the United States deems necessary, U.S. attorneys may attend all depositions and make objections as necessary to protect national security information.”[42]

“Ex parte in camera” applies to an extraordinary category of evidence beyond the sight of defense counsel, presented only for the Judge’s eyes. The defense attorney is not entitled to know that it exists, and cannot dispute any part of its contents. In the early 1990s before the Patriot Act, this special classification was rarely invoked.

Judge Lamberth’s ruling forever empowered the U.S. government to bar Dr. Fuisz’s testimony on any criminal or civil matter, by invoking the Secrets Act. Only the President of the United States could override the Director of the CIA, in a written memorandum to compel Dr. Fuisz to reveal his knowledge and sources on matters linked to national security, large or small.[43] Neither the Secretary of State nor any member of Congress could override that provision. Even if Dr. Fuisz himself desired to contribute to an official inquiry, he would be prohibited from doing so.

That would apply to Lockerbie, to any 9/11 inquiry — and to my own criminal case as an accused “Iraqi Agent.”

Word of Dr. Fuisz’s first-hand knowledge of Pan Am 103—and his strange inability to testify— got reported in Scotland’s Sunday Herald at the height of the Lockerbie Trial, when Scottish families recognized the Crown’s lack of evidence against Libya, and started demanding real answers.

In May, 2000, Scottish journalist, Ian Ferguson asked Dr. Fuisz directly if he worked for the CIA in Syria in the 1980s.[44] His response was less than subtle. “That is not an issue I can confirm or deny. I am not allowed to speak about these issues. In fact, I can’t even explain to you why I can’t speak about these issues.’ Fuisz did, however, say that he would not take any action against a newspaper which named him as a CIA agent.”

The verdict was unanimous among my Arab contacts: Dr. Fuisz was a master spy. My own interactions with Dr. Fuisz affirmed his superior intelligence background. So when he commanded that I must compel my Iraqi diplomatic sources to divulge any intelligence of an emerging conspiracy involving airplane hijackings and some sort of aerial strike on the World Trade Center, I took his request very seriously. I had good reason to trust him.

As it happens, there were extraordinary reasons for Dr. Fuisz’s concern. The “chatter” between terrorist cells monitored by the National Security Agency reached unprecedented levels by May 2001, which accelerated until September 11, 2001.[45] In mid June, an Al Qaeda video became public, in which Osama bin Laden announced, “Your brothers in Palestine are waiting for you. It’s time to penetrate America and Israel, and hit them where it hurts the most.”[46]

July turned out to be pivotal for the 9/11 warnings.

On July 10, 2001, CIA Director, George Tenet, was so alarmed by a classified debriefing he received on the terrorist threat from Al Qaeda that he marched straight to the White House. A top CIA analyst suggested a major attack was coming in the next few weeks, but cited no specific date. To his credit, Tenet wasted no time providing that information to Condoleezza Rice in writing. He also brought along one of the CIA officers tracking bin Laden, who gave Rice and others an oral debriefing.[47] Former Anti-Terrorism Czar, Richard Clarke strongly endorsed the importance of the report. The CIA officer who gave the briefing said the nation had to “go on a war footing now.”

More remarkably, the Foreign Minister of the Taliban provided a direct warning to Washington that Bin Laden was preparing to launch a huge strike on the United States.[48] Prior to 9/11, the Taliban received financial support from the U.S. to destroy Afghanistan’s poppy crop, which supplies 85 percent of the world’s opium and heroin. Their warning should have been treated with utmost seriousness.

Though short on actionable intelligence, U.S. Intelligence was onto the 9/11 plot. Friendly foreign intelligence agencies relayed serious warnings of a late summer, early autumn attack that would utilize airplanes as weapons to attack targets inside the United States. Israel, Jordan and Egypt, all long time collaborators with US intelligence, provided similar warnings of an imminent terrorist strike four weeks prior to 9/11.

On September 7, 2001, French intelligence sent an urgent message, of an imminent attack using airplanes as weapons inside the United States.[49]

The German press reported that 206 international telephone calls were made from the 9/11 hijackers prior to the attack. The NSA has refused to provide detailed list of the calls, but they were reportedly made to Saudi Arabia and Syria.[50]

Perhaps the most damning indication of prior knowledge about a major upcoming terrorist strike came out of the State Department’s regular warning system to American citizens traveling overseas.

On Friday, Sept. 7, the State Department issued a worldwide alert— “American citizens may be the target of a terrorist threat from extremist groups with links to [Osama bin Laden’s] al Qaeda organization.” That report cited information gathered in May, 2001 as suggesting an attack was imminent. It warned “individuals in Al Qaeda have not distinguished between official and civilian targets.”[51]

As a senior intelligence operative with a specialty in Middle Eastern terrorism since the 1980s, Dr. Fuisz enjoyed privileged access to that sort of raw intelligence data.

What was missing was actionable intelligence to prevent the attack— who were the terrorists, how many, which airport, what airlines, what flight numbers.

Just a name. A number. A fragment. All summer Dr. Fuisz pleaded with me exhaustively to bring him anything at all. He swore that if I could get it, the NSA and CIA would bust overtime to flesh it out, so that we could stop the attack.

By August, that hunt was becoming frenetic. I have physical proof that our team was not the only one ferreting for intelligence the weekend of August 4-5. During a pre-release book tour in Japan, I spoke extensively about our team’s aggressive actions in the critical week after Robert Mueller’s Senate nomination hearing on August 2nd.

When I returned from Japan, I was astounded to discover the original newsprint edition of the Wall Street Journal dated July 30, 2001— pinned on my desk by a rose quartz paper weight next to my computer, so that it would not get thrown away. The faded 10 year old newspaper was addressed to my boss at the consulting job I held during the summer of 2001. That’s where I phoned Dr. Fuisz on the day of Robert Mueller’s nomination hearing.

Weeks before 9/11, somebody had gone to the trouble of tracking down where my phone call to Dr. Fuisz originated. That individual “visited” my office, no doubt seeking any scribbles or papers that I might have left around my desk, which might have provided some clue what our team had discovered about the 9/11 conspiracy so far.

It’s standard practice to grab a newspaper off a desk in situations like that, as an accurate snapshot with the company’s name, address and date. It’s like a “proof of life.”

Yes, it indicates that another intelligence team “picked the locks” to get into the office. There’s a time when that sort of thing is necessary. And this would be it!

The original Wall Street Journal was tucked on my desk too late for inclusion in the first release of Extreme Prejudice. I am revealing it now, because I have been deeply moved by the public’s desire to learn as much of the events before 9/11 as possible.

That Wall Street Journal, dated July 30, 2001, could only have been grabbed the week of Robert Mueller’s nomination hearing. The newspaper would have been tossed out weeks before the 9/11 investigation kicked off. That’s physical proof that other intelligence teams were aggressively hunting for intelligence to block 9/11, like us. And I’m grateful for that. Our team urgently desired as much help as we could get.

This was a race to stop violence against the United States—not a competition. All of us gravely worried about what was coming. Our teams are structured to function independently and overlap, but (most of the time) we’re on the same side, with the same shared goals.

On that note, I take umbrage at the lies invented by Neo-Conservatives on Capitol Hill after 9/11. The Intelligence Community was accustomed to functioning on a superior and pro-active footing. Until Republicans gutted the intelligence community to impose political conformity in the cover ups of 9/11 and Iraq, U.S. Intelligence had rapid fire reflexes, and a reputation for attracting brilliant case officers. These were creative strategists and problem solvers. They were the best and the brightest.

Before 9/11, the Intelligence Community was at the top of its game.

My Iraqi sources just did not have actionable intelligence. On my last trip to New York on August 4, 2001, diplomats threw up their hands. They’d been warned of the consequences for months if something awful happened. Retribution would be swift and severe. None of that changed the hard truth. Iraq had nothing to give us.

In Baghdad’s defense, diplomats protested how the U.S. would demand cooperation, yet take no action to send the FBI. If the CIA thought the conspiracy was real, we had options. Failure to move forward exposed a dysfunction among Washington’s new Republican leadership. Alas, the rest of us had no choice but to work within those limitations.

But categorically, that was not—I repeat not—the CIA’s fault.

At our next face meeting on August 6, 2001, Dr. Fuisz was grim.

Something would have to be done. We needed help.

Locked in the holding cage of the Baltimore Federal Courthouse—an accused “Iraqi Agent—” I recalled with grief and fury what Dr. Fuisz and I hashed out.

Above all, I recalled that on August 6— at the same hour on the same day, down at Crawford Ranch in Texas, President Bush was handed a memo from the CIA outlining the severe threat of a terrorist attack by Osama bin Laden’s network on the United States. I’m told President Bush tossed aside the CIA’s Daily Briefing Memo: “Well now, you’ve covered your ass. Let’s go shoot some golf balls.”

I’m told a video captured the Crawford meeting for posterity. But ten years later I cannot bear to watch it. The laziness and indifference of President Bush and other White House officials, while the rest of us raced to stop 9/11, enrages me to this day.

Former Clinton advisor, Sidney Blumenthal said, “[Richard] Clarke urgently tried to draw the attention of the Bush administration to the threat of Al-Qaeda. They do not want it to be known what happened on August 6, 2001. It was on that day that George W. Bush received his last, and one of the few, briefings on terrorism. He told (Clarke) that he didn’t want to be briefed on this again, even though Clarke was panicked about the alarms he was hearing, regarding potential attacks. Bush was blithe, indifferent, ultimately irresponsible... The public has a right to know what happened on August 6, what Bush did, what Condi Rice did, what all the rest of them did, and what Richard Clarke’s memos and statements were.”

Unaware that President Bush had just blown off the CIA’s explicit warnings, Dr. Fuisz and I decided the best way forward would be to request emergency assistance from the Justice Department.

It was the week of August 6 – 10. The September 11 strike was a month away. There was plenty of time to block the attack.

At the instructions of Dr. Fuisz, I telephoned the private office of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, consisting of about 20 senior staff members. Quickly I identified myself as the chief U.S. Asset covering Libya and Iraq at the United Nations on anti-terrorism. That way I could make sure the bureaucrat on the other end of the phone would appreciate my special access to high level intelligence as a primary source, which should be weighed carefully before disregarding my call.

Once I had the staffer’s attention, I made a formal request for Attorney General Ashcroft’s office to “broadcast an emergency alert throughout all agencies of the Justice Department, seeking any fragment of intelligence pertaining to possible airplane hijackings or airplane bombings.” I explained that we believed “a major attack on the United States was imminent, with a high probability of mass casualties.” And we believed “the target would be the World Trade Center, which would suffer some sort of aerial strike.” I provided as many specific detail as I could to help focus the investigation.

Given the dangers and timing of the attack, I asked that “our request for emergency cooperation should be given the highest priority.”

Attorney General Ashcroft’s staff advised me to contact the Office of Counter-Terrorism at the Justice Department immediately, and repeat what I had just told them.

I did so without delay. I repeated the warning in full detail, and requested that any possible information should be submitted immediately.

Locked in that holding cage in the Baltimore Federal Courthouse, the memory of it was cold and harsh. I seethed with fury.

I shouted for the bailiffs, so I could yell at them, too. I was hopping mad!

But I already knew. Our 9/11 warning to the Justice Department was not something Republican leaders wanted American voters to learn about— not with the 2004 Presidential Campaign in play—nor the 2008 Campaign, for that matter.

Oh yes, I would be gagged through two presidential elections.

With those calls to the Attorney General’s private staff and the Office of Counter-Terrorism, the U.S. government lost its cover of deniability. If I testified before the 9/11 Commission or any congressional inquiry—the Justice Department would have been forced to admit that some of its own top staff received formal warning about 9/11, along with urgent requests for assistance, when there was still time to coordinate a response, and thwart the demolition of the Towers.

I didn’t stop there. Most Americans would be stunned to know that in mid-August, 2001, our team was so convinced that a 9/11 style attack was “imminent,” that I took further proactive measures, visiting my second cousin, Andy Card, Chief of Staff to President Bush, to request his intervention at the Justice Department, too.

I parked on the street outside his house in Arlington, Virginia, and waited in my car, chain smoking for almost two hours. (I quit in 2005.) Occasionally, I could see neighbors peering out of their windows and frowning at me. In my head, I rehearsed what I would tell Virginia police or the Secret Service, if they showed up to investigate this strange car parked outside the home of the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States.

Unhappily, Andy did not return that afternoon. I finally left without sharing our fears.

Driving away, I distinctly recall asking myself if I might be making the greatest mistake of my life. Throughout all these years, it is one of my few regrets.

Oh I see. You prefer the official, sanitized story that nobody in U.S. Intelligence had a clue about the 9/11 conspiracy.

Is that really more comforting? Let’s see, the greatest intelligence community in the world, with vast technological superiority, was “incompetent” to anticipate 9/11? That’s what you think?

Sorry to disappoint you. It doesn’t make sense. And it’s not true.

We knew that a conspiracy was in play. The CIA knew. The Justice Department knew. The Office of Counter-Terrorism knew.

I know that for a fact—because I told them. (And they told me.)

I was arrested to stop me from telling you.

Symbol Susan, indeed!

What I could not know, unhappily, is that another intelligence faction was also working aggressively opposite us.—

Like the copy of the Wall Street Journal that appeared on my desk, a trustworthy source revealed this information after Extreme Prejudice had gone to galleys.

Late on the night of August 23, 2001, at about 3 a.m. security cameras in the parking garage of the World Trade Center captured the arrival of three truck vans. Visual examination determined the vans were separate and unique from trucks used by janitorial services, including different colors and devoid of markings. More curious, all the janitorial trucks had pulled out of the Towers by about 2:30 a.m—about half an hour before the second set of vans arrived.

According to my source, who saw the tapes, no vans matching that description had entered the World Trade Center at that extraordinary hour in any of the weeks or months prior to August 23. It was a unique event.

Security cameras caught the vans leaving the Towers at approximately 5 a.m—before the first wave of Wall Street tycoons arrived to track the Asian markets.

For the next 10 to 12 nights, the same mysterious truck- vans arrived at the World Trade Center at the same mysterious hour— after the janitorial crews had left the building and before the most fanatic robber barons on Wall Street started their work day. The vans clocked into the parking garage from approximately August 23, 2001 until September 3 or 4, 2001. After that last night, they never appeared at the Towers again.

The vans were never heard of again, either. The 9/11 Commission was never informed of their surprising presence three weeks before the 9/11 attack. Most of the 9/11 Truth Community has no knowledge of this extraordinary nightly activity, either.

For all the public’s ignorance, video from the security cameras could be the most significant missing evidence of the 9/11 puzzle. My source was convinced those mysterious trucks transported explosives into the towers, so that an unidentified orphan team could finish wiring the World Trade Center for a controlled demolition. He has stayed quiet to protect his job, his retirement pension and his reputation—knowing that others who spoke up have gotten fired or thrown in prison. Like me.

Though I was still ignorant of those parking garage tapes, I had plenty to be angry about inside that holding cage, waiting for a Federal Judge to throw my bail. From the moment that holding cage clanged shut behind me, I was furiously aware that my arrest was a crucial part of the 9/11 cover up. They might have triumphed over truth, except the Justice Department hit a snag.

After my arrest, the FBI quickly discovered that the CIA wasn’t the only party knowledgeable of our team’s 9/11 warnings. I had warned some of my civilian friends about the possibility of a 9/11 style of attack, too— particularly friends with family or professional ties to New York City.

That’s where the Feds got crossed up.

A Personal Warning to a Friend

Dr. Parke Godfrey was one of my closest friends in Maryland, working on his doctoral dissertation in computer science at the University of Maryland in College Park. His family lived in the Connecticut suburbs of New York City. We spoke frequently, socializing a couple of times a week, and shared much of the same political outlook.[52]

Godfrey has gone on to launch a distinguished career as a tenured Professor of Computer Science and Technology at York University in Toronto, Canada. He presents a calm, studied demeanor. He speaks precisely and methodically, choosing his words carefully—what some friends have teasingly compared to Dr. Spock of Star Trek fame. During difficult courtroom questioning, he would frequently pause and take his time to give an accurate, thoughtful response. He proved a superior witness by any measure.

In shattering testimony a mere 1,000 yards from Ground Zero, Godfrey told the Court how several times in the spring and summer of 2001 I warned him that we expected a major terrorist strike that would encompass the World Trade Center.

In courtroom testimony, Godfrey said I told him that, “a massive attack would occur in the southern part of Manhattan that would involve airplanes and possibly a nuclear weapon.”[53]

He testified that I told him “the attack would complete the cycle of the first bombing of the World Trade Center. It would finish what was started in the 1993 attack.”

On cross examination, he was more specific, declaring that I warned him in August, the attack was “imminent.”[54]

Equally devastating, Godfrey testified under oath that he told the FBI about my 9/11 warning during a sit down interview in Toronto in September, 2004, a few months after my arrest—and before the 9/11 Commission issued its report. At that point, it was still possible to alert the 9/11 Commissioners about this shattering revelation.[55]

The FBI interview with Godfrey was jointly attended by the Canadian Royal Mounted Police. Asked why a member of the Canadian Police was present at the FBI interview, he replied with a smile: “They were there to assure my protection.”

Unfortunately, nobody was present to assure mine.

The fact was I knew too much, and I was starting to talk. That’s why I was sitting in that holding cage waiting for my bail arraignment.

My arrest came hard and fast after I approached Senator Lott and Senator McCain’s offices,[56] asking to tell the whole saga from start to finish.

U.S. Intelligence understood exactly what that meant. I would blow the whistle and expose the whole façade. I was their Asset, after all. They’d been supervising my work for many years, and they were intimately familiar with how I operate and what I would reveal. And they knew that my truth would be nothing remotely similar to what Congress and the White House were selling to the American people.

Perhaps most significantly, from their intelligence profiling, they understood that once I made up my mind to talk, it would be damn near impossible to shut me up. I would find a way to speak, one way or another. That was my nature.

Only one thing could be guaranteed to stop me. I would have to be “terminated with extreme prejudice—” the operative phrase for destroying an Asset or Intelligence officer, body and soul— usually as an assassination.

In that holding cage at the Baltimore Federal Courthouse, I had no idea yet how “extreme” that act of prejudice would be.

Our intelligence war was just getting started. And it would be a fight to the death.

CHAPTER 3:

PEACE ASSET

“I’m dancing barefoot—”
Patti Smith

There’s a saying in the Intelligence Community: When they want you, they will come and get you.

But sometimes I forget how extraordinary all of this strikes outsiders. I mean, how does an American peace activist get tapped to become a U.S. Asset engaged in counter-terrorism, dealing regularly with the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations? Or the Libyan Embassy, for that matter?

My clandestine life began quite unexpectedly, with a collision of events tied to the first World Trade Center bombing in February, 1993.

Yes, like some sort of Greek Tragedy, the great moments of my life all turned on the World Trade Center, start to finish.

At a National Press Club lunch for Palestinian women’s leader, Hanan Ashrawi in late 1992, I leaned across the crisp linen table cloth and whispered to a diplomat from Tunisia that I had information about somebody who might be engaged in terrorism.

“He’s a real terrorist. He was held in an Israeli prison for a year, and his mother thinks he’s dead,” I recall saying to the diplomat.

My attempt at conversation was interrupted by Ashrawi’s excellent speech, but I contacted the Tunisian Embassy in Washington DC several weeks later. I asked the Embassy to help locate the diplomat from the luncheon, explaining that it was imperative that we should finish our conversation at the earliest possible convenience.

On that mysterious note, Tunisian diplomats determined that I had spoken with a member of Ashrawi’s travel entourage, and the diplomat had returned home to Tunis.

Sensing the urgency behind my request, however, Mr. Mounir Adhoum invited me to visit him instead at the Tunisian Embassy in Washington DC.

With much trepidation, we met, and I confided that I believed the World Trade Center was about to get attacked by Islamic fundamentalists from the south of Egypt who sought the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

The full scope of our conversation remains extremely sensitive to this day. Let’s just say, the people who ‘need to know’ already have that information. Beyond that circle, it would be considered extremely unfriendly to expose any part of our discussion. I will only say that my warning was fully accurate in all details. I have never withdrawn any part of the remarks I made to Mr. Adhoum on February 24, 1993. Eerily enough, it makes my work in anti-terrorism a perfect cycle that started and ended with warnings about the World Trade Center. That stuns some people. Even me.

Mr. Adhoum was polite, but skeptical. That’s not surprising. I was completely unknown. I appeared out of nowhere to share some extraordinary information, then I retreated to the shadows. For me, it was enough that I fulfilled my obligations to come forward.

Attitudes at the Tunisian Embassy changed quickly, however. Two days after my meeting with Mr. Adhoum, the World Trade Center suffered its first historic attack on February 26, 1993, when a truck loaded with explosives detonated in the Secret Service section of the parking garage.

The explosion ripped through three floors of concrete and steel in the 110 story building, scattering ash and debris, and starting a fire that shot smoke and flames up one of the Twin Towers.[57] It also left a gaping hole in the wall above the Path underground station. Miraculously, only five people died in the crush of concrete, though over 1,000 New Yorkers suffered injuries. The World Trade Center lost all electricity and lighting, and elevators stopped working. It was a chaotic crisis that put thousands of lives at risk.

That moment changed my future forever. Fast on the ball, the Justice Department announced to an excited throng of journalists that an unnamed woman had warned of the terrorist strike two days before the attack. The Justice Department assured the media that all leads from the woman’s warning would be pursued aggressively.

The next day, the warning was retracted as “a hoax.”

It was not a hoax. I was that woman. Only the substance of my message, including my description of efforts to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak, remains far too sensitive for public disclosure, even after Mubarak’s ouster 20 years later.

If the media was totally ignorant of my identity and warning, U.S. law enforcement and the Intelligence community were intensely aware of me—especially as it became obvious that I had correctly anticipated the threat to President Mubarak’s government in Egypt in its full scope. Sheikh Abdul Rahman and Ramzi Yousef, both convicted in the conspiracy, agitated for the violent overthrow of President Mubarak’s secular regime, in favor of a radical Islamic government based on Islamic Shariah.[58]

Very quickly U.S. Intelligence and the FBI turned a harsh spotlight on me. At first the investigation terrified me. But my paranoia was not irrational, as some have accused.

I was 29 years old. My mother, a source of inspiration for me, had died the previous year of cancer. All of a sudden, having correctly warned about the first major terrorist attack inside the United States since Pearl Harbor— involving the World Trade Center no less—I found my life subjected to the most extreme scrutiny. That’s really an understatement. It was baptism by fire.

All parts of U.S. law enforcement mobilized rapidly to capture the terrorists. Overnight, I became a ‘person of interest’ in the truest sense. When I shunned publicity, they got very curious as to why I did not rush to claim my 15 minutes of fame. Why not take credit? On the other hand, my silence must have been highly desirable since it created a false sense of security for the terrorists, who had no idea of the depth of information the U.S. government already possessed about their cause. That gave the FBI, the CIA (and several other alphabets) an advantage in their work. At that point, surveillance techniques became intrusive enough to discourage me from changing my mind about coming forward.

On the bright side, the furniture in my apartment got dusted more thoroughly than it’s ever been since. I couldn’t rub a finger over any surface in my living room and find a speck of dirt anywhere. It was spotless, like a Stepford wife’s house.

Small teams of FBI agents and NSA types staked out my apartment in the vibrant immigrant neighborhood of Adams Morgan. When I left for work in the morning, somebody would tail me to the Dupont Circle metro, stopping at the top of the escalator as I went down. On the other end of my commute, the same woman would wait every morning at the Capitol South Metro, going nowhere. When I got off the escalator, the woman would fall in behind, escorting me all the way to the Longworth House Office Building where I had started working as Press Secretary to Congressman Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, before switching over to the office of his rival, Congressman Ron Wyden, who ultimately defeated DeFazio in a Senate race.

Street surveillance continued every day for 5 or 6 months.

Some of the surveillance struck me as comical. Carrying groceries one afternoon, I was accosted by a genial Arab fellow wearing dirty jeans and a t-shirt about a block from my apartment. According to my journals, this occurred in May or June of 1993. The Arab man greeted me loudly, with a huge smile plastered on his face.[59]

Very quickly he got to the point. And there was nothing subtle about it.

“I am visiting from the south of Egypt. Do you know anybody from the South of Egypt? Do you know any terrorists? Really, I am very serious. Do you know any terrorists? You should tell me.”

At that point, he made a clumsy overture to pay me for sex, pulling a large wad of hundred dollar bills out of his tattered jeans pocket. I burst out laughing and slammed the door in his face.

In ordinary circumstances, the idea of subjecting a young American woman to foreign surveillance in Washington DC would raise eyebrows. It would be unthinkable. In truth, such encounters were the tip of the iceberg.

From the perspective of law enforcement, that sort of aggressive surveillance qualified as a necessary infringement on my civil liberties. However, as a 29 year old woman living alone in Washington DC, all of that attention felt dreadfully unnerving. It didn’t continue very long, fortunately. I’d done the right thing. The more the FBI and National Security Agency verified the accuracy of my warning, the more they had to respect that I came forward to try to stop the attack. At least I tried to do something, instead of looking away.

I kept a journal after the 1993 World Trade Center attack. Many years later my entries on surveillance gave ammunition to critics, who accused me of “irrational paranoia” during my imbroglio with the Justice Department.[60] However, my writings only seem paranoid because my 1993 warning had been kept secret from the public. In light of my actions, it’s not terribly surprising the government acted aggressively to track my activities. In a sense they had to.

After the 1993 attack, the style of surveillance struck me as overt and intrusive. As an Asset, I learned that if the government desires to conceal its surveillance, you would never guess you’re a target. If you’re aware of surveillance, it’s because they want you to be conscious of it. Intrusive surveillance is designed to scare you off. It’s a method of psychological warfare. And believe me when I say, it can be very effective.

Still, I considered it excessive. For one thing, I am the social opposite of the terrorist network I exposed. I am a life-long peace activist opposed to violence in all its forms.

My mother, Jacqueline Shelly Lindauer, raised me to oppose War and violence from my earliest childhood during the Vietnam War in the 1960s. A college teacher of children’s literature at Cal Polytechnic in Pomona, California, Jackie Lindauer testified at numerous draft board hearings to keep her students out of Vietnam as “conscientious objectors.” A few of her students fled to Canada, with her encouragement.

Jackie also counseled young American soldiers who returned from Vietnam emotionally damaged, as they tried to adjust to college life.

Years later, when our family moved to Alaska, my mother became a bright light on the small Anchorage social scene. She served as President of the Anchorage Fine Arts Museum Association, and entertained various foreign dignitaries and foreign policy experts, who would speak before the World Affairs Council in Anchorage, while traveling in the wilds of Alaska. To her immense credit, she launched five country radio stations and 10 weekly newspapers throughout rural Alaska.[61]

I spent my teenage years listening to the Rolling Stones and Hank Williams, Jr.

As publisher and editor-in-chief of her small Alaska media empire, Jackie championed sustainable fisheries management in Alaska, the protection of Alaska Native culture, the restoration of Russian Orthodox churches, rural education and health care, among other local causes. Fiercely pro-development, nevertheless Jackie mobilized Alaska’s fishing community to support a ban on drift-nets that wiped out millions of fish and sea life in the open ocean. She also lobbied hard for an international treaty to stop over fishing in international waters called the “Donut Hole,” between the U.S., Japan and Russia. She was much loved and civic minded.

In a switch from her past, Jackie frequently entertained top military brass at our home, including some of the Generals from Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson who got their stripes in Vietnam. On occasion, at her parties, these Generals would tease her about military dossiers tallying her protests of the Vietnam War, and her transformation from 1960s radical activist to civic leader. But the Generals and military attaches in Anchorage always praised the support she gave young soldiers coming home from Vietnam. My mother opposed the War; she never opposed the young men drafted to fight it.

In a real sense, I followed in my mother’s footsteps as an Anti-War activist. During Vietnam, my mother had a poster that read: ‘War is harmful to children and other living things.’ She taught us that all life should be treated as precious and sacred. She revered civil rights activist, Rev. Martin Luther King. While America battled racism in the 1960s, my mother made sure that we played with little black and Hispanic children in our home. In 1968, that was different.

As a result, from my earliest childhood in the 1960s, I learned a profound respect for the cultural rights of other peoples, a lesson that crossed racial and ethnic lines and all geography.

It also meant that anti-war activism and social justice formed the deepest core of my political philosophy long before the first Gulf War in 1990.

As a graduate of Smith College (one of the Seven Sisters colleges) and the London School of Economics, I opposed virtually all American foreign policy during the Reagan-Bush era. Most ironically, the focus of my politics bitterly opposed the CIA. I campaigned hard against apartheid in South Africa and opposed all U.S. intervention in Latin America throughout the 1980s. Politically, I championed the Sandinistas against the Contras in Nicaragua, and abhorred the death squads in El Salvador and Honduras (trained and financed by the CIA). I argued passionately against war and militarism. I supported liberation theology and nuclear disarmament. Anti-war philosophy profoundly shaped my dogma and religious viewpoints.

My favorite economics professor at Smith College, Dr. Andrew Zimbalist, campaigned aggressively against the Cuban trade embargo, and ranked as one of the foremost opponents of sanctions policy in his day.[62]

Now a leading expert on American baseball franchising and sports economics,[63] in those days Zimbalist showed me how sanctions reduce entire nations to struggling poverty, with long term consequences that harm the rise of new markets for U.S. goods. In that sense, he showed me how sanctions cripple economic prosperity for trade partners in both directions.

From there I came to see that sanctions break down communications exactly when diplomacy is most urgently required to address conflict. Sanctions lay barriers to quid pro quo solutions, which are vital to breaking deadlocks, in favor of “all or nothing” solutions, which are most difficult to attain. Very serious conflicts continue to fester without relief, as a direct result of sanctions policy.

That lesson would affect me deeply. My passion against sanctions that I nurtured at Smith College would catapult me into the most surprising opportunity of my future. Above all, Smith filled me with a sense of empowerment, and inspired my unshakeable belief that women should expect to contribute solutions to difficult issues. That sense of confidence encouraged me to embrace the challenges of performing as an Asset dealing with conservative Arab governments. And it’s what saved me when the Justice Department tried to smash apart my sense of identity and achievement, and the pride I felt for my accomplishments.

Without Smith College, I could never have survived the harrowing ordeal of my indictment. I could not have fought so hard to defend myself, or marshalled confidence to confront such powerful foes.

I owe Andy Zimbalist and Smith College everything.

After Smith, I headed to graduate school at the London School of Economics. There I gained something else pivotal to my life— close, personal exposure to the sons (and a few daughters) of high ranking government ministers and diplomats around the world, including Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq and Iran. The L.S.E.’s philosophy exposed me to a global diversity of policymaking, including an Islamic philosophy of government that contradicted everything I understood about politics. It challenged me at every level.

At the outset, I admit I was not tolerant. As a young feminist, I was both tantalized by the teachings of Islam, and frightened by its repression of women. Yet Arab culture excited me. As a spiritual person, I discovered genuine admiration for Islamic teachings. Ultimately I learned to respect Arabs culturally, and I learned how to discuss non-violence in the context of Islamic philosophy, in such a way that they could hear me, and we could understand each other. In that way, my immersion at the London School of Economics made it possible engage in successful dialogue with Arab diplomats years later at the United Nations. Without that early confrontation with diversity in government agendas and policymaking, it’s doubtful I could have been effective in building bridges to those Embassies.

All of those aspects of my early life forged into a passionate commitment to dialogue, and opposition to militarism, which would culminate in my very unique occupation.

There is one more striking peculiarity that defines my life. I have a life-long interest in spiritualism and metaphysics. Since my earliest childhood, I have possessed psychic abilities, including telepathy and precognition, which I have always embraced.

Ultimately, what I cherish as a beautiful gift would prove to be the most controversial aspect of my life. It painted a bull’s eye on my back during my legal battle, though many people around the world share those same types of experiences, and hold them to be quite wonderful. In my case, whatever you choose to call this presence, it is loving and righteous. And it has brought me to some extraordinary moments.

One particular event has stoked controversy over my spiritual beliefs. Though somewhat mysterious, like so much in my life, it happens to be entirely truthful.

It occurred on the morning of April 15, 1986, after U.S. and British fighter jets bombed Colonel Gadhaffi’s camps in Tripoli. The story goes that when fighter planes crossed Maltese airspace without permission, Malta’s Prime Minister called to warn Gadhaffi, who narrowly escaped death at his family compound.[64]

As fate would have it, that night I was stuck at the Moscow International Airport in the old Soviet Union, returning to London with a school travel group. Unbeknownst to any of us, the United States had issued a special warning to the Kremlin that all Soviet planes must stay grounded during the attack on Libya. Any Soviet planes lifting off any runway would be interpreted as threatening the United States, and would be shot down. This was Ronald Reagan’s Administration, already infamous for joking that “the bombing starts in five minutes.”

Without our knowledge, our student group from the London School of Economics had just become pawns of the Cold War. After hours of delay, our flight was rushed out of Moscow International Airport. Shortly after take off, a U.S. fighter jet appeared on our wing and escorted us out of Soviet airspace. That’s something you don’t forget.

The next morning, safe on British soil, we discovered why the fuss. Banner headlines in the “Times” of London proclaimed “President Reagan Bombs Tripoli.”

During that school year, I lived in the Earls Court neighborhood off Cromwell Road and Kensington High Street, the heart of a thriving Arab community in London. I was excited about my trip to Moscow and Leningrad, and decided to walk to Holland Park near my home.

Rage on the street was palpable. Fist fights broke out in the neighborhood. Inside Holland Park, police cordoned off the British Commonwealth Institute because of a bomb scare.

I sat down on a park bench.

An old Arab man, very dignified with a black cane, cautiously sat down next to me.

What followed was the most extraordinary conversation I’ve ever shared with any soul in this life-time. Our meeting fully changed my life, and opened my heart to the opportunities I would confront later on. Almost immediately it became apparent this old Arab man possessed a great gift of precognition. That’s stunning to a western audience, but much better understood and accepted in the Middle East. Given my own predilections for spiritualism, I responded encouragingly.

For about an hour, the old Arab man spoke extensively about the future of the Middle East—and the future of my life, in highly subtle and precise detail. I was fascinated. He spoke with such patience and confidence and an uncanny sort of ancient wisdom. He was an extremely conservative Arab, who addressed me as a woman, in the old way— from the side of his mouth, with his eyes lifted away from my face.

Mostly he spoke about Libya and Iraq. With striking precision, he described how “the United Nations would impose sanctions on Libya for the bombing of an airplane that would go down on the roofs of Scotland.” Those were his exact words. When he raised his hands forward, I could see red clay roofs through the ripped fuselage of an airplane. There was no mistaking it as the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

He also harshly criticized what he called ‘the War of the Tigris and Euphrates—’ For these purposes, I have updated my vocabulary to call this the “Iraq War.”

Extraordinary as it sounds, that morning the old Arab man fiercely condemned United Nations sanctions against Iraq—which he claimed would cause ‘horrific suffering and deaths for the people of the Tigris and Euphrates after the War ends and’— quote “before it continues.” Without question, he saw the possibility of a second phase of the war and vigorously wished to stop it. We know that, of course, as the Iraq War. He described the situation inside Iraq in tremendous detail, as if he was standing on a street corner in Baghdad, watching the violence unfold.

Most interesting to my Arab and Muslim friends, in advance of the War, the old man declared what’s called “a fatwa,” that all true Muslims would be required to help Iraq. He insisted that “true Muslims would be required to oppose the sanctions and the War.”

As for the War itself, he declared: “We must all do everything in our power to stop the fighting.” Muslim peoples “would be required to compensate the Iraqi people for their suffering and help them rebuild the country.” That’s what he demanded, in his own words. His warning was redlined: All violence against the Iraqi people was strictly prohibited under Islamic law—and he declared that Arabs particularly would suffer punishment if they hurt the Iraqis. No sanctions. No suicide bombings. No. Occupation.

Interestingly, he stressed his authority under the Shariah to justify his fatwa. Perhaps more controversially, Arab behavior towards the Iraqi people mattered more to him than the Infidels.

Now, it’s important to understand that the old Arab man was speaking on April 15, 1986—the morning after the bombing of Tripoli.

Pan Am 103 got bombed and crashed over the roofs of Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988— two and a half years after our conversation. The United Nations imposed sanctions on Libya in 1992. That’s six years later.

The United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq in August, 1990—four and a half years after the Old Man’s fatwa. The United States launched the first Gulf War against Iraq in January, 1991 and the second War in March, 2003.

Nevertheless, the old Arab man described all of those world events in explicit detail on the morning after the bombing of Tripoli, as if all of it was happening in the current day. He foretold it all, years in advance. It’s controversial, but no hoax. I refuse to recant any part of this conversation.

One more observation struck me personally as uncanny. Repeatedly the old Arab man told me, “The authorities of the Court are going to ask you questions about me.” That’s how he described it—‘authorities of the Court.’ And he urged me not to be afraid of answering those questions. He was so adamant about the “authorities” wanting to interview me, that while we sat on the park bench in Holland Park I began to look for police. I wanted to get that interview over with! And he just smiled, and said, “No, no. That’s later on. You will testify in a courtroom.”

What he described would indeed occur— 20 years later.

The old Arab man was so emphatic that I would be interrogated by ‘authorities of the court” that during the Lockerbie Trial in the summer of 2000, I insisted to Libyan diplomats in New York and my American Intelligence handlers that they must allow me to testify at Camp Zeist, because the old man had foretold it. One Libyan diplomat asked if I thought perhaps there would be a second trial.

Our conversation over that single hour affected the most important decisions of my life. More than 24 years later, the old man’s observations continue to have great validity to my experiences—and to events in the Middle East.

All of these factors influenced who I am, and how I came to work as an Asset, despite my frequent criticism of U.S. foreign policy.

From its first stage in 1990, I recognized the Iraq War would define our global age.

As the old Arab man predicted on the morning after the bombing of Tripoli, the brutality of U.N. sanctions on Iraq grieved me profoundly. Sanctions closed down the entire Iraqi economy. Iraqi families could not buy food or medicine, school books or basic household commodities. Children starved and died. Literacy was wiped out in a single generation. The future of the country was ravaged in all parts. It was deliberate cruelty and a mockery of the humanitarian principles embodied by the United Nations.

As the cruelty of U.N. sanctions took its toll, I began to search for more effective ways of participating to end the conflict. My education encouraged me to believe that I should participate in tackling social problems. Perhaps the natural hubris of youth protected me, since I was unaware that most efforts like mine end in failure and disillusionment.

Primarily I wanted to help Iraqi women. I wanted to help Iraqi mothers feed their children. I wanted to help teachers so children could thrive in the classroom. I wanted to help doctors get medicine for the sick. I looked to the history of the Silk Road through Persia hundreds of years ago, and recognized that trading goods and culture would give momentum to social and political reforms.

Like any other activist, I recognized how small I am. But I also recognized that hard work and dedication would compensate for small size and lack of financial resources.

All of these factors were known to the U.S. Government, as a result of intensive scrutiny during the 1993 World Trade Center investigation. U.S. Intelligence identified me as holding strong anti-war and anti-sanctions beliefs. I was recognized to have a personal interest in spiritual metaphysics and psychic phenomenon. They knew all about the Old Arab man from London. Above all, I appeared to have an uncanny capacity for recognizing terrorist scenarios, and correctly configuring all the random parts to anticipate events and trends.

Everything was on the table—every part of who I am, all my strengths and foibles. I had been fully vetted in every conceivable way.

None of that changes the remarkable choice of tapping a life-long peace activist to serve as a U.S. Intelligence Asset, dealing with Iraq and Libya on counter-terrorism at the United Nations.

Yet that’s exactly what happened to me.

In late August, 1993 I received an unexpected phone call from Pat Wait, Chief of Staff to Congresswoman Helen Bentley, (GOP- Maryland). Briefly, Mrs. Wait was acquainted with my father, John Lindauer, who lost a race for Governor of Alaska on the Republican ticket. She called to express sympathy for the death of my mother. Mrs. Wait lived next door to Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. That would be the same Senator Thurmond who famously told my former boss, Senator Carol Moseley-Braun (the 8th African American elected to the Senate) he would sing “Dixie” until she cried. I suspect that communicates the depth of Mrs. Wait’s own conservative philosophy.

Privately, for months after the 1993 World Trade Center attack, I had wept over the phone to friends about how desperately I missed my mother. I could not confide to my friends that I warned about the first attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. I might have exposed them to danger. So instead I blamed my grief on my mother’s death, which they could understand. For awhile I cried a lot. I was tremendously sad. Once we got to know each other, Pat Wait confided that the spooks had known this, and deliberately appealed to my sense of loss of my mother to establish contact with me.

We met for lunch at a diner in Alexandria. The two of us could not have been more different. We were fierce opposites on all matters of importance to my life. We’d been sitting together no more than five minutes when Pat declared that she’d campaigned against the Equal Rights Amendment, and took great delight in seeing it defeated. Well, I’m a life-long feminist. And my mother, whose life we were presumably honoring, had lobbied hard for passage of the E.R.A. It struck me that Pat was not remotely repentant for the loss to American women.

About that time, she glanced up from the menu to announce casually that a close friend of hers, Paul Hoven, would be joining us for lunch.

I looked up just as a big mountain of man climbed out of a white pick up truck. Pat peeked above the menu and declared, “Paul works for the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

Then she popped her head down, silently giggling over my obviously terrified reaction.

It could only be described as an ambush. All I could think was what would happen if this Pat Wait and Paul Hoven discovered my secret—that I’d warned about the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center a few months earlier. What would happen to me then?

I felt like I’d wandered into a lion’s den, and these were real lions. I was a goat. I was going to get eaten.

Much later, Paul and Pat delighted in assuring me they had both known my secret before we ever met at the diner. Given our extreme political differences, they swore they would never have made time for me otherwise. But apparently it had been decided that somebody really ought to watch over me in Washington. Somebody needed to keep me out of trouble. That task had been assigned to two hard-right Republicans who would not tolerate any liberal shenanigans.

But I did not understand that yet. I still believed in “coincidences.”

I resolved to shake them off. They hated my politics, right? So it should have been simple never to cross paths again. Well, they had other ideas. They refused to be shaken off. And I quickly discovered that these two—Pat Wait and Paul Hoven—were real players. For all his blood red conservatism, Hoven had accomplished some truly remarkable things. And Pat Wait was a formidable political historian in her own right. For all the differences in our outlooks, I developed tremendous respect for her analysis, though I always opposed her extreme conservative philosophy.

Hoven was a hero by anybody’s standards.[65] In Vietnam, he saw active combat from 1968 to 1970, as a 23 year old helicopter pilot who flew medical evacuations into hostile enemy zones. In Vietnam, his first combat mission was the assault on the Y Bridge in Saigon. But mostly, as a chopper pilot, he would haul out American soldiers trapped under enemy fire. He would fly straight into live mortar fire to save young soldiers desperate to get out of a jungle fight, and frequently injured or dying. He’d land his chopper in the thick of battle. Sometimes soldiers died in his arms, but he never left a man behind. Paul is fierce that way. He got shot down at least twice over hostile territory. In all, he flew 1392 hours.

He also served in Laos. According to Leslie Cockburn in “Out of Control,”[66] Hoven “had an enormous range of contacts in the murky world of special—i.e., clandestine—operations.” Some of his compatriots included famous spooks like Carl Bernard, Ted Shackley, Tom Clines and Richard Secord.

But there was a surprising philosophical side to Paul Hoven, too.

For all his Soldier of Fortune bluster, Paul had rubbed elbows with some highly respected liberal activists in Washington, including Daniel Sheehan, an attorney who championed the causes of Daniel Ellsberg and Karen Silkwood.[67]

I was definitely intrigued.

As the Spartacus Forum tells it, “Daniel Sheehan made his name in the prisoner rights movement at Attica State Prison in New York. During the Attica riots in 1971, he attempted to negotiate a peaceful solution, before Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered authorities to take down the prison by force. He was a member of F. Lee Bailey’s law firm that represented Watergate burglar, James McCord. At Harvard Law School, Sheehan co-founded the Harvard Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review. And he acted as general counsel to the Jesuits’ social ministry office in Washington.”[68]

In 1980 Sheehan took over as general counsel for the Christic Institute, “dedicated to uniting Christians, Jews and other religious Americans on a platform for political change.”

For his part, Hoven was a staunch Catholic. He worked for the Project on Military Procurement, exposing fraudulent billing by defense contractors.[69] It was Hoven’s group that exposed the $10,000 screw and the $30,000 toilet at the Pentagon, among other eye popping items on procurement lists.

“Much of our information was supplied by the Pentagon Underground,” Hoven says. “The Underground was made up of a loose confederation of Military Officers and Pentagon civilians who believed two basic points: that weapon systems were not tested fully before purchase, and that the Pentagon was not responsible with its money.”[70]

“We supplied documents and assisted reporters with all military things. Our offices on Capitol Hill were broken into a number of times. My apartment was broken into. Nothing was ever taken, but items on my desk would be rearranged. The front door dead bolt would be unlocked, and the door would be opened a quarter of an inch,”[71]

Working together, Hoven and Sheehan got deeply ensnared in one of the hottest spook conspiracies ever to rock Washington. Together, this unlikely pair played a catalyst role exposing Oliver North and the Iran-Contra scandal, involving drug and shipments from Latin America and arm sales to Iran, in order to finance illegal U.S. operations in Nicaragua.

Paul used to brag to me that the idea for a special prosecutor on Iran-Contra was hatched in his kitchen.

Political analyst, David Corn, sums up Daniel Sheehan’s involvement with Paul Hoven and the history of their exposé of Iran-Contra in his book, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA’s Crusades (1994).[72] It provides critical independent validation of my own interpretations of Paul Hoven’s extensive ties in the murky world of intelligence:

As Corn tells it in “Blond Ghost,” “Throughout 1985, Paul Hoven, a friend of Sheehan’s and a Vietnam veteran, regularly attended parties of ex-Agency men and weekend warriors, some associated with Soldier of Fortune magazine.

At a Christmas bash, Carl Jenkins, a former CIA officer who had been assigned to Miami and Laos, introduced Hoven to Gene Wheaton.

Wheaton served as an army detective in Vietnam, and in the mid-1970s a security officer at a top-secret CIA-Rockwell surveillance program in Iran called Project IBEX. In 1979 he returned to the United States, and held a string of security-related jobs. When he met Paul Hoven, Wheaton was scheming with Carl Jenkins and Ed Dearborn, a former CIA pilot in Laos and the Congo, to win federal contracts to transport humanitarian supplies to anticommunist rebels, including the Mujahedeen of Afghanistan and the Contras in Nicaragua. However the trio had failed to collect any contracts. They had complained to a State Department official that Richard Secord and Oliver North improperly controlled who got the Contra-related contracts.

At the Soldier of Fortune party, Hoven agreed to assist Wheaton. Hoven set up a meeting with a congressional aide who followed the Afghan program. Hoven did not realize that Wheaton had more on his mind than contracts. Wheaton had spent much of the previous year hobnobbing with arms dealers, ex-CIA officers and mercenaries, and he had collected information on past and present covert operations, including the secret Contra-arms project.

Wheaton was obsessed with the 1976 assassination in Iran of three Americans working on Project IBEX. He attributed the killings to U.S. intelligence, and a ring of ex-spooks running wild in Central America and elsewhere.

So when Wheaton met with the congressional staffer and Hoven, he launched into a speech about political assassinations. Wheaton made his bottom-line obvious: a rogue element in the U.S. government had engaged in a host of nefarious activities.

The congressional staffer wanted nothing to do with Wheaton’s intrigue. But Hoven was interested. He called Danny Sheehan, thinking he ought to hear Wheaton’s tale.

By early 1986, press accounts revealed that a clandestine Contra support network ran all the way into the White House, spearheaded by Oliver North, even though Congress had barred the Reagan Administration from militarily aiding the rebels.

Here was the perfect target for Sheehan: a furtive program supporting a covert war against a leftist government. Then he met Gene Wheaton, who had a helluva tale for Sheehan.

Sheehan and Wheaton sat down in the kitchen of Hoven’s house in early February of 1986. Wheaton tossed out wild stories of clandestine operations and dozens of names: A whole crew was running amok, supporting Contras, conducting covert activity elsewhere. Drugs were involved. Some of this gang had engaged in corrupt government business in Iran and Southeast Asia.”

According to Spartacus, “Wheaton and Jenkins shared intelligence about a covert CIA assassination program in Vietnam in 1974 and 1975. Called the Phoenix Project, it carried out a secret mission of assassinating members of the economic and political bureaucracy, in attempt to cripple Vietnam’s ability to function after the U.S withdrawal from Saigon. The Phoenix Project assassinated 60,000 village mayors, treasurers, school teachers and other non- Viet Cong administrators. Ted Shackley and Thomas Clines financed a highly intensified phase of the Phoenix project in 1975, by smuggling opium into Vietnam from Laos.”[73]

As Blond Ghost relates: “As Sheehan talked to Wheaton and Jenkins, he had something else on his mind: a two-year-old bombing in Nicaragua. On May 30, 1984, a bomb exploded at a press conference in La Penca, Nicaragua. Afterward, Tony Avirgan, an American journalist who suffered shrapnel wounds, and his wife, Martha Honey, accused a group of Cuban exiles with ties to the CIA and the Contras of planning the murderous assault. Their report noted that some Contra supporters were moonlighting in the drug trade.

Come late spring of 1986, Sheehan was mixing with spooks in Washington DC, collecting information on the Contra operation. Then Sheehan made a pilgrimage to meet the dark angel of the covert crowd: Ed Wilson. The imprisoned rogue CIA officer made Sheehan’s head swim. The essence of Wilson’s story, Sheehan claimed, was that the Agency in 1976 had created a highly secretive counter terrorist unit apart from the main bureaucracy of the CIA. The mission— conduct “wet operations” (spy talk for assassinations). After the election of Jimmy Carter, this group was erased from the books and hidden in private companies. Shackley was the man in charge, both in and out of government.

At one point after Sheehan met with Wilson, it dawned on him: everything was connected. The La Penca bombing, the North-Contra network, the Wilson gang, all those CIA-trained Cuban exiles, the whole history of Agency dirty tricks, the operations against Castro, the war in Laos, the nasty spook side of the Vietnam War, and clandestine CIA action in Iran. It was an ongoing conspiracy. It did not matter if these guys were in or out of government. It was a villainous government within a government.

Sheehan applied the resources of his small Christic Institute to the case. He knitted together all this spook gossip with a few hard facts, and dropped the load. In a Miami federal court, Sheehan filed a lawsuit against thirty individuals, invoking the RICO antiracketeering law and accusing all of being part of a criminal conspiracy that trained, financed, and armed Cuban-American mercenaries in Nicaragua, smuggled drugs, violated the Neutrality Act by supporting the Contras, traded weapons, and bombed the press conference at La Penca.

Sheehan’s plaintiffs were journalists Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey. He demanded over $23 million in damages. With this lawsuit, Sheehan believed, he could break up the Contra support operation, and cast into the light shadowy characters who’d been up to mischief for years.

Hoven and Jenkins were stunned. Neither expected Sheehan to produce such a storm. Sheehan was not about to be a quiet disseminator of information. “I had been left with the assumption,” Hoven noted, “that I was set up to pass information to Sheehan. But they—” [whoever set up Hoven to contact Sheehan] “—mucked it up because Sheehan was not playing it close to the script.”

In fact, Sheehan championed the impeachment of President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush for their role in Iran Contra. Celebrities like Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Don Henley and Kris Kristofferson raised funds for the impeachment campaign led by the Christic Institute.

In the final round, the Special Prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh, gave prosecutorial immunity to 14 defendants. When President Bush, Sr. lost his re-election in 1992, one of his last acts in office was to pardon the remaining six individuals indicted by the special prosecutor for Iran-Contra. The Christic Institute moved to Los Angeles in 1995.[74]

Seven years had passed since Danny Sheehan and the Christics busted open Iran-Contra, with a little help at the right moments from Paul Hoven.

Now Hoven showed up with Pat Wait to meet me in August, 1993. For the first couple of months, we danced around each other. We were not friends. We were not colleagues. To put it bluntly, Paul did not appear to like me. But he would not go away. He told me straight up that it had been decided somebody must watch over me. That task had been delegated to him. And he took his assignment very seriously.

Always he told me bluntly that our meeting was not a random event. “They” asked him to watch over me. “They” planned the approach with careful attention to personal details. One of Paul’s friends was a Rosicrucian in Minnesota, and I was known to have a keen interest in spiritualism and metaphysics. “They” considered the value of his friendship with this Rosicrucian in assigning him as my watcher— because it would help establish a bond between us. Paul stressed this numerous times.

As to who recruited Hoven, that was always mysterious. But Hoven made a point of explaining how Congress prohibits the CIA from running operations inside the United States, or targeting American citizens for domestic surveillance. Domestic anti-terrorism operations—like I was caught up in— fell under the auspices of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Hoven told me. And he insisted no person or agency was breaking the law, or violating any congressional mandate by shadowing me. By chance, this conversation took place a couple of nights before I was going to interview for a Press Secretary job in Congressman Ron Wyden’s office. That’s when Paul told me on a “need to know” basis.

Hoven told me he’d been forced to retire as a “contract officer” on permanent disability, because of a cardiac virus he picked up in Panama. He’d been a guest producer with Mike Wallace at “Sixty Minutes,” covering the U.S. invasion of Panama, when a viral infection destroyed 40 percent of his heart capacity. In early 2005, Hoven had a heart transplant at the Mayo Clinic.

Despite his heart disease, Hoven had no difficulty filling the role of my “case officer” or “handler.” It was also Hoven who informed me that Defense Intelligence ran a special operation on psychic research parallel to the Soviets, during the Cold War. Hoven knew one of the Directors of the psychic research program, and they’d spoken about me.

If you looked up ‘spook’ in the dictionary, I’m pretty sure you’d find a picture of Paul Hoven. Everything pointed that way. He was definitely enmeshed in those circles.

Even his heart attack brought out the spooks.

At a Spartacus “education forum,” in 2007, Hoven told the story:[75] “At the time of my heart attack, two events were taking placed that I was involved in: 1) the meeting at Marine Headquarters to get Oliver North transferred out of the White House, and 2) the cancellation of the Division Air Defense program 40 mm Bofors Cannon on the old M-48 tank body. This was the first time that an active Pentagon weapons system was cancelled.”

“When I started having chest pains after drinking some orange juice, I assumed it was a muscle cramp. Finally, my roommate called 911. I lived in Arlington, Virginia, and Arlington County ran the only ambulance service. I was given some nitroglycerin, and the stretcher was placed on the ground in front of the ambulance.”

“A second ambulance arrived, and the two crews started arguing over who was to take me to the hospital. The second crew mentioned that I was the person involved in canceling DIVAD. [Note: The ambulance crew arrived knowing those highly specialized details about Hoven’s current projects, which would have been classified.] “They were both informed that I was to go to George Washington Hospital in Washington.”

“The second ambulance crew won the argument, and proceeded to take me to a Northern Virginia hospital, instead.” [Closer to Langley.]

“We pulled into the building, and 16 doctors, nurses and techs were there to greet me. They saved my life. After three days, I was transferred to my HMO hospital in Washington. I was informed by Knut Royce (former interpreter for the Emperor of Ethiopia) that one of my nurses was the daughter of the CIA liaison in the White House.”

“Months later, Carl Jenkins [another famous spook who trained Cuban exiles in Mexico for the Bay of Pigs] and I were at O’Toole’s Bar in Langley, [a CIA watering hole]. We met an ex-special forces doctor on his way to Afghanistan to provide medical care to rebels fighting the Soviets. My heart attack came up in conversation. He asked if I drank something cold before the attack. I mentioned that I had some orange juice. He said there was a substance that causes heart attacks and is delivered in cold beverages. Danny Sheehan told me there were 9 or 10 of us [involved in Iran-Contra and the Project for Military Procurement] who had heart attacks. I was the only one who did not die.”

But was Hoven a spook?

Once I asked Paul how I could identify spooks that might approach me at the United Nations. He just smiled and shook his head.

“Susan,” he said. “If it waddles like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

“But Paul!” I said. “How can I be sure?”

“Susan,” he said. “It’s a duck.”

He wasn’t the only one.

Very quickly I discovered Pat Wait had extraordinary access to numerous high level intelligence sources, as well. She’d known Richard Fuisz, my CIA handler, for 20 years. After my arrest, Pat Wait swore that Hoven and Fuisz “could face prosecution for perjury and obstruction of Justice, if they denied their intelligence ties or supervising” my work.

But not everybody was so informed. Some people who’d known Paul and Richard for years, were totally clueless as to their intelligence activities. That’s the nature of the beast. Nobody volunteers this sort of background. If you don’t need to know, you’re out of the loop. And you ain’t comin’ inside the circle.

If they don’t want you to know, they’ll keep you guessing. They can hide behind all sorts of technical language to deny it, if they wish. It’s nothing to get upset about. That’s how the spooks work. I find it amusing.

For awhile, I suspect they tried to figure out whether I might have possible use, or if my warning about the 1993 attack had been a fluke.

To his credit, Hoven took a big chance on me. In May 2004, he proposed that my uncanny ability to filter counter-terrorism scenarios, combined with my steadfast opposition to war and sanctions, might find application in real politics in the Middle East.

Very cautiously, he floated the idea that I might approach Libyan diplomats at the United Nations to start talks for the Lockerbie Trial.

I would become what’s known as an “Asset.”

“Assets” are private citizens who have developed some specialized field of expertise or interest that grant us special access to target groups desirable to the Intelligence Community.

In a practical sense, an Asset resembles a pawn in a chess match. We stay on the playing field as long as possible, to be leveraged and exploited for a greater purpose (typically obfuscated from the Asset’s view). Except this game is so extraordinary and dynamic, most people wouldn’t care that they’ve been caught or exploited. It’s an opportunity to play in a real game. In the case of Libya or Iraq— two nations under sanctions— it would mean access to high ranking Arab officials that very few individuals could talk to, establishing a point for back channel dialogue in support of counter-terrorism policy. My access would grant me a unique opportunity to contribute towards ending the sanctions that I loathed so deeply.

I jumped at the chance. As an activist, it was everything I could wish for. I rationalized that I would not be compromising my anti-war principles by supporting counter-terrorism policy. I hoped the consistency of my support for non-violence would win respect from Arab governments, and ultimately their cooperation.

I would not work against Arab peoples, or culture or the Islamic religion, either. I would prove that anti-terrorism could succeed on the basis of diplomacy and respect for cultural dignity, without military threats or sanctions.

It would be a One-Woman Experiment with a new and wholly different approach to counter-terrorism. Success would depend on my ability to cultivate difficult relationships with Libyan and Iraqi diplomats in the opposite direction of official U.S. policy. If I succeeded, I hoped to win the grudging respect of U.S. military types like Hoven, who ordinarily equate anti-terrorism with mandatory threats of force. I wanted to prove that engagement and diplomacy would succeed just as well.

I had one iron-clad condition. Under no circumstances could the U.S. government interfere with my activism for any reason. I had opposed the first Gulf War with Iraq, and I fiercely opposed any second war. I demanded full rights to lobby Congress and the United Nations against U.S. militarism and sanctions on Iraq, Libya and the Middle East overall. If that seems contradictory to a U.S. Intelligence agenda, in fact the success of my anti-terrorism work would depend on the sincerity of my anti-war and anti-sanctions activism. The two parts would be inextricably linked. That’s what the U.S. wanted to leverage. That’s what the U.S. would have to tolerate.

My condition was fully accepted and understood. But first there was somebody Hoven wanted me to meet.

Paul teased me by withholding the name of this CIA officer until right before our meeting. It took several months to get approval for a face to face conversation. I was Press Secretary for Congressman Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat at the time. So I thought I was hot stuff. But that only got me so far with this crowd.

These people are trouble-shooters in a crisis. They stay in when everybody else gets out. They fix things that others have broken and abandoned as hopeless. They’re intensely creative risk-takers— 24/7. You’re taught that every encounter, every experience provides a weapon or a tool. Every crisis creates new opportunities. You’ve got to be incredibly tough, tenacious and resilient to play in their game. The stakes are high because a good Asset impacts the opportunities on the playing field for everybody else. That’s the whole purpose of an Asset.

When I finally met Dr. Richard Fuisz in September, 1994,[76]I got insight to the special diva status the Intelligence Community affords itself. Though I was a congressional staffer for a leading Democrat, Dr. Fuisz would not deign to come to Capitol Hill for our first meeting. I, the Congressional staffer would have to go to him in Virginia. His office was deemed appropriately “secure.”

Hoven promised the trip would be worth it. Driving out to Chantilly, Virginia, he took all the back roads and cut through neighborhoods, so I would have difficulty returning. The next day I drove back to the office and found it on my own. Paul was impressed.

On our drive, he gave me the low down on Dr. Fuisz’s remarkable career as a top CIA operative in Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s. Hoven described Fuisz in almost legendary terms. His team in Lebanon coordinated the hostage rescue of Terry Anderson et al., locating their make-shift prisons in the back alleys of Beirut, and calling in the Delta Force for a daring raid.

Later, Dr. Fuisz testified before Congress about U.S. Corporations that supplied Iraq with weapons systems before the first Gulf War. He ran a fashion modeling agency with Raisa Gorbachev that incidentally sold computers to the Soviet government during Glasnost, while her husband, Mikhail Gorbachev was President of the Soviet Union.

Dr. Fuisz got outed as CIA by Damascus, after stealing the blueprints for Syria’s brand new telecommunications system from a locked storage vault. A Real Life “Mission Impossible.”

Finally, Dr. Fuisz claimed to know the real story of Lockerbie, including the identities of the terrorist masterminds, whom he insisted were not Libyan at all.[77]

Remarkably, Dr. Fuisz lived up to all the hype.

In those days, Dr. Fuisz looked like a cross between Robert DeNiro and Anthony LaPaglia, a devastatingly handsome man of Hungarian descent, whose playground ran to Monte Carlo and Paris, when he wasn’t trouble-shooting in Beirut. He had an apartment in Paris overlooking the Seine, until one of the Saudi princes borrowed it for a weekend with his girlfriend, who refused to leave, invoking Parisian laws of “squatters’ rights.”

Without question, Richard Fuisz is the most fascinating and complicated individual I’ve ever met. For him, it’s effortless. He’s brilliant and unforgettable. As a scientist and inventor, he’s got a drawer full of patents on pharmaceutical products. He’s like an alchemist. Working with him and Hoven was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. I have no regrets at all.

During negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial at the United Nations, I put together a sworn statement about our first meeting in September, 1994:[78]

Dr. Fuisz maintained close business ties to Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia during the 1980s. As part of his work, he infiltrated a network of Syrian terrorists tied to Islamic Jihad—the precursor to Hezbollah— who, at the time of his residence in Beirut, were holding 96 high profile western hostages, including Associated Press reporter, Terry Anderson; Anglican Envoy, Terry Waite; CNN Bureau Chief, Jerry Levin; and CIA Station Chief, William Buckley.

Islamic Jihad released gory videos of Buckley’s brutal torture sessions, finally resulting in his death—and heightening the urgency of rescuing the other hostages.

Dr. Fuisz impressed on me that his team had identified the kidnappers behind the hostage crisis, and located the streets and buildings where the Americans were captive, at tremendous personal risk. Once he identified their locations, he called in the Delta Force to execute a synchronized raid.

Unforgivably, the order for the hostage rescue was rescinded by top officials in Washington, and delayed several months, until right before the 1988 Presidential election of George H. Bush. Dr. Fuisz called it the original “October Surprise.”

We talked a great deal about how the sale of heroin/opium from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon finances terrorist activities on a global scale. Dr. Fuisz explained how the bombing of Pan Am 103 was intended to strike down a team of Defense Intelligence Agents, flying back to Washington to protest the CIA’s infiltration of heroin smuggling, as part of locating the hostages in Beirut. The DIA team was suspicious that a double agent on the CIA team was warning Islamic Jihad whenever rescuers got close, so the hostages could be moved. Dr. Fuisz claimed the Pan Am 103 bombing was an act of terrorist reprisal to protect their profits from aggressive drug interdiction efforts. They wanted to stop the fact-finding team from reaching Washington to make their report.

To my great surprise, Dr. Fuisz swore he could identify who orchestrated the bombing of Pan Am 103. He stated categorically that no Libyan national was involved in the attack, in any technical or advisory capacity.

Dr. Fuisz asked for my help as a congressional staffer. Apparently he had aggravated the Feds, by trying to contact the Pan Am 103 families about Lockerbie. He also testified before a Congressional Sub-Committee about a U.S corporation that supplied Iraq with SCUD mobile missile launchers before 1990.

Now, instead of praise, he was enduring harsh audits by the Internal Revenue Service investigating his use of black budget moneys.

Efforts by his attorneys to stop this harassment had been answered with warnings that he should shut up about U.S. arms supplies to Iraq and the Lockerbie Conspiracy.

That was how the bombing of Pan Am 103 arose in our conversation. Dr. Fuisz complained that he could provide a great deal of information about Middle Eastern terrorism, except the U.S. doesn’t want anybody talking about Libya’s innocence. Then he jumped into the Lockerbie case by way of example of terrorist cases that he could immediately resolve. He complained that the messenger was getting shot for delivering an honest message.

Because of his Syrian ties, he told me he “was first on the ground in the investigation,” to use his words. At that point, I tried to sound tough. “Oh yeah, everybody knows Syria did it. The U.S. repaid them for supporting us during the Iraqi War by shifting the blame to Libya.”

Immediately he cut me off.

“Susan, Do you understand the difference between a primary source and a secondary source? Those people in Virginia are analysts. They’re reading reports from the field, but they don’t have first-hand contact with events as they’re happening on the ground. Or first hand knowledge about what’s taking place. So they don’t actually know it, even if they think they do.”

“I know it, Susan. That’s the difference. Because of my Syria contacts, I was there. They’re reading my reports.” (Then he laughed sarcastically.) “In my case, they’re reading them and destroying them.” (And he threw up his hands.) He continued on:

“Susan, if the government would let me, I could identify the men behind this attack today. I could do it right now. You want a police line up? I could go into any crowded restaurant of 200 people, and pick out these men by sight.”

“I can identify them by face, by name.” He started gesticulating, and counting off on his fingers. “I can tell you where they work, and what time they arrive at their office in the morning—if they go to an office. I can tell you what time they go to lunch, what kind of restaurants they go to. I can tell you their home addresses, the names of their wives if they’re married, the names and ages of all their children. I can tell you about their girlfriends. I can even tell you what type of prostitutes they like.”

“And you know what, Susan? You won’t find this restaurant anywhere in Libya. No, you will only find this restaurant in Damascus. I didn’t get that from any report, Susan.” Dr. Fuisz started shaking his head. “I got it because I was investigating on the ground, and I know. Do you understand what I’m saying to you now? I know!”

To which I answered. “For God’s sakes tell me, and I’ll get my boss to protect you—” a reference to Congressman Ron Wyden.

Then he got really mad. “No, no! It’s so crazy. I’m not even allowed to tell you, and you’re a congressional staffer.”

This was how I learned that Dr. Fuisz is covered by the Secrets Act, which severely restricts his ability to communicate information about Pan Am 103 or any other intelligence matter. Though he states freely that he can identify the true criminals in this case, he requires special permission from the CIA to testify, or a written over-ride by the President of the United States, if the CIA refuses to grant permission.[79]

I believed that was tragic on two accounts. First, the accused Libyans were denied the right to a fair trial where they might call witnesses to launch an effective defense, and exonerate themselves of all charges. And secondly, the Lockerbie families were denied the ability to close this terrible wound, and experience the healing that would come from discovering the complete truth surrounding this case.

On both accounts, I could not stay silent. I recognized that our disclosures might pain the families. And yet it’s precisely because I abhor all such violence— terrorist and military— that I believed we must pursue the truth.

As it turned out, there was a second purpose to Dr. Fuisz’s candor about Lockerbie. Somebody needed to approach Libya about the Lockerbie Trial. Somebody like me— who recognized and accepted the truth of Libya’s innocence—would be ideal to initiate contact with Libyan diplomats at the United Nations. Given my passionate opposition to sanctions, I might have a shot at persuading Libya to accept a trial, whereas nobody else could get in the door. Perhaps I could get the negotiations unstuck.

I seized the offer enthusiastically. (Iraq was added to my agenda one year later.) From that point on, in our private conversations, Hoven identified himself as my “case officer” or “handler.” Many of my private papers from the mid-1990s refer to Hoven as my “Defense Intelligence handler” or “DIA contact.”[80] That’s not something I invented afterwards. It was always there. I always believed that Hoven filled an important liaison role to defense intelligence. Both men supervised me. They provided instruction and guidance. I trusted them fully to stand behind me.

Dr. Fuisz made no attempt to hide his CIA connections He had a vast network of contacts throughout the Arab world, and penetrating insight to Middle East politics. His intelligence credentials were easily established, and known to the Arabs as well.

Hoven was more cagey about his connection to Defense Intelligence. But there was no way to have a conversation with him, and not conclude he had deep spook ties. He talked about the Defense Intelligence Agency all the time. He often spoke of visiting “the Farm—” a euphemism for DIA. I would tease him with questions about the animals on this Farm. I called it the “Old McDonald game.”

“Are there chickens on your farm?” I’d ask. “No,” he’d say.

“But surely there are cows?” “No,” he’d shake his head with a smile.

“Oh, is it a pig farm? Do you have horses?”

“No,” he’d say. “It’s sort of an under-ground bunker built into the side of a hill, with a wall of technology gadgets when you entered the building.”

It’s sometimes hard for outsiders to understand. But it’s the nature of intelligence to behave that way. Only a handful of people knew what I was doing all those years, either. It’s something you hold close. It’s how intelligence functions.

The bonds that I forged with Hoven and Fuisz lasted almost a decade. I knew these men intimately. Paul loved teasing that I was a “goofy peace activist.” That never offended me.

And extraordinary as it sounds, the instructions from the Old Arab Man in London on the morning after the bombing of Tripoli proved extremely valuable to the success of my outreach to Iraq and Libya, too. While controversial in the West, the old Arab man called it right on the mark, with frightening precision. Decades later, I am still discovering that he told me everything about my own life on that morning. It’s quite exceptional, and intensely uncanny. To myself, most of all. Yet it’s impossible to deny that it happened.

So it went. As an Asset throughout the 1990s, I gained direct, “primary” access to the day by day flow of cooperation from Libya and Iraq on counter-terrorism. Virtually no one else enjoyed such close proximity to either of those embassies during that period.

All of that explains how, when Republican leaders decided to go to War with Iraq, the profound depth of my involvement and knowledge created a major obstacle to their revisionist brand of history. If the White House hoped to invent a story that could defeat theactual facts of history, they would have to get rid of me first.

Their lie could not exist alongside my truth.

They would have to destroy me.

Oh how they would try.

CHAPTER 4:

A SECRET DAY IN
THE LIFE OF AN ASSET

On my desk sits a bronze statue of a little girl in a frilly dress riding a rhinoceros. That’s my life—feminine but slightly dangerous. OK, more than slightly dangerous. Rhinoceros have horns and armor plates to protect them in rough play through all sorts of adventures.

My adventure as an Asset lasted from 1993 until 2002. My countries were Iraq and Libya. But my efforts encompassed Egypt, Syria/Hezbollah, Yemen and Malaysia. If that doesn’t communicate high level security interests, I don’t know what could. There were some extraordinary consequences for that level of involvement. But it was all worth the price. I wouldn’t change a single moment of my experience.

Those were exciting times. Under the intense supervision of Dr. Fuisz and Hoven, I established contact with the Libya House in May 1995, and the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations in August, 1996. About every three weeks I would travel from my home in the suburbs of Washington DC to visit diplomats at the United Nations in New York. In a crisis, or when our projects intensified, I traveled to New York more frequently. By 2002, I estimate that I met with Iraqi and Libyan diplomats 150 to 170 times each.

Our outreach was not exactly covert. From the outset, diplomats from Libya and Iraq understood that I sought to create a back-channel in support of dialogue that would break the stalemate and help end sanctions on their countries. All of us understood each other.

My first meeting at the Libya House involved a shockingly frank conversation, in fact, of my connection to Dr. Fuisz and his ability to identify the terrorists who plotted the bombing of Pan Am # 103, a.k.a “Lockerbie.” Dr. Fuisz was already well established as a major CIA operative in the Middle East, who tangled with Syria and Lebanon during the Terry Anderson hostage crisis during the 1980s. So when I explained that my work involved Dr. Fuisz, Libyan diplomats understood with utmost clarity what that meant: I had high level contacts deep inside the CIA.

I recall that the Libyan diplomat, Mr. Amarra, glanced up from his small white Turkish coffee cup, and smiled with a mischievous sense of irony.

“Why, thank you CIA. On behalf of Gadhaffi, on behalf of Libya, we thank you, CIA. Thank you for helping Libya end our sanctions!” He had a good laugh.

Once that genie’s out, there’s no putting it back in the bottle.

I remember my first introduction to the Libya House like a sort of slapstick Laurel and Hardy comedy of intelligence errors.

For security reasons, I dropped by Libya’s embassy at the United Nations unannounced and uninvited, with a request to meet the diplomat handling Lockerbie.

Our team wanted to walk away and disappear if the meeting backfired.

But making contact proved more exasperating than Dr. Fuisz and Hoven anticipated.

When I arrived without an appointment, the Libyan concierge demanded that I go back outside to a payphone across the street from the Embassy. In an absurd game, he instructed me to telephone him and request permission to enter the lobby.

“But I’m already here!” I protested.

“No, no! You must go to the phone outside, and ask for permission to come in and speak to me,” the concierge tutted. “That’s how it must be done.”

There was a light rain outside. I had advance warning that a squad of intelligence officers watched the Libya House from a nearby building. By now they were probably curious about this lone visitor to the Libyan embassy, too. I resolved not to panic. Except that when I phoned the Libya House, the concierge asked for my name, which sent daggers through my heart, since a phone so close to the Libyan Embassy had to be wiretapped. Sure enough, Dr. Fuisz told me that after I left, my fingerprints got lifted off the phone receiver.

So much for Spy Games 101. The concierge gave me permission to enter the lobby. When I returned, he smugly told me that I should come back tomorrow at 10 o’clock.

I groaned.

On my second approach to the Libya House, stony-faced embassy staff descended en masse to the lobby, and bickered in Arabic over whether I should be allowed upstairs. All of us crowded into the elevator. No one spoke. They glowered. Every suspicious eye turned on me. As we got off the elevator, diplomats grabbed my purse and my light rain coat, convinced that I carried recording devices.

“Why have you come here?”

The Libyan diplomat, Mr. Amarra, could have been a bedouin, tall and lean, haggling over spices at the soukh. Except he was sharp eyed, and I learned later that he spoke seven languages fluently.

“Why have you come here?” His fingers twisted on the tiny Turkish coffee cup. In the doorway embassy staff hovered, listening to every word I spoke, ready to fetch more of the exquisite Arab coffee, a thick almost syrupy concoction, which the Libyan diplomat generously offered. I remember that he leaned forward, eyes piercing me and very much suspicious.

“That is a very important question. It requires a very important answer.”

The “very important” explanation is that I was “an Asset”— a private citizen with specialized interests or skills that allowed me to establish contact with otherwise extremely difficult to reach groups and individuals on behalf of the intelligence community. Most ironically, my own value as an Asset derived from the profound sincerity of my activism against sanctions and military aggression—the formal thrust of U.S. policy towards those same countries. My outspoken opposition to the official direction of U.S. policy, and my deep confidence in the ability of dialogue to resolve conflicts gave me a critical advantage. Indeed, my work could not have been accomplished otherwise.

Globally, there were just 5,000 Assets before the 9/11 attack, according to George Tenet, CIA Director for both the Clinton and Bush Administrations.[81]

Only three Assets covered the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations—and the other two started after 9/11.[82] Nobody except me covered Libya at the United Nations for most of the 1990s, because of Libya’s extreme isolation. Thus, we occupied a fairly elite and privileged group. At the point that I approached Libya to start talks for the Lockerbie Trial, Washington politicians and U.N. diplomats had given up entirely, believing it was far too difficult, maybe impossible.

I visited the Libyan Embassy to get things “unstuck,” and establish a friendly channel for dialogue that tackled several other obstacles, as well. Later I would do the same for the weapons inspections in Iraq.

Often Assets are teasingly called “useful idiots.” Far from derogatory, it marks a necessary distinction inside Intelligence circles. Assets exist outside the ordinary boundaries of the community, even while supplying “must have” access and information that make us critical to the total operation. An intelligence officer who oversees an Asset is known as “a handler.” The Asset exists as a mark to be exploited, or mined, to determine whatever we know. Many times Assets have no idea whatsoever that they have been tapped by intelligence. They might be deeply offended to realize that the CIA or Defense Intelligence has begun tracking them. Ignorance strengthens their indignation— and deniability— if challenged. That can be highly advantageous.

Intelligence officers routinely use covers for introduction to potential Assets, in order to protect themselves from hostile reactions by unwilling individuals, who might get upset and rebuff the approach if they understood who was really making it. That’s universal to intelligence gathering around the world. An Asset only gets a fragment of the truth on a “need to know” basis— if they’re trustworthy. However, if you’re around long enough—and if the Asset proves strong enough—you can figure out what the handler is really trying to do. A strong Asset strives to create the opportunity that intelligence relies on to move forward.

That’s the game for an Asset. That determines our value. It’s not a passive role. In effect we agree to play with all of the smoke and mirrors and cul de sacs, applying our most stubborn tenacity and creative risk taking to advance shared goals. That’s crucial to understanding why I wanted in, and why Arab diplomats at the United Nations responded so positively towards me.

If you’re a Mark, it is critically important to figure out why somebody has approached you. What do they want to accomplish? What’s their agenda? What’s stuck that the Asset is determined to fix? There might be advantages for both sides if the project succeeds—like getting out from sanctions. Irregardless, it would be disappointing if the Mark doesn’t recognize that something’s in play. That’s part of testing their sophistication and worthiness to join the game.

And it is a game. The first rule is that there are no rules. That gets a little hairy sometimes. You’re there to get something done, usually because it’s needs a good kick to get unstuck. Whatever gets in the way, gets jettisoned. It’s supremely creative.

By the way, it’s usually flattering to be approached. It means you’ve got something worth having or knowing.

A friendly approach is much better than an unfriendly approach.

On the downside, meetings between handlers and Assets don’t usually disclose the full purpose of the Operations, or the activities of other players. Assets don’t receive intelligence reports, except on a strictly need to know basis, for example if knowing one part will guide how the Asset interacts with another part of a project. We are pawns on a chess board. We are not allowed to see the whole game.

In short, by our very function and purpose, Assets are not “agents,” properly called “case officers” of one or another U.S. Intelligence Agencies. As Hoven used to remind me, “agents” are foreigners. Americans are “case officers” by right of birth. That’s one way older spooks get around admitting their affiliations, he used to joke. If they’re asked to identify themselves using incorrect language— “Are you an agent?” they can deny it without perjury.

So what’s the purpose of an Asset? What gives the Asset value?

Assets are specially prized for our access. We are vital and necessary surrogates for intelligence officers who otherwise lack the specialization necessary to penetrate those exclusive groups. In this way, Assets form the core of human intelligence.

We are eyes and ears— primary sources of information—in contrast to secondary sources called “analysts” who review raw data collected from Assets, and try to connect the dots, in order to diagram trends and players in some cubicle at Langley. Assets are “on the ground” with greater breadth and intimacy than a cold report. It’s why some experts call human Assets the single best source of raw intelligence, far superior to electronic surveillance. That’s particularly true if the Asset is highly perceptive and capable of connecting random facts into a reasonable picture of unfolding events.

A corollary is that screwing your Assets undermines the entire foundation of intelligence gathering.

And where did our team fall on this spectrum?

Dr. Fuisz told me that I was “uncanny” in my perceptiveness. Paul Hoven told me that I could deduce trends and scenarios “weeks and months ahead of the analysts.”

Most significantly, because of the U.N. sanctions and the resulting isolation of my countries, I was almost unique in having those contacts. The pariah status of Libya and Iraq throughout the 1990s stymied other approaches routinely used to outreach less controversial embassies. U.S. and British intelligence couldn’t get access to Libyan or Iraqi diplomats— except through me. So we needed each other. It was a symbiotic relationship.

For obvious reasons, therefore, my handlers would not have wanted me, the Asset, to stop functioning in my normal sphere of public activities. Put another way, the pursuit of my specialty work—my activism against war and sanctions— was necessary to build those difficult relationships.

Incidentally, during the Clinton Administration, a State Department official once observed in private conversation that there was an extra design in using me: They were showing these authoritarian governments— most cleverly, I must add—that in a democracy, activists who oppose the government on one issue can be recruited as allies on other matters. Opposition in one area does not render an activist an enemy on all things. That’s the greatness of democracy. We respect each other, and we disagree with each other. And still we can work together.

My activism was most genuine, however. I campaigned passionately against sanctions at the United Nations and in the Halls of Congress for years. I considered it morally disgraceful that the United States would inflict such misery on the Iraqi people, particularly. I grieved for Iraqi mothers who struggled to feed their children, and Iraqi teachers who despaired of books and pencils to educate their students; and Iraqi doctors facing empty medical cupboards when suffering people begged for pain killers or heart medication or oxygen canisters to breathe.

Those peoples were my motivation. Anything that I could contribute to help lift those wretched sanctions, I would gladly do. If my contribution was to act as a back channel to Baghdad, for the purpose of supporting counter-terrorism and non violence, then I would gladly dedicate myself wholeheartedly to the task. At least on that one topic, I would try to make a difference.

And so I was never quiet about my beliefs. On the contrary, I was outspoken in my criticism. I could get “into the room” with Iraqi diplomats. And I could get “into the room” with American Intelligence. And I never stayed silent in the presence of either group. I lobbied Iraq and Libya hard to support non-violence in all forms, including anti-terrorism and weapons disarmament. By turn, I lobbied Congress and U.S. Intelligence to oppose sanctions and military aggression, even short bombing raids.

I beseeched Ambassadors on the United Nations Security Council to wake up to the misery of sanctions destroying Iraqi society. I warned embassies that their cruel support for sanctions undermined the integrity of the U.N.’s humanitarian mission on all fronts, which should be to support diplomacy and engagement; supply medical and social services to needy peoples; and build up infrastructure that promotes self sufficiency and economic development.

While my outspoken activism evidently frustrated the Justice Department, U.S. Intelligence expected me to oppose U.S. policy while visiting the Iraqi Embassy and the Libya House. The authenticity of my activism was paramount for maintaining the strength of my contacts. Otherwise my whole outreach would have collapsed.

Only somebody on the outside, who does not understand how Intelligence works, would question the efficacy of those actions. Those should be called “Intelligence Dummies.” Sure as heck they have no understanding of the difficulties of engagement.

Oh yes, we understood each other very well. If the CIA had demanded that I make a choice, I would have chosen my activism first. We would have said our good byes, for I would never give up my values. And yet the strength of my sincerity and my unshakable devotion to my causes made the rest of my work viable.

In turn, I enjoyed an extraordinary opportunity to contribute to the causes I loved most. That was my motivation for participating.

The Justice Department should not have worried. Oversight of my activities was intense. I had two handlers, Hoven and Dr. Fuisz. So naturally, I had twice the number of debriefings. Typically, Dr. Fuisz and I met every week or 10 days. By 2001, during back channel talks on resuming the weapons inspections, Dr. Fuisz and I spoke on the phone every single work day, in addition to our weekly meetings.

My relationship with Paul Hoven was doubly intense. From the start in 1993, Hoven and I met at least once a week, more frequently during a crisis.

By the end, I estimate that I attended more than 450 meetings with Dr. Fuisz and close to 650 meetings with Hoven.

The question was, could I prove it? The answer was yes.

Crucial for my future legal defense, a group of heavy-hitter Republican Congressional staffers gathered socially every Thursday evening at the old Hunan Restaurant on the Senate side of Capitol Hill.[83] The Hunan served alcohol, though Hoven and I never drank until after our debriefings. The restaurant was pitch black, and the crystal shrimp with walnuts was delicious. That made everybody happy, while this cabal of Congressional staffers talked policy and plotted conspiracies. That’s where Hoven and I caught up, whispering in one of the dark corners.

The Chief of Staff for Senator Kit Bond from Missouri used to come. Legislative staff for Senator Chuck Grassley would be seated at the long table in the pitch black room. Pat Wait, Chief of Staff for GOP Rep. Helen Bentley was a regular fixture, as was Kelly O’Meara, Chief of Staff for GOP Rep. Andrew Forbes. Nobody in this crowd could be called a light weight. Mixed in would be top White House journalists like Jerry Seper from the Washington Times. The Washington correspondent for the Asian Wall Street Journal. And Hoven and me.

Occasionally other spooky types would show up, as well.

As the token progressive Democrat— on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum—my presence baffled these hard leaning conservatives. But the dark corners of the restaurant gave Paul and me a safe place to retreat for private conversations about Libya and Iraq. During times of crisis or intensive action on our projects, Hoven and I met a second time at our homes, as well.

My witness list would not be boring, for sure. At trial, some of these folks could have expected subpoenas. They would have been compelled to acknowledge that Paul Hoven and I forged a tightly bonded relationship for almost 9 years that was publicly observed. It’s doubtful they understood the full nature of our work. It was clandestine, after all. But they could definitely confirm that Hoven and I had done it together. That would be the crucial admission, which accounts for why Hoven and I chose the Hunan for our meetings in the first place. We wanted supremely credible, high level witnesses to observe our engagement, in case anything should happen to either one of us.

Debriefings safeguarded me as an Asset, because they guarantee full disclosure, oversight and prompt feedback. Nobody has to worry that an American citizen would be wheeling and dealing with Libya or Iraq for a decade without somebody paying close attention. That would never happen. In my experience, it would be impossible.

After my indictment, I was confident the candor of my disclosures would save me from prison. Nobody could claim ignorance of my activities. Nothing had been concealed. For example, the Justice Department indicted me for taking a trip to Baghdad in March, 2002. As it turns out, my invitation as a guest of Iraq’s Foreign Ministry had been reported to Andy Card in a letter dated March 1, 2001—one year before the trip occurrred.[84] In it, I offered to delay or reject the invitation outright, if so instructed. That letter was one of 11 progress reports to the White House and CIA, describing the success of talks to resume weapons inspections.[85]

My commitment to full disclosure was reliable at all times, and fully documented in my papers.

Other individuals—such as Jesse Jackson, Scott Ritter and ex-Chess Champion, Bobby Fischer, did receive explicit warnings not to travel to Iraq or Yugoslavia. By contrast, I was not warned off. I interpreted that as a deliberate and informed decision on their part. At that moment we were making excellent progress on behalf of the 9/11 investigation and securing Iraq’s commitment to the weapons inspection process.[86] All aspects of our project carried great value to the U.S. and its allies in Europe and the Middle East. At this stage, I don’t think the majority of rank and file U.S. intelligence had insight to the secret war agenda of the Bush Administration. For certain, they did not confide in me.

There was another reason. By the nature of the work, an Asset always seeks to maintain and expand her circle of contacts, in order to broaden the scope of access. A handler would be loath to stop an Asset from expanding those contacts. The Asset gains value precisely because of the ability to interact with difficult sources, and create fresh opportunities for action and dialogue.

That’s why Andy Card never discouraged my meetings at the Iraqi Embassy or the Libya House, and why I believe I was never told to cancel my trip to Baghdad. Although secretly the White House intended to pursue a totally different course of action than what I offered, policymakers needed to know what Iraqi officials were thinking and planning. They needed my raw intelligence. My conversations with Iraqi officials gave insight to Iraq’s intentions towards the world community. For different reasons perhaps, both sides needed to exploit my back-channel. And I agreed to be exploited.

Whether we liked each others’ politics or not, this needed to get done. And it had to get done right. It was really that simple. And I had a strong track record of success.

You need only look at Libya today to know that back-channel dialogue succeeded admirably, in fact.

Before the fall of Gadhaffi, Libya had fully reformed, having renounced its sanctuary for terrorists and WMD development —my two favorite causes as an Anti-War Asset.

The situation was very different in May 1995, when I first approached Libyan diplomats. My first meetings at the Libya House occurred at a time when Tripoli held pariah status in the international community. The FBI snatched anybody who walked into the Libya House even once, and sat them down for a serious conversation.

They did not try to stop me.

Why? Because Assets can be extremely difficult to replace—especially with regards to countries like Iraq and Libya. Nobody else could step in, particularly in those years.

And yet it was incredibly shrewd of American Intelligence to use me. Because of my activism, I could establish rapport with individuals they could not otherwise get close to, inside nations officially cut off from the United States. Most unusually Arab diplomats respected the motivations for my engagement—which were totally sincere on my part. They welcomed me as a guest to their embassy. They recognized that I opposed acts of violence, not people or culture or religious teachings. Most importantly, the Arabs had vastly more incentive to cooperate, because they recognized the consistency of my opposition to violence in all directions. I opposed military aggression by the West with the same passion that I opposed terrorism. As such, I could engage in topics that would ordinarily be off limits.

For those who would criticize my Intelligence affiliations, consider this:

I acquired all of my success without wiretaps, water boarding or warrantless searches. I never engaged in rendition, kidnapping men off the streets of one country and transporting them to secret prisons for brutal interrogations. I never seduced young jihadis to plot bombings, so that I could arrest them and build a reputation for myself.

Quite the opposite, I applied myself to old-fashioned dialogue and diplomacy. Long before anti-terrorism was fashionable in Washington, I opened a back-channel with Middle Eastern countries that could contribute something important to counter terrorism policy. I worked to support values of non-violence that were clearly stated upfront to all parties, and fully understood. I got difficult problems unstuck. I never solicited media attention for my successes. My satisfaction came from working to achieve my values, not from a need for personal celebrity.

For all those reasons, it is a ghastly twist of fate that my Asset work achieved notoriety—but not public respect. Because in fact I accomplished a great part of what America’s leaders and the American people hail as your highest priorities. The global community’s greatest good was served. My efforts protected U.S. and Middle Eastern security, and laid a foundation for a wider scale of cooperation in multiple sectors.

I never betrayed my original values. On the contrary, through this work, I found a practical way of expressing my beliefs and working to achieve them.

Dialogue didn’t mean the U.S. had gone soft on Iraq, either. For sure Dr. Fuisz and Hoven did not give a damn about the immorality of sanctions or U.S. militarism. They were warriors, not sentimentalists. They wanted to leverage access from my activism to these embassies, because they understood that Iraq and Libya had the best intelligence on terrorist activity in the Middle East. And the U.S. needed to capture that intelligence.

It was simple logic. They could not afford to blind their sight because of hostilities with Baghdad or Tripoli. They needed the Lockerbie Trial and the weapons inspections. I was the one who lobbied for lifting sanctions to reward cooperation. But it was really a Catch 22. If Iraq or Libya refused to cooperate, it would have created another justification for holding sanctions in place. So in a real sense, my back channel created a pressure valve that was vital to the endgame.

Strikingly, however, my handlers and I discovered that we shared a common value system in support of non-violence. And as an Asset, I was far more desirable than arms traders or international drug lords, who are the most common types of Assets. As one would expect, weapons traders play all sides of a conflict, and typically only reveal intelligence that would harm the financial interests of their competitors. Likewise, drug lords provide quotas of high value intelligence for drug busts, sacrificing weak traffickers, in order to shield the most profitable operations of their cartels.

Those sorts of Assets are shady and duplicitous, frequently engaging in the very same illicit activities which Intelligence strives to expose. They limit Intelligence to whatever fits their group agenda.. They fudge it. They play with it. They redact what isn’t helpful to their cause.

I was infinitely more reliable. Some of the spooks might have strongly disagreed with my politics. But they understood from my platform that I would never incite violence. And I would discourage others from doing so.

I wasn’t half bad, after all.

I recall my visits to the Iraqi Embassy with tragic clarity.

The United Nations Mission of Iraq resided in a gorgeous old brownstone on the Upper East-side of Manhattan, half a block from Central Park and a brief walk to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue.

Five video surveillance cameras marked the entry door and inner foyer. During crises with the United States, an American security guard would be posted in front of the building. I would get waved inside.

Many times during flare ups in hostilities, my private life would be thrown aside, while I rushed to visit the Iraqi Embassy. I aspired to be a source of calm, a counterweight to belligerent threats that would ratchet up the stakes inside Iraq. I did not always succeed, but at least I earned my reputation as a peace activist honestly. I saw for myself that even one small voice urging restraint can make a difference. Kindness and dignity matter.

Ah, but isn’t it “grandiose” to want to contribute to peace efforts?

Perhaps. But nothing can change the fact that I did so. I worked very hard for this. I dedicated almost a decade of my life to it.

Walking into the Iraqi Embassy, I was struck by a sense of worn elegance, tattered on the edges, but proud and timeless nonetheless. Beautiful plaster crown molding tipped the ceilings over elegant honey wood floors, slightly scuffed. A marble fireplace on the main floor and, for awhile, a large chandelier drenched with crystal prisms remarked on better days, when the Embassy was alive with high profile guests seeking audience with the Ambassador to discuss corporate investments and cultural missions to Baghdad.

Most afternoons, the embassy was quiet. When I would arrive, the diplomat on guard would bring me cups of sweet Iraqi tea, while my diplomatic contact got summoned to the embassy. In those rooms, conversing with diplomats, I saw endurance and fortitude such that nobody who actually spoke with those men would question their integrity. These were honorable and good people. Even those who called Iraq an enemy would have to respect them. They were not war-mongers. They were devoted to easing the suffering of Iraqi children under sanctions. I admired them greatly, because they preserved that integrity in the face of the most grueling ostracism and pariah status inflicted by their host country, the United States.

Admittedly, I have a broader perspective of Saddam Hussein than other Americans. I saw Saddam as a political creature of the Middle East, just like Hafez al Assad, Syria’s former President for Life, and Hosni Mubarak, President for Life of Egypt, or any of the Emirs and Princes ruling over Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. The United Nations is loaded with dictatorships in Africa and Asia. It’s the people who must be protected. For its part, Iraq was more progressive and secular than most Arab countries. Their people shared western values, making conversation easy.

Just three Assets covered the Iraqi Embassy in New York before the War. I never met the other two until all of us got indicted as “unregistered Iraqi Agents,” and accused of “conspiracy with the Iraqi Intelligence Service.”[87]

The United States did not need us anymore. We had served our purpose and could be discarded. Worst yet, we were up to our eyeballs in direct contact with “inconvenient truths” that contradicted official U.S. policy. Our voices would have been a major embarrassment to the false story Congress was selling to the public. So they took us out, though they had been lucky to enjoy our service at all. Don’t forget: under Saddam Hussein’s government, the CIA could “count the number of agents in Iraq on one hand.”[88] Saddam killed them all as traitors as fast as he found them. And he tortured the hell out of them first.

It helps explain the saying that “Assets have no future. Only a bullet.”

Foolishly, I never thought that axiom applied to me. Never would I have anticipated the insulting rhetoric by Republicans or Democrats on Capitol Hill, not after all I had done. I am fiercely proud to this day of the work that we accomplished.

I considered it a tremendous privilege and challenge.

Above all, Asset work provides a unique opportunity to roll up your sleeves and dig into hard problems in the international community. An Asset participates directly and immediately in changing the dynamics of the conflict. “Think tanks” abound in Washington. They only talk about issues and problems. Asset work gets you into the room where the problems are hammered into solutions.

If you really believe in a cause, it’s a chance to make some crucial difference— or to beat your head against the wall trying. It’s creative and proactive—the enemy of passivity and inertia. It’s “doing,” not wringing your hands in grief.

You don’t like the situation. Change it.

When you’re an Asset, you can.

Where then do misperceptions about “Double Agents” come from?

Those misperceptions are surprisingly common: Very simply, when one Agency captures an Asset—almost nobody in other Agencies knows who they are. Or what they’re doing. Or that their work is being closely watched. They don’t know about the Operation. They can’t identify who’s running it. And the Asset doesn’t know all the facts either. So if confronted, the Asset might give unexpected answers, which makes other Agencies—or factions inside the same agency—very nervous.

Other foreign Intelligence agencies likewise don’t know what it’s for. They only know that some individual has initiated contacts with some awfully extraordinary groups of people. That’s all they see. And they are paying attention.

In my situation dealing with Iraq and Libya, you’d better believe those other Intelligence factions steadily reported the fact of my meetings higher up the chain—including foreign intelligence services. They would have been negligent not to. Sometimes they might have been told to look the other way. Or they might have received heated instructions to “get me.” These groups are so disparate and unconnected to one another that one faction could flag a series of contacts as potentially threatening, while another team or faction was aggressively pushing to maintain those same projects.

Because they fight over control of Assets and budgets, one agency— or faction within the agency—might refuse to disclose an operation. Another faction might then attack the Asset. It happens all the time. It’s the peril of Asset work.

When it came to the Lockerbie negotiations, certain factors aggravated the hardships, because there was outright hostility to the Trial in some quarters. Factions played against each other fiercely. Defense Intelligence championed the Lockerbie Trial. Parts of the CIA feared it. As the Asset who started the talks, I got caught in the cross-fire. Even though the U.S. government declared the Lockerbie Trial a formal policy goal, I was bitterly harassed.

I was also heavily protected. Paul Hoven stayed over night at my house with a gun a few times during the Lockerbie talks, when unfriendly folk would come to Washington. Except I don’t think he slept. By contrast, there were no threats when our team started back channel talks with Iraq on resuming the weapons inspections—just heavy tracking, especially after 9/11. Ironically, as long as they showed up, I felt safe. I was reporting my actions, and they were responding.

I cannot stress enough that it would be anathema to the whole system of intelligence gathering to discourage Assets from maintaining contacts within their target circle. If one agency in the Intelligence Community gets into the habit of burning Assets used by other factions, the entire process of intelligence gathering would be defeated. It would break down irreparably. It would guarantee the destruction of U.S. Intelligence.

There were other drawbacks that I would come to recognize later on. By then, I had become so engrossed in this life that it would have been impossible to change my destiny.

Truthfully though, I would never have wanted to.

Iraq’s Collision With Fate: Why 9/11 Had to Happen

I get asked all the time why Washington allowed the 9/11 strike to happen. Because that’s what they did. They allowed it to happen. 9/11 was the outcome of a shadow policy of “deliberate avoidance.” Senior officials got warned over and over what was coming by numerous, highly knowledgeable sources. The government very deftly resisted appeals to coordinate a preemptive response between agencies, which would have made it possible to acquire more “actionable” intelligence to block the attack. (That’s “nuts and bolts” intelligence.)

In the aftermath, it’s obvious that 9/11 provided the vehicle for War with Iraq. Everyone can see that.

But very little has been offered to explain why.

What obstacles faced Washington prior to 9/11 that compelled the Pro-War Camp to take such drastic measures to topple global opposition to War with Iraq?

Put another way, why did the Bush Administration consider a “Pearl Harbor Day” necessary to achieve its secret objectives in Baghdad?

“Why” has been a black hole in the debate. And it’s much more than a rhetorical question. There’s substantial history of parallel events involving Baghdad in the twelve months leading up to 9/11, which has never been discussed in this context at all.

In my opinion, understanding that parallel history is critical to understanding what happened to the United States that tragic morning.

My Asset work made me much more attuned to those undercurrents, which came very close to swamping the White House agenda altogether.

It was all right there below radar. Americans proceeding blissfully in their lives had no idea what was coming:

It was peace.

Flagging International Support for U.N. Sanctions

When President-Elect George W. Bush swore his oath of office on January 20, 2001 his new Administration faced a serious problem: Peace was breaking out all over the world—much of it focused on Iraq. Emissaries from around the globe traveled to Baghdad, openly expressing sympathy for Iraq’s plight under sanctions and encouraging Baghdad to return to the fold. Trade emissaries looked forward to restoring economic ties. They began to negotiate reconstruction contracts in all economic sectors, which would be implemented as soon as sanctions got lifted. Europe, Russia, China, the Arab League, and the Non-Aligned Movement all agitated for a major policy shift. Baghdad moved closer to ending the hated sanctions every day.

By this time, Iraq had suffered 11 years under brutal U.N. sanctions that blocked free-flow imports of food, medicine and equipment for factory production in every sector.

The international community could stand it no longer. Internationally, support for sanctions was collapsing rapidly and irrevocably.

Iraq’s misery was dire. Health and medical services deteriorated the most severely. Most of the international community has forgotten that Iraq performed the second heart transplant in the world, before sanctions, and boasted some of the finest hospitals and medical staffs rivaling the United States and Europe.

Under sanctions, Iraq could not purchase chemotherapy drugs, insulin or digitalis for heart conditions. Health officials could not purchase x-ray machines or oxygen canisters for hospitals. A visiting U.S. Congressional delegation reported in 2000 that hospitals lacked incubators for new born babies, or air conditioning for seriously ill patients in the desert climate.[89]

On my trip to Baghdad in March 2002, three hospitals threw back their supply doors in random floor inspections to prove that doctors had almost no prescription drugs of any kind on site—no pain killers for hospitalized patients—not even aspirin. Oxygen canisters were in such short supply that patients in adjoining hospital rooms handed them back and forth five to ten minutes at a time. When the canisters would run out of oxygen, hospital patients would receive no breathing assistance at all.

Not surprisingly, many hospital patients died for lack of life support.

This policy of cutting off Iraq from all outside trade was implemented by the U.N. at the demand of the United States and Britain. The “oil for food” program allowed Baghdad to sell $5.26 billion worth of crude oil every 6 months with which to buy food, medicine and all other supplies necessary to run a country of 22 million people.

On a per capita basis, the “oil for food” program averaged $252 in humanitarian assistance for each Iraqi citizen.[90] However, Iraq relied on that allowance to bankroll every other part of its economy, too, including heavy equipment for oil facilities, clean water treatment and sewage systems, electrical production, housing and food storage.

On the high end, Iraq was restricted to $600 million worth of oil parts and equipment every six months to staunch the rapid deterioration of its oil industry after 11 years of neglect. Inevitably those monies cut into the allocation available for food and medical supplies. The advanced destruction of its pipeline and pump stations made it impossible for Iraq to increase its oil output, nonetheless.

Worse still, Iraq received substantially less than the $5.26 billion allotment, because both the United States and Britain made a practice of putting holds on relief contracts, and typically froze about $1.5 billion worth of equipment and replacement parts in all sectors.[91] That trend produced dire consequences for long term repairs to Baghdad’s electrical grid, water and sanitation systems, and agriculture, something that would prove deeply problematic for all of Iraq’s future governance.

Independent of that U.N “oil for food” program, the Iraqi people had no access to their own national wealth and natural resources, most notably oil. The U.N. bureaucracy controlled it all.

Once some of the best educated peoples in the Middle East, under sanctions, Iraqis could not purchase pencils or desks or books for school children. Every Iraqi school child was allocated just 6 pencils, 2 erasers, 1 pencil sharpener and 6 exercise books that had to last the entire school year.[92] Humanitarian aid workers opined that sanctions wiped out literacy in a single generation. Except for an elite minority, the “sanctions generation” would enter adulthood with only the minimum educational requirements necessary to participate in rebuilding their country.

In context, by 2003, 18 year old males in Iraq had been living under sanctions deprivation since they were 5 years old. With dangerously few personal resources to recommend the future, or provide a way for them to participate in it, it’s not surprising that so many young Iraqi men gave their muscle and backbone to the insurgency movement to oust the Occupation. They had nothing else to look forward to.

It’s unfathomable for consumer-driven Americans and Europeans to comprehend the society created by the United Nations: Iraq was prohibited from importing any sort of consumer good at all—Translated to daily life, Iraqis could not buy cars to drive. Or computers. Or dishwashers. Or washing machines. Or dishes and silverware. Sanctions prohibited the imports of chairs, couches, tables and light fixtures; television sets and stereos; stoves, refrigerators and microwave ovens, and every other conceivable item for daily use. The United Nations seized all of Iraq’s oil wealth, paying six figure salaries to bureaucrats in New York and Geneva, who managed “humanitarian” programs and weapons inspections to verify Iraq’s disarmament. Central economic planning by the United Nations created the sort of deprivation expected in the poorest third world countries, a shocking outcome in a nation sitting on the world’s second richest oil reserve.

At the start of the Gulf War in August, 1990, three Iraqi dinar bought $1 U.S. dollars. By the time of President Bush’s inauguration, the value of the dinar had collapsed to a rate of 2,000 dinar to every $1 U.S. dollar.

To put that in context of family income, a typical Iraqi government pension ran 250 dinars a month[93]—the equivalent of 12 U.S. cents. On that income, a middle class Iraqi family made do with a piece of bread and a cup of tea at the noon meal followed by rice for dinner.[94] Poor families in Iraq fared infinitely worse, forced to choose which child to feed each day, because government rations got exhausted by mid-month, leaving them with nothing to eat at all. Malnutrition reached staggering levels.

By the end of sanctions, in 2003, 1.7 million Iraqis had died from starvation and lack of medicine, counting only children under the age of 5 and adults over the age of 60.[95]

The deaths of children age 6 and over, and adults age 59 and under, were excluded from mortality statistics on sanctions-related deaths. Otherwise the death toll would have climbed dramatically higher.[96]

As it was, the World Health Organization reported that 500,000 children had died by the end of 1996, raising alarms that the U.N. sanctions had become a policy of “mass death.”[97] The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) acknowledged that in state-controlled areas of Iraq, the mortality rate of children under the age of 5 had more than doubled in 10 years.[98]

Officially, UNICEF estimated that between 5,000 and 7,000 children under age 5 died each month.[99] However, the Iraqi Health Ministry published statistics averaging 11,000 dead each month in 2000, much higher than the United Nations wanted to acknowledge.[100] The Iraqi Health Ministry documented 8,182 child deaths from diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition in January, 2000 alone, compared with just 389 deaths in the same month of 1989, the year before the trade embargo went into effect.[101]

Under the guise of demanding Iraq’s disarmament, the United Nations had succeeded in killing more Iraqi people with its sanctions policy than all the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction ever used in history, combined, according to the prestigious Foreign Affairs Journal.[102]

Internationally, the Iraqi sanctions acquired a harsh reputation as a policy of genocide.

On top of that, only 41% of Iraq’s population had access to clean water, and 83 % of Iraqi schools required substantial repairs.[103]

The “oil for food” program was such a failure that top bureaucrats at the United Nations were ashamed to run it. A year before President Bush’s inauguration, Hans von Sponeck of Germany, the U.N.’s senior humanitarian coordinator, tendered his resignation from the “oil for food” program, calling Iraqi sanctions “a true human tragedy that needs to be ended.”[104]

“The very title that I hold as a humanitarian coordinator suggests I cannot be silent over that which we see here ourselves,” Von Sponeck said.

Jutta Burghardt, head of the U.N. World Food Program in Iraq, joined him in resigning to protest the depth of human misery created by their own relief programs.

“How long the civilian population, which is totally innocent on all this, should be punished for something they have never done?” Von Sponeck posed a rhetorical question that echoed through Amabassadors’ cozy chambers at the United Nations.[105]

That criticism displeased the U.S. and Britain. But Von Sponeck’s despair echoed Dennis Halliday, the first humanitarian coordinator of the “oil for food” program, who resigned from a 34 year career at the U.N. in September 1998 after reaching the same conclusions.

Halliday called the sanctions “a totally bankrupt concept.”[106]

“We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It’s as simple and terrifying as that,” the former assistant Secretary General at the U.N. warned, in his resignation.

“The middle class and the professional classes, the very people who might change governance in Iraq, have been wiped out, and those that remain are struggling to stay alive and keep their families alive.”

The severity of damage to the middle class and professional Iraqis qualified as a critical flaw in the sanctions policy design.

Indeed, on the other side of the debate, some people have wondered how human rights activists, who champion democratic freedoms for all peoples, could oppose a policy tool like sanctions, which help to undermine despotic governments.

It’s because we believe so passionately in the rights of all people to have input to government policy, and to speak freely about government decision making, including the right to criticize the government. The rights of democracy are essential to what we do every day, and we want those rights for all people.

We oppose sanctions out of recognition that ordinary people have almost no power in those societies. It seems deeply unjust to punish them for government activities and policies that they cannot possibly hope to change. Worst still, the extra burden of sanctions has the counter-productive effect of crushing those people even further. All of their energies must shift to providing basic necessities for their families. There’s nothing left to engage in community transformation or political reform movements. By necessity, their daily life must focus entirely on economic survival.

In short, sanctions defeat any hope of authentic political reforms.

Alas, the United Nations was caught in a macabre steel trap of its own design. Security Council resolutions rigidly declared that sanctions could not be lifted until Iraq proved that it possessed no Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Iraq wept tears of blood that it had no weapons left to destroy—a truth the U.S./British invasion verified as tragically accurate. U.N. inspectors had destroyed every weapon system in the country before its teams pulled out in December, 1998. Post-war assessments show Iraq’s weapon stocks had been eradicated by late 1996.

All those Iraqis had suffered and died for nothing—1.7 million people died for a lie.

For Iraq’s part, after the U.N.’s self righteous departure, officials in Baghdad called the U.N.’s bluff and refused to let inspection teams back into the country. Where the U.N. expected contrition, they got scorn. Iraq resolved that any resumption of weapons inspections must stipulate a guarantee that once Baghdad demonstrated compliance with the inspections process, and proved the status of its disarmament, sanctions would have to be lifted. Inspections could not go on endlessly, as before, without producing evidence of illegal weapons production. Iraq would reject any sort of cooperation that failed to achieve that goal.

There was some morality in Washington, if only a token for humanity. In the year before President Bush’s inauguration, future Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich teamed up with Democratic Whip David E. Bonior and Rep. John Conyers, soon to be chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Together they introduced a bill that would have permitted the export of food and medicine to Iraq. The bill had 70 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives.[107]

Chief sponsor, Rep. Bonior, called the sanctions “infanticide masquerading as policy.” He swore that some members of Congress “refuse to close our eyes to the slaughter of innocents.”

Alas, by and large, when President Bush swore the oath of office on January 20, 2001, most Americans could have cared less about Iraq’s suffering.

However, the International Community was a different matter. In the year before 9/11, the international community had woken up to the misery manufactured by the U.N.’s central economic planning in Iraq, and the effect of handicapping political reforms for average Iraqi citizens. Ordinary people around the globe recognized a human catastrophe was underway in Iraq, and the United Nations had caused it. Pressure rose in Europe, China and Russia to resolve their conflict with Baghdad. The International Community was sick to death of watching Iraq’s misery from the sidelines.

After 10 long years of international passivity, in September, 2000 humanitarian groups around the world took bold and courageous action.

In a lesson straight out of the Berlin Air Lift, humanitarian groups mobilized to organize rescue flights into Baghdad International Airport, transporting activists, medical staff and urgently needed medical supplies to the Iraqi people.

Notably, the Germans and the Russians came first, memorializing that great lesson of breaking the blockade on East Berlin during the Cold War. The French and Italians seized the example—And finally Jordan sent a plane carrying ministers, doctors and medicines to Baghdad.

It was the first Arab flight to Iraq in 10 years. Yemen and Morocco took heart from Jordan’s leadership and flew into Baghdad, too.

The flights sparked fierce debate on the Security Council, with France insisting that planes only needed to notify UN bureaucrats of their flight plans. France and Russia pointed out that no flight ban was contained in the U.N. sanctions resolutions. The flight ban had been self-imposed, and was thus righteously rejected.

Baghdad International Airport had been designed and built by a French architectural company in 1982 to handle 7.5 million passengers annually. The airport had been closed since the outbreak of the Gulf War on the night of January 16, 1991. It reopened on August 15, 2000.[108] As champions of human dignity mobilized internationally, and refused to bow to the crude absurdity of U.N. sanctions any longer, the emptiness of moral authority of the sanctions exploded into the open.

When I saw the humanitarian airlifts organized by activist groups all over the world, I knew the sanctions would fall.

Far more importantly, U.S. Intelligence recognized it too. Those courageous pilots flying those medical airlifts changed the whole dynamic of peace. By their actions, they showed that the world could not stomach this cruelty against Iraq’s people any longer. With one brave act of defiance, they forced a complete reconsideration of global policy simply by refusing to cooperate with injustice. Sanctions would have to go.

Parts of the United Nations Community had started to reach the same conclusions. In August, 2000 the U.N. Sub Commission on Human Rights issued a report by Belgian law professor, Marc Bossuyt declaring that sanctions were “unequivocally illegal.”[109]

After 10 years enforcing sanctions, the United Nations woke up to recall that the 1949 Geneva Conventions prohibits the collective punishment of civilians, and “expressly prohibits the starving of civilian populations and the destruction of what is indispensable to their survival.” After a decade of denial, the UN Human Rights body finally admitted that “All economic activities are seriously affected (by sanctions in Iraq), particularly in the areas of drinking water supplies, electricity and agriculture.”[110]

The UN report concluded “that sanctions have led to a disaster in Iraq comparable to the worst catastrophes of the past decades.”

Finally, sanctions were judged and condemned as a massive policy failure.

If Europe was a new convert to anti-sanctions philosophy, sentiments among the Arab peoples had always championed Baghdad’s cause. The Arab Street had discovered its collective voice amidst the continuous U.S. bombings of Iraqi cities—20,000 air sorties by the close of the Clinton Administration. Arab fundamentalists had rallied to Iraq’s cause for years in a boiling froth of rage over the deaths of innocents in Baghdad. For a long time Arab governments smirked over the take down of Saddam, glad for America’s wrath to point at other leaderships every bit as totalitarian as their own. But the Arab Street was always alive with the fires of retribution.

After 10 years, Arab governments began to heed those street chants. By the close of the Clinton Administration, even Washington’s Arab allies blistered criticism on sanctions policy. Qatar called for Gulf Nations to normalize relations with Iraq and lift sanctions. Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates followed Qatar’s example, and took steps to reactivate their diplomatic ties with Baghdad.

The United States faced one more problem: A chilling prophecy out in the deserts of Afghanistan was coming to fruition. In late December, 1998, an intrepid journalist for TIME Magazine,[111] Rahmullah Yusufzai trekked out to the secret encampment hiding a young jihadi named Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden emerged from his caves to wax eloquent praise on the masterminds of the terrorist bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, Kenya—and to claim credit for attacking targets inside the United States as early as 1993—encompassing the first attack on the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City Bombing.

When Yusufzai asked what the U.S. should expect from him now, Bin Laden gave a chilling reply: “Any thief or criminal robber, who enters another country, in order to steal, should expect to be exposed to murder at any time. For the American forces to expect anything from me personally reflects a very narrow perception. Thousands of millions of Muslims are angry. The Americans should expect reactions from the Muslim world that are proportionate to the injustice they inflict.”[112]

The Arab Street was ready to unleash its impotent rage. Europe had awakened to the implications for Middle East volatility. The United States and Britain, however, clung to their shared superpower status as a false cloak of protection, convinced that no government, much less a small guerrilla entity, could knock them off their pedestal of power and cultural elitism.

It was the final days of the Clinton Administration. The U.S. and Britain had become isolated on the U.N. Security Council. The world of nations collectively opposed any further aggression against the Iraqi people. Coming into power, newly elected President George Bush had no chance to peddle his game plan to oust Saddam Hussein. The mere suggestion of war with Iraq would have sparked outrage and gotten denounced forthwith as a “rogue action,” without provocation.

An Era of Peace was breaking out over the world community. Humanitarian activists braced to score a great victory against the misery of U.N. Sanctions.

And a time bomb was ready to explode on the Arab Street.

The CIA was fully conscious of all these factors. It was the political reality that confronted them. They had to deal with it. They had a legitimate purpose, however, which was to guarantee that the United States controlled the agenda for resolving the conflict with Iraq at all phases. They did not want to relinquish that power to their allies on the U.N. Security Council or other Arab governments. It was their job to hold power tightly in the hands of Washington.

Like it or not, that motivation was entirely rational from the standpoint of U.S intelligence. It was such a matter of political necessity that the Pro-War cabal could not ignore it, either.

Republican leaders would have to overcome the obstacle of peace if they hoped to achieve their secret agenda of leading the international community to War in Iraq. They would have to turn the whole world topsy turvy to get their chance.

As horrific as it was, 9/11 fit the bill.

CHAPTER 5:

IRAQ’S PEACE OVERTURES
TO EUROPE AND THE
UNITED STATES

“The first casualty, when war comes, is Truth.”
U.S. Senator Hiram Warren Johnson, 1918

In such a radically changing political climate, the CIA could not stay passive.

Simply put, the status quo had to change. With pressure building from the international community to force a change, the CIA recognized it would have to adapt in order to retain control of the outcome, and secure the most favorable benefits for Washington.

Warming relations between Iraq, Europe, Russia and Asia wasn’t the only “bad news” for Pro-War Republicans in the months before 9/11. Woefully for the War Camp, Baghdad was locked in a highly successful, two-prong strategy to undercut whatever international support for sanctions remained. The Iraqi Government aggressively courted foreign corporations to visit Baghdad, and publicly rewarded trade missions with highly lucrative reconstruction contracts in any post-sanctions period.

That created a secondary concern with regards to future oil rights in Iraq. U.S. demand for Iraqi oil, and its avaricious desire for future exploration and development contracts continued unabated, despite U.S. hostilities to Saddam’s government. U.S. refineries proved to be Iraq’s best customers from the late 1990s onward, importing 750,000 barrels per day, or 9 percent of total U.S. imports.[113] Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Bayoil and Koch Petroleum ran the most Iraqi oil through their refineries.

If the U.S. was Iraq’s most loyal customer, for obvious reasons it was not Iraq’s favorite customer. Iraq made a practice of rewarding friendly nations that opposed sanctions with major oil exploration and development contracts that would become active in any post-sanctions period. Among those allies, Russia stood out. Baghdad gave favored status to Russian shipping and trading firms, “taking large volumes of crude…. away from previous customers.”[114]

Thus, as Russia confronted its own critical period of economic upheaval, it emerged as Iraq’s largest trading partner, winning 40 percent of all oil export contracts under the “oil-for-food” program. The transfer of contracts to Russian oil traders was widely regarded as payback for Moscow’s refusal to allow Washington and London to revise sanctions in the Security Council, as opposed to ending them outright. President Vladimir Putin declared a strong desire for close bilateral relations with Baghdad.

Most significantly, Iraq awarded a highly lucrative contract to LUKoil, Russia’s premiere oil corporation. The 1997 LUKoil contract to develop the West Qurna field, expected to produce 600,000 barrels per day, was the largest deal signed by any international oil company under Saddam’s government.[115] Oil rights carried an estimated value of $20 billion for LUKoil, with 3 percent ownership by the Russian government.

Mega U.S. Oil Corporations shuddered in dismay when the LUKoil contract was announced. Even promises that U.S. corporations could compete for second and third tier sub-contracts for development of the West Qurna field could not alter the blow that Russia’s priority status would cause for U.S. shareholders. It locked into place a structure for oil rights in Iraq that would seriously crimp the long term earning potential of politically connected corporations like Halliburton and Chevron Texaco, which had been eyeing Iraq’s oil potential for a decade. LUKoil agitated Washington.

Contrary to rhetoric in the European media, however, France, Russia and China weren’t the only recipients of bountiful reconstruction contracts. A substantial offering was made covertly to the United States, as well.

And the CIA was determined to drive a hard bargain.

As early as October 2000, Iraq signaled a desire to negotiate a “comprehensive resolution to its conflict with the United States that would be mutually beneficial to both parties,”[116] according to U.N. Ambassador Saeed Hasan.

Central to those discussions, before back channel talks kicked off, Iraq agreed in principle to accept the return of U.N. weapons inspectors, a ground-breaking shift in Baghdad’s policy, and a major break in the deadlock over Iraq’s disarmament. The CIA accepted the talks with that understanding upfront. Notably, Baghdad’s acquiescence occurred fully 18 months before the world community learned of Iraq’s commitment to resume inspections.

To be fair, as of November and December 2000, Baghdad hoped to structure the new agreement in such a way as to prevent the belligerent and insulting behavior practiced by Richard Butler’s inspection teams before the 1998 pullout.[117] At the start of talks, Iraq wanted a statement of intent that U.N. inspectors would behave with a modicum of respect for their host, without racial slurs against Arab culture or mockery of the suffering of Iraq’s people, which was endemic to the previous inspections.

There was legitimate basis for Baghdad’s concern. I myself overheard derogatory remarks about the Iraqi people in the United Nations cafeteria in New York, of all places. One such conversation between U.S. and British diplomats scorned the deaths of Iraqi children, and ended with laughter. So I know racial insults were fairly common. Baghdad demanded that UN bureaucrats should behave like professionals.

Above all, Iraq wanted to establish a mechanism for lifting the sanctions as compliance moved forward, so that any new round of weapons inspections could not continue indefinitely, as before, without acknowledging substantial proof of Baghdad’s cooperation and verification of disarmament.

Over and over, Iraqi diplomats fretted how the U.S. would respond when they found no weapons of mass destruction. How could Iraq compel the United Nations to accept the evidence that there was no weapon stocks left to destroy? What would happen next? How could Iraq make sure the U.N. would follow through to end the sanctions?

There was so much despair over those questions, and so much distrust, that I knew in my heart no illegal weapons would be found in Iraq. To lighten up the conversation, I would tease diplomats that Baghdad should buy weapons from Iran (formerly Iraq’s mortal enemy), and import them through Syria (another mortal enemy). When the weapons got to the Iraqi border, the Foreign Ministry should call a press conference and officially unveil them, with the announcement that Baghdad was turning them over to the United Nations, because weapons inspectors refused to go away empty handed. The Iraqis could say to the United Nations— “Now you have your weapons! We have bought them especially for you. Go away! And leave us in peace!”

But it was actually a very serious problem in the structuring of sanctions policy. Sanctions presumed that at all times Iraq would have illegal weapons that should be turned over to the United Nations. Once Iraq stopped possessing weapons— and thus stopped turning them over to U.N. inspections teams— Baghdad fell into a state of Non-Compliance.

In a perverse twist, Iraq’s inability to hand over WMDs amounted to a violation of the Security Council Resolutions. Nothing in sanctions policy established procedures for what to do next. Because of the rigidity of the policy design, the U.N. bureaucracy could not adjust to that shift in reality. Suspiciously too, the oversight of Iraqi affairs had become a full scale bureaucracy at the United Nations, with high profile jobs and six figure salaries in New York and Geneva. The bureaucracy had a competing purpose— to protect its own job security. U.N. bureaucrats had every incentive to perpetuate sanctions indefinitely.

It’s unforgivably obscene, if you consider the humanitarian purpose and ideology of the United Nations. But that’s how it was done.

There was a second problem. Like all sanctions regimens, the nature of its rigidity eliminated any possibility of quid pro quo in talks. It forced an all or nothing solution, blocking intermediary steps that ordinarily would have been implemented to move out of deadlock. Thus, unhappily, the goal of resuming weapons inspections struck many diplomats as impossible to achieve. Iraq would have to forsake its national pride to comply. Meanwhile, the U.S. demanded exceedingly tough standards for access and transparency, which Iraq complained was burdensome beyond the scope dictated by the Security Council. At the end of the day, very few world-class diplomats wanted to stake their reputations to resolve this headache for the international community.

Just like negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial, that meant the field was wide open for a third party back channel to kick start the process— if someone could be found who was not intimidated by impossible constraints and overwhelming odds against success.

As it happened, this was just my cup of tea. I had already run this obstacle course in back-channel negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial. Persuading Libya to hand over its two men for Trial was considered impossible, too, for all the same reasons. So I understood the expectations—and my limitations and boundaries. We would get this process unstuck, and solidify Baghdad’s commitment to resume the weapons inspections. Then the preliminary agreement would get handed back to the United Nations, so that legal staff could ratify the agreement in technical language.

The U.N. would claim victory. Congress would pontificate. And we would watch our success from the sidelines, while others strutted on CNN and the FOX News Channel. All of my glory would go to others— most of them ignorant of how our process of conflict resolution actually worked.

Straight off Lockerbie, I was genuinely enthusiastic and eager to help, nevertheless. I saw this as a unique and precious opportunity to contribute to my values. I grieved for the suffering of the Iraqi people. And I was willing to assume the political risk. I was fully committed to seeing it through to the end, with the greatest hope that Baghdad’s humanitarian crisis would come to an end once and for all

And so I grabbed the opportunity with a full heart. I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. I swore to my CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz that anything Washington wanted from Baghdad, I would make sure it got.

In fact, I was very well-positioned to carry this project forward. As a long-time Asset, I had fairly unique access to Iraq’s senior diplomats in New York. And I had all the right contacts on the Security Council to help me, as well.

Of all the diplomats at the United Nations whom I was privileged to meet, Dr. Saeed Hasan, Iraq’s Ambassador to the U.N., stood out as the most courageous and highly moral individual that I encountered. Dr. Hasan was fully dedicated at all times to decision making that would protect the future of Iraq’s children.

Most importantly, by this time, Dr. Hasan had been stationed in New York for seven years as Iraq’s Ambassador and former Deputy Ambassador. As such, Dr. Hasan recognized the scope of commitments necessary for Baghdad to get out from under sanctions. Critically, he accepted the personal risk of delivering that message to Saddam Hussein, at a time when the proposal to resume inspections was still highly controversial in Baghdad.[118] Ambassador Hasan understood the greater issue of disarmament for the West. Yet he was fiercely protective of Iraq’s sovereignty. This solution to this quagmire was only possible because of Dr. Hasan. He broke the deadlock.

In October, 2000, when Iraq indicated it was ready to discuss a “comprehensive settlement on all outstanding issues,” Dr. Hasan communicated that offering through my back channel to Dr. Fuisz and Hoven. From them, it reached the upper echelons of CIA and other concerned parties in the Intelligence Community.

All agreed that after the November, 2000 Presidential Election, I could take up the weapons inspections with Ambassador Hasan. My role would be to persuade Iraq to accept the rigorous demands for compliance and transparency dictated by the United States. According to CIA conditions, I would have no part in determining what those technical standards should be. I would push Iraq to accept U.S. demands in all areas. I would not criticize U.S. demands publicly or in private conversations. My remarks would be limited to demanding that Iraq satisfy Washington before sanctions could be lifted.

Most critically, it would be a fixed price. There would be no haggling. The U.S. would define the terms. Iraq would have to agree “with no conditions,” on all matters.

The CIA was hot for a public victory. Most critically, U.S. Intelligence wanted to show its European allies that Washington had stolen back control of the endgame. That marked a huge success for the Americans. By usurping control of the agenda for ending sanctions, the CIA could play both sides. The CIA could force Iraq to submit to disarmament verification, while preventing Baghdad from punishing Washington for the deaths of one million Iraqi children under the age of 5.

Weapons inspections remained paramount; but Iraq’s sweetheart deals in Europe and Asia created a new imperative that U.S. Intelligence was determined to rebalance.

The CIA would move heaven and earth to protect market access for U.S. corporations in any post-sanctions period.

And so, in November, 2000, while votes in Florida were still getting counted, I sat down with Dr. Hasan at the Ambassador’s House in New York to hold preliminary talks on resuming the weapons inspections.

The meetings in November and December, 2000 culminated in a letter to Vice President Elect Richard Cheney, dated December 20, 2000.

At this stage, the Presidential Election continued to be a cliff-hanger. No one had a clue whether the Democrats or Republicans would win the White House. The return of weapons inspectors to Iraq would be gift-wrapped for either of the two Presidential contenders, Vice President Al Gore or Texas Governor George W. Bush, with no party favoritism in the outcome.

By the Inauguration, the CIA expected to hand the new President the first foreign policy victory of his Administration, comparable to the release of the American hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, as President Ronald Reagan was sworn into office. The new White House could tout a major foreign policy achievement from a problem left over by the outgoing Administration. It would launch an image of muscular leadership on the world stage, for the new President.[119]

All of my U.S. intelligence contacts expected gratitude from the new White House. With those expectations, we mapped out a framework for action required by Iraq.

First and foremost, Iraq would have to accept the return of weapons inspectors and maximum transparency to verify disarmament.

Secondly, Baghdad would be required to cooperate with U.S. counter-terrorism goals on a number of ongoing projects.

Thirdly, Iraq would have to guarantee reconstruction contracts for U.S Corporations, post-sanctions. All U.S. Corporations engaged in non-military production before the first Gulf War would have to be authorized to re-enter Baghdad, and perform at the same level of market share as they enjoyed prior to 1990. Iraq’s commitment to U.S. Corporations would have to be publicly declared and ratified to authenticate the understanding.

Does all that seem impossible?

In fact, my efforts proved far more successful than currently understood. The CIA had floated these conditions to Baghdad before agreeing to the talks. Iraq had already issued a general affirmative response before the meetings started.[120]

Notably, Iraq’s Ambassador, Dr. Hasan swore that “the conversation would be short, because Baghdad was fully committed to complying with all current U.S. demands.” It would take “only a couple of weeks to hammer out the details, and no longer,” he assured the U.S. in the December 20 letter to Vice President-elect Richard Cheney.[121] Ambassador Hasan declared that he was authorized to say Baghdad would welcome “covert or non-covert talks with any U.S. official in New York or anywhere in the world.”

Infamously, newly appointed Secretary of State Colin Powell jumped on the Iraqi promise of a quick agreement on “all current U.S. demands,” telling Congress that any talks on weapons inspections “would be a short conversation.” In doing so, Secretary Powell was paraphrasing the Iraqi Ambassador.

There was one great surprise for all of us. Newly elected President Bush appointed Andrew Card, my second cousin on my father’s side, to serve as White House Chief of Staff. That was unexpected. Critically, it must be understood that the decision to engage in covert, back channel talks was reached two months before Card’s appointment. Planning for the talks, and my first two meetings with Dr. Hasan occurred several weeks before Card’s appointment was announced. I cannot underscore enough that back channel talks never depended on my cousin’s promotion.

It was sheer fate that all of my correspondence detailing the progress of our talks to resume weapons inspections got addressed to Andy Card. In a practical sense, he filled the role of a “picture frame” for correspondence intended for the White House, CIA and national security apparatus. That satisfied one of Iraq’s chief concerns that communications should be addressed to policymakers—not the Intelligence Community. By January, 2003, that portfolio totaled 11 letters to Andrew Card, jointly received by the CIA.

The stage was set for victory.

To the surprise of all, President Bush had other plans. Shortly after his Inauguration, on February 16, 2001 he ordered the bombing of Baghdad.

Instead of a “short conversation” and “fast resolution,” preliminary talks on resuming weapons inspections dragged on another year. When the U.S. could pose no more hypothetical obstacles, FBI records show that in February, 2002, I delivered the agreement to the U.N. Security Council.

In fairness, at the start of the Bush Presidency, the Administration’s war agenda remained hidden from the American public and significant parts of the Intelligence Community. Assets like me had no comprehension of the depths of President Bush’s determination to lead the world into War with Iraq.

And so, despite the February 2001 bombing, our back channel talks continued with senior Iraqi diplomats, albeit more slowly. Dr. Hasan ended his tenure as Ambassador to the United Nations and returned home to take up the post of Deputy Foreign Minister. No matter. Iraq’s new Foreign Minister, Naji Sabri, approved of the dialogue, and received communications about all meetings in Baghdad. My talks continued with other senior diplomats— Salih Mahmoud, Saad Abdul Rahmon and Abdul Rahmon Mudhian, whom Baghdad assigned to handle these dynamic communications. Our dialogue stayed highly productive.

At no time did Andy Card demand that I shut down my project, or cease functioning as an Asset or back channel to Baghdad. There was definite subterfuge by the Pro War cabal at the White House, regarding its intentions towards Iraq. They kept me in the dark, while I continued to perform faithfully.

One sees now the dilemma faced by the Intelligence Community, as it tried to serve this President. In retrospect, the world fully grasps how diplomacy posed a significant threat to the vanity of unilateralism in the Bush Administration. One sees too late that George W. Bush was a suspicious and impotent leader, who dissembled to disguise his personal weakness. He did not understand the strategic value of solving problems to maintain U.S. control of a situation. Solving problems was never his strength. So he kept everyone else off balance, in order to maintain control.

But in the opening months of his Administration, the Intelligence Community could be forgiven for the difficulties it faced trying to figure out this new master.

Campaign rhetoric throughout the 2000 Election emphasized Bush’s non-interventionist philosophy of foreign affairs. The Bush family had close relationships with the Arab-American community, and received a king’s ransom of campaign funds from them. Indeed, the Bush family had longstanding ties to Saudi oil. Throughout the campaign, Bush Jr. emphasized fiscal moderation. Nobody expected George Bush to be a “buck burning” President.

For its part, the Intelligence Community saw with great clarity that the international community was ready to throw off U.N. sanctions on Iraq, and seize all those tantalizing reconstruction contracts for itself, worth tens of billions of dollars in revenues and jobs.

Over time, the Intelligence community would come to recognize President Bush’s leadership ineptitude, and experience real frustration over the burdens posed by his weakness. In the meantime, problems had to be solved.

If the United States stood down from a leadership role in problem-solving, then other nations and coalitions would assert their own leadership and policy direction. That would have shut out Washington, which the CIA considered folly under any circumstance. Allowing American influence to collapse in a vacuum of White House leadership would have been a radical failure for U.S. policy in the Middle East.

In the first term of the Bush Administration, the CIA still functioned well enough to recognize that paradigm, and act on it. And so U.S. Intelligence made sure that my interaction with Iraq was heavily supervised. The CIA exercised fierce control over the agenda in all parts, and demanded that I must not challenge whatever extra demands Washington chose to impose on Baghdad. In exchange for my unquestioning obedience to the U.S. agenda, I could work towards suspending the U.N. sanctions.

For my part, my motivation was strictly humanitarian. I was horrified by the misery of Iraqi families and children. I saw the CIA as providing me with a unique and precious opportunity to contribute to the solution. So I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

Again and again, Iraq agreed to all U.S. demands.

And very quickly I began to hunt for help-mates among my other diplomatic contacts at the United Nations—with some noteworthy success.

During the Lockerbie negotiations, I had struck up friendly relations with senior ranking diplomats from Malaysia, which served as a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, under the leadership of Ambassador Hasmy Agam.[122]

When back-channel talks got underway with Iraq, I approached Mr. Rani Ismail Hadi Ali, my contact at the Malaysian Embassy, for help. There’s no point in U.S. Intelligence denying it. My relationship with Mr. Rani Ali and Malaysia’s input on Iraq are substantiated by phone taps, letters and email communications. Malaysia’s support for the peace process, and its advice throughout this back channel process, was quite precious.

Malaysia proved an outstanding partner, in fact. Malaysia[123] boasts a vibrant Islamic community and vast wealth as one of Asia’s financial capitals, with over 30 major international banks operating in Kuala Lumpur. A major exporter of electronics and telecommunications equipment, Malaysia has a fully diversified economy, with 89% literacy in a population of 24 million. More strikingly, Islam is the official religion of the country, and the government actively promotes relations with other Islamic nations, including those in the Middle East.

In its eagerness to advance its relationship with Washington, Malaysia’s Foreign Ministry offered to assume a formal role of intermediary between Iraq and the United States in any covert talks.

It was a valuable strategic offer that promised to yield results on a full range of Middle East and Islamic issues.

Most graciously of all, Ambassador Hasmy Agam, whose career encompassed thirty years of high profile diplomacy in the Non-Aligned Movement, offered to act as the designated contact between Baghdad and the United States. His participation offered a way to jumpstart talks on all matters of the conflict, since it was understood that Iraq and the United States could not sit down together, despite Baghdad’s oft expressed desire to do so. The outstanding leadership of Ambassador Agam provided a way forward. He assigned Rani Ali, an expert on U.N. sanctions policy who staffed him on the Security Council, to liaison with me for guidance, as talks moved forward.[124]

Without explanation, Republican leaders took no action on Malaysia’s generous offer— and so squandered a powerful alliance, which could have interceded on a number of difficult Middle Eastern matters.

Though disappointing, in fairness, U.S. intelligence had already voiced a strong determination to retain control of any settlement with Iraq. They weren’t eager for international participation. However, it was also clear that Republican leaders failed to grasp how strategic alliances could be leveraged to strengthen U.S. influence in other parts of the world. The Bush White House was so myopic that it could not understand how partnerships would be reciprocated by advancing U.S. priorities in those regions, and moving other nations’ domestic policies closer to ours.

Diplomacy was too subtle for Republican leaders, even when it was designed to dictate outcomes controlled by the United States, and favorable to our agenda. In a global age, Republican leaders did not understand that proactive management would create strategic foundations that strengthen America. They did not understand why problems should be solved proactively at all.

Now that critical weakness in Republican foreign policy began to show.

For its part, the CIA faced the unhappy prospect of bucking the Bush Administration, while it experienced what appeared to be a steep learning curve.

All of us accepted the challenge. For its part, Malaysia’s commitment on behalf of the international community was truly exemplary. Ambassador Agam was like a teacher, sharing the wealth of his lifetime expertise with the rising generation of Malaysia’s diplomatic staff. It was an exciting embassy to visit, very active and dynamic. In that spirit of cooperation, Malaysia’s Embassy provided a sounding board and vital technical guidance for my preliminary talks on the weapons inspections. Ambassador Agam and Mr. Rani Ali guaranteed that back-channel talks would conform to U.N. standards of compliance once it got through U.S. gates.

For his efforts to rebuild peaceful relations with America and Iraq’s neighbors in the Middle East, Iraq’s Ambassador Dr. Hasan should have won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Malaysia’s Ambassador Agam.

Dr Hasan showed true vision of what would be necessary to restore Iraq’s economy and infrastructure after sanctions, while Ambassador Agam and his diplomatic staff stood off-stage, quietly contributing to a successful resolution. I have never known any individuals who deserved a Nobel Peace Prize more than those two.

Ambassador Agam’s prodigious diplomatic talent was fully recognized and rewarded by Malaysia’s appointment to chair the Non-Aligned Movement in 2003.

On account of all those contributing factors, by July 2001, a successful peace with Iraq was within the world’s grasp.

It looked so hopeful. On all matters, Iraq agreed to U.S. conditions again and again, in total contradiction to what Americans were told before the War. All matters large and small were resolved through back-channel dialogue.[125] Diplomacy proved a great success.

Revealingly, Iraq’s enthusiasm to resume inspections quickly was only outdone by Washington’s extraordinary reluctance to get started. It began to appear the U.S. was dragging its feet out of awareness that Iraq had nothing left to disclose or destroy,. It looked like leaders on Capitol Hill recognized the wastefulness of the exercise, and were afraid of it. Meanwhile Baghdad hankered to get started. Iraqi officials saw the momentum for change coming from the international community, and pushed forward to greet the new day. They were excited to provide verification that old weapons stocks had been destroyed long ago.

The behavior of Iraqi officials, and especially their eagerness to resolve the impasse, convinced me totally and without qualm that no weapons of mass destruction or illegal production facilities would be discovered inside the country. .

I am convinced the Intelligence Community could read the tea leafs, too. It did not look good for U.S. propaganda on Saddam’s illicit weapons production.

My job was not to criticize, however. It was to secure maximum compliance, and to wrest as many concessions from Baghdad as possible, as part of a comprehensive solution. I kept going.

Over the next 18 months of back channel talks, Iraq’s offer to the United States came to encompass all of the following:[126]

1. As of October, 2000, Baghdad agreed to resume U.N. weapons inspections. That was 18 months before the world community was told of Baghdad’s acquiescence.

2. As of October, 2000, Iraq promised to include U.S. Oil Companies in all future oil exploration and development concessions. Taking contracts from Russia or European countries would have been controversial, and politically impossible. However, Iraq had ways of cutting U.S. Oil into the mix of existing contracts.

Iraq also promised to invest in major purchases of U.S. oil equipment, which it freely declared to be the best in the world.

3. Baghdad offered to buy 1 million American-made automobiles every year for 10 years to replace its citizens’ outdated fleet of automobiles. Because of purchase restrictions under U.N. sanctions, most automobiles in Iraq predated the mid 1980s. Iraq’s imports of U.S. automobiles would have translated into thousands of high-paying Labor Union jobs in the Rust Belt of the United States— concentrating heavily in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania, which otherwise have been crippled by the loss of factory investment. It would have guaranteed a foundation of prosperity for America’s workers.

4. Iraq promised to give the U.S. priority contracts in telecommunications products and services.

5. Iraq agreed to grant priority contracts to U.S. health care, hospital equipment and pharmaceuticals, in any post-sanctions period.

6. Iraq promised to give priority to U.S. factory equipment, and allow U.S. Corporations to reenter the Iraqi Market at the level that they enjoyed prior to the 1990 Gulf War. Dual use military equipment and factory production was exempt from this promise. Dr. Fuisz gave critical testimony in the Congressional investigation of U.S. corporations that supplied weapons to Iraq before the first Gulf War. There was no danger he would have tolerated or mistakenly supported dual-use contracts, in addressing opportunities for American corporations in post-sanctions Iraq.

7. Iraq agreed to contribute as a major partner in U.S. anti-terrorism efforts.

Time and again, Baghdad made it crystal clear: Any special preference Washington demanded, the United States could have—anything at all.

Every offering was reported to Andy Card and my CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz. We followed the same strategy and reporting process that had worked so successfully during the Lockerbie talks.

There were no surprises at CIA Headquarters. The CIA fully understood my way of thinking— that both sides urgently needed to find new ways to address our problems. And for all the insults I suffered from the Justice Department after my indictment, I was very good at what I did. Throughout the 1990s, everybody was pleased on both sides. The Arabs loved me, and the CIA praised me, too.

Because of Iraq and Libya’s pariah status, other foreign Intelligence Agencies had a legitimate interest in my activities, as well. In fact, I suspect I was a primary source for most of the foreign intelligence networks tracking Iraq and Libya right up to the War—and particularly during the weapons inspections talks and the 9/11 investigation.

By example, British Intelligence would often shadow my dinners or lunches at restaurants in Manhattan, when I dined with senior diplomats on the Security Council, like Malaysia— or diplomats from Iraq or Libya to discuss the progress of back channel talks or anti-terrorism matters.

It had a comical side for sure. Several times an upper-crust British couple would arrive at the restaurant on the heels of my diplomatic host. They would take a table close by. I would watch as a dollar bill (presumably of high denomination) would slide across the table. In a crowded restaurant in New York City, bustling with activity, the British couple would order no food— only tea or coffee and water. They would not be interrupted by waiters for the next two to three hours, while my lunch or dinner conversation proceeded nearby. As my guest and I got up to leave the table, they would call the waiter—presumably to leave another large tip.

With all that surveillance, and scrutiny of my work by Dr. Fuisz and Hoven, could the Justice Department truly have been ignorant of our relationship all those years? Could they have seriously believed I was acting as an “Iraqi Agent?”

It seems impossible to me. I believe their motivation was very different. Because of my high level access to Iraq’s Embassy at the United Nations, I had vast knowledge of opportunities for a comprehensive peace with Baghdad, including promises of economic contracts for U.S. corporations and Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation, that the U.S. and Britain urgently wanted to hide.

Given my passionate activism against war and sanctions, it was a good bet that I would talk.

And I would have a lot to say.

CHAPTER 6:

9/11: A PATTERN OF
COMMAND NEGLIGENCE

With Michael Collins

Shortly after September 11, retired General Wesley Clark spoke with Tim Russert of NBC News about a call he received after the strike. A member of a foreign think tank rang General Clark on his cell phone, urging him to claim 9/11 originated from Iraq at the direction of Saddam Hussein. Now, General Clark isn’t accustomed to taking orders from strangers. But he was curious about this call to his private cell phone. He asked the caller to provide evidence supporting this accusation. The conversation ended quickly, without the evidence. And that was that.

Apparently General Clark gave the motivation for War with Iraq a great deal of thought over the years. At a major speech in Texas in 2006, he said:

“Now why am I going back over ancient history? Because it’s not ancient history, because we went to war in Iraq to cover up the command negligence that led to 9/11. And it was a war we didn’t have to fight. That’s the truth—”

“I’ve been in war. I don’t believe in it. And you don’t do it unless there is absolutely, absolutely, absolutely no alternative.”[127]

General Clark’s argument that War with Iraq was a diversionary strategy to distract angry Americans from the command failure before 9/11, stands out as unique and provocative among the upper echelons of the military. I agree wholeheartedly with his assessment. Only I take his conclusions one step farther. I believe that when his theory of “command negligence” gets factored in with my team’s advance warnings to the Office of Counter-Terrorism in August 2001, there is finally a “coherent” explanation for 9/11— if allowing an attack on sovereign territory of the United States could be described as a “rational” thought process. (Obviously, it’s not.)

Consider the military lexicon for command responsibility:

Command: (Department of Defense) 1. Command includes the authority and responsibility for effectively using available resources, and for planning the deployment of, organizing, directing, coordinating, and controlling military forces for the health, welfare, morale, and discipline of assigned personnel.[128]

Negligence: Failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in like circumstances.”

How can we assess whether “command negligence” actually occurred?

Three Proofs of Command Negligence

There are three levels of proof to support General Clark’s assertion that 9/11 resulted as a consequence of command negligence, which in the opinion of many Americans, facilitated a pro-war agenda.

The first level of proof examines the Commander in Chief’s use of available military resources to try to thwart the attack on U.S. soil, and whether or not those resources got deployed in an appropriate fashion.

Consider, first of all, that the North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) had practiced military responses to attacks on major buildings, including the World Trade Center, in the two year period before September 11.[129] In one exercise, fighter craft performed a mock shoot down over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target inside the United States. In another scenario, the target was the Pentagon — That drill stopped after Defense officials declared the attack scenario unrealistic.

The point is that NORAD had trained to confront an attack on U.S. soil exactly like this one. Ironically, the Pentagon organized the military exercises after U.S. intelligence exposed a master plot to hijack commercial jetliners, and use them as aerial weapons to strike the World Trade Center. Sound familiar?

Called “Project Bojinka,” the plot was hatched by Ramzi Yousef, chief mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, as a way to fullfil his dream of toppling the twin towers. Yousef was captured in the Philippines in 1995 and extradited to the United States. Convicted at trial in 1996, he was sentenced to life without parole. His co-conspirator, Sheikh Abdul Rahman, a famous, blind Egyptian Islamic radical, agitated for the violent overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak.

Yousef has emerged as a central character in the history of Al Qaeda and 9/11. A tactical mastermind with exceptional gifts for creating chaos and misery, Yousef spoke several languages fluently, and graduated with an electrical engineering degree from Swansea University in Wales. He joined Al Qaeda in 1988 as a bomb maker. Born near the Afghani-Pakistan border, Yousef’s family lived smack in the cultural milieu that produced the radical Muslims recruited, trained and funded by Washington to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.

It was Yousef who devised the tactical model for September 11 from his hide-out in Manila, capital of the Philippines, where he fled after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

The ambitious “Bojinka” project aspired to hijack eleven commercial jets on the same day, which would be used as missiles to strike the White House, the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and other national symbols of U.S. global pre-eminence, including the World Trade Center.

Philippine police struck gold when they broke up a meeting of Muslim terrorists in Manila during 1995. They suspected this visiting bomb maker had been involved in several local terrorist attacks, as well.

They arrested Yousef, confiscated his computer, then enlisted the help of a local computer expert to decode the hard drive. That’s how Philipino authorities discovered “Bojinka—” to their credit.

Yousef’s diabolical plot was no secret. The scheme was unveiled at his trial in New York in 1996, at the federal courthouse a few blocks from the World Trade Center.

Vince Cannistraro, former Director of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Division called it “extraordinarily ambitious, very complicated to bring off, and probably unparalleled by other terrorist operations that we know of.”[130]

For the next few years, “Bojinka” lay dormant.

Then, in the spring of 2001, U.S. Intelligence got wind that terrorists intended to carry out a strike remarkably similar to “Bojinka.” Concern reached such a heightened status that starting in April, 2001 and throughout the summer, I was ordered to tackle my Iraqi sources for any fragments of actionable intelligence, regarding its execution.

At the same time, NORAD was planning war games in Canada and Alaska—thousands of miles from the potential target, already identified as the World Trade Center in New York City. “Operation Northern Vigilance”[131] was a major military exercise synchronized to coincide with a Russian military exercise near Alaska. As part of that training, the US Air Force was supposed to simulate the protection of North American air space, as though Russia was attacking the U.S[132] (i, ii, iii)

The U.S. Air Command scheduled the War Games in Canada and Alaska to run from September 10 – 14th.

Critically, the U.S. Air Force ordered personnel to operate on a state of heightened security throughout the Continental United States to defend against any intrusion on U.S. airspace on those days.

NORAD had trained for “Bojinka” for two years.

And yet, inexplicably, the full scope of rationale for the heightened security alert was never explained to the military.

Indeed, NORAD has acknowledged that U.S. forces were advised to go on alert only because of the Russian military exercises. The U.S. military was not warned “Bojinka” might be in play, though factions of U.S. intelligence were shouting from the rooftops about a possible attack, and pleading for multi-agency cooperation at that very moment.

Failure to adequately alert and deploy the Central Command of the U.S. Armed Forces, despite the heightened security risk against a known target—definitely qualifies as “command negligence.”

Through no fault of its own, because of poor communications from the White House, the U.S. military was only half-loaded for a massive strike against the United States, when it should have been fully braced to confront a major domestic assault.

Subsequently, Air Force commanders experienced confusion on September 11. The regional NORAD commander for New York and Washington reported that some commanders at NORAD thought 9/11 was part of the military exercises.

“In retrospect, the exercise should have proved to be a serendipitous enabler of a rapid military response to the terrorist attacks on September 11,”[133] said Colonel Robert Marr, in charge of NEADS. “We had the fighters with a little more gas on board. A few more weapons on board.”

However, other NORAD officials were initially confused about whether the 9/11 attacks were real— or part of the exercise.”[134]

As a result, at the exact moment that US and foreign intelligence around the world buzzed about a massive terrorist attack on New York City, citing the World Trade Center as the primary target, the US Air Force was locked and loaded— for war games off the coast of Russia. The U.S. Air Force was on high alert throughout the Continental United States from September 10 onwards— yet received no effective communication regarding a high level threat inside New York City.

With better communications, there’s no question that the Air Force would have done much better than to dispatch a single fighter jet to Manhattan and another to Washington. They would have launched all available aircraft to bring down the hijackers pronto.[135]

Options for pre-emptive military action were definitely available.

When a small aircraft buzzed the White House in the 1980’s, missiles got placed on the rooftop to shoot down future aircraft that came too close.

A couple of months before 9/11, world leaders gathered for a G-8 World Economic Summit in Genoa, Italy. Intelligence suggested terrorists might crash an airplane into the conference building hosting the world leaders. Overnight, Genoa became heavily fortified with anti aircraft missiles, along with significant NATO Air Force protection. The G-8 Global Summit progressed unscathed.

Didn’t all of this advance intelligence warrant the deployment of a single anti-aircraft or missile battery on top of the World Trade Towers, too?

It would have been shockingly simple and cost effective to implement. Instead, the most powerful Military Command on the planet was badly misused—cut out of the loop, denied knowledge of a significant threat against the sovereign United States.

That’s hard evidence of command failure about the military level.

The second level of “command negligence” relates to the failure to coordinate an appropriate, unified response to a known threat between U.S. intelligence and federal law enforcement. Heightened cooperation between the CIA and FBI required “command leadership” from the White House. Yet despite urgent requests in August, 2001, that inter-agency cooperation never materialized.

Bottom line: “9/11 was an organizational failure, not an intelligence failure,”[136] as John Arquilla, of the Naval Postgraduate School put it succinctly:

Consider the time line of the warnings.

According to a Joint House-Senate Congressional inquiry,[137] in March 2001 an intelligence source claimed a group of Bin Ladin operatives was coordinating an unspecified attack on U.S. soil. One of the alleged operatives resided inside the United States.

In April 2001, U.S. Intelligence learned that terrorist operatives in California and New York were planning strikes in both of those states.

Between May and July of 2001, the National Security Agency reported at least 33 chatter communications, indicating a possible, imminent terrorist attack. These individuals appeared to possess no actionable intelligence that would have identified who, how many, when or where the attack would start.[138]

In May 2001, the Intelligence Community learned that Bin Ladin supporters planned to infiltrate the United States via Canada, in order to carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives. Further investigation by the Defense Department indicated that seven individuals associated with Bin Ladin had departed various locations for Canada, Britain and the United States.[139]

By May, U.S. intelligence had gathered sufficient evidence to show that some Middle Eastern terrorist group was planning an imminent attack on key U.S. landmarks, including the World Trade Center. This coincides precisely with the timing of the portentous warning from Dr. Fuisz that I must confront Iraqi diplomats, and aggressively demand any fragment of intelligence regarding airplane hijackings.

In June 2001, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) acquired information that key operatives in Bin Ladin’s organization were going underground, while others were preparing for martyrdom.[140]

In July 2001, the DCI gained access to an individual recently traveling in Afghanistan, who reported: “Everyone is talking about an impending attack.” The Intelligence Community was also aware that Bin Ladin had stepped up his propaganda efforts to promote Al Qaeda’s cause.

On August 6, Richard Clarke presented a Daily Briefing Memo to President Bush, outlining the gravity of Al Qaeda’s threat. Sometime on August 7 or 8, I telephoned Attorney General John Ashcroft’s private staff and the Office of Counter-Terrorism at the Justice Department, with a request for an “emergency broadcast alert throughout all agencies,” seeking “any fragment of intelligence regarding possible airplane hijackings and/or airplane bombings.” I described the threat as “imminent,” with the “potential for mass casualties.” And I cited the World Trade Center as the expected target.

On August 16, 2001, U.S. Immigration detained Zacarias Moussaoui in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

On September 4, 2001, the FBI Office in Minneapolis sent urgent cables about the Moussaoui investigation to the Intelligence Community, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Secret Service, and several other federal agencies in Washington. Despite urgent warnings from the FBI in Minneapolis about Moussaoui’s likely involvement in some terrorist conspiracy, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to get a search warrant from the secret intelligence court in Washington[141] so they could crack open Moussaoui’s computer.

Finally, on September 10, 2001, the National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted two communications between individuals overseas, suggesting imminent terrorist activity. These communications were not translated into English and disseminated until September 12, 2001. These intercepts gave no indication what activities might occur. It remains unclear whether they referred to the September 11 attacks.[142]

By any measure, U.S. intelligence performed in an outstanding capacity, anticipating the threat posed by al Qaeda.

All of which raises serious questions as to how Central Command at the White House could have allowed such valuable raw intelligence to go unused between agencies?

Various factions of U.S. intelligence buzzed that a major terrorist attack was about to occur. There was an outpouring of pleas for aggressive coordination and pre-emptive planning. In its frustration, the Intelligence Community made a herculean effort to break through the gridlock and appeal directly to the Justice Department.

Unhappily, law enforcement at the Justice Department received no “command” support from the Attorney General’s Office. That sort of top level mandate would have been required for cooperation to occur between Intelligence and law enforcement, which perform two very different missions. With the crucial exception of the FBI office in Minneapolis, the response at the Justice Department was abysmal.

Intelligence sharing functioned properly. Outreach to law enforcement was made in a time effective manner. Yet nothing happened.

The command leadership dropped the ball, pure and simple. Command leaders failed to pull resources across agencies to implement the most basic precautionary safeguards. There’s no question but that qualifies as a major “command failure” and “command negligence,” as defined by General Clark and the U.S. military establishment.

The third argument for “command negligence” involves the White House failure to accept full command responsibility after 9/11.

When there’s a tragedy or crisis, Americans expect our leaders to stand forward and embrace their responsibility for the welfare of the nation, invoking the full power of their authority. As Harry Truman put it so bluntly, “The buck stops here.”

President Bush’s performance as Commander in Chief at the start of the attack was awkward at best. At a town hall meeting in Orlando, Florida on September 12, a young audience member addressed President Bush.

Question: “One thing, Mr. President, you have no idea how much you’ve done for this country. And another thing is that – how did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack?”

PRESIDENT BUSH: “Well – Well, Jordan, you’re not going to believe where – what state I was in, when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my chief of staff, Andy Card – well, actually I was in a classroom, talking about a reading program that works. And it – I was sitting outside the – the classroom, waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower of a – of a – you know. The TV was obviously on, and I – I used to fly myself, and I said, “Well, there’s one terrible pilot.” And I said it must have been a horrible accident.”[143]

The President’s statement was largely incoherent. Somehow he translated the child’s question: “How did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack?” to a more concrete “What state was I in when I heard about the terrorist attack?” “Oh, Florida.” He interjected seemingly random comments about my cousin, Andy Card, and barely made it through the answer. This sort of disconnected rhetoric was typical and expected by those who followed President Bush closely.

[Crucially, in this statement, President Bush admitted knowing about the Mossad video of the first airplane crashing into the towers. That video becomes very important for identifying Israel’s advance knowledge about 9/11, on the morning of September 11. See Chapter 7]

More than that discredited the White House. After 9/11, Republican leaders pushed very hard, as long as possible, to avoid an investigation, hiding from criticism of their pre-9/11 inertia. When the 9/11 Commission was finally established, the White House designated a budget nowhere close to sufficient for a serious investigation.

Blue ribbon commissions are a trademark of the federal government. When a topic appears too hot for Congress to handle, a commission of distinguished officials gets appointed from the top ranks of both political parties to address it. But President Bush and Vice President Cheney wanted no part of a 9/11 investigation. Indeed, Cheney rang up Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (Democrat-South Dakota) and asked him to limit the investigation to communication failures between agencies.[144]

“The Vice President expressed concern that a review of what happened on September 11 would take resources and personnel away from the war on terrorism,” Senator Daschle told CNN.

Unable to stop the 9/11 investigation, the White House tried to starve the Commission of funds, finally allocating an $11 million budget, a pittance of what Congress spends on far less important tasks.

Once the 9/11 Commission was formed, the White House saw to it that a White House insider was selected for the all important job of Staff Director. Phillip Zelikow was a close professional colleague of Condeleeza Rice. They wrote a book together on foreign policy, and Rice brought Zelikow onto the Bush 2000 transition team. An academic of some distinction, Zelikow authored two notable position papers for the Bush transition team. The first studied how to manage terrorist threats. The second justified a preemptive invasion of Iraq.

In other words, Zelikow was neck deep in the policies that produced the command negligence for 9/11 and the preemptive invasion of Iraq.

It’s hardly surprising that so much information in this book never got published in the 9/11 Commission report.

General Clark stops short of declaring that President Bush engaged in “deliberate” command negligence, in order to justify going to War with Iraq. He leaves open the possibility that top White House officials showed gross incompetence in their organizational leadership, and may have used the Iraq War as a distraction from their own mediocrity.

That’s where I diverge from General Clark’s outstanding arguments. I take a stronger position. I agree that “command negligence” occurred, building up to 9/11. But I know for a fact that key leaders deliberately ignored multiple advance warnings presented by domestic and foreign intelligence sources, and willfully failed to enact the most basic cautionary measures to defend the World Trade Center—which was already identified as the primary target of the attack.

That raises the most controversial questions that have spun through the 9/11 Truth Community for years: Was 9/11 allowed to happen, or made to happen—in order to manipulate public rage into support for President Bush’s secret agenda of invading Iraq?

Put more succinctly: Did the White House practice “deliberate negligence” to create a Pearl Harbor Day that would push the U.S. into War with Iraq?

Unequivocally, I believe the answer is yes.

Alternatives to War— The 9/11 Incentive

Given the rallying for peace in the international community before 9/11, the concept of War against Saddam was inconceivable without some major provocation. The international community was inflamed with a desire for cooperation and reconstruction. Any U.S. aggression would have been condemned as a “rogue” action— There would have been no “Coalition of the Willing” standing by to absorb the costs and contribute troops to the Mission. The secret war agenda would have died.

For its part, a faction of U.S. Intelligence had analyzed potential flashpoints for future tensions with Iraq, and moved to neutralize them. The peace framework addressed all major U.S. objectives in Iraq, including some not previously considered by the Bush Administration.

The White House was thoroughly apprised of all progress to implement those goals in Baghdad—and by corollary, our rapidly sinking sanctions policy.

That illustrates damnably why the Pro-War camp needed 9/11. Neo-conservatives needed to set up Saddam’s government as a paper-tiger, an external enemy that would incite popular hatred, and overcome international resistance to War.

Neo-conservatives had lost all legitimate justifications for War. So they had to invent one. Osama bin Laden saved the day, when he came along with a conspiracy to hijack airplanes and strike the Twin Towers. Right up to that point, the Bush Administration had lost every other excuse for War. It was flatly impossible.

Was the goal seizing Iraq’s oil after all? Vice President Cheney fought for years to protect the confidentiality of his pre- invasion meeting with U.S. oil executives. But there have been enough leaks to speculate that Cheney carved up Iraq’s oil reserves, and replaced the existing contracts held by foreign oil companies.

In testimony before Congress, U.S. oil executives denied that such a meeting with Vice President Cheney occurred. But in late 2005, a White House document confirmed that Cheney’s meeting took place.[145]

There’s also the matter of the Caspian Sea Pipeline, which runs from Kazakhstan through Iran. A primary source of Russian oil, the Caspian Pipeline is geographically sensitive to hostilities between Iran and the West. It’s entirely possible that top officials wanted to concentrate U.S. military bases in Iraq, on the border of Iran, as a check on Tehran’s ambitions to dominate and manipulate oil supplies. Looking at the map of military bases surrounding Iran, it’s obvious they’ve done it.

Unhappily for Capitol Hill cronies of the oil industry, instead of securing vast wealth for its stockholders, war and sanctions accomplished their own worst ambitions. Sanctions fundamentally annihilated Iraq’s oil infrastructure and pipelines for the foreseeable future. Cost prohibitive damage was exacerbated by repeated acts of sabotage by Iraq’s nationalist insurgency. A large percentage of Iraqi people are convinced the United States invaded Iraq to seize its oil resources. A critical sub-group of that population chose to degrade their own oil infrastructure, rather than allow the U.S. to steal Iraq’s national wealth.

Distrust of Washington

Tragically today, the vast majority of citizens around the world have no confidence that we’ve been told the truth about 9/11. From that despair, the “9/11 Truth Movement” has emerged. Ordinary citizens have put together a Terror Timeline, culling information that the government would not provide.

For me, that’s heart breaking to watch. I know from personal experience the ripples of advance warnings that ran like wildfire through the intelligence community before 9/11. I recall my own desperate efforts to reach the Justice Department, at the urgent command of my CIA handler. And I know the White House floated the idea of War in Baghdad for months before the attack, because I was commanded to issue those threats myself, if a 9/11 scenario occurred and Baghdad failed to share intelligence with the U.S.

On the morning of my arrest, one more thing threatened pro-War Republicans. I had full knowledge of Iraq’s efforts to cooperate with the 9/11 investigation, and how that effort had been snubbed.

I was always one to call a spade, a spade. Citing my direct contact with Iraq, I was ready to turn Washington on its ear, declaring the War on Terrorism a “fraud” and the White House rejection of peace an act of public deception.

Those in the intelligence community, who had watched me work for a decade, had no doubt that I would do it.

CHAPTER 7:

SEPTEMBER 11

Finally you are told some facts.

Surely they make a great deal more sense than the semantic games played in Washington all these years. Yes, the greatest Intelligence Community in the world expected a major terrorist strike according to a 9/11 style scenario. We lacked actionable intelligence to identify airport hubs or flight numbers, which would have been necessary to stop the attack. Yet far more tragically, the command leadership necessary to coordinate that pre-emptive inter-agency effort — or deploy anti-aircraft guns on top of the Trade Center, or activate NORAD during its pre-scheduled military exercises— failed to mobilize.

It was not for lack of trying by those of us at the mid-level, below the leadership. We raised the alarms. Alas, Republicans at the command level chose not to act.

Instead, throughout the summer of 2001, the U.S threatened Iraq with military retaliation “worse than anything they suffered before,” if a 9/11 style attack occurred. Yes, U.S. Intelligence abhorred the concept of a 9/11 attack, including my own handlers. But a handful of puppeteers controlling the stage at the highest levels of government aggressively prepped some factions of U.S. Intelligence to accept War with Iraq as the inevitable outcome of the 9/11 strike. In which case, they made no effort to block 9/11, so they could fulfill their quest.

Adding to the confusion, most Americans have wrongly split between two stark choices: Either they think airplanes brought down the World Trade Center – or a controlled demolition using military grade weapons accomplished the evil deed. Until now, arguments on both sides have been framed to cancel the other out.

From where I sit it’s obvious that both the airplane hijackings and the controlled demolition were synchronized to play off each other.

9/11 was like a magician’s trick. All eyes were watching the airplanes on the left, while the real sleight of hand was happening on the right. In other words, the airplane hijackings provided a “cover” for the controlled demolition of the Twin Towers.

In spy circles, it’s known as a “cover and deception” operation.

It’s critical to understand that Intelligence is not a monolithic mega-entity, but a community of factions, broken down into small teams. Once advance warnings about the World Trade Center attack get factored into the equation, it’s entirely conceivable that some different team, in a competing faction—called an “orphan,” entered the World Trade Center in the midnight hours, and positioned explosives throughout the buildings, with the intention of maximizing the detonation impact on whatever day the hijacked airplanes struck the buildings.

All crimes require motive and opportunity. By my count, the “orphan team” had six months of warning time to acquire explosives and map out a detonation pattern. And that threat of War with Iraq provided the missing “motive” to do the unthinkable.

Regrettably, everything falls into place in the Terror Timeline once Washington’s advance threats against Iraq are factored in.

Does that truth satisfy you?

It has cost me a great deal to tell you. I have waited a long time and suffered through a frightening and horrific ordeal for my chance, spending a year in prison on a Texas military base without a trial or guilty plea, as you’re about to discover.

That ugliness was coming faster than I ever dreamed. However, have some patience, friends. First, some more truth. Because you see, just as I warned about the 9/11 attack, I was also a “first-responder,” covering Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation.

I told you. I know everything. Those facts have been concealed from you, as well. And they are more devastating than you know.

First though, think back with me. Do you remember what you were doing when you first heard that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center? Did you hear it on the radio, driving to work? Were you taking the children to school? Can you recall your split second reaction to the news?

I was at the Post Office in Takoma Park, my tiny peacenik hamlet in the suburbs of Washington DC. Someone behind me groaned excitedly that a crazed, grief stricken pilot must have committed suicide.

I recall my split second reaction like a punch in the gut: We knew it! Richard and I told them this was coming. Oh God, why didn’t they listen to us?

I rushed home and got on the phone with Dr. Fuisz. Shouting over each other at the carnage playing on our televisions, we commanded office workers not to go back inside the damaged towers. I demanded that Richard stop them. In my grief, I endowed him with super human strength to right all wrongs, fly down amidst the chaos, and issue vital instructions for the preservation of the crowds.

To no avail. On September 11, 2001, 3,017 souls lost their lives, and 6,291 were seriously injured when the Twin Towers of black glass imploded and crashed to the concrete floor in a frightening cloud of thermatic dust.

Fire-fighters and rescue workers died with them.

Alas, 9/11 proved that none of us are super human. Not to diminish the irresponsibility of the government’s role, but I seriously doubt the inner circle of U.S officials comprehended the full power of the blow, or the scope of repercussions, when they made the fatal decision not to block that hideous attack. In all likelihood, they expected only minor damage, according to the scope of what had come before.

To put that in context, the 1993 World Trade Center attack killed just 5 people—and wounded 1,000. The bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen killed 17 people.

I mean, come on. Nobody imagined the Titanic would sink either. Right?

The Titanic did sink, though, didn’t it? And more government officials had been debriefed about this “imminent” terrorist threat in late August or September than Americans would like to imagine. Everybody we could think of had been warned.

Most intelligence teams would have concluded that airplanes alone could not bring down the Towers. If the goal was maximum destruction, it would require some help. And don’t forget there was six months of advance time to plan a “cover and deception” operation that would exploit the airplane hijackings, as a false flag to complete the job.

That’s how it happened.

Many times I’ve been questioned about Dr. Fuisz’s other sources, who fed him intelligence before the attack. Truthfully, he never revealed them to me.

But I have guessed. Shortly after the first tower collapsed—but before the second tower collapsed, Dr. Fuisz blurted something to me over the phone. It regarded the videotape of the first hijacked airplane flying over the Manhattan harbor moments before ramming full force into the World Trade Center. The video camera was held by steady hands in a controlled setting, not whipped around by an amateur bystander, responding hysterically to surprising, fast breaking events.

Dr. Fuisz demanded to know if I thought it was “an accident that a man and woman happened to be waiting on the sidewalk with a video camera, ready to record the attack?”

He was highly agitated.

“How often does a bystander have a camera cued up to record a car accident on the street? It never happens, Susan. It never happens.” He challenged me.

Then Dr. Fuisz said, “Those are Israeli agents. It’s not an accident that they were standing there. They knew this attack was coming. They were waiting for it all morning.”

In my grief, I was outraged and shocked by the images on television. I shot back something to the effect of—

“You mean to tell me, we’ve been looking for intelligence on this attack for months! And Israel knew the whole time? And they didn’t tell us?” I was madder than hell.

Immediately the phone line cut dead between us. I called him right back.

Very calmly, he said, “Susan, we must never talk about that again.”

We never did. But it prompts serious questions. Did the Israelis fail to warn us? Or did Israel provide a broad outline of the attack, but withhold crucial details that would have empowered the CIA to defeat it?

Or did White House officials ignore Israel’s warnings like they ignored everybody else? Dr. Fuisz gave no hint.

A couple of details are worth noting, however. Dr. Fuisz was knowledgeable about the team’s intelligence identities and the existence of the videotape about 24 hours before the corporate media started broadcasting footage of airplanes striking the Towers, on September 12.

Now, Dr. Fuisz enjoyed absolute superiority in his intelligence sources. But this video must have been distributed to the top echelons of U.S. Intelligence with lightning speed to become available so quickly—before the second Tower collapsed. That would signify the video was filmed by a friendly Intelligence Agency like the Mossad. Only somebody with top access inside the CIA could pull that off so rapidly.

That also explains the extraordinary remarks by President Bush— how he saw footage of the first airplane crashing into the Towers before he entered the classroom in Florida. Bush guffawed that he thought the pilot was lousy. The second plane crashed into the World Trade Center while President Bush was reading to the children. My own cousin, Andy Card, whispered in his ear, when the second crash happened.

Is that significant? I could be wrong. But I would say it’s huge.

Obviously President Bush saw video of the first airplane crashing into the Towers. And so did Dr. Fuisz. It was filmed by the Mossad— which enraged us both. I am convinced the White House spiked the video’s release, realizing that our reaction would be universal. At warp speed, Americans would know that our ally, Israel had advance knowledge about 9/11—Or worse.

So why the hell didn’t they speak up?

One more thing occurred that morning. Dr. Fuisz and I made a crucial decision in the first hours after the attack. Whether it proved correct or not, I leave history to judge.

We agreed to avoid recriminations in the first days after the attack. U.S. Intelligence did not need to hear ‘we told you so’s.’ Not from us. It was not a conspiracy of silence. We never agreed to bury the truth. We only agreed to delay confronting it. Everybody recognized a terrible mistake had been made. Everybody knew our team had warned about the threat. We’d been highly vocal. What they needed most urgently was Our Help— and the help of everyone with special access to high level sources close to Middle Eastern terrorism. They needed us. Beating up the Intelligence Community in those first days would have demoralized the very men and women who now had to mobilize all of their energies to launch an effective investigation.

We wanted to contribute. And so we decided to wait before calling attention to our team’s accurate predictions. I always expected a Congressional inquiry to bring our advance warnings to light. It was a question of a few weeks, I figured, while everyone focused on the criminal investigation.

There would be enormous repercussions from our decision. I myself would suffer appalling personal consequences. We had no way of knowing how serious or terrible.

As they say, the road to hell is paved with best intentions.

For me, it meant the abyss.

CHAPTER 8:

IRAQ’S COOPERATION
WITH 9/11 INVESTIGATION

Everyone wanted to help after 9/11. Very few people actually could. I was one of those. There’s nothing grandiose about it. The U.S. required a rapid turn around of high value, actionable intelligence from all possible Arab sources, in order to launch a muscular response to Al Qaeda. Iraq and Libya were both known to possess a significantly higher quality of tracking intelligence on terrorist cells in the Middle East. As such, my special access to those embassies— and my history securing their cooperation with other anti-terrorism projects — carried premium value in any serious investigation.

To put that in context, by September 11, 2001, Paul Hoven and I had worked together for eight years, going back to the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. Dr. Fuisz and I had worked together from September, 1994 onwards. I established contact with the Libya House in May, 1995 and the Iraqi Embassy in August, 1996. Our work encompassed significant parts of the Middle East, including Egypt, Syria/Hezbollah, Yemen and Malaysia. However, primarily we focused our energies on Libya and Iraq, leveraging my anti-war and anti-sanctions activism to build relationships with diplomats on all matters involving counter-terrorism.

This was a well-oiled machine. Virtually no one else enjoyed such close proximity to either Iraq or Libya’s embassies. Both countries had been isolated at the United Nations for years, though Libya’s relations in Europe and Africa had started to thaw following the Lockerbie Trial.

As for Baghdad, former CIA Director, George Tenet, bemoaned that he could “count on one hand the number of agents working inside Iraq.”[146] The simple fact was that Saddam tortured and killed them as quickly as he uncovered their duplicity. Saddam executed them as traitors.

Globally, there were just 5,000 Assets, making us a fairly elite group.[1]

That put me in a prized position in New York. Only three U.S. Assets covered the Iraqi Embassy— And my two comrades got drafted by the FBI after 9/11. Raed Al-Anbuke and Wisam Al-Anbuke were sons of an Iraqi diplomat, brothers who desired to remain in the U.S. after their visas expired. In exchange for validating their green cards and work visas,[148] the brothers videotaped and photographed guests at Embassy parties.[149] I know that because, as co-defendant, I received copies of their legal discovery and saw the paltry evidence against them.

The Anbuke brothers were very young, in their mid-20s, and worked at a dry cleaners and a video rental store in Manhattan.[150] By contrast, I had graduated from Smith College and the London School of Economics. I had worked as a Congressional Press Secretary and Capitol Hill journalist in Washington DC. Throughout the 1990s, anti-terrorism was my specialty. Most unusually our back-channel was not covert, in that I operated with the full knowledge of Arab diplomats and Ambassadors, who understood my motivation as a desire to help end UN sanctions. This was an open and direct line.

In short, if the U.S. government was serious about acquiring Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation, they required my help. There was nobody else who could do it.

Under the circumstances, it would have been irresponsible—and possibly criminal— if I had refused. During my nightmarish federal indictment, I frequently pondered the irony of that point. Refusing to help might have got tagged as “obstruction of justice.” Many times I pictured that “alternative” court session— how Judge Mukasey might have lectured the Court on my stunning failure to provide for the community’s welfare. He might have denied my bail, or handed down a heavy sentence to teach everyone a lesson of the obligations we all bear to our society.

I would have deserved it.

After all, pressure to secure Iraq’s cooperation was intense after 9/11. The Pro-War camp hurled outrageous accusations about Saddam’s support for Al Qaeda. On November 28, 2001, Presidential hopeful, Senator John McCain declared— “There was a meeting between Iraqi Intelligence and Mohammed Atta [chief conspirator of the 9/11 attack] in Prague.”[151]

Two weeks later on December 9, 2001, Vice President Richard Cheney said on “Meet the Press,” “It’s been pretty well confirmed that he [Atta] did go to Prague, and he did meet with a senior official of Iraqi Intelligence Service.”[152]

Republicans in Congress jumped fast on that bogus bandwagon, trumpets blaring.

I suffered no suspicions. From where I sat, Congressional leaders had zero comprehension of Saddam’s philosophy for holding onto power, or his deep paranoia of all Islamic fundamentalists, terrorists or not. He tracked those individuals mercilessly. What’s more I had full confidence that Baghdad would have supplied me with any fragment of intelligence on the 9/11 conspiracy, as I had demanded for months, if they had come across it. Providing that intelligence would have brought Baghdad closer to Washington and Europe. I had underscored that advantage many times over the summer of 2001. Helping us pre-empt the attack would have emphasized Iraq’s secular commitment and moderation. Baghdad understood that. They simply had nothing to give us.

In truth, throughout the summer of 2001, Iraqi officials raced full steam to topple the U.N. sanctions, actively wooing trade missions from Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf to rebuild bridges and overcome that isolation barrier. My back channel focused on the critical importance of resuming U.N. weapons inspections to verify disarmament But tantalizing side conversations promised the U.S. a bonanza of economic reconstruction contracts in various economic sectors.[153] Trying to win over Washington, Baghdad dangled priority contracts in telecommunications, transportation, hospital equipment and pharmaceuticals, in addition to the oil sector. Whatever the CIA asked for, the U.S. could have. Diplomats swore a thousand times that it would be mine.[154]

After 11 years of hellacious misery, the end of sanctions loomed closer every day. Iraqi officials would have done nothing to jeopardize that progress. It was their greatest hope for the future.

In short, there was zero chance that Iraq had any incentive to participate in the 9/11 conspiracy, or withhold information about it. They would have lost everything at exactly the moment they were poised to triumph over all their obstacles.

September 11 was Baghdad’s tragedy, too.

I was never fooled by Republican rhetoric to the contrary. Yet even those of us who correctly recognized that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 should have been enthusiastic to receive Iraq’s cooperation with the War on Terrorism.[155] Baghdad had some of the best tracking intelligence on the workings of terrorist networks anywhere— Saddam’s secular government loathed and reviled Islamic fundamentalists. In his paranoia, he presumed that sooner or later they would become “enemies of state.” So Iraqi Intelligence monitored them constantly, and tracked them all over the Middle East. They would often appeal to his government for sanctuary, anticipating his hatred of the United States. If so, they failed to understand that Saddam desperately hoped to reconcile with America. Getting access to that superior trove of intelligence would have made a phenomenal impact on U.S. goals— and Saddam understood that.

The U.S. would have difficulty achieving results without that input.

On the other hand, you can see the problem for Republican leaders.

Finally, after 9/11, President Bush had a chance to hurdle international antipathy towards U.S military aggression against Iraq. Right up to that moment, world opinion had turned against Washington. Current U.S. policy against Iraq was doomed. Baghdad was poised on the cusp of rehabilitation. Cooperation with anti-terrorism would have been one more factor to justify that end. It didn’t take Saddam very long to figure that out.

Where would that leave the White House? Back at square one without an excuse to launch their war.

But I did not understand that yet.

With the world discombobulated by 9/11, the White House seized its advantage and rushed to rev up its propaganda machine, with Vice President Cheney and Senator John McCain as its mouthpiece. In a calculated push to link Iraq to Al Qaeda, the White House launched one of the most blatant and audacious deceptions in the War on Terrorism.

Not for the first time, my credentials posed a serious problem for Neo-Cons at the White House. Our team had monitored Iraq’s enormously poor enthusiasm for various jihadi groups since 1996—including Iraq’s rejection of overtures from Bin Laden in 1998, immediately after his infamous jihad fatwa against the west.[156]

In the early spring of 1998, before the U.S. Embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, Kenya, I played a first-hand role in assessing whether Bin Laden would find sanctuary or financial support from Libya or Iraq.[157] In one of the very first investigations of what I call “Pre-Al Qaeda” structure and support, I approached both embassies, and expressed sympathy and appreciation for Bin Laden’s cause.

Their reaction was stark. Libyan diplomats declared me ‘persona non grata’ at their Embassy in New York, and commanded that I must go away and never return. They would not meet with me again.

As for Baghdad’s reaction, Iraqi diplomats voiced great alarm. They quizzed me extensively as to what Islamic cleric had set up shop in Washington, who could possibly preach support for Bin Laden’s cause. They urged me to explore Islam through a different mosque, and expressed dismay that my understanding had suddenly become so dark. Iraqi diplomats argued that Bin Laden does not follow true Islamic beliefs. They warned that in my quest to understand their religion, I had come across unholy teachings. They urged me to abandon any new friends preaching these terrible things. They were horrified.

They pushed very hard to identify who my new radical friends were. They wanted names and nationalities. Like I said, Saddam tracked these people all over the world.

All of this was reported to Dr. Fuisz, who delightedly instructed me to return to the United Nations and apologize to Libya and Iraq. He told me to say that I had made a great mistake in my enthusiasm, and that I recanted my support for Osama Bin Laden.

Diplomats from both embassies expressed profound relief.

Our project was important because it established one of the earliest benchmarks for the response that would greet Osama in Middle East nations alienated from the United States. Would his compatriots find sanctuary and welcome in Libya or Iraq? Absolutely not. Baghdad and Tripoli were onto Osama’s game years before Al Qaeda hit our radar. They saw him as a serious threat. They demanded that I stay away from his followers— or stay away from them.

My career as an Asset was itself a history of Iraq’s opposition to radical Islamic terrorism.

And so within days of the 9/11 attack, I headed for New York to meet with Libyan and Iraqi diplomats. Both Dr. Fuisz and Hoven urged me to act as rapidly as possible to secure the highest levels of cooperation from both countries. I performed at their demand.

Paul Hoven would later tell the FBI that he spoke with me 40-50 times after 9/11.[158] That speaks for itself.

Dr. Fuisz was typically smooth, quoting John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask you what you can do for your country. You don’t ask for anything right now.”

It must be understood that I had to do the fieldwork before Dr. Fuisz and Hoven could report back to the Intelligence Community, as my handlers.

At the end of the day, I was the one in direct contact with Iraqi officials. These were my diplomatic sources. My team would succeed or fail—and the policy would succeed or fail— based on the aggressiveness of my outreach.

After 9/11 nobody was playing. The CIA damn well wanted everything turned over immediately. People like Dr. Fuisz and Hoven took this investigation very seriously. They pushed me to the limit. The attack required it.

For that matter, I had Libya, too. That was easy. In my conversations with Libya’s Ambassador, Issa Babaa, he quickly reminded me that Libya was the first nation in the world to warn Interpol about Osama bin Laden in 1995. (Egypt issued the first warrant for his arrest in 1996.) Given that long-standing animosity between Gadhaffi and Bin Laden, it was easily confirmed that Libya would have no present day linkages to Al Qaeda that could be exploited for intelligence purposes. On the other hand, Libya was praised in media reports for voicing sympathy for the 9/11 victims, including Tripoli’s recognition that over 90 nations lost their fellow country-men that day. The tragedy struck world-wide.

I communicated those messages from Libya’s Ambassador to Dr. Fuisz. When the media praised Libya’s cooperation, I reasonably concluded my messages had made it up the intelligence chain, and that the success of my efforts was recognized and appreciated.

With regards to Libya, I think it was appreciated.[159] A few weeks later, the New York Times lauded Libya’s contribution with the headline: “Three New Allies Help CIA in its Fight against Terror.” “Since Sept 11, CIA officials have opened lines with intelligence officials from several nations that Washington has accused of supporting terrorism.”

Importantly, those meetings at the Libya House occurred on the same days—the same trips to New York—as my meetings at Iraq’s Embassy. I visited one after the other.

It is with a mixture of pride, amusement and disgust, therefore, that I recall one count of my federal indictment: “On or about September 19, 2001, Susan Lindauer a/k/a “SYMBOL Susan,” met with an officer of the Iraq Intelligence Service in Manhattan.”[160]

The date was actually September 18. The feds got the wrong day. And I certainly hoped my diplomat friend, Salih Mahmoud, had ties to Iraqi Intelligence. It would make my success much easier to achieve. That was the whole point of the trip, after all.

It must be underscored that the Justice Department never disputed that my work occurred. On the contrary, the federal prosecutor, Edward O’Callaghan, argued that I should serve 10 to 25 years in prison because it did occur. He simply argued that my CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz, was interested in Libya and only Libya—Not Iraq.

That’s right! According to the Justice Department, the CIA did not care about Iraq’s relationship to Al Qaeda after 9/11. They did not want to know anything about it.

I am not making that up.

The alleged evidence supporting these accusations are what I call “hinky.” And that’s putting it politely.

According to the FBI, an Iraqi diplomat named Salih Mahmoud (whom I fully acknowledge working with) treated me to lunch on three afternoons in Manhattan.[161]

On September 8, 2001, the Iraqi diplomat allegedly bought us both lunch for $33.50. My half of that was apparently $16.75 with tax and tip.

On September 13, he bought the two of us lunch for $27.57 at 2:17 pm, according to a time-stamped receipt. My half of that bill would have come to $13.78.

And on September 22, he allegedly bought us lunch for $31.85—My half was $15.92.

The grand total of this misadventure totaled $92.92—By deduction, my half share for three lunches in the most expensive city in the world totaled $46.46. I found that somewhat insulting, though most amusing. All receipts were date and time stamped. So the feds couldn’t fudge the meetings, which helped my defense enormously.

Curiously, none of those lunches took place on September 19, 2001—the date cited in my indictment. Yet this was the evidence used to justify criminal charges against me.

I mean, come on—didn’t the FBI have anything better to do? The Justice Department wanted to put me on trial for eating a cheeseburger?!

Ah, but was it American Cheese! Was it a patriotic cheeseburger? Or was it the “French” fries, which irked the Justice Department? That’s what a jury had to decide.

Remember now, a defendant is innocent until proven guilty—even under the Patriot Act.

Here’s the punch line, which I could not wait to share with a jury: The FBI had the wrong Susan. The diplomat in question, Salih Mahmoud, had a girlfriend named Susan, who worked at the United Nations. We joked about her all the time, that he had “another Susan, since he couldn’t have me.” She was the “other woman.” Or maybe I was the “other woman.” Whatever—we were two different American women.

Apparently the FBI didn’t figure that out in its investigation. That’s what happens when the Intelligence Community cannibalizes its Assets! Nobody knows what the hell’s going on. It’s pandemonium!

I used to giggle deliriously, anticipating my pleasure as I exposed my “rival” to a jury. Given the gravity of the charge— eating a cheese burger with a friendly Iraqi diplomat, you can only imagine how I savored the imaginary moment.

And how did we know this ‘other Susan’ was the real cheeseburger fiend? Because September 8 was three days before 9/11. Witnesses would testify that I stopped visiting New York several weeks before 9/11.[162] They would testify that I warned friends and family to stay out of New York City, too. The CIA had not yet decided they wanted me dead. They were still trying to keep me alive. Thus, on September 8, I was tucked at home in Maryland, safe from terrorists and federal prosecution.

Critically, this innocuous receipt for a cheeseburger guaranteed that my Defense would have the right to introduce our 9/11 warnings to the Court! There was no way the Prosecution could keep it out!! Hence, I flatly barred my attorney from pushing to drop that charge.

I also had a hard alibi for September 13, 2001. When the FBI broke open the hard drive of my computer, they discovered that somebody created a letter to Andy Card at the White House, at exactly the time of day that I was supposedly sitting in that restaurant with Salih Mahmoud.[163] The date and time stamp on the visa receipt proved it was impossible for me to have traveled to New York for the lunch, except in a time warp. Or perhaps a magic carpet!

Did I mention that New York City lies 214 miles from my home in Takoma Park, Maryland?

Later, staff at the Bureau of Prisons speculated that perhaps a friend snuck into my house and posed as me, creating the letter to Andy Card as an alibi, while I conducted the meeting in New York. (And you guys think I’m paranoid!)

It added to the pleasure of my jury fantasy. After all the trouble, I hope it was a good burger! I think New York City owes me one on the house! Hell, they should name a cheeseburger after me on Wall Street, for all the trouble they caused me! And by God, it better have American cheese! Or maybe pepper jack! That’s spicy enough!

All of which explains why I wear my indictment with a peculiar sort of pride. The indictment proves beyond any doubt that I definitely functioned as a “First-Responder” to the 9/11 tragedy. I confess wholeheartedly that I appeared at the scene of the crime, even if the FBI got all its facts and dates wrong. Without question, I visited my embassy contacts in New York right after 9/11.

But if I wasn’t that “other Susan” eating cheeseburgers with Salih Mahmoud, then what exactly did I contribute to the 9/11 investigation? And why would the U.S. government be so frightened, that I would be arrested and gagged from disclosing it?

Where do I start—

Brace yourselves.

Iraq’s efforts to contribute to the 9/11 investigation were far more substantial than Republican leaders wanted to acknowledge to the American people.

With tragic irony, I strongly believe the Republican leadership’s refusal to accept Iraq’s assistance has resulted in long term damage to the War on Terror, with dire consequences for future security. In my opinion, the Republican failure has left a back door wide open for another major terrorist strike on the United States.

And let me tell you why.

Iraq’s Official Response to 9/11: Frustration and the Oklahoma City Bombing

Immediately after 9/11, Iraq was much more frustrated and reluctant to contribute than Libya.

First of all, Iraqi diplomats in New York and Baghdad numbered among the very few in the world who possessed direct knowledge that America’s top leaders unequivocally expected 9/11 in its precise construction and modus operendus.

How did they know? Because I told them. Our team pushed Baghdad hard to supply details of the conspiracy from May, 2001 onwards. And we threatened them with a massive retaliatory attack if they failed.

In Iraq’s eyes, that strained our credibility.

In back channel communications from Baghdad, Iraqi diplomats challenged me sternly: “Obviously you knew the attack was coming, because you kept telling us about it. You should have stopped it, Susan—instead of blaming us today.”

“Why didn’t you stop it?”

“We will tell you why. You didn’t stop it, because you’ve been planning to attack us all along. This is your excuse. That’s why the United States let (9/11) happen!”

“You didn’t want to stop it.”

“Your government allowed this to happen to its own people, so you could declare war on us. And now you complain!”

Iraqi diplomats nailed it.

They also guessed, probably correctly, that their old enemy, Israel’s Mossad, gave the CIA intelligence about the attack—and the Mossad now sought to lay blame at their door.

To Baghdad’s way of thinking, that made perfect sense. That did not make Iraqi diplomats sympathetic, however. Most Americans will not like to hear this. But any sort of debriefing requires candor. Otherwise it’s worthless. So I will say it straight up—Iraqi diplomats got incensed by our outrage over the 9/11 strike.

“This bombing, it happens every day all over the world. And Americans don’t care! Other families suffer. Other homes are destroyed. Schools are bombed. Commerce is disrupted. This is the way. It is your way.”

“This is what America does to other countries. You drop the bombs! Now you are suffering, too, and you’re angry. Well, damn your hypocrisy!”

On my first trip to New York on September 18, those were the sentiments of Iraqi diplomats. What else could we expect after running 20,000 sorties over Iraq’s sovereign air space by this time? And that clock would keep running on the sanctions and no fly zones for an additional 18 months, until the U.S. invasion.

The problem was that Baghdad possessed vast amounts of exactly the sort of raw intelligence and sourcing that the U.S. required to launch a muscular and effective counter-strike on Al Qaeda. Say anything else about Saddam— his government had phenomenal tracking on terrorist cells throughout the Middle East, particularly with regards to Islamic agitators. My handlers and I were specially convinced that Baghdad would have access to bank accounts or financial records— the greatest prize of all after 9/11.

If Saddam didn’t have it already, he could get it. And that was exactly the sort of premium intelligence the U.S. needed most.

The problem was getting the stuff handed over to us.

Immediately after 9/11, I began badgering my diplomatic contacts by phone. I urged Iraqi officials to express condolences for the 9/11 families. And I pushed hard for cooperation with the 9/11 investigation, especially with regards to identifying Al Qaeda operations and financial mechanisms. Dr. Fuisz and I had very precise conversations about what sort of documents would be worthwhile to lay hold of.

On September 18, 2001—one week after the 9/11 attack—I headed to New York to meet my diplomatic contacts.[164] Libya was generous in its condolences for the 9/11 victims and their families, noting the international scope of suffering.

Iraq was scathing. Baghdad caught on with lightning speed that the U.S. government was remarkably silent about its advance knowledge of the attack. Diplomats were also sharp on point that their great tormentor, the United States, urgently required Baghdad’s help to achieve the most substantial results.

Our need galled Iraqi diplomats. They stressed that New York had no authority to grant my request. The decision would have to come from the highest levels of government in Baghdad. From Saddam himself. Or Tariq Aziz. Diplomats in New York would take no action until authorization was received. “Oh no, no,” I shook my head. “You must push Baghdad hard. The global community demands a rapid reply.”

And that’s what we got.

Very late on the night of September 21, 2001, my diplomatic contact, Salih Mahmoud, phoned my home in Maryland with an urgent request that I should return to New York as quickly as possible to receive the official response from Baghdad.[165]

Early the next morning, on September 22, I jumped in my car and hit Interstate 95, heading north to Manhattan through Delaware and New Jersey. At my speeds, it’s about 3 ½ hours in each direction, a long day after meetings, but always productive.

When I got to New York, my meeting with Salih Mahmoud took place inside the Embassy. I wanted to gather as much feedback from other diplomats as possible. Also, the spooks could audiotape meetings inside the embassy, standard practice during a crisis. In this situation, Langley would have the capability to authenticate my reporting, and they could add to the analysis. So it was necessary for the conversation to stay inside the embassy. Unhappily for federal prosecutors, I would have resisted any suggestion to move our meeting to a restaurant.

Salih was late arriving. Apparently he was enjoying lunch with his girlfriend, the “other Susan.” That’s a lunch I dearly wish I could have shared with them, since I am ultimately the one who paid for it. And it cost a great deal more than $31.85, I can tell you now.[166]

Immediately Salih handed me a written, decoded statement.

What follows is the official verbatim transcript from Baghdad on September 21, 2001 in reply to my request for cooperation after 9/11, including grammar and parenthetical comments.[167] (See Appendix) The brackets are my own insertions:

1.    If the request had been made in different circumstances, it would have been possible for us to agree or go along with it.

2.    With the continuation of U.S. and U.K. aggression and the tense atmosphere in The United State of America against Iraq, any step to be taken by Iraq might be interpreted in a harmful manner to Iraqi reputation and to the keenness of Iraq to maintain its dignity.

3.    Despite of that, all the points proposed by you [meaning me, Susan Lindauer] reflect the real Iraqi position.

4.    If U.S. declared that it intends to halt (stop) the air raids against Iraq (or such things like this) in order to concentrate on other Matters, the situation would be different (better).

5.    However, we are prepared to meet any American official in a covert or non-covert manner to discuss the common issues.

6.    In any case, Iraq has suffered from terrorist and its leaders, including his excellency, Mr. President has been a target to many assassination attempts, in addition to the attempt to assassinate Mr. Tariq Aziz in first of April, 1980. In fact, he was injured, as well as some Iraqi leadership members who suffered from such terrorist acts.

7.    Iraq demonstrated a good faith towards U.S.A. in 1993 after Oklahoma Trade Center previous accident, and informed American government through Iraqi interest section in Washington that it (Iraq) was prepared to provide U.S.A. With Some Information about the perpetrators of 1993 accident, if American side would send a delegate to Baghdad. But the American side dealt with our offer improperly and they said to Us (Iraq) to deliver this information. That means eventually they rejected to meet us.

8.    This is the Iraq official position.

Reading over it, I jumped on the references to Oklahoma City and the first World Trade Center “accident” in 1993.[168]

My eyes got big. I was immediately glad that we stayed at the Embassy. I began by asking some disarmingly simple questions. I tried to avoid questions that would arouse excitement or cause Salih to alter his story to please me. I wanted to know exactly how the paper arrived. Who had access to it? Whether the Ambassador or other senior diplomats in New York possibly might have edited it?

Above all, did the document that arrived actually use the word “Oklahoma?” Or had Salih guessed?

It was important that he should not be afraid to correct a mistake, if he’d made one.

Salih replied candidly. The message had arrived in code. He deciphered the paper himself. Nobody else was authorized to lay hands on it. So the message originated wholly in Baghdad, without amendment of its political content by diplomatic staff in New York.

Salih assured me that it came from the “top of the government, far above the Foreign Minister. Nobody would be authorized to change it without facing serious troubles.”

I suspected that meant Saddam Hussein or Tariq Aziz.

And finally, yes, the coded message from Baghdad included a cipher for “Oklahoma.” Salih faithfully swore that he had checked the document carefully. It was not a mistake on his end in New York.

I pressed a little harder. Did he understand the geography of the United States? Did he understand that Oklahoma was not part of Manhattan, but more than 1,500 miles away? These were two separate locations? It could be an innocent mistake by someone who lacked knowledge of American geography. Both of them had suffered horrific terrorist attacks.

“Yes,” he replied. “We know they are two separate cities. I know it, and Baghdad knows it. We know they had two separate ‘accidents.’”

“I think the message refers to both of them,” Salih leaned back on the sofa, and kicked his feet up on the coffee table, suddenly conspiratorial.

“I understand that it is still possible for you to receive this information. This door is not closed. If we give it to you, Susie, there is no problem. When you give it to America, they’re going to say that we have it. With the tensions between us, Baghdad fears taking any action that would expose us to harm. You’ve been threatening us for months, Susie.”

“If you had not threatened us, we would not be so concerned now.”

“Why didn’t you stop the attack, Susie? You told us about it. We learned about it from you. Obviously you know more than anyone. So how can you blame us? Perhaps you should not look so far away.”

“Baghdad has to consider all of these things.”

“But this message is very positive,” Salih insisted.

“Baghdad would be ready to cooperate if our interests are not damaged. Then you can have whatever you want. I see no problem. I think you will get it.”

Here you see the value of an Asset.

Iraqi diplomats confided this information to me—not Washington Those were my relationships that prompted a remarkably fast response from Baghdad, with a three day turn around from September 18 to September 21, followed by a meeting on September 22. Iraq trusted me as the point person, though they had no trust for the United States whatsoever. And they would do favors for me— which I would request on behalf of those greater needs. Expecting that, the CIA would leverage my relationships and network of contacts for its own advantage. That’s how our back-channel worked.

Baghdad’s official response to 9/11 was communicated in a letter to Andy Card, Chief of Staff to President Bush, dated September 24, 2001.[169] That letter faithfully records the dates of my visits to the Iraqi Embassy on September 18 and September 22, proving nothing was concealed from the White House or Dr. Fuisz, who received copies of all my reports to Andy Card, and prompt debriefings on top of that.

Despite all of my troubles, I stand by my conclusion to Andy Card: “Iraq has remained silent against the accusations playing in the media not out of malice, but because of frozen communications. I believe Iraq does not know how to speak to the United States, so that you can hear what they are saying, because they are so traumatized.”[170]

“They are frightened of an irrational U.S. response— because they’ve seen the previous Administration retaliate with attacks inspired by fuzzy data, or inadequately researched speculations, usually to distract from some media scandal or other. That’s why the Iraqis—and some others, frankly—are freezing up, and the common peoples of some Islamic nations have voiced a distrust of the information against Bin Laden. (They see it) as political justification for a witch hunt against an old enemy.”

“To regain credibility, in this first situation you are going to be held to a higher standard of scrutiny from the Arab Street. You’ve got to show this is not the same… old cynical leadership. They respect your strength, there is no question. But they also must respect your judgment, so that you retain all of your moral authority.”

“And so I urge the Administration to hit your mark, but keep your focus tight. Don’t use excuses to expand the circle of targets. Everyone in Europe and the Middle East will see through you, and your actions will only diminish America’s moral justification.”

There was no hostility in my comments, and I was correct on all accounts. Yet this letter would become a focal point of my five year legal battle over whether I performed as an “Iraqi Agent—” and deserved to spend 10 to 25 years of my life in prison— for delivering such prescient advice to the White House.[171]

Fortunately I did not know that yet. I seized on Baghdad’s claims about the Oklahoma City Bombing and the 1993 World Trade Center attack vigorously.

In the next weeks, I returned to New York frequently to investigate what exactly Iraq offered the United States. I was convinced that intelligence cache would possess exceptional value.

Intriguingly, Iraqi diplomats in New York and Baghdad swore their documents proved active Middle Eastern participation in both the Oklahoma City bombing and the 1993 World Trade Center attack. Senior diplomats, including a delegation from Baghdad, insisted the evidence was irrefutable that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols had not acted alone, but in fact received technical guidance and financial assistance from pre-Al Qaeda forces, sometimes called the “Inter-Arab” group, before 9/11.

As the chief U.S. Asset with ties to the Embassy, Iraq was mine to chase. Anything from Baghdad would have to come through me. Only three of us covered Iraq at the United Nations —and the other two Assets were brand new after 9/11, and in their mid-20s. They had no experience with this sort of work. By contrast, I had several major projects in play already— including a special project in support of U.S. anti-terrorism policy.

FBI Task Force Invited to Baghdad

Months before 9/11, a major platform was already on the table that would have dramatically enhanced the United States’ pursuit of terrorists seeking sanctuary inside Iraq. Our team had persuaded Iraq to authorize an FBI Task Force to conduct terrorism investigations inside its borders, with the right to interview witnesses, and most controversially, the right to make arrests. We just needed authorization from the White House to implement the agreement.[172]

The idea for an FBI Task Force emerged after the strike on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in October, 2000.

A year before 9/11, Iraqi diplomats provided advance warning about a major terrorist attack targeting the port facilities at Aden, Yemen. Iraq’s warning came just 10 days before the attack on the U.S.S. Cole linked to Osama bin Laden.

Intelligence about the conspiracy came through my back channel, with an emergency summons to visit the Iraqi Embassy. Diplomats informed me that Baghdad had swiftly deported a Saudi national after discovering that he was conspiring to attack a port facility elsewhere in the Middle East. Iraqi diplomats protested they would never dare to arrest a foreign national— a Saudi most of all— for fear of international reprisals. There would be too much controversy. Even cracking a major terrorist conspiracy harmful to the Saudi royal family would not be sufficient for Iraq to act, because of repercussions from the international community. It would not be feasible under any circumstances.

Diplomats protested that they could only deport the jihadi, and notify us. The Iraqi diplomat was quite emphatic, however. The Saudi man traveled on to Yemen after leaving Iraq’s territory.

Without delay, I notified Dr. Fuisz and Hoven that the Port of Aden in Yemen might be targeted for attack.

On a rapid turn around trip to New York, I quickly warned Yemen’s Deputy Ambassador at the United Nations, Mr. Al Sindi, of the threat. Yemen had served as a non-permanent member of the Security Council during Lockerbie, and we’d become friendly. For awhile Mr. Al Sindi visited me socially in Washington, and took me out for dinners in Georgetown. So when I described the terrorist scenario over dinner in New York, he took my warning to heart.

Regrettably the warning came too late to stop a small boat laden with explosives from ramming the U.S.S. Cole, while it docked for refueling five days later.

But Iraq gave a chilling explanation for the logic behind the conspiracy. Apparently, the Saudi terrorists hoped to alienate the local population from Yemen’s central government and the United States. They hoped Yemen’s leadership would be so disorganized in responding to the strike that Washington would be provoked to impose some sort of sanctions as punishment. That would cause hardship for the local people, costing support for the West and Yemen’s central government authority.

Such vicious logic enraged Baghdad.

But their evil logic was significant. Terrorists hoped that alienated rural communities could be persuaded to embrace a sort of freedom fighter/insurgency amalgamation. Seizing on that rage, Saudi rebels could burrow deep into Yemen’s rural villages, and launch attacks on Saudi oil fields, across the border. Thus, Yemen would become a Saudi Rebel base for destabilizing the Saudi Royal family.

Yemen is scrabble poor. Tribal families in the border lands bitterly resent the extravagance of their Saudi neighbors, and perceive them to have seized Yemen’s historic territory, in order to expand their wealth. Some of those rural tribes would definitely welcome raids on Saudi oil fields. No doubt they would enjoy sharing the wealth brought by Saudi Rebels, too.

In short, the U.S.S. Cole attack was predatory and opportunistic, pure and simple. The terrorists sought to create hardship for the Yemeni people, so that it could profit strategically from their misery and isolation.

The Saudi group in question would soon have a notorious name, and a more infamous reputation: Al Qaeda. The attack on the Port of Aden in Yemen would launch a major effort by this Al Qaeda group to achieve dominance in global terrorist circles.

Knowing all of that, my warning had been two-fold: 1) notifying Yemen’s Deputy Ambassador Al Sindi of the possible attack on the Port of Aden, and 2) discussing strategies for cooperation, so Yemen could hit the ground running and satisfy U.S. authorities.

If they couldn’t stop the attack, at least Yemen would be braced for U.S. investigation tactics. And so, five days later, when a small boat laden with explosives rammed the USS Cole, Yemen was not caught wholly off guard.

Demands for an FBI Task Force in Baghdad erupted out of the CIA’s frustration over Iraq’s impotence to thwart foreign terrorists from setting up shop inside its borders.

Baghdad complained bitterly that it had no desire to provide sanctuary for Islamic groups—which Saddam’s government despised. However, young jihadis arrived at their borders regardless, attracted by perceptions of the lack of central authority in Iraq. Correctly or not, terrorists believed the international community would hinder Iraq’s ability to police its territory. They sought to exploit that weakness. However, once they arrived, they found no friend in Saddam. They posed a genuine threat to his secularism, and risked stirring up fanaticism among his poverty-weary people. Saddam’s government was already weakened. He did not relish any outsider taking advantage of the porous desert to set up camp inside his country.

The bombing of the USS Cole was a frustrating reminder of those complications. Iraq’s complaints were legitimate, unfortunately. Iraq could not arrest foreign nationals without provoking an international crisis. Nobody wanted Baghdad to reverse that policy. Yet clearly something had to be done.

Immediately after the attack on the USS Cole, Dr. Fuisz gave instructions that I should corner Iraqi diplomats with our demand to allow the FBI or Interpol to set up shop inside Iraq. If Baghdad could not control the entrance and movement of terrorists inside its borders, who might be attracted by perceptions of Iraq’s flagging security under sanctions, as diplomats insisted, then the international community should be allowed to provide additional safeguards.

Remarkably, by late February, 2001, Baghdad agreed— eight months before 9/11.

Regrettably, for all the tough talk on terrorism, Republican leaders took no action on the security arrangement.

And so another critical safeguard was missed in the months before 9/11.

Tragedy gave the U.S. a second chance.[173] I was convinced a Task Force would provide a windfall of intelligence for global counter-terrorism efforts, and so I renewed my push for Baghdad to allow the FBI (or Interpol or Scotland Yard) to operate inside its borders. It was a logical demand. Given new disclosures about the cache of documents establishing a Middle East link to the Oklahoma City bombing and 1993 World Trade Center attack, the FBI seemed best positioned to execute a rapid turn around. They could acquire all of the available financial documents in one throw, as opposed to what I could get piecemeal from Iraqi diplomats. The FBI could act immediately to subpoena bank accounts, and move rapidly to seize suspicious funds. They could also deploy teams of law enforcement to chase down terror suspects.

The FBI would get the glory. That accounted for some hostility at CIA towards the project. However, given the dynamics, it seemed appropriate for law enforcement to take a lead role, as the most effective means of putting that intelligence to rapid use.

There was just one foreseeable problem: Dr. Fuisz warned that it might take a directive from Congress to bring the CIA and FBI together, because of longstanding hostility between the two agencies.

That proved to be the greatest understatement of all.

CHAPTER 9:

IRAQ’S CONTRIBUTION TO
9/11 INVESTIGATION, PART II

After 9/11, everything moved into high gear, making rapid progress on all fronts with Iraq. For the first months after the attack, 9/11 looked like it might become a catalyst for great good. If War was unavoidable in Afghanistan, a full arsenal of peace options flanked the troops in Iraq.

My projects had been underway for a full year. Now we rallied to the finish line.

Weapons Inspections

Iraq’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Dr. Saeed Hasan formally welcomed the return of weapons inspectors to Baghdad as of November, 2000.[174] Still, there was a striking disconnect in concerns on both sides.

Foremost for the U.S., there had been much talk of Iraq’s national pride and past insults by Australian Richard Butler’s inspection teams. That worried the CIA. Even the slightest risk of confrontation, once inspectors were deployed on the ground, made U.S. Intelligence wary of accepting Iraq’s invitation. The CIA feared Baghdad would abruptly refuse to cooperate with “excessive demands” for access to possible weapons sites, and the entire operation would be jeopardized.

The CIA was adamant. Iraq must agree to weapons inspections “with no conditions.” That was the operative phrase. It meant no qualifying factors, CIA jargon for “unconditional surrender.” Iraq would have to brace its people for the most rigorous standards of compliance in the history of disarmament verification, with maximum transparency and five minute access—long enough to find a key and open the door. The U.S. also wanted the right to interview scientists outside the presence of Iraqi officials— a demand that intimidated Iraqi scientists, who feared Washington would twist their words to manipulate the media.

There was obviously deep distrust on both sides. That much was widely reported.

On the Iraqi side, concerns were strikingly different. Iraqi diplomats welcomed inspections from the end of the Clinton Administration— two years before they kicked off.[175] But senior diplomats agonized over what would happen next—once the U.S. and Britain discovered no weapons caches or production facilities at any of the inspection sites. What mechanism would protect Iraq— and require the U.S. to validate the results—once Iraq’s disarmament was thoroughly verified? How would the U.S. and British governments react when their weapons fantasy turned out to be a hysterical delusion?

Iraq understood the concept of pride. They understood that London and Washington had a heavy personal stake in the inspection results. The U.S. had pounded its breast, and declared before the world that Iraq was hiding illegal weapons caches. Washington would have to save face somehow, when its theory proved entirely wrong. Iraqi diplomats spent a lot of time debating and fretting over how to get the trapped giants out of their corner.

That’s what ultimately convinced me Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq actively worried how Washington and London would handle the embarrassment of defeat. That revealed a lot.

Another thing, as of November 2000, as the Presidential vote count was underway in Florida, top Iraqi officials swore U.N. inspections could resume in a few weeks. So while the U.S. and Britain publicly chastised Iraq for withholding access to sites, in back channel negotiations Iraq was throwing the door wide open. Baghdad was eager to act as a friendly host, insisting inspectors would be well treated, whereas the United States dug in its heels and balked. That in itself was a blaring admission that Washington and London recognized the outcome would embarrass the West.

Above all, Iraq made clear it wanted friends. All of Iraq’s future trading partners were eager to put their reconstruction contracts into play. They gave Baghdad the same ultimatum. Baghdad must accept inspections before everyone could get on with business. They hated sanctions, too. They desired a new chapter of friendly relations with Baghdad. But there was no way to surmount disarmament verification.

And so, over and over, Iraq assured the White House and CIA that Baghdad would welcome U.N. inspectors to finish their job.

That’s a total contradiction of what the international community was told.

Cooperation with the Global War on Terrorism

Another great contradiction was Iraq’s so called “lack of cooperation” with global. anti-terrorism policy. Congress had no idea what it was talking about, suggesting Iraq embraced any sort of terrorist philosophy. Throughout the 1990s, Iraq was one of Washington’s best sources on counter-terrorism. Our back-channel existed first and foremost as a back door to receive that intelligence. And Baghdad was always enthusiastic to contribute, regardless of sanctions. Congress had nothing to fear.

Support for global anti-terrorism was motivated by Baghdad’s secular identity, and its determination to keep a tight rein on radical fundamentalists inside its borders. Baghdad flatly abhorred the notion that it willingly provided sanctuary to aspiring terrorists. Quite the contrary, Saddam would have liked to arrest all young jihadi types, so they could rot in prison. On that point, Saddam shared a lot in common with former Vice President Dick Cheney.

It must be understood that Saddam restricted his definition of “terrorism” to craven acts of violence or sabotage for the purpose of disrupting political or economic interests. Saddam’s government did not consider “acts of liberation” to constitute terrorist assaults— like the Palestinian fight against Israeli Occupation. Baghdad never shared intelligence on “freedom martyrs.” Quite the opposite, those jihadis received special protection and financial support from Saddam’s government, which never wavered all those years.

Washington and London should have thought hard about Iraq’s commitment to liberation ideology before sending U.S. soldiers into Baghdad.

In Iraq, opposition to Infidel Occupations is a form of religion.

But Saddam was supremely paranoid about religious zealots ready to commit acts of violence in the name of Islam against Arab governments. They would come to Iraq eager to attack the United States, or (mostly) Saudi Arabia, expecting to receive a sympathetic audience. Saddam would throw them right out, howling in protest, through our diplomatic back channel, that sanctions acted like a magnet for those groups to the detriment of the Gulf Region.

Saddam hated them more than we did.

“You don’t want them in your country!” Diplomats complained. “Why should we allow them in ours?”

“If we discover jihadis who want to attack Saudi interests, do you think we can arrest them? No! We would like to help protect the Saudis. But the International Community would never allow it! They would never forgive us! So what can we do?”

The problem was that Baghdad was right. Young Islamic radicals recognized that Saddam’s government had limited options for handling the influx. So they came in as visitors, and kept a low profile for a few months, until they could resist no longer. At that point, they would come into confrontation with Iraqi authorities, who would quickly ship them off to a new outpost.

Deportation was the only option.

Against that backdrop, our push to get an FBI or Interpol Taskforce into Iraq won rapid approval after the U.S.S. Cole bombing in October, 2000.

Iraq only hesitated long enough to insist that any terrorists identified by the FBI would hail from Syria, Jordan or Lebanon. Baghdad swore they would not be homegrown in Najaf or Mosul. Officials insisted their country was a transit point only. Saddam feared what their fanaticism could inspire among his people, so he squashed them hard. Saddam wanted them gone.

By February, 2001, Baghdad agreed— nine months before 9/11.

After 9/11, the agreement had to be revalidated. Baghdad correctly feared that any intelligence sharing might be portrayed by Washington as an admission of guilt, as opposed to positive cooperation, like Pakistan, Jordan or Egypt.[176] Iraq desired to be respected like any other nation contributing responsibly to this problem. Their fear was not unreasonable.

But given Iraq’s history of cooperation, it was fairly simple to persuade them. I just had to keep the Task Force on the table until we could get it implemented.[177] Without a doubt, it was a serious and meaningful effort. All of us presumed the FBI would send its best and brightest agents, who would act aggressively to hunt out terrorists hiding in Iraq. They would have the right to interview witnesses and conduct investigations. Most controversially, they would have the right to arrest terror suspects. This was the motherlode.

Revelations that Iraq possessed documents proving a Middle Eastern link to the Oklahoma City bombing hit me totally by surprise. The Oklahoma bombing in April, 1995 preceded my first visit to the Iraqi Embassy by 16 months.

But wait a minute, I can hear you thinking. That was Timothy McVeigh’s gig, right? Didn’t he go to his execution by lethal injection, swearing that he acted alone?

Yes, he did. And a lot of smart people think McVeigh lied, including former CIA Director, James Woolsey,[178] and McVeigh’s own attorney, Steven Jones.

And yours truly.

My handler, Paul Hoven was an expert on the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, including 19 toddlers and infants[179] at a nursery school on the ground floor of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Hoven studied the detonation pattern and architectural designs of the building— which convinced him explosives had been strategically placed in stairwells and/or elevator shafts. He found it most peculiar that employees of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) had not shown up for work the day of the bombing, as if they’d got advance wind of the attack. As for who might have conspired with McVeigh, Hoven studied the “skin-head” angle, the Aryan Nation connection, revenge for Ruby Ridge and the tragic conflagration at Waco, Texas. He understood all the different contributing factors. However, Hoven also gave strict instructions that I should grab anything at all that hinted of Middle Eastern involvement.

It strained logic to think that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols acted alone.

Think about it from a practical level. Building a bomb of that detonation force requires massive sophistication and expertise in storing and mixing dangerous chemicals; maximizing detonation capability; storage of the completed bomb; and technical planning for delivery—all without triggering a premature detonation.[180]

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were ambitious, yes. But in all probability, inexperienced bomb-makers would blow themselves sky high before they got so “lucky” as to create a bomb of that magnitude, and protect its separate components until delivery and detonation. This was a bomb capable of destroying a nine story building, and laying it to waste in concrete rubble, after all. There’s some difficult chemistry here.

Some of us strongly believe that McVeigh and Nichols must have received technical guidance for the job. Travel and supplies required financial assistance, as well.

There’s a remarkable documentary film that lays out this argument called “Conspiracy? The Oklahoma City Bombing.” I strongly recommend it. For a more in depth and devastating analysis, I also recommend “Third Terrorist: The Middle Eastern Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing” by Jayna Davis and “Oklahoma City Bombing Revelations,” by Patrick B. Briley.[2]

“Conspiracy?” does a beautiful job reexamining the facts about Oklahoma City, including recaps of the eye witness observations by 10 men and women, who claim to have spotted Timothy McVeigh with a young, Middle Eastern man at the Murrah building on April 19, 1995—minutes before the explosion.

Three employees of the Ryder shop, where McVeigh rented the truck, swore independently under oath that two men entered the store together, identified as Timothy McVeigh and an unknown Arabic man in his mid-20s. The truck was rented from a small store in a small town, with a limited number of daily transactions—not a busy shop. So there was no confusion two days later when the FBI showed up after the blast. All three employees agreed. Two men rented that truck. One of them appeared Middle Eastern.[181]

Likewise, two Middle-Eastern looking males were spotted sprinting at break neck speeds away from the Murrah building, and jumping into a dark truck a couple of minutes before the explosion. Speeding away, they almost ran over a woman four blocks away.

As former CIA Director Woolsey told film makers, “The number of witnesses puts the burden of proof on those who say there was no foreign involvement of any kind.”[182]

Here’s the bombshell: Terry Nichols’ passport showed that he traveled to the Philippines five times from 1990 to 1995, ostensibly to collect his “mail order” bride. But after the wedding, Nichols returned to the Philippines unaccompanied by his wife.

Strikingly, Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef both visited Southwestern College in the Philippines, a notorious recruiting ground for the Islamic Abu Sayef, during the same months, from November, 1994 to January, 1995. That would be Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, who went into hiding in the Philippines from 1993 until his capture in 1995.[183]

More curiously, a police informant visually identified Nichols as having attended a meeting with Ramzi Yousef, at which bomb building and detonation strategies were discussed—the missing technical assistance for the Oklahoma City Bombing. Nichols apparently introduced himself as “the farmer.” (Back home in Kansas, Nichols was indeed a farmer.)

By the way, the 1993 World Trade Center attack relied on the same M.O. as the Oklahoma City Bombing– a Ryder truck loaded with fertilizer explosives and ammonium nitrate.

And the shoe drops.

That’s an awful lot of coincidence. That two notorious terrorists would inhabit the same Islamic University campus for several months, meet to talk shop in late 1994 and early 1995, then apply the same bomb building techniques— without conspiring on the Oklahoma City attack four months later in April 1995— strains credulity.

My handler, Paul Hoven studied the Oklahoma City investigation exhaustively, and he thought it was a cover up— a la Arlen Specter and the single bullet theory in the John F. Kennedy assassination. In his megalomania, Timothy McVeigh even loathed sharing credit with Terry Nichols. As such, his reliability could be considered highly questionable, as far as identifying co- conspirators.

And now Baghdad swore it possessed documents proving a Middle Eastern connection to Oklahoma City and the 1993 World Trade Center attacks![184]

Well, I wanted to see what Iraq had. Anybody else doing credible anti-terrorism would want to see it, too. It would be irresponsible not to examine it closely!

And so I returned to New York frequently to investigate what Iraq was offering. Diplomats responded enthusiastically to my questions. They made additional inquiries to Baghdad, and received confirmations that the documents pertained to both the Oklahoma City bombing and the first World Trade Center attack in 1993.

And what’s the primary (known) link between those two attacks? Ramzi Yousef.

Could it be that Iraq possessed financial documents tied to him?

As one Iraqi diplomat traveling with a delegation from Baghdad put it, “We don’t think this will be valuable to the United States, we know this will be valuable to your efforts.”

If it related to Ramzi Yousef, that would be a phenomenal understatement!

Iraq’s contribution was priceless. It might outline the whole Al Qaeda spider web of illicit financing from its earliest days!

A picture of these documents began to emerge, which excited me very much. Reports from Baghdad clarified that in its treasure trove, Iraq was holding banking and financial records from the early to mid 1990s.

It was exactly what Dr. Fuisz and I hoped for. Such a cache would have incalculable value from the standpoint of tracking the pipeline of Al Qaeda finances. Identifying even a single bank account would allow a back trace on all funds moving from other accounts. Some monies would involve legitimate transactions. Others would not. Either would yield intelligence on even more accounts. Gaining that intelligence could have resulted in the seizure of tens of millions of dollars that otherwise continue to circulate internationally to this day.

Tracing this spider network of cash from the Middle East to New York and Europe to the Philippines and Indonesia would have disrupted a whole river of finances, keeping this global terrorism network afloat in “happy cash.” I call it happy cash, because most of it comes from heroin trafficking—a cash crop that produces $3 billion in revenue for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

An astounding 85 percent of the world’s heroin supply comes from Afghan opium production. All global drug cartels draw from those fields. The Islamic religion has nothing to do with it. Those are drug profits. And that’s where terrorists get their money.

Iraq offered a way to identify that network and stop it, effectively.

Baghdad had just one stipulation: They would only hand over those documents to the FBI or other international law enforcement agency— not the CIA. They wanted to support legitimate terrorist investigations— not get swallowed in the miasma of intelligence. I sympathized enormously. The Intelligence Community might easily identify something unpopular in a document, and bury it forever.

From my perspective, Iraq’s concern demonstrated the integrity of the documents. They were “results oriented only,” not for show.

That should not have been a problem. It fit perfectly with our first objective of getting an FBI Task Force into Baghdad. The FBI would find a lot to keep them busy.

I took one more precaution: I told Iraqi officials that if the documents truly pertained to Oklahoma City, then the Chief of Police of Oklahoma City would very likely travel to Baghdad with the FBI to receive the documents. I explained the Police Chief was like a tribal leader, who would know the families of the Oklahoma bombing personally. He would probably go to church with them—just like Iraqi tribal leaders attended mosque with families in their own community. The Chief of Police would be personally insulted—and Iraq’s reputation for cooperating with anti-terrorism goals would be smashed for all of the future— if he arrived in Baghdad and the documents proved to be worthless. He would be ashamed to go home to face the families. The United States would never forgive Baghdad. (And nobody would ever forgive me!)

Many times I urged diplomats that it would be better to abandon their claim than to create false hope for those families. I gave them plenty of opportunities to back out.

Nothing scared Iraqi diplomats into backing off their claims.

By November, 2001 our teams’ efforts were shaping up to a brilliant success on several fronts.

Our team was riding high to victory. That’s when I made an extraordinary discovery.

Saddam Hussein was a romantic.

There was a man at the Iraqi Embassy. Oh yes, there had to be one.

Our affair started back in 1997, one of those teasing romances. Only like everything else in my life, my liaisons proved slightly more colorful and dangerous in the end.

Mr. A—— was dark, tall and dashing, in his mid-30s. He had a muscular build. And he was incredibly sexy, with a mustache and a great wide mischievous smile, quite playful.

For all those years, it was fairly predictable that whenever the U.S. bombed Baghdad, I would visit Iraq’s Embassy. Any number of times, I dropped by, while the United States engaged in military action. I would be inside the embassy, while Secret Service Agents or security guards would be posted outside, depending on the severity of the confrontation.

Late one of those nights, during a major bombing raid on Baghdad, Mr. A——swept me up in his arms. We slow danced for the better part of an hour, in the greeting room of the Embassy. I kicked off my high heels, and danced in my stocking feet. There was no music. So he sang Iraqi love songs to me, which occasionally he stopped to translate.

Outside the embassy, Secret Service agents were posted on the street to stop any conflicts with angry Americans that might escalate hostilities between the two countries. Through the window, I could observe their reactions. It was a cold and rainy night. They looked slightly shocked, as they stared back through the glass.

Our affair was incredibly romantic. And ever so slightly dangerous.

Now four years had passed since my friend got ordered back to Baghdad. It was November 28, 2001, and I was visiting the embassy for a meeting with other diplomats.

When I looked up, I saw my old lover, larger than life, standing in the doorway watching me, a haunted smile on his face.

My heart stopped for a moment. Then I jumped up from the couch in mid-conversation with another diplomat.

I grabbed him and kissed him without any thought for the reaction. There was a gasp around us, I recall, and a few shocked expressions. And some embarrassed laughter.

As it turned out, Mr. A——was traveling as part of an Iraqi Delegation to New York after 9/11. And he was carrying a message from Iraq’s top Leadership.

A message for me.

A decision to resolve all outstanding obstacles to peace had been reached in Baghdad. The haggling was over. At this meeting on November 28, 2001,[185] my friend was authorized to communicate Iraq’s acceptance of all parts of the CIA’s demands.

Strikingly, Saddam chose my old lover to courier the message.

The substance of the agreement was relayed to Andy Card and Dr. Fuisz in a letter dated December 2, 2001.[186] It made our peace framework official, final and complete:

Most notably, as of the November 28, 2001 in New York, Iraq agreed to resume weapons inspections “with no conditions—” the operative phrase sought by the CIA.[187] That committed Baghdad to the most rigorous standards of compliance demanded by the United States, with maximum transparency and swift access to all sites, including the rights to interview scientists outside the presence of Iraqi authorities.

When I heard this, I cheered out loud and threw up my arms in a “V” for victory. We had worked so hard for those three little words—“with no conditions.” It appeared so simple. Yet it meant so much. It required that Iraq would not equivocate in its commitment to the inspections. Iraq would accept what had to be done, without complaint.

That meant everything.

Secondly, once more Iraq authorized an FBI, Scotland Yard or Interpol Task Force to operate inside Baghdad, with full rights to conduct terrorist investigations, interview witnesses and make arrests. The FBI would have authority to review all documents and financial records, proving a Middle Eastern link to the 1993 World Trade Center attack and the Oklahoma City bombing.[188]

In a further show of good faith, Iraq granted the FBI immediate authorization to interview Mr. Al-Anai, the Iraqi diplomat from Prague who allegedly met with Mohammad Atta, the alleged mastermind of 9/11 in April or May, 2001.

My Iraqi friend, Mr. A— assured me that he had personally interviewed Al Anai, who denied that such a meeting ever occurred. Mr. A— extrapolated that Al Anai was a secular leaning Muslim, who would not have sympathized with Islamic radicalism in any regard. He drank. He smoked. He chased women. However, the Iraqi Embassy agreed that FBI agents would have permission to speak with Al Anai one on one, and hear it for themselves.[189]

That was significant. Earlier that very day, November 28, 2001, future Republican Presidential hopeful John McCain had demanded that Iraq come clean on this alleged meeting in Prague. On ABC’s Nightline, McCain issued a fierce demand for Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation, with special rights for law enforcement to interview Mr. Al Anai.[190] Two weeks later, on December 9, 2001, Vice President Cheney repeated the accusation on “Meet the Press.”[191]

It was a done deal before Vice President Cheney opened his mouth. Baghdad agreed to the FBI interview on the very same day that Senator McCain issued the first demand.

White House Chief of Staff Andy Card was notified of Iraq’s agreement to that effect by December 2, 2001—one week before Vice President Cheney added his voice to the outcry.[192] From the sidelines, it appeared Cheney was grand-standing to maximize the impact when America was informed that Iraq had capitulated to Republican leaders. But Republicans knew they’d already scored.

Stunningly, despite all of that posturing by top Republican brass, no action was taken on Iraq’s offer. The demand to interview Al Anai was another false flag—part of the cynicism with which politicians in Washington began to manipulate the emotional tragedy of 9/11 for their own political advantage.

Likewise, Washington refused to accept Baghdad’s treasure cache of financial documents on early Al Qaeda. Instead the Justice Department seized bank accounts of legitimate Islamic charities engaged in community building— feeding widows and orphans, financing hospitals and schools— which offset the hopelessness and despair that foments into alienation and violence.

Seizing those charity funds does not— I repeat, does not— interrupt the flow of finances circulating through terrorist pipelines. Any politician in Washington who goes on CNN or FOX News Channel to claim otherwise has just proved he’s a fool!

As the Asset responsible for securing Iraq’s cooperation, I was appalled by the deception— and not for the last time, unfortunately. So much of 9/11 was a circus performance of political grandstanding. It was all showmanship and spectacle. I just didn’t know it yet.

Third on our agenda, and a particularly great victory for the United States, Iraq promised U.S. Oil Corporations would be guaranteed exploration and development contracts on equal par with Russia and France. The United States would not be penalized for supporting U.N. sanctions, or its many acts of military aggression.

Already some first tier oil concessions had been granted to Russia’s LUKoil and French oil corporations. Iraq would not violate its prior commitments. However, effective immediately, the U.S. could bid for 2nd tier and 3rd tier concessions on those projects. And in the future, the U.S. oil would receive lucrative first tier contracts for all exploration and development projects.[193] U.S. companies would likewise receive special preference for all oil equipment purchases for production and pipeline construction.

Fourth, another huge win for the CIA—Baghdad agreed that U.S. Corporations could return to Iraq in all economic sectors, and function at the same market share as they enjoyed prior to the 1990 Gulf War. U.S. corporations would suffer no penalties for the decade of cruel U.N. sanctions on Baghdad. “Dual use” production would still be controlled. (Again, given that my CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz testified before Congress about U.S. corporations that supplied weapons to Iraq before the first Gulf War, there was no worry that he would neglect that concern.)[194]

As an additional show of friendship, Iraq offered U.S corporations preferential reconstruction contracts for Iraq’s hospitals and health care system, including pharmaceutical supplies and medical equipment. U.S. telecommunications corporations would also receive priority contracts. All of it amounted to tens of billions of dollars in long term corporate revenues—jobs and major profits for shareholders.[195]

During my trip to Baghdad, officials added another tempting carrot to this bundle: Iraq would guarantee the purchase and import of one million American manufactured automobiles every year for 10 years. That would have a secondary benefit of creating market density for U.S. automotive spare parts. The upshot would be thousands of high-paying union jobs in the economically distressed Rust Belt of the American Heartland—Ohio, Michigan and Indiana.

That deal would have saved the U.S. automobile industry. In turn, the domino effect would have saved the Detroit and Michigan economies and housing market. At the very least it would have cushioned other blows.

It would be a lot to gain. And a lot to lose.

Last and finally, Iraq agreed to cease firing on U.S. and British fighter planes patrolling the no-fly zone over northern and southern Iraq for 30 days before any direct talks occurred, or before a comprehensive settlement got implemented. If the U.S. would consent to resolve the outstanding issues, Iraq would demonstrate its good faith with this ceasefire, effective immediately.[196]

And so it came to pass that on November 28, 2001— fully 16 months before the Invasion— Iraq agreed to the full scope of demands put forth by the CIA. Every possible U.S. objective would be protected, once sanctions got lifted.

I was elated. We had accomplished something momentous for the 9/11 investigation and for peace in the Middle East overall. I expected our team to be supremely praised by the White House, bipartisan members of Congress and the Intelligence Community. America’s leaders had defined the objectives, after all. Our team met the challenge to fulfill them. It was a stunning victory.

Our success was reported to Andy Card in a letter dated December 2, 2001, and copied to Dr. Fuisz.

Given the ramifications of the Peace Framework, it would have been extraordinary not to tell the White House. Indeed, why would I have done so much work without reporting it? What would be the point? My actions depended on communication to the CIA, in order to validate our progress. Moreover, my handlers swore numerous times the Intelligence Community would be irresponsible not to pay attention. That’s their job. Denying it would be the ultimate perjury. Anyone standing in front of a Judge, swearing so under oath, would be guilty of obstruction of justice. They could face prison time for that. And believe me, I would demand maximum sentencing.

The end was in sight. But I wasn’t quite finished.

The Christmas Holidays were fast upon us. That would put a hold on action. Still, I expected the White House and CIA to act shortly after the New Year.

Come spring-time, various Congressional offices, Democrats and Republicans alike, confided in private audiences on Capitol Hill that they received intelligence debriefings about the success of our talks.

I was in the home stretch. Leaving nothing to chance, in January and February, 2002, I held marathon sessions with Iraqi diplomats in New York.[197]

Now our discussions turned to an examination of conflicts in previous inspections. The U.S. claimed certain Iraqi behaviors aggravated perceptions of non-compliance. For the sake of future success, every problem situation from the past was studied and picked apart exhaustively with diplomats.

Iraq had to agree to do everything differently. Diplomats had to clarify specific changes that would be made, point by point. Nothing was left to chance.

Once again, I can prove the meetings occurred, because the Justice Department cited them in my indictment— though most of the dates are wrong.

Surveillance photographs provide irrefutable evidence that the U.S. (and possibly British) intelligence shadowed us in January and February, 2002.[198]

We met at a small hotel close to the United Nations. Our meetings could not be conducted in an open setting, like a restaurant or bar. Our conversations ran so late into the night that it was impossible to return home to Maryland.

Half an hour after checking in, like clock-work, the noisy elevator would stop at my floor, and a man and woman would get out and enter the room directly next to ours. It happened every time. That reassured me the Intelligence Community was fully alert. Though I could not know which alphabet agency was surveilling us, I was confident the spooks were tracking our meetings closely.

More comically, at the very start, I suspect the U.S. alphabet agencies hoped to confine us to a single room at the hotel. Diplomats and I returned after a few weeks hiatus to find an astonishing sight: The bed was unmade, the blanket tousled exactly as I left it three weeks earlier. A half empty liter of Diet Coke sat on the table, and the trash was still piled with leftovers from our take-out chicken dinner. Maid service had not cleaned that room in three weeks. And nobody else had slept there.

Iraqi diplomats and I took one look at that hotel room and rapidly leapt to the same conclusion. The room had to be loaded with bugs. The spooks must have showed up an hour after I left, because they’d interrupted the cleaning services. They must have quarantined the room, and reserved it exclusively for us. How considerate!

(The Iraqis demanded another room immediately).

Was I paranoid? Perhaps. Candidly, this was the hottest spook party in town. If you wanted to know what Iraq was up to after 9/11, you had to get inside this room—with us— to find out.

The CIA required this to get done right. They had a legitimate responsibility to secure the integrity of the weapons inspections process and everything else—Nothing could be left to chance. If it was going to happen, it had to be done right.

Weapons inspections didn’t just “happen to work.” They were made to succeed because of rigorous planning and 17 months of upfront effort, which made the difference.

Whatever else you think of the CIA—on Iraq, the agency fulfilled its obligations to the highest degree. These men are warriors who built a strong and reliable framework for peace. It was comprehensive and proactive, covering all possible areas of U.S. interests. It was not flimsy; it was not idealistic. It was constructed to be demanding and rock solid.

I categorically deny that I or my fellow Assets engaged in criminal activity. The obvious proof of surveillance photographs[199] prove the U.S. side was fully informed by me when and where those meetings would take place. I was not operating alone. After 9/11, nobody suggested I should break off engagement. Later my Defense Intelligence handler, Hoven, told the FBI he spoke with me 50 to 60 times after 9/11.

After those marathon sessions, by mid-February, it was time to hand over Iraq’s agreement to the United Nations. I grabbed it up, and delivered it myself to the Security Council, and a wider circle of Embassies known to deplore the crippling sanctions. My actions are fully substantiated by faxed documents to Ambassadors all over the U.N.[200]

I am deeply proud to have done so. It’s pointless for my detractors to deny, since the FBI supplied evidence from wire taps to prove it in court.

Most perplexing, Ambassadors and senior diplomats at the United Nations would only act once they saw Iraq was already committed to the weapons inspections agreement. Until preliminary talks guaranteed success, they would take no action to help solve the problem. Except for the courageous leadership of Ambassador Hasmy Agam of Malaysia[201]—willing to guide and mentor the rising generation of diplomats, whom he assigned to liaison with me—they would not risk any of their own political capital to find a solution. No diplomat would lift a tea finger to make it happen. It had been the same with Lockerbie.

Attitudes changed with lightning speed forty eight hours after receiving my faxes detailing Iraq’s agreement to inspections “with no conditions.” The Security Council declared it was time for direct dialogue with Baghdad. They invited Iraq to send a delegation to New York, March 8-9, 2002 to hammer out technical language for the agreement.[202] As long as Iraq agreed to Washington’s rigorous standards of compliance, the United Nations would draft up language pronto.

My work was almost done. There was just one thing left. Then my 18 month project to resume the U.N. weapons inspections would be finished.

I scheduled a trip to Baghdad the first week of March, 2002,[203] flying home the first day of talks in New York.

A great deal was at stake. I had a tremendous personal investment in the success of the talks. It would have been disastrous if Baghdad backed off its commitments.

In any event, the CIA understood my travel plans. I categorically deny that I would have traveled anywhere in the Middle East of all places, without making sure the Intelligence Community could find me if I got into trouble. Some particularly dangerous people did not appreciate my efforts.

That’s one time complaints about my paranoia hit the mark dead on.

My trip to Baghdad had a second purpose to explore how far my relationship with my old diplomatic lover, Mr. A— could evolve, if at all.

It struck me as a grand gesture that Saddam chose my lover to courier his message. In the paranoia of the intelligence world, there’s no such thing as “coincidence.” If this particular diplomat showed up in New York, given our past romance, it signified that Saddam was using him for some purpose. The question was what purpose. For sure, nobody trusted Saddam.

There was an element of danger given our past. I could not afford any mistakes. His safety would become my highest priority. Special precautions would be required to protect him.. There was no danger— Yet. I would have to watch out for it.

There was ugliness on my end, too. I have bitter memories begging Dr. Fuisz for payment of the debts I accrued during the Lockerbie talks. It shocks Americans to discover that in those days, Assets only received compensation after completing a project.

Every one of my projects was considered extraordinarily difficult—Lockerbie was judged impossible. Most Assets would give up, because it was so hard. That accounts for why the CIA withheld rewards until a project’s completion.

That doesn’t mean there wasn’t money. Dr. Fuisz received $13 million from emergency “black budget” appropriations for the 9/11 investigation several weeks after the attack. I was visiting his office, when the glorious news arrived in a phone call.

By this time, Congress owed me a tidy fortune for my successful contributions to Lockerbie, the U.S.S. Cole, and assundry Terrorism projects all the way back to the 1993 World Trade Center attack.

As my handler, Dr. Fuisz controlled my access to funding, though notably, he had no direct contact with Iraq or Libya himself. And so immediately I requested part of that money. Payment was not only for my sake, but for my Iraqi friend in Baghdad. He would be risking his life, if Saddam decided he had become overly friendly with the FBI Task Force on Terrorism. On my trip to Baghdad, I wanted to provide the strongest possible incentive to inspire his cooperation. He would have been worth every dollar, if I could persuade him to help.

Knowing about that pot of money—$13 million, folks— I leaned hard on Dr. Fuisz for cash right up to the date of my departure. That’s what Congress intended it for, right?

A third of that money could have achieved all of our goals in Iraq, with ample funding left over, including payment for Dr. Fuisz, Hoven and myself. By comparison, the 9/11 Commission got $11 million for its entire investigation into the attack.

Dr. Fuisz had other plans. He was building a mega-mansion in Virginia, a stone’s throw from CIA headquarters. He wanted it all.

Later on, the FBI and the Prosecutor would float the extraordinary suggestion that I had not contacted Dr. Fuisz at all. I didn’t ask for any money. I just ran off to Baghdad!

Yeah, sure I did!

Blissfully ignorant of my twisted future, on my visit to Baghdad I received assurances from the Foreign Ministry that Iraq was fully committed to the success of the weapons inspections.[204] By the time I finished meeting with Dr. Saeed Hasan— now Deputy Foreign Minister and a personal friend, I was delighted that all of our back-channel efforts had succeeded so magnificently.

Now it got very interesting. My old diplomat friend was now a senior member of Iraq’s Intelligence Service, called the Mukhabarat. He was authorized to act as a liaison in Baghdad to the new FBI Taskforce. However, Saddam’s professed desire to cooperate with U.S. anti-terrorism policy could not alter the reality that the FBI and CIA would demand much more than Saddam’s government might be inclined to give. The FBI would not limit its focus to Saddam’s targets. They would have eyes open at all times.

Any real progress might be hazardous to Mr. A—s life, if Saddam perceived he was too close to the Americans. Or some jihadi might take him out.

From the outside it looked so easy. Yet it was fraught with danger.

Suffice it to say that I made a very special appeal for his help. And my outreach was rewarded. My friend agreed to put himself at great personal risk, in order to aid the FBI (or Interpol or Scotland Yard) in identifying terrorist targets moving inside Iraq. He promised to advise us when they arrived; where they stayed; whom they met; and their activities. Some of those people would be despised by Saddam. But a few might enjoy special protection, which my friend would have to overcome.

I was elated! Once I got home, I expected to receive commendations heaping praise on my cleverness and resourcefulness in developing this Agent at the top of Iraq’s Intelligence Service, no less. That’s a pretty big deal—if you “count on one hand the number of agents inside Iraq,”[205] as former CIA Director George Tenet told Congress.

As proof of his performance, my friend’s first act of assistance was to identify a group of Jordanians, who fled into Iraq for medical treatment the first week of March, 2002. Apparently they had suffered war injuries fighting in Afghanistan. Mr. A— said they could not go home to Jordan, on threat of immediate imprisonment.

One jihadi in particular was a monster, Mr. A— claimed. The timing and description match the young Abu Musab al Zarqawi, infamous for orchestrating a massive bombing campaign against the U.S. Occupation that murdered hundreds of Iraqi citizens and U.S. soldiers.[206] Hundreds of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings would be carried out against the U.S. Occupation under his banner.

It’s factually known that Zarqawi arrived in Baghdad seeking medical care for a war injury sustained in Afghanistan the first week of March, the same time as I did. More recently, some intelligence has pushed back Zarqawi’s arrival to May, 2002. That’s nonsense revisionism to protect Republicans from criticism of this lost opportunity to arrest him. It’s typical of the careless, self important prognostications flowing through the corporate media these days. They are factually wrong.

My friend told me the jihadi was a young man of craven violence urgently sought by Jordanian authorities. As my friend put it— “Some men are animals. This man is the worst I have ever seen. He belongs in a cage, and he should stay there.”

My friend offered to deliver him to the FBI Task Force. Iraqi Intelligence expected him to create serious problems wherever he went. They were anxious to hand him over to U.S. custody. Appallingly, the U.S. would not take him.

I also gave my friend a list of terrorists tied to the Pan Am 103 bombing, aka Lockerbie, including famed terrorist, Abu Nidal. I asked Mr. A— to exert his power to arrest Nidal if he showed up in Baghdad.

In July 2002, Iraqi police stormed a building where Nidal lived, and the world learned that the fabled terrorist died in a hail of gunfire fighting off arrest— or perhaps committed suicide, as Iraqi police closed in.

Immediately after his death, Nidal’s friends and family in Lebanon talked openly of his involvement in the Lockerbie bombing, and his regret that an innocent Libyan man, Mr. Abdel Bassett Megrahi had been sentenced to life in prison for Nidal’s crime.[207]

My Iraqi friend played an instrumental role in arranging Nidal’s capture.

By any measure, my trip to Baghdad was enormously successful. If U.S. ambitions to hunt out terrorists in Iraq were at all sincere, this strategically placed Iraqi Intelligence Officer would have had phenomenal value.

Appallingly enough, during my indictment, I faced bitter recriminations and threats of prison time for the actions I took to win him over, and protect him in Baghdad. Those attacks show how cheap the U.S. holds the lives of foreign helpmates. Congressional leaders and the upper echelons of U.S. Intelligence ought to think hard about endorsing such a message. It certainly makes us look very bad.

I feel that I deserve an apology.

Democracy Initiative

By far, the most fascinating development on my trip to Baghdad emerged quite unexpectedly at lunch with a member of Saddam’s Revolutionary Counsel at the “Iraq Hunting Club.”

Throughout the lunch, the Senior Iraqi official was identified only as “His Excellency.” Asked a couple of times for his name, his entourage replied with a smile– “We have told you. You may call him “Excellency.”

“That is his name?”

“Yes.”

Through photos and video broadcasts of Saddam’s cabinet meetings, I have visually identified him, I believe, as an attendant to Saddam at Revolutionary Council meetings, carrying papers and leaning over the Iraqi Leader for his signature. That adds a tantalizing quality to “His Excellency’s” surprise query at this luncheon.

“What value would the United States place on Democratic Reforms in Iraq, as far as lessening tensions between our two countries?”

According to “His Excellency,” “maybe Saddam would not be there. He might be gone.” The mere suggestion shocked me so much that I wondered if possibly Saddam was dying. Otherwise speculation about his future would be treasonous. Dictators typically don’t like underlings talking about the succession to their regimes. People get killed for conversations like this.

Registering my astonishment, “His Excellency” assured me that Saddam was preparing to assume a more distant role in government, and would support the development of democratic institutions that promote power sharing.

An activist for democracy myself, I responded enthusiastically, citing the European Union’s push for democratic reforms in Turkey, as a pre-condition for EU membership. Still, I expected only a symbolic or token proposal of Iraq’s commitment to reform. I was astonished, therefore, by the depth of thoughtfulness and the creativity of problem solving contained in Iraq’s proposal. Their package of democratic reforms was obviously well considered.

Critically, it must be stressed that this proposal was floated a year before the Invasion—and months before the U.S. publicly threatened a military assault on Baghdad.

It laid a path for regime change without resorting to violent warfare and Occupation.

Safeguarding the Exiles

According to His Excellency, Iraqi officials had devised a highly original plan to safeguard Exiles returning from London, Tehran and Detroit, so that they could join the political process.[208]

Iraq would invite the international community to reopen their Embassies in Baghdad, which His Excellency observed are “sovereign territory” of those countries. He stressed that Baghdad could not attack or arrest anyone inhabiting those Embassies, as violence against an Embassy constitutes an act of war against the home country, or near to it.

His Excellency suggested Iraqi Exiles could return home to Baghdad, and take up housing in those protected domiciles. Iraq would allow Embassies to beef up security for their protection, and would allow them to take over neighboring houses to expand their compounds sizably. This was still Iraq. Eminent domain prevailed over individual rights to property.

The Exiles would be granted safe passage to their Party headquarters around Baghdad, and to other meeting points. Security provided by the embassies would guarantee their safety inside the country.

Establishing Political Parties and Party Headquarters

Upon returning to Iraq, the Exiles would have the right to establish political parties, including opening party headquarters around the country.[209] They would have the right to publish opposition newspapers, and possibly a television or radio station. His Excellency stressed that the latter would depend on the United Nations’ willingness to amend or lift the sanctions, which tightly controlled and restricted media development inside Iraq. However, Saddam was prepared to share some oil revenues with the Exiles to promote their activities, so long as the level of funding did not negatively impact food and medicine for the Iraqi people.

In conclusion, His Excellency suggested that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter might head an international delegation to monitor future elections in Baghdad.

Jimmy Carter supervises election monitoring teams all over the world. He would never tolerate voter fraud in Baghdad or anywhere else. The international community could have trusted that such an eminent observer, of such renowned integrity, would safeguard this “new democracy” in Iraq, in a substantial and effective way.

The flow of conversation at the Iraqi Hunting Club that afternoon astonished me. The man was talking treason. Merely to suggest that Saddam might forfeit control over every facet of the government could be punishable by firing squad. Upon consideration, I questioned if Saddam might be terminally ill, and stepping back from the daily regulation of government. That might make him more accepting of the inevitability of public grasping for power, and open to plotting out the transition.

After the invasion proved that Saddam was not terminally ill, I concluded that he had behaved in the fashion of a survivor. He recognized his time had come, and he set about developing a strategy for implementing the inevitable, so that he would not be destroyed by it, but would find a proper balance and sanctuary for himself and his family.

Whatever motivated this conversation, it was a brilliant and creative opening for Democracy, the likes of which Iraqis never got from George Bush. This plan laid the foundations for major political reforms, and the creation of socio-political institutions necessary for a transition to pluralism, without requiring a military deployment or aggravating sectarian strife. It’s a blueprint worthy of attention in other conflict zones.

Back at the Al Rasheed Hotel, I checked the internet, and discovered the Lockerbie Appeal was finalized, too. The legal challenge on behalf of Abdel Basset Megraghi, the one Libyan convicted of bombing Pan Am 103, had failed in the Scottish Courts. There was nothing more Dr. Fuisz or I could contribute to the Lockerbie case.

That meant my work with Libya was over, too. Libya’s future appeared bright and dynamic, according to what I saw, with a cadre of (mostly) British Intelligence jumping in to carry forward.

I felt satisfied and content. I considered that my work as an Asset was essentially over— with mostly good results all around.

It was March, 2002—one year before the invasion. Winter was ending in Maryland, where I live in the suburbs of Washington DC, a few miles from Capitol Hill. When I returned home from Baghdad, the world looked ahead to peace and prosperity in the Middle East. I watched CNN and MSNBC, much amused, as pundits and Statesmen strutted before the TV cameras to prattle about my baby—the return of U.N. weapons inspection teams to Iraq.

After such a long labor, I was at peace to watch them.

CHAPTER 10:

BLESSED ARE THE
PEACEMAKERS

You’d never guess from all our success securing Iraq’s cooperation with anti-terrorism policy that I suffered from chronic exhaustion. My double-life was becoming more difficult to sustain.

While the whole country grieved over 9/11, I had to swallow my pain. My part in the 9/11 investigation allowed no time for grief. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t suffering like everyone else.

By early October, 2001, I began to experience panic attacks whenever I had to cross the street. My heart would start pounding; I would feel faint and dizzy. My legs would teeter, as if I might collapse on the pavement in the middle of oncoming traffic. I’d have to stop myself from grabbing the arms of strangers to get across the road. Lunchtime on Connecticut Avenue in the heart of downtown Washington about killed me.

I suffered terrible insomnia. I’d wake up at three in the morning, and sit on my back porch, chain smoking cigarettes until I could fall asleep. (I quit several years ago.) A couple of times I saw flashes of camera lights, and wondered if one of my early rising neighbors in artsy Takoma Park had photographed my self-abasement—or if the spooks were checking up on the lady who warned about 9/11. My paranoia skyrocketed. However someone definitely photographed me several times late at night in November and December, 2001. That’s also true. I saw them do it.

I beat myself up with recriminations over our failure to stop 9/11. I tortured myself wondering what more we could have done. (Honestly, nothing). That didn’t stop me from long nights imagining the possibilities. What if I had not left Andy Card’s house that day in mid-August? What if I’d waited another hour in my car? (I waited two hours.) Why didn’t I go back to drop off a written warning about our suspicions?

I considered the 9/11 investigation my personal responsibility. I would report to Dr. Fuisz’s office, and physically shake. My legs couldn’t stop bouncing—tapping my feet on the floor. I was totally wired, so much it hurt. But I couldn’t come down off it, either.

I’d always been addicted to danger. I thrived in harsh situations. I contributed to many other terrorist investigations. This was my element. I visited the Iraqi embassy whenever the U.S. bombed Baghdad. Diplomats raved that I was unnaturally calm in a crisis. I was notoriously not afraid in situations that would overwhelm most adrenalin junkies. I never flinched from those encounters.

“Paranoia” was another matter. Paranoia was an occupational hazard. Surveillance targeting me during any terrorism investigation could get hyper intense. The Intelligence Community needed to know what the hell was going on. And I would be the first to find out, because of my special contacts with pariah Arab governments. So I would get tracked heavily.

By example, at the close of the Lockerbie negotiations, on the night that Tripoli handed over the two Libyans for trial, I went down to the basement of my house, and found ten to twelve audio cables dangling from the ceiling. All the ceiling tiles had been torn out. I could see cables winding through every room above. Ceremoniously, I got a chair and cut the heads off the listening devices. I felt quite satisfied. My landlord, however, was highly perplexed.

That intensity of surveillance, while perfectly legitimate in these circumstances, aggravated my stress levels all the more. It was not “irrational” paranoia, as some have questioned. But it was stress provoking, nonetheless, because that degree of surveillance gets highly aggressive and intrusive. Sometimes whole teams would track my movements. Black sedans would chase me as I zig zagged through traffic on Interstate 95 all the way to New York. Over the years I learned to identify them. That didn’t make them the enemy. It was just part of the culture. A stressful surveillance culture.

After 9/11, they followed me into restaurants when I dined with Arab diplomats in New York. They checked into adjoining hotel rooms in New York to monitor my meetings with Iraqi diplomats on resuming the weapons inspections. They tried to wire hotel rooms that we might use again. They always tapped my phones. They’d jump out like paparazzi with cameras on the street. It happened in Washington and New York, with Rani Ali of Malaysia, and many times with Libya’s Ambassador Issa Babaa and others, who shall be glad to stay anonymous. I’d be sitting in a chair, and somebody would pop up close to my face, whisper a code and disappear like a ghost. We’re in place. We’re ready. Face gone.

In late November or early December, 2001, I saw Richard— for the last time, it turns out—though I had no inkling that afternoon. I was debriefing him jubilantly about my successful visit with the Iraqi delegation, and Baghdad’s enthusiasm for the peace framework. I voiced concern over how detailed my letter to Andy Card, dated December 2, 2001, should be, as far as detailing the peace framework.

Richard replied: “You don’t have to worry. We always know exactly where you are, and everything you’re doing. We know it as soon as it happens. If you give us the Andy Card letters or not, we’re going to know anyway.”

Then he said something that I regarded as strange: “Even if I could not communicate with you directly, Susan— for any reason— you can trust that at all times I have full knowledge of the status of this project. And I expect you to complete it. Do you understand?”

In retrospect, I suspect that about this time, Dr. Fuisz got debriefed on the early war planning against Iraq—which he could not divulge to me under any circumstances. It got confusing on my end, for sure. But I don’t blame Dr. Fuisz. After 9/11, the spooks played at the top of their game. As long as they showed up in New York, I felt safe. Their appearance meant that my messages to Dr. Fuisz as to meeting times and locations made it up the chain. This was Iraq’s cooperation with U.S. anti-terrorism policy, after all, and resuming the weapons inspections. This was the hottest party in town. It’s incomprehensible that anybody would argue the Intelligence Community had no reason to track my engagements. That’s absurd. And wrong. They tracked it very heavily.

My pain was altogether different and private.

After 9/11, I was overwhelmed by “what ifs.” I recycled non-stop through my conversations with Dr. Fuisz in the summer of 2001. Many times I thought back to the day of FBI Director Robert Mueller’s nomination hearings on August 2, when Dr. Fuisz urged me not to go back to New York.

That’s why I remember everything so clearly to this day. I wanted to be ready to tell Congress everything before the attack. I could never have believed that Congress, as leaders of the American people, would not want to know precisely and accurately what our warnings entailed. So I replayed my conversation with Attorney General John Ashcroft’s private staff on August 7 or 8 over and over in my mind. I replayed every detail of hanging up the phone to Ashcroft’s office, and immediately dialing the Office of Counter-Terrorism at his staff’s insistence—right down to the last irrelevant details. I wanted to be ready. I made a decision to read no reports by other sources –not even the 9/11 Commission Report— so that external sourcing would not influence my first-hand descriptions of our warnings.

By November, there was a new tension in my midnight solitude: How extraordinary that nobody appeared willing to acknowledge our warnings before the attack?

Now that stumped me. I suffered no delusions that I gave the only warning. You’d be wrong to think that. There were others. Trust me.

Exhaustion was starting to wear me down. But something did not sit right. It struck me that somebody was cooking the intelligence books. I was just too exhausted to figure out why. I was so damn tired! And that proved my undoing.

All of my energies had to stay focused on Baghdad—and fulfilling the mandate from the White House, Congress and all those Washington pundits who railed against Iraq on CNN and the Fox News Channel after 9/11.

Dr. Fuisz and Hoven pushed me hard for results. They watched “Meet the Press,” too. They listened to the speechifying on Capitol Hill, and all of us recognized that Iraq was the second hottest front in counter-terrorism after Afghanistan and Pakistan. And Iraq was our baby. If the White House was guided by a secret agenda of leading our nation to War with Baghdad, they dropped no hints to an anti-war Asset who campaigned aggressively against sanctions. Truly I don’t believe Dr. Fuisz or Hoven understood that agenda for awhile to come, either.

You see the obstacles I had no idea I was confronting?

Let me underscore this point: Every time White House or Congressional leaders opened their mouths with public demands for Iraq’s cooperation, they were speaking to my team. I was the Asset designated to carry out that particular mission. My back-channel had filled that purpose since August, 1996.

For those reasons, Dr. Fuisz urged me not to get distracted by our advance warnings about 9/11. We’d confront them later, he said, after our work got finished. He didn’t say when it would be safe to discuss. I don’t think he knew. He only said that he couldn’t use me if I fell apart.

I definitely exhibited signs that I might. I suffered night sweats. I’d wake up from nightmares where I’d spin like a twister out of my body. Then I’d crash into my bed drenched in a cold sweat, my sheets and nightclothes soaking wet. Those are clear signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Does that disappoint you? It shouldn’t.

Everyone can help in good times when things are easy. Everybody’s your buddy and your pal. Everybody wants to contribute. What separates the “men from the boys”—or the “women from the ladies” is who stays in when situations get really tough. Who doesn’t give up? Who doesn’t quit?

After 9/11, you needed me. I considered my actions on your behalf to be the proudest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Because I did this work when it got hardest for me. Because I pulled myself through my own pain and grief, and gave everything I had. I tore myself apart for this. I did not break. I did not give up.

Regrettably America, you did not help me.

When I begged for a budget to support my work, Dr. Fuisz said, and I quote: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. You don’t ask for anything.”

Paul Hoven echoed those sentiments, with a few ugly, anti-feminist expletives thrown in. “Susan: President Bush said you’re either with us or against us. You’d better get to work and stop asking my friend for money.” And so I kept going.

By November, Dr. Fuisz accessed a large pot of money totaling $13 million from emergency “black budget” appropriations for the 9/11 investigation. While I argued that money existed to support our field operations, Dr. Fuisz handled it as his own private financial compensation. When I pleaded desperately to receive “something” to hold my own finances together, Dr. Fuisz vigorously refused. He had started building a mansion in Virginia earlier that year. An architect stole $3 million dollars off the $8 million project, Dr. Fuisz claimed. As a result, construction on his extravagant house stalled throughout the summer. Having listened to his phone calls many times on visits to his office, I saw for myself that he could raise no more cash to finish his mansion.

All of a sudden after 9/11, Dr. Fuisz was flush again. When I expressed heart-felt relief for the availability of funds, Dr. Fuisz told me straight out that $13 million (definitely from the feds) gave his family the opportunity to start construction from scratch. He talked about buying new land, and starting from the foundation up. And this mansion would be more spectacular than the first, because now he had $13 million to build with! I have always wondered if some of that money bought fancy houses for his college-age children, as well. Either way, he gave me nothing.

My request for funds to acquire Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation: Denied.

Was Richard motivated solely by greed? Did a Pro-War faction at the White House relay a clandestine order to stall our Iraqi project? Or did Richard augur the future War policy on his own, and conclude the White House would be supremely pleased if all that federal gold got invested anywhere except to compel Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation? In which case, nobody at the White House or CIA would mind if funds got diverted to the construction of his great house in Virginia.

Senior officials might have speculated that without budget resources, I would get fed up and quit. If so, they had a poor understanding of our team. We accepted the challenge under any conditions that we had to face. Dr. Fuisz gave me a personal check for $2,500 in October, and I kept going. This had to get done. We would make sure it got done right. These men aren’t quitters. Neither am I. If members of Congress aren’t who they pretend to be, that had nothing to do with us.

Not surprisingly, the lack of funds made it vastly more difficult for me on a personal level. I had to push forward with no safety net at all. My furnace broke that winter, and I had no heat for almost 10 days from Christmas Eve until after New Year’s. I cranked up my kitchen stove to stay warm through the Holidays. Dr. Fuisz sent me a honey baked ham for Christmas dinner. But life got awfully grim in my household, while Homeland Security beefed up its bureaucracy, and the National Security Agency splurged on high tech gadgetry.

I shudder to recall it, even today. Honestly, I felt heart-broken and I suffered for it. Yes I did. For months I pushed Richard to intercede on my behalf to secure the annuity payment promised as reward for my work on Lockerbie, the U.S.S. Cole, 9/11—You name it. I was entitled to receive rewards for all those projects.

Failure to honor those promises amounted to massive leadership fraud. It was a major betrayal of Congressional pledges of support for Assets in anti-terrorism, flags flying high on the sound stages of CNN and the Fox News Channel.

Meanwhile, the “Black Budgets” exploded to $85 billion a year—all of it taxpayer dollars off the books to federal auditors—paid from the salaries of hard working teachers, doctors, construction workers, farmers, and every day Americans across the country, who sweat, like me, from pay check to pay check. There’s no accountability for handling those “black budget” appropriations. Congress has barred itself from auditing black budget projects. So in truth, Capitol Hill has no idea whether appropriations reach the field, or if monies get diverted to private bank accounts for non-professional uses, resulting in thefts of billions of U.S. tax dollars.

Failing to provide resources to Assets like me, engaged in the daily work of counter-terrorism amounted to gross command negligence, however.

There’s a time-honored tradition in military style structures that leadership entails a responsibility to provide for the welfare of individuals under the command. Underlings give obedience, and commanders act in good faith to provide for their honest needs— not extravagantly, but at a basic threshold. It’s known as “Jus in Bello,” and it’s critical for the success of the command unit.

This time they failed badly, and I suffered intensely as a result.

And all because of the total absence of black budget oversight. Black budget monies are equivalent to 100 percent, interest free gifts to the notorious Beltway Bandits in Washington, who grab for that cash with open fists. They have no obligations to provide any services to the government in return, or to repay the money if businesses are sold for a profit down the road. It’s corporate welfare. Small business owners across America would be so lucky. They’d be thrilled.

As a result, it is impossible for me to hear leaders on Capitol Hill brag about their outstanding leadership support for Assets and anti-terrorism without becoming very, very angry. Congress should keep its mouths shut, until whatever time black budgets get reformed. An overhaul of intelligence appropriations is long overdue.

Unhappily after 9/11, I needed to buy groceries and pay my mortgage and utility bills just like other Americans. I tightened my belt and kept going. After 9/11, I got to New York twice a month on average for meetings with Iraqi and Libyan diplomats. I went after Iraq’s cooperation pretty hard. And the spooks kept track of it all.

Later on, when I got accused of acting as an “Iraqi Agent,” I dreamed of going into Court wearing a shirt that read: I Warned About 9/11 And All I Got was This Lousy T-Shirt & a Federal Indictment.

Pretty scandalous, eh?

Bottom line: Republicans on Capitol Hill got a free ride on the publicity train after 9/11. They never paid the fares. Promises were broken and forgot as soon as the TV cameras packed up. Unhappily, their deception carried a bitter cost for Assets like me.

After my indictment, my emotional stress after 9/11 would become a matter of fierce conjecture and debate. The spooks would grab for any excuse to block my demands for a trial, and thereby prevent exposure of Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence and our 9/11 warnings. My panic attacks and chronic fatigue gave them a reprieve. They would not let it go.

Ominously, the Justice Department attack would spiral beyond their grasp. And Congress would hold no inquiry to check the facts of my history as an Asset. They would not want the truth about Iraq or 9/11 coming out either. My indictment helped a lot of people tell a lot of lies.

And so it’s important to know what really occurred during those twelve months after 9/11. My “emotional state” turns out to be nothing remotely similar to what it was portrayed to be.

Chronic fatigue should not be confused with depression. In fact, it has quite the opposite effect. I experienced stress and anxiety, which I associated with my profound disappointment over our team’s failure to stop 9/11. However, I continued to feel motivated to pursue my work. I worried for my future. But I also expected any private setback to be short term. Throughout those months I never stopped appealing to Dr. Fuisz for funding.

I suspect chronic fatigue is something I have shared with Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson. It’s a condition where your body becomes so tired you can’t sleep at all, because you’re throbbing with energy of what has to be done. You know that you must sleep, and it hurts physically that you can’t. You’re just too wired and hyped. It’s a bad cycle to fall into. It’s more likely to occur, I think, if you’re forced onto a sustained level of high energy, when your body does not get a chance to recuperate or slow down as part of its normal cycle.

In fact, my chronic fatigue was the brunt of hard work. I was accustomed to the quirks of my trade, and perfectly content. I lived my life the way I chose. I pursued projects I loved. Dr. Fuisz and Hoven never coerced me for help. Our team was incredibly close, and I wanted to do this, despite the lack of funding, which I considered grossly unfair and selfish. Up to this point, in every respect I lived the best life that I could have chosen, given who I am. I made sacrifices, but I considered those worthwhile. I was a good sprinter. I was at the top of my game, no matter how exhausted I felt.

What I needed was a long vacation on a tropical island, with snorkeling and horseback riding and a private masseuse. Or a hike through the Australian Outback. I certainly deserved it! I had earned those rewards promised by Congressional leaders on CNN and the Fox News Channel.

Alas my daily life had to be far more practical. After my trip to Baghdad, I started a job as Press Secretary to Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from San Jose, California. That proved to be a horrible mistake.

There’s an honorary code of silence among former Hill staffers. Suffice it to say that Washington PACs keep Lofgren in office, no matter what happens to San Jose, California. She’s a safe Democratic seat. She’s not going anywhere.

In fact, she got promoted. Today, Rep. Lofgren chairs the House Ethics Committee, though I recall her angrily hiding in her office, waiting for a San Francisco TV journalist to leave the front waiting room, so she could take her car for an oil change.

I had no tolerance for that sort of behavior on Capitol Hill. As it was, I lost eight weeks sitting at a desk in Lofgren’s House office, doing absolutely nothing. Sure I needed the rest quite desperately. But every day I chomped at the tether, longing to get back to work.

It all came to a head when my old friend, Rita Cosby at the FOX News Channel breathlessly informed me that Iraqi diplomats told her about the documents proving a Middle Eastern connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing and the 1993 World Trade Center attack. I was convinced those papers tracked Ramzi Youseff’s financial accounts from what we formerly called the “Inter-Arab Group,” at the birth of Al Qaeda. That made the decision for me. I had to get those papers. When a frivolous dispute arose inside Lofgren’s office, I managed to extricate myself from her ego trip within the hour. I was not alone in the flight out of her office. She hired four press secretaries in the 12 months before me. That says everything.

I was glad to get out of there. I had real work to do. Working made me feel better.

PART TWO:

WHEN TRUTH
BECOMES TREASON

CHAPTER 11:

THE OLD
POTOMAC TWO-STEP

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight.
It’s the size of the fight in the dog.
–Mark Twain

Arguably, I just might be the most slandered woman in America. In which case, I am also the subject of the greatest farce.

Think I’m exaggerating?

You’ve all heard the rap: Bad Intelligence before the war. No options for peace. Lousy Assets got our facts wrong. Incompetent! Poor risk taking and creative problem solving.

Oh yes, it’s my fault the U.S. invaded Iraq! I’m the fool who ruined us!

That’s right. Assets are supposed to be proactive and creative fighters, aren’t you? You guys are supposed to stick your fingers in the dyke to hold back catastrophe.

You’re supposed to find a way when the situation’s hopeless. You’re supposed to create opportunities for action where there are none. That’s what an Asset does. It’s what an Asset’s for.

So where the hell did you disappear to before the War? Did you get lost in the Gobi Desert, and couldn’t get an internet connection to find out what lunacy was seizing Washington? Were you stuck in a Siberian gulag? Lost in the Australian Outback? Hiking in the Himalayas on a quest to find the true Dalai Lama? Did you find Amelia Earhart in Tonga?

Where did you go? Why didn’t you do something when all of us needed you so badly?

You dealt with Libya and Saddam Hussein for years. Couldn’t you handle Andy Card and Colin Powell? Was Nancy Pelosi really so difficult?

Oh I see. If only I’d gone to Capitol Hill, and confronted congressional staffers about the gross mistakes in their assumptions about Iraq’s weapons stocks! Maybe Congress would have allowed U.N. weapons inspectors to finish their jobs, instead of racing to spout war propaganda loaded with salacious intelligence “facts” that were totally wrong!

Surely they would have listened to me. Obviously I had better access to higher quality intelligence than they did! I was a primary source for intelligence on Iraq after all.

If only I had debriefed Congress about the comprehensive peace framework constructed by the CIA, protecting all U.S. interests, post-sanctions—

Oil contracts? Got it.

Lucrative reconstruction contracts for U.S. corporations in telecommunications, transportation and health care? Done.

Anti-terrorism? Bulls eye.

Weapons inspections? Not a problem.

Democracy? Some very creative ideas on the table.

Surely if I informed them, Congress would have recognized that all the problems identified by Washington could be resolved without firing a single missile. No American soldier had to die, or lose his arm or leg in five tours of duty in Mosul and Fallujah. No Iraqi civilian had to lose their home, or watch their future destroyed.

Picture the streets of Baghdad with no IEDs. No suicide bombings. No fragmentation of Iraq.

There would be no quagmires. No $5 Trillion Dollar war deficit. No financial meltdown bankrupting the Middle Class. Just peace and prosperity for all of our days! A future of contentment and envy around the world, while the Greatest Super Power of All Time enjoyed bountiful blessings, dominating the global agenda.

The world could have been spared so much pain…

Why didn’t I think of that!

My apologies to Nancy Pelosi, but my actions totally demolish the rants on Capitol Hill about Assets and Pre-War Intelligence.

I might have been “last to know” on the Intelligence food chain of what the Bushie Boys were up to in Baghdad. But I certainly got the message that something was wrong before the rest of the American people or the world community.

I am a life-long peace activist, after all. I live six miles from Capitol Hill. It’s a 12 minute metro ride. Door to door, it’s a half hour trip. I worked as a congressional press secretary myself back in the 1990s. I know how Congress works. I know how to schedule meetings with staff.

When I hear this nonsense in TV sound bites about how poorly Assets performed before the War, I have learned to roar with laughter.

Am I a punch line? Or a punching bag? Or both?

I can only say that the truth feels much more tragic, because it so intimately relates to my own lost hopes for the Iraqi people.

Before my trip to Baghdad in March 2002, the finish line looked so close. By April and May of 2002, it appeared more distant. None of our successful arm-twisting in Baghdad was sinking into the Washington mindset. “Think tanks” spewed endless misinformed conference papers. Congress appeared to grasp none of the facts about Iraq’s current status. It was not difficult to conclude that information about Baghdad’s cooperation was not reaching Capitol Hill.

OK. I could fix that. How hard could it be?

By mid-May, 2002— almost a year before the Invasion— I began a round of meetings on Capitol Hill to bring top Republican and Democrats up to speed on the substantial gains from our back channel talks. This was good stuff after all.

Throughout May, June and July of 2002, a healthy smattering of House and Senate offices got the good news that Andy Card had already received: The CIA had built a substantial framework for peace that protected all major U.S. concerns in any post-sanctions period. Hallelujah!

As part of the sit down debriefings, senior staffers got copies of the most important Andy Card letters, detailing Iraq’s response to 9/11 and its efforts to cooperate with U.S anti-terrorism policy. They were fully informed of efforts to safeguard U.S. interests at multiple levels—including some objectives not yet identified by Congress.

My first stop was Senator Carl Levin’s office, days after I returned from Baghdad. I was confident the Michigan Democrat and Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee would be thrilled to hear of Iraq’s promise to purchase one million American automobiles every year for 10 years. Or how U.S. corporations would enjoy preferential contracts in telecommunications, health care and pharmaceuticals. That would translate to thousands of high paying union jobs and equipment purchases for Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. The Rust-Belt of America, so aptly named for its faded industrial glory, would receive some of the most substantial benefits from America’s share of this peace dividend. Iraq’s commitment would have to be publicly ratified before the international community, giving American workers a measure of protection. There’s no question that Senator Levin’s constituents would have benefited enormously from long term economic development multipliers.

Given Michigan’s large Arab-American population, I also expected excitement from Sen. Levin’s staff for our progress targeting genuine terrorist cells, as opposed to frightened taxi drivers and plumbers in the general Arab population, who have nothing to do with terrorism. The vast majority, in fact.

Neither rendition, nor water-boarding nor the Patriot Act would have been necessary instruments of our success. Nobody had to worry that funds would be seized from legitimate Islamic charities engaged in community building, financing schools and health clinics for the poor, providing food for widows and children—all those good things that encourage hopefulness in the community. Nor would Americans worry about deploying the National Guard to Buffalo, New York, a shocking prospect that White House officials actually debated during this same time period.

And since “real” terrorism financing comes from global heroin trafficking, we would have tackled that other monster— the global profits of illegal narcotics—at the same time. We could have crippled heroin profits for those cartels on a global scale. (Except apparently Congress does not understand how one pays for the other.)

My conversation with Senator Levin’s staff was dynamic and far reaching—with great implications for Washington on so many levels. Notably, his staffer surprised me by revealing the Office had been debriefed about the comprehensive peace framework already. His staff was familiar with different parts of it.

That gave me hope as I continued my rounds.

Senior staff for Senator Debbie Stabenow’s office, also serving Michigan, got the same private debriefing. Ultimately, both Senator Levin and Senator Stabenow opposed the Iraq War Resolution in October, 2002. However neither Senator informed Michigan voters about these substantial opportunities for addressing so many urgent problems, like job creation for the local community.

I carried the good news to Senator Wellstone’s office— that much beloved and unabashed Liberal Democrat from Minnesota. Senator Wellstone provided a strong voice for peace until his tragic death in a mysterious airplane crash.

I visited the Black Caucus, including Rep. Elijah Cummings, and several other key representatives from Maryland, including former Rep. Connie Morella (GOP) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who both represented my tiny hamlet of Takoma Park. In fairness, Rep. Van Hollen—who defeated Morella— was newly sworn into office weeks before the Iraq invasion. He faced a steep learning curve, and our meeting included a group of 20 local anti-war activists. There was not an appropriate moment to debrief his staff about the peace framework. However Rep. Van Hollen hit the ground running, with a strong showing of support for the peace community.

His predecessor, Rep. Connie Morella, got the Andy Card papers in May of 2002. As a mark of her wisdom, Rep. Morella was one of only six Republicans in the House of Representatives to vote against the War Authorization bill. Courageously, she bucked the party machine and voted with her constituents, something Marylanders like me greatly appreciated. It took guts to go against Karl Rove and my dearest cousin, Andy Card. Rep. Morella deserves real praise for that, too.

Outrageously, some of the most aggressive attacks on Assets engaged in Pre-War Intelligence came from a handful of House and Senate offices that received my debriefings—and lied about it afterwards. For example, the chief of staff and legislative director for former Rep. Jane Harman, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, received copies of the Andy Card letters, including the peace framework, with a request to share them with Rep. Harman.

As it happens, Rep. Harman and I are both alumnae of Smith College, one of the Seven Sister women’s colleges in Northampton, Massachusetts. Smith prides itself on building women’s leadership. If not for Smith College, I would not have carried the confidence to fight so hard in my battle ahead with the Justice Department.

Imagine my astonishment, therefore, to open the Smith Alumnae Quarterly, and read criticism from Rep. Harman, attacking Assets before the War. Rep. Harman gave speeches throughout the foreign policy community, criticizing Assets for failing to develop a Peace Option to War— in essence trapping Congress into following White House policy. That’s exactly what I had done. And senior staff in her office knew it.

Rep. Harman was not alone in repackaging the truth.

Ah but to my face, those Congressional staffers smiled, all peachy and nice. They might have strongly desired to shut me up— like Senator Lott and Senator McCain in February, 2004, resulting in my arrest on the Patriot Act. But they were not so uncouth as to threaten me to my face.

Quite the opposite, staff for Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma, Majority Whip for the Republican Party and Rep. JC Watts of Oklahoma thanked me graciously and generously for gathering new leads on the Oklahoma City Bombing, including efforts to acquire financial records on Al Qaeda. I felt deeply gratified by their praise—which doesn’t mean they did not complain to the FBI afterwards.

Senator Lott’s and Senator McCain’s staff were very polite, too—And they got me arrested thirty days after I requested to testify.

Those Pre-War meetings occurred in mid-June, 2002.[210] And so the question of who sicked the FBI on me—the Democrats or the Republicans— becomes highly intriguing.

By July 2002, somebody in those Congressional offices complained to the FBI.

Shockingly, instead of turning its focus onto terrorist finances, as I expected, the FBI turned its sights on me, and launched a major investigation of my anti-war activities.

We know the timing, because the FBI was forced to turn over wire taps[211] for 28,000 phone calls, 8,000 emails and hundreds of faxes after my arrest. FBI phone taps started in mid-July, 2002—five months after my trip to Baghdad in March, 2002—but just a few weeks after I started making the rounds on Capitol Hill.

Surveillance photos prove the FBI or National Security Agency captured my meetings with Iraqi diplomats in New York in February, while the trip to Baghdad was planned. If the Feds believed I was breaking the law—instead of organizing my trip the way I thought I was supposed to—the FBI would have registered a phone tap and email capture immediately, as part of a criminal investigation. Nobody did so for another five months. That screams volumes that my trip to Baghdad was no big deal.

It’s crucial to understand that ordinarily the FBI applies for a wiretap separately from the National Security Agency. The NSA had tapped my phones for years, going back to the 1993 World Trade Center attack. But those wire taps would not automatically get shared with the FBI, unless the Intelligence Community referred my activities for a criminal investigation.

The FBI took no such action. Instead—by coincidence I’m sure, the FBI started its phone taps exactly when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee planned a series of hearings on Iraq in late July, 2002.[212]

That timing suggests the FBI wanted to monitor what Congress would learn about the realities of Pre-War Intelligence, which contradicted everything the White House was preaching on FOX News and CNN.

In which case, the Justice Department discovered that I told Congress a lot—and Congress rewarded the White House by pretending that I had not said a word.

But phone taps don’t lie. Numerous phone conversations with Congressional offices show that I identified myself as one of the few Assets covering Iraq.[213] Some of my calls described the peace framework, assuring Congressional staffers that diplomacy could achieve the full scope of results sought by U.S policymakers.

Other conversations warned how Imams in Baghdad threatened to tear American soldiers apart, limb from limb, if the U.S invaded Iraq. On my trip to Baghdad in March, 2002— one year before the invasion— Iraqi Imams threatened to use suicide bombs, and swore that even Iraqi women would launch a powerful resistance to any U.S Occupation. Over and over, Iraqi Imams promised it wouldn’t matter if the people hated Saddam. They hated the United States much more, because of the brutality of sanctions, which had destroyed Iraq’s society and economy. There would be hell to pay if the United States tried to occupy Baghdad.

FBI phone taps captured it all, making a lie of complaints that Assets failed to warn U.S. leaders off this catastrophe. My phone calls were loaded with pleas to turn back from disaster.[214]

Ironically, a large part of my debriefing focused on the need for leadership on Capitol Hill to bring the CIA and the FBI together to launch the Terrorism Task Force inside Iraq. Most Congressional staffers could spout flaming rhetoric with regards to anti-terrorism policy. But they could not grasp necessary strategies for achieving results on the ground. Their eyes took on a blank glaze when I described how the FBI and the CIA would have to engage in inter-agency cooperation, in order to secure those financial records from Iraq. And of course, I explained the value of identifying the cash pipeline.

Closing down the financial pipeline for terrorist activities should have been a top priority for Republicans and Democrats alike. And let nobody forget, those monies come from heroin trafficking, a network that runs from Afghanistan and the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon to Colombia. Genuine terrorist organizations are heavily interconnected with those smuggling cartels. That’s where their operating dollars come from.

I expected Congressional staffers to seize the opportunity with gusto. I expected them to rally enthusiastically to the challenge. Indeed, it remains a mystery why any responsible government official would not grab the chance to investigate those accounts, and track the flow of cash in and out of them.

Unconscionably, Republicans preferred to deprive Baghdad of an opportunity to cooperate with global anti-terrorism— with dire consequences. Failure to act allowed that cash flow to remain active and accessible in other conflicts to this day— in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It probably financed attacks on Mombai, savaging Pakistan’s peace with India. Indonesia is experiencing a low-grade insurgency against Islamic rebels. The list goes on.

Above all, heroin trafficking has financed the Taliban’s War in Afghanistan against U.S. Armed Forces. Profits from opium production account for why a rag tag militia of Afghan mountain fighters has prevailed over the combined military strength of the United States, Britain and 42 NATO governments, which boast the most sophisticated weapons on the planet.

To put that in context, Afghanistan rakes in about $3 billion a year from opium production, supplying 85 percent of the world’s raw ingredients for heroin, morphine and other opiate mixtures.

According to the UN World Drug Report of 2010, heroin commanded a global market value of $55 billion, and a trafficking network that employs 1 million people.

Notably, the year of 9/11—2001—saw Afghanistan’s lowest opium production since the 1980s— approximately 100 tons, thanks to the Clinton Administration’s successful programs paying Afghan farmers to stop opium harvests. Under President Clinton, opium production was almost eradicated—a superbly successful anti-drug policy that likewise cut off financial resources for armed conflict.

When President Bush stopped paying Afghan farmers to convert from poppy crops, opium production jumped to 3,200 tons in 2002.

Opium production skyrocketed thereafter, throughout the Afghan War, peaking at 8,000 tons in 2008, when President Bush left office.

By 2009, President Obama’s drug policies cut opium production to 7,000 tons in 2009. But the damage has been done. Though military strategists are loathe to admit it, the United States and NATO have lost the Afghan War to these ferocious rag tag fighters, who have no technology, but reap the harvests of endless cash supplies for their Jihad.

And so I stand by this criticism:

Refusing to shut down the financial pipeline shared by Jihadi fighters in Afghanistan and terrorist cells organized by Al Qaeda qualifies as the single most dangerous failure of national security by the Republican leadership.

American soldiers have died because of it. Afghan and Iraqi civilians have suffered endlessly in the cross fighting. Civilian infrastructure has been wrecked. A future has been destroyed—The U.S. came home defeated from Iraq. And after 10 years of War, the Taliban is guaranteed to dominate the political landscape after NATO pulls out in 2014.

Finally, the Republican failure has set loose a ticking time bomb that threatens domestic security inside the United States, as well. There’s a significant probability that the next major terrorist attack on America soil will receive financing through that same international financial network. It was grossly negligent— and suspicious— not to identify that financial pipeline, and shut the damn thing down.

Instead, the United States made a great show of seizing donations to legitimate Islamic charities engaged in community building. There’s a tragic sort of irony in that, because the health, education and food programs funded by those Charities provide the best deterrents against violence in the community. Those programs create a sense of future, in addition to providing for basic survival. Seizing those charitable donations is not only morally wrong, it’s desperately short-sighted. It’s the worst sort of grandstanding in Washington. It demonstrates that U.S. leaders don’t comprehend how terrorism originates, or what keeps it alive. U.S. leaders are cutting down the community infrastructure that might make it possible to stop the violence.

On top of all that, the FBI wanted to eat the CIA’s lunch. They tried to swallow up the CIA’s mission overseas. That did not sit well in Washington, and complicated possible joint ventures like this one. Instead of cooperating like Sister Agencies, the FBI sought to push the CIA out of the picture altogether, and took advantage of the CIA’s perceived failure to stop 9/11, in order to savage the competence of the agency.

That’s almost funny, in the blackest way—considering the Justice Department refused the CIA’s urgent appeals for cooperation to pre-empt the 9/11 strike throughout the summer of 2001, in the first place.

Leadership from Congress would have put those relations back on track. But it never emerged. As an Asset, I was greatly frustrated. I could see that Congress lacked the skill to carry its agenda into the real world. Cut past the rhetoric, and Congress was not the high flying, results-driven leadership it was selling to the American Heartland.

Within six months of 9/11, terrorism had become a media spectacle, a Big Top Circus of hype and drama on Capitol Hill to hold people’s attention. But none of that emotional regalia after 9/11 translated into action that would have made a difference to terrorism controls in the field. It was purely a publicity stunt.

Most aggravating of all, Congress appeared to be afraid of losing the public’s attention. CNN was calling for guest interviews. Voters held their leadership in high esteem. Beneath the veneer of patriotism, Congress was reviving the art of demagoguery. Pushed to deliver substance by somebody like myself, who understands the dynamics of anti-terrorism at the field level, Congress proved useless to provide any sort of leadership assistance, or bring the FBI and CIA together for cooperative projects.

Unfortunately, leaders in Washington quickly saw that nobody would know the difference. So the rhetoric on Capitol Hill became more aggressive after 9/11, while their performance flagged far behind.

Then in July, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee decided to hold hearings to examine U.S. policy in Iraq. The Senate Chamber was packed to overflow, but I got a seat in the audience. There I listened, dumb-struck, while Senate leaders bandied about ridiculous allegations about Iraq’s illegal weapons stocks and refusal to accept U.N. weapons inspections, in contradiction to all current facts on the ground.

I couldn’t believe the stupidity of what I was hearing. It was all political grandstanding. I was absolutely furious.

CHAPTER 12:

THE BATTLE FOR PEACE

“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation,
are people who want crops without ploughing the ground;
they want rain without thunder and lightening;
they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters.
The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both.
But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did. And it never will.”
–Frederick Douglass

I was furious, and I was not alone.

Americans were awake after 9/11. And now, in record time, the forces of Democracy mobilized for one helluva fight to protect peace in the Middle East.

At the first trumpeting for War on Capitol Hill, Americans of all political stripes, every ethnicity and socio-economic background, young and old, rallied together in opposition. People who had never participated in demonstrations before raised their voices against War with Iraq.

Leaders in the anti-war movement—MOVE on, International ANSWER, and United for Peace and Justice unleashed the fury of the internet as a critical tool for mobilizing public opposition on a massive scale. Through rapid-fire email alerts and online petitions, they organized signature campaigns and ambitious phone blitzes to the White House and Congressional offices, identifying Congressional reps for activists and providing phone numbers and a 30 minute time block for every caller. With such aggressive behind the scenes’ organization, protests to Congress rolled throughout the days, and the anti-war movement swelled across the country at warp speed. Hundreds of thousands of letters arrived on Capitol Hill every week, running 10 to 1 against the War. Thanks to the internet, the strength of the anti-war movement rivaled the momentum achieved at the end of the Vietnam War.

And so the blueprint for internet activism was born.

If the leaders of the United States ever cared about democracy, this was a moment to be fiercely proud of our country and our people.

Instead, on October 10 and 11, 2002 the U.S. Congress approved a Joint Resolution Authorizing War with Iraq by a vote of 77 to 23 in the Senate, and 296 to 133 in the House.[215]

Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia has dubbed the Senators who opposed the War resolution “the Immortal 23.”[216] But of those, really just a handful of Congressional leaders actively took up the anti-war cause, and fought with urgency and passion to head off the disaster.

The podium for peace was a lonely place. The most formidable leadership came from Senator Byrd himself, and Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, who worked tirelessly to interject a modicum of rational thinking into the debate. Senator Byrd took to the floor every day before the vote. After that fight was lost, he battled for peace right up to the invasion, and for disengagement from Iraq thereafter.

Senator Kennedy entreated America’s leaders to think ahead to the consequences for America’s moral leadership in the world community:

“We can deal with Iraq without resorting to this extreme. It is impossible to justify any double standard under international law. America cannot write its own rules for the modern world. To do so would be unilateralism run amuck. It would antagonize our closest allies whose support we need to fight terrorism, prevent global warming, (and) deal with many other dangers that affect all nations. It would deprive America of the moral legitimacy necessary to promote our values abroad. And it would give other nations, from Russia, to India, to Pakistan an excuse to violate fundamental principles of civilized international behavior.”[217]

Wiser words have rarely been spoken on Capitol Hill.

A rising leader in the Democrat Party, Barak Obama did not get elected to the U.S. Senate until November, 2004, after the War started. However, he “got it,” too. In remarks declaring his anti-war philosophy in October, 2002, a week before the Senate vote, Obama demonstrated more foresight and courage than most of his fellow Democrats.[218]

“I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi people would be better off without him,” Obama said. “But I also know Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors; that the Iraqi economy is in shambles; that the Iraqi military is a fraction of its former strength. In concert with the international community, he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.”

“I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences,” Obama said. “I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale, and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda.”

“I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars,” Obama said. “You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda through effective, coordinated intelligence, and shutting down the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.”

I could not have said it better myself.

Alas, in direct contrast to the overwhelming demands of the American people, as of October 2002, Obama, Byrd and Kennedy constituted the minority on Capitol Hill.

Only 23 Senators and 133 House members—including just one Republican in the Senate, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, and six Republicans in the House, had the courage and vision to oppose the War Authorization bill. Support from Democrats proved just as obstinate. Less than one-third of the House opposed the War bill.

In the days before the big vote, I was appalled by the irrational propaganda on Capitol Hill. The rhetoric was totally divorced from the reality that I was connected to as a primary intelligence source at the United Nations. It was real political theater. Members of Congress spoke of Iraq in language devoid of any understanding of the substantial developments over the previous two years.

By that time, I had visited many Congressional staffers in different offices.[219] My meetings with Republicans and Democrats to explain the Peace Framework continued right up to the Invasion. Several told me they’d already received debriefings. As such, all that disinformation could not have been a mistake. It struck me that Congress was deliberately trying to eradicate the truth about opportunities for a peaceful resolution with Iraq, so they could sell a non-truth to Americans that required a military option. They wanted Americans to perceive War as the only way forward—And that was a lie.

After the War authorization vote, there were some notable conversions to the peace camp. Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware), Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) and Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) emerged as outspoken advocates for using diplomacy and coalition building to its greatest possible good, before engaging in military confrontation.

They played a critical role arguing that dialogue had already achieved results by securing the return of the weapons inspectors to Iraq. And they urged the White House to give weapons inspections a chance to succeed. Notably, all three served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which received special debriefings on the success of back channel dialogue.[220] That gave me hope that the peace option would sway more leaders.

On the House side, meanwhile, Rep. Ron Kind (Wisconsin) and Rep. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) led a coalition of 123 Congress members, urging the White House to give U.N. inspectors ample time to complete their jobs. Fully one-quarter of Congress signed a letter to President Bush supporting the U.N.’s process for verifying Iraq’s disarmament. All were Democrats.[221]

Unhappily, disinformation continued to be more plentiful than courage.

Even the most rudimentary knowledge of the Middle East should have frightened Congress away from military conflict with Iraq. Yet despite all the debriefings by the intelligence community, and appeals to desist by foreign policy gurus and military experts alike, Congress failed to grasp the magnitude of consequences of its actions. Leaders on both sides of the aisle demonstrated the poorest conceptualization of issues framing the Middle East. They refused to hear the message pounding from all sides.

Phrases like “quagmire,” “dead end,” “sand trap,” all of it were a foreign language on Capitol Hill. Congress was caught up in the theatrics of their war propaganda. Their need for public attention and TV time swamped their better judgment. They did not want to hear any criticism or doubts.

If members of Congress believed they could steamroll the American people, however, they were grossly mistaken. The American people roared back in opposition.

On October 26, 2002, two weeks after Congress approved the War Resolution, the American people launched massive demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco, with bus-loads of protesters arriving from the heartland of Nebraska and Iowa, Ohio and New Hampshire, North Carolina and Florida. Internationally, on the same day, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Rome, Berlin, Copenhagen, Tokyo and Mexico City to protest War with Iraq, as well.[222]

Globally, opposition to the Iraq War was the most powerful act of democracy the world has ever witnessed.

In Washington DC, more than 200,000 Americans attended a three hour rally, followed by a march that circled the White House. The size of the crowds rivaled the largest peace demonstrations at the end of the Vietnam War. Shoulder to shoulder crowds marched for blocks at a time, singing and chanting anti-war slogans. When the front of the procession returned to Constitution Avenue at the starting point of the march, thousands of demonstrators were still heading out on the parade route, still shoulder to shoulder strong.[223]

Every activist who participated in the Anti- War Movement demonstrated heroic foresight that year. Every one of us should be proud that we battled so hard to preserve the peace.

Democracy showed amazing strength across all economic lines and regional boundaries. Without a single classified intelligence debriefing, the American people and the world community saw with great clarity the nightmare that would be unleashed by this war. Together all of us aggressively pushed forward to voice our objections, with the full expectation that government leaders who champion democracy overseas would first have to respect those principles here at home.

It’s a great irony, isn’t it?

If our leaders had respected the will of the people, the triumph of the Anti-War movement would have done more to advance democracy in difficult regions of the world than all of the slogans and speechifying by the White House and State Department. We would have won the hearts and minds of the Middle East, Asia, on and on. Through War with Iraq, that possibility has been largely squandered. In my opinion, it’s lost forever.

For myself as an Asset, it was not difficult to decide what I must do. I knew that I could not sit idly on the sidelines, while Congress stampeded the world into War.

Throughout the fall and winter, I hooked into the burgeoning anti-war network, attending mass demonstrations in Washington and smaller protests by CodePink and local peace groups, like the D.C. Anti-War Network and Education for Peace in Iraq. Like others, I turned to the internet, which swelled and multiplied the ranks of the antiwar movement in record time.

I got angrier every day. I experienced great surges of outrage every time White House officials or Congressional leaders swallowed the airwaves of CNN to reinvent Pre-War Intelligence with false reports on Iraq’s links to terrorism or hostility to the weapons inspections. The speakers were ignorant of the facts. They hardly qualified as “Middle East experts” at all.

I was appalled by how recklessly think tanks and media pundits attacked peace. Our framework had been constructed so carefully, in order to advance all components of U.S. interests. Even the slightest amount of direct knowledge of the actual events would have smashed their rhetoric into tiny fragments for ridicule. Yet instead of questioning White House propaganda, media pundits fed the hysteria. War was sold like high fashion. These were the days of promos on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC like “Showdown with Saddam” and “Countdown to Iraq.”

Fuming over the breadth of deception and fraud by Congress and the White House, I made a decision to break the cardinal rule of intelligence gathering.

I would not swallow the truth for Capitol Hill.

I would not stand down.

I would not protect elected leaders from their responsibility to the people for their decision-making.

I would not shield them with deniability.

It was a decision that ultimately would cost me everything I had. But to this day I have never regretted what actions I took next.

As an Asset, I had learned how to work a problem and create whatever tools I needed on my own—rapidly and out of nothing. Otherwise I could never have become so effective at what I do.

The situation on Capitol Hill indicated a massive communications breakdown. The solution struck me as fairly simple. It required message confrontation at the broadest possible level, inclusive of every conceivable party to the debate. That would build a critical mass of audience and knowledge at a rapid and exponential degree. And it would preclude “deniability.” They couldn’t say they didn’t know the facts. They couldn’t pretend not to have been shown the mistakes in their assumptions. If they could be forced to confront truth at every turn, they would be more likely to accept it.

It was an excellent strategy, if I say so myself.

And so, on September 11, 2002, the first anniversary of the terrorist strike that I labored so hard to prevent, I launched a message system that I called “Citizens for Public Integrity,” so named to condemn the political manipulations of 9/11 to enflame public support for War.

To get the message across, I formed a blast fax and comprehensive email data base for all 435 members of the House of Representatives and 100 Senators. My targets encompassed Democrats and Republicans alike, guaranteeing that both parties would have equal access to message warnings, without partisan favoritism.[224]

The list included the personal emails for every Chief of Staff; every Legislative Director; every Press Secretary and Foreign Policy Assistant in the House and Senate.[225]

In short, the email data base covered every top legislative staffer on Capitol Hill, Democrat and Republican alike.

It was a huge undertaking. I had to phone every office to get those names. Wire taps provided by my good friends at the FBI prove I really did so. Then I had to tabulate all those names into a massive data base to run the emails.

In addition, I created a blast fax for every Congressional office—all 435 in the House and 100 in the Senate. I also created a blast fax for every Ambassador’s office at the United Nations, 185 in all.[226]

Once Citizens for Public Integrity was established, I used those fax and email data bases to launch a massive blitz exposing the dangers of War and Occupation. A series of 20 short papers proved incredibly prescient in forecasting the catastrophic consequence of Occupation for Iraq’s people, the Middle East and the financial future of America’s Middle Class. A number of noteworthy articles by foreign policy experts and activists got redistributed, as well.

So much for the phony accusation that Assets stayed silent, while Congress raced off the cliff! I shouted from the rooftops—And I must say those rooftops were awfully crowded. All of us together hit the mark with a tragic degree of accuracy.

For example, Citizens for Public Integrity researched the history of Iraq’s resistance to the British Occupation in the 1920s, and the heavy losses for British soldiers. I warned about their costly defeat as anti-British rebellions against puppet rulers spilled blood throughout the 1940s and 1950s, culminating in Iraq’s violent anti-Western, pro-Communist revolution of 1958.[227]

Citizens for Public Integrity and another anti-war group, Focus on Arab American Issues and Relations (FAAIR), jointly projected a 10 year cost of War and Occupation at $1.6 Trillion Dollars—compared to the $100 billion projected by pro-War Republicans on Capitol Hill.[228] In actuality, the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost $4 to $5 Trillion together—equaling one-third of the total Federal debt of $15 Trillion.

Unhappily for Middle Class Americans, Citizens for Public Integrity correctly warned that the costs of War would overwhelm Washington’s ability to provide essential domestic government services at home. “The (initial) $100 billion price tag for the War risks forcing a tax increase on personal income and meager corporate profits, at a time when Americans are struggling to resist a backslide into a double-dip recession, and filing a record number of bankruptcies.”[229]

Like a modern day Cassandra, I warned that War in Iraq would push our financial institutions to the brink of collapse.

Always I warned of penalties for opposing the Will of the People: “It is inconceivable that after September 11, Congress would take such rash, poorly evaluated actions to aggressively taunt terrorist retaliations against our country. Evidently some incumbents think they can distract Americans from the stock market and the dangers of a double-dip recession with all this talk about Iraq.”[230]

“Citizens for Public Integrity want to put Congress on notice. We will hunt Congressional representatives whose actions trigger terrorism, just like we hunted Al Qaeda. Only members of Congress won’t be able to hide like Osama bin Laden.”

I was hardly passive, after all. In fact, I would argue that my efforts exemplify Asset work at its very best—when there’s a crisis and somebody goes in to reshape the construct of the problem, and create a vehicle for solution on a rapid basis. My actions make a mockery of claims that Assets demonstrated “gross incompetence” in the run up to War.

Thanks to the FBI, which captured 28,000 phone calls, 8,000 emails and hundreds of faxes, all of my efforts to warn Congress away from this War are fully substantiated.[231]

Yes, I was one more voice in a humongous crowd. I’m fiercely proud of all of us.

And yes, my anti-war perspective was probably a minority viewpoint inside the CIA. Nevertheless, my actions prove that thinking opponents of the War shrieked from the rooftops to pull Congress back from disaster. Our numbers might have been small, but we were extremely well organized and resourceful in communicating our message. We were anything but sheep-like or ambivalent towards the impending catastrophe. We saw the mistakes in political assumptions, and we urgently tried to introduce more accurate information to policymakers. That’s exactly what all of us should have done.

Our leaders refused to listen to us—though they are supposed to act as the people’s representatives, and take instructions from the electorate.

And yes, I faced a backlash from the pro-war camp. By example, I relied entirely on the internet and fax lines to distribute my anti-war messages to Congress and the United Nations in New York. My blast fax transmitted non-stop, 24 hours a day, for weeks on end, while I slept or headed off to work. Mysteriously, my phone lines would go down, cutting off my faxes. I would march to a pay phone in the freezing cold, only to be told that some unidentified technical glitch had interrupted my service, and a technician would have to be scheduled. It never happened before, and there was no explanation for why it happened now— except for my activism. A phone technician would come out, and trouble-shoot repairs. Low and behold, 10 days later the phone would cut off again. It happened repeatedly.

That didn’t stop me. I would get everything ready. When the phone would come up, I would rush to get my papers out before the lines shut down again.

So yes, it’s true that pro-war and anti-war factions fought each other. But that’s part of the intelligence game. It takes a lot more than that to discourage any of us.

Any good Asset is supposed to know how to run a blockade. That’s the role we play. By this time, I had done the Lockerbie negotiations with Libya, and preliminary talks with Iraq’s Ambassador and senior diplomats to resume the weapons inspections. Any of that would be much more difficult than a tricky phone line.

And yes, I believe Neo-conservatives tried to sabotage my anti-war communications. Absolutely they played with my message distribution.

Hey, I can take it. They would play rough and throw up obstacles. I would rebuff them. That’s how it’s done. That’s the game of Intelligence. That’s what makes Assets different.

It’s not really a complaint. It is important, however, for Americans and the global community to understand what actions I took before the War, because my actions prove that complaints about pre-war intelligence were false flags to distract angry voters. Washington scapegoated the Intelligence Community overall, because Congressional leaders lacked the integrity and courage of good leadership to take responsibility for their own decisions. At the end of the day, they’re the ones who did this. A good number of us desperately tried to stop them.

On the other hand, let’s give credit where it’s due: Everybody on earth opposed this War. Way to go, people!

As the months rolled on, the Anti-War community mounted an increasingly frenetic lobbying effort to stop the War.

Tens of millions of activists took to the streets around the globe.

Entire populations raised their voices to beseech America’s leaders not to do this terrible and stupid thing. A majority of Republican and Democrat voters favored giving U.N. weapons inspectors the opportunity to finish their jobs.

Come January 19, 2003, anti-war forces in America trebled our numbers. The Washington Post acknowledged “more than 500,000 people” braved the frigid cold that January day, marching 40 deep in crowds that stretched two miles through the streets of Washington to protest a U.S. invasion of Iraq.[232]

The Anti-War movement struck ever more forcefully in February. On the weekend of February 14-16, 2003, Anti-War demonstrators rallied in 60 countries and 700 cities on every continent, including the McMurdo Air Base in Antarctica. Over 12 million people participated world-wide, by conservative estimates. It was the largest coordinated demonstrations in the history of man-kind.[233]

The most staggering crowds turned out in Italy and Spain, where right-wing governments backed the US- British invasion, despite polls showing 70% of their peoples opposed the War.

At least 2 million Italians gathered for a massive protest in Rome. The historic center “between the Roman Coliseum and Piazza San Giovanni was packed for hours in a slow-moving carnival of banners, dancing and music.”[234]

In Germany, 500,000 protested in Berlin, while 100,000 marched in Brussels, the largest demonstration ever in the home of the European Parliament and NATO.[235]

In New York City, over 500,000 protesters packed the streets for 20 blocks as part of a rally at the United Nations Headquarters. Hit by freezing cold winds, New Yorkers refused to go home, despite New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to ban the planned march. The people persevered.[236]

Spain outshone us all. Millions of anti-war protesters filled streets throughout the country: 1.5 million in Barcelona; 2 million in Madrid; 500,000 in Valencia; 250,000 in Seville; 100,000 in Los Palmas and 100,000 in Cadiz.[237] The European media declared that one of every eight (8) Spaniards protested that day against Prime Minister Jose Aznar’s stubborn support for War. A year later, Aznar would be thrown out of office by angry Spanish voters.

That weekend marked a momentous celebration of non-violence and diplomacy throughout the world.

The tragedy is that such a fantastic and extraordinary groundswell of global democracy did not sway America’s leaders to honor the will of the people.

After all, the decision to go to war was undertaken in all of our names—against all of our wishes. And We, the People of the World, continue to pay the price for the horrible mistake on March 19, 2003— a day that should live in infamy forever— a day that global democracy was defeated by a small shadow group of tyrants in Washington DC.

I was just one voice among millions, amidst a whole planet united for peace and justice. Who would guess that out of all those demonstrators, one in particular— Little Me— would pose such a grave threat to White House officials, who would become desperate to invent a series of false justifications for this debacle, after their gross mistake was recognized and attacked.

Bottom line: the leaders who pushed our world into War with Iraq could not handle the responsibility of their decision-making.

They were cowards.

One of them happened to be my second cousin, Andrew Card, Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush. When the War started to go wrong— which was almost immediately—Andy and his Neo-Conservative friends looked for a scapegoat.

They decided to pick on the Assets.

In short, they decided to pick on me.

Andy Card

Andy Card. There’s a lot of speculation and gossip about who he is to me, most of it not very flattering or polite. Inquiring minds want to know, right?

Well, Andy Card is my second cousin on my father’s side from Holbrook Massachusetts.

He was the Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush, Jr. and former Deputy Chief of Staff and Secretary of Transportation to President George H. Bush, Sr,[238] otherwise known as “King George the First.”

In short, Andy’s a professional hit man for the Republican Party.

While I was growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, my mother owned a string of 10 weekly newspapers and four country music radio stations. Political lines get awfully blurry on the tundra. Alaska’s a small town almost three times the size of Texas. Everybody takes care of everybody else. They cut fire wood for their neighbors. They go hunting and fly-in fishing together. And when I was growing up, they all voted for Senator Ted Stevens, because he defended the gun laws and sent money home to Alaska’s villages. People in Alaska love their guns. And they love their federal dollars. They’re pretty sure both are manna from God, and they give thanks accordingly. Which (sort of) explains Sarah Palin.

I first met Andy Card when I was a freshman at Smith College, one of the Seven Sister women’s colleges in Northampton, Massachusetts. Traveling home to Alaska for holidays was impossible. So for Thanksgiving and Spring Break, I would visit my 80 + year old Aunt Mimi, Miss Mildred Platt of Holbrook, Massachusetts. Think of Jessica Tandy, and you’ve nailed her. Aunt Mimi was the picture of Yankee independence, sharp as a tack and our family historian. She wanted to teach me everything possible about our family genealogy. She was a gem, a gracious lady who welcomed her “cousin from Alaska” into her home.

On visits to Aunt Mimi’s grand old house in Holbrook I met my East-Coast cousins, including Andy Card, his brother, Bradford and their sister, Sarah. Andy was much older than all of us. Sarah had graduated from Wheaton College. But Brad was a college freshman like me at St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, New Hampshire. For a couple of years, Brad road tripped to Northampton for weekend visits to Smith. He’d bring his friends to campus parties. He was outgoing and handsome, and I enjoyed our visits very much.

So I want to be clear: Andy Card and I have known each other since the 1980s, though age separated us, and most of my time was spent with his younger brother.

What’s more, Andy’s a good political player. Come election time, what with my mother’s growing media empire in the wilds of Alaska—and her ties to the good and honorable Senator Stevens—it just made sense that Andy Card would make a special nod to our family in Alaska.

Perceptions to the contrary would be grossly inaccurate.

After I warned about the 1993 World Trade Center attack, and started working as an Asset, I had to distance myself from Andy, who had national political aspirations after all.

Our need for distance ended overnight when President-elect George Bush, Jr. named Andy to serve as White House Chief of Staff. At that point, my background was fully revealed, all cards on the table, when I approached him in December, 2000 about our back channel talks to resume the weapons inspections in Iraq.

I expected Andy to be surprised. But I was at the top of my game. I had accomplished many good things involving Libya and Iraq, with special regards to anti-terrorism, through a decade of perseverance and creative strategizing.

I expected a man like Andy Card to be proud of my actions. A man who brags to his friends about his outstanding devotion to my field of work should be fiercely proud that one of his own family has been on the cutting edge of it for a decade.

When you do the work I have done, you don’t apologize for communicating with the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States of America.

At the end of the conversation, you expect him to say thank you.

Think about it. I was a primary source of raw intelligence on Iraq and Middle Eastern anti-terrorism overall. I enjoyed high level access to officials in Baghdad and Libya. It was extremely valuable for the White House Chief of Staff to have first-hand access to major new developments inside Iraq. Given my status as an Asset—and his— it was entirely appropriate for him to receive these debriefings. That was part of his job.

No doubt that’s why Andy Card never suggested I should break off communications with Iraq— or that I should stop providing him with my insider’s analysis of breaking developments in Baghdad.

All of which makes our end so galling.

CHAPTER 13:

THE LAST DAYS

To suffer woes, which hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy power, which seems omnipotent;
To hope til hope creates from its own Wreck the Thing it Contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent
–Percy Shelley

Diplomatic activity moved at whirlwind speeds inside the Iraqi Embassy once weapons inspections got underway. Always courteous diplomats clipped with brisk efficiency, hurrying to meetings, making the most of every opportunity to assure anxious observers of Baghdad’s compliance with the most rigorous standards for disarmament verification the world had ever seen.

Most nations at the U.N. would have flunked the performance standards demanded of Iraq. They could never have passed their own tests. Ironically, Iraq’s performance excelled at the target so much that the United States and Britain were forced to raise the bar ever higher. But in all ways, the U.S. was outdone. Iraq’s diplomats craved an end to the misery of U.N. sanctions for their people. They saw the finish line, and they were determined to earn that suspension with fast-paced responses to any U.N. inquiry for data or performance reviews. They were tireless in chasing that goal.

Iraq had been cosmopolitan and secular before sanctions, which meant that diplomats were highly acclimated towards the West— very different from Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or Iran, which despised all social progress. For all of those years, Iraqi diplomats always made a point of declaring their desire to renew old friendships with the West. Now they had a chance to prove it. They would not miss this opportunity.

Nor did France, Russia or other Security Council members like Syria, which championed a non-military solution to the conflict, let Iraqi diplomats off easily. Quite the opposite, those countries sought to prove the worthiness of peace by demanding that Iraq jump through hoops of fire, as well. They were determined to show that conditions for peace would not be lax or ineffectual, as Washington and London argued.

Over 800 inspections uncovered only a few rusted relics of old armaments. Meanwhile, Iraqis tolerated the most intrusive searches of factories, employees’ cars, purses and briefcases, and home visits to scientists. Every time the U.S. and Britain ramped up their propaganda machine, U.N. inspectors would come up empty-handed. The most aggressive weapons hunt in history risked shaming the United Nations, which had inflicted horrific suffering on the Iraqi people, in its self righteous pursuit of weapons owned by every nation on earth—except Iraq.

By this time U.N. sanctions had killed 1.7 million Iraqis, including one million children.[239] That’s no exaggeration, unfortunately. The World Health Organization and UNICEF calculated that 500,000 Iraqi children died from sanctions by the end of 1996.[240] It was now 2003, and death had continued its relentless march through the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. UNICEF estimated that 5,000 children under the age of 5 died every month from sanctions.[241] Iraqi health officials put that figure closer to 8,000 dead children and 3,000 adults—a total of 11,000 deaths every month.[242] On either end, the death toll was hideous.

Now it appeared the children of Iraq had died for nothing.

Remarkably, the lack of weapons uncovered during the inspections did nothing to dampen dire predictions about what Iraq might still be hiding.

Journalists tracked the progress of weapons inspections amidst wild and inventive leaks from White House officials about secret weapons caches. Media “experts” fed the hype with speculation as to where Iraq might be hiding those pesky weapons that U.N. inspectors could not seem to find. But around the world, in neighborhoods and restaurants, in universities, corporate offices and family rooms, rational citizens everywhere prayed for weapons inspections to succeed. The whole world held its breath watching for signs that Iraq would crack under duress.

Inside the Embassy, a different scene played out. Iraqi diplomats smiled with hope, serenity etched on their faces. Their acceptance of the demands on their country posed no burden for them. For the first time in thirteen years under sanctions, they could see a better future ahead, one of reconciliation, prosperity and welfare for their people. And so they worked tirelessly through days and nights to acquire documentation and prepare for meetings with various Embassy staffs in New York. They did not sleep so they could coordinate with Baghdad, which was already approaching night-time when the day was half done in New York.

Perched on a sofa, drinking sweet Iraqi tea and watching the action in the embassy lobby, I remember saying a prayer for those diplomats—for all of us really. And yes, I asked God to stay with them. Perhaps that makes you uncomfortable, but if there was ever a time for prayer, it was in those last days. Iraq was not the problem, however. If the world could have looked down from a corner of the ceiling, there would have been no doubt of the sincerity of their actions.

That change was not accidental. We had done so much advance work to prepare for this day. All of us had made a huge up-front investment to guarantee this success. With Saad Abdul Rahmon and Salih Mahmoud and Dr. Saeed Hasan, and Abdul Rahmon Mudhian, we had planned exhaustively how Iraqi officials would respond differently to every problem situation that tripped up previous inspections.

Objectives had been carefully defined and communicated for 18 months in our talks. Previous problems got picked apart in painstaking detail. How would past failures get handled differently this time? What advance instructions would be necessary for building supervisors, so they could cooperate effectively? Who at the lower levels would require special hand-holding, if approached? We worked methodically and intensively to make this a different experience.

Watching the inspections unfold, I could see that our dialogue had achieved strong results.

I felt deeply satisfied. I believed the world was starting to become persuaded. Most important of all, the brutality of U.N. sanctions might end for the Iraqi people.

On December 21, 2002 I lunched with my senior diplomatic contact at the Malaysian Embassy, Mr. Rani Ismail Hadi Ali.[243] Rani Ali was an expert on U.N. sanctions policy who staffed Ambassador Hasmy Agam on the Security Council. On behalf of Ambassador Agam and Malaysia’s foreign ministry, Rani Ali provided vital and necessary technical guidance, regarding U.N. criteria for disarmament verification.[244]

To my greatest chagrin, Rani Ali was homeward bound to Kuala Lumpur, having finished his diplomatic tour at the United Nations.

Equally disappointing, Ambassador Agam was also returning to Malaysia. His distinguished career in diplomacy had been rewarded by a much deserved invitation for Malaysia to head the Non-Aligned Movement (N.A.M.), with Ambassador Agam holding a top Secretarial post. Malaysia was scheduled to host a meeting of the N.A.M. in Kuala Lumpur in February.

Rani Ali would be leaving New York in just days. At our final lunch, he offered some critical parting advice,[245] which I took seriously to heart.

The most urgent question now, Rani Ali argued, was how to get the United States out of its corner, so that Washington could embrace the world position for peace and still come out declaring victory. The U.S. had to appear triumphant.

In this phase, Rani Ali urged me to go back to Baghdad, and look for anything more that I could get for the United States to close that deal.

I agreed wholeheartedly. On my walk up Third Avenue to the Iraqi Embassy on East 79th Street, I thought about different possibilities.

There was talk that Iraq had cancelled the LUKoil contract with Russia for development of the West Qurna Oil fields, containing 8 billion to 10 billion barrels of oil.[246]

With profound apologies to Russia, I recognized that if I could persuade Iraq to offer a major first-tier oil concession to the United States, it might push us over the top to lock in a peace agreement. What can I say? I had to examine every possible opportunity. Frankly I cringed to hear that Iraq had pulled LUKoil’s rights to develop that oil field. It hurt my efforts that Iraq should renege on its contractual commitments to Russia or any other country for post-sanctions reconstruction or oil development. It was important that U.S. corporations must be able to trust Iraqi promises, as part of lifting sanctions. If Baghdad would break its agreements with Russia or France, both outspoken opponents of sanctions policy, what would they do to the U.S., which had tormented them for 13 years?

See the problem? Still, LUKoil gave me an edge. I wasted no time raising the possibility with Iraqi diplomats that afternoon on December 21, 2002.

It’s important to clarify that I’m the one who decided to ask for the LUKoil contract. Rani Ali did not suggest that I take it. That was my own idea.

Iraqi diplomats seized on my suggestion immediately.

On January 8, 2003, I made a final appeal for peace to my dear second cousin, White House Chief of Staff Andy Card.[247]

Reminding him about my special contacts with Iraqi diplomats, I offered to secure the LUKoil contract for the United States. I made sure Andy understood the U.S. could definitely have the West Qurna field. However, if the White House did not want it, I hoped Baghdad could restore Russia’s contractual rights.

The purpose of my letter was greater than the LUKoil contract, however. I made clear that I would use my back-channel access to get anything more the United States wanted from Baghdad, so the Bush Administration could be satisfied in accepting a non-military solution to this (non) conflict.[248]

My letter on January 8, 2003 provided a devastating forecast of the dangers of invading and occupying Iraq.[249]

“My dearest cousin, this War with Iraq will hurt us, too. In six weeks or six months, it won’t matter. Because when it hits, it will hit so hard it will not matter that there was ever a delay. The Iraqi people hate Americans, no matter what they think of Saddam. When I was in Baghdad last March, more than one Imam swore to me their people would tear off the arms and legs of American soldiers, and decapitate them, and drag their bodies through the streets. They swore their women would fight, too.”

“Once the U.S. bombing starts, the Iraqi exiles will have no credibility as leaders. None whatsoever. They will be hated as pawns of the United States, and my God, let me tell you, Arabs can hate. A U.S. victory will never be sweet for long.”

“Above all, you must realize that if you go ahead with this invasion, Osama bin Laden will triumph, rising from his grave of seclusion. His network will be swollen with fresh recruits, and other charismatic individuals will seek to build on his model, multiplying those networks. And the United States will have delivered the death blow to itself. Using your own act of war, Osama and his cohorts will irrevocably divide the hearts and minds of the Arab Street from moderate governments in Islamic countries that have been holding back that tide. Power to the people, what we call “democracy,” will secure the rise of the fundamentalists. And before the next Presidential election, Andy, it will become a disaster.”

“You are in my prayers. Let me help you. Please.”

Warning Secretary Powell before his U.N. Speech

Andy Card was not the only White House official whom I approached to outline opportunities for peace in January, 2003.

By happy chance, Secretary of State Colin Powell lived next door to my CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz in McLean, Virginia.[250]

For years I’d been told that soldiers appreciate peace more than ordinary people, because they understand what battle actually costs. They understand what it means to ask men to die, and to send men to kill. They understand the sacrifice for soldier families, and the price of destruction unleashed on the community by their weapons. As General Wesley Clark said, you don’t go to War unless there’s “absolutely, absolutely, absolutely no other way.”[251]

War should be a last resort when all other options fail.

With that understanding, many of us in the anti-war community pinned our hopes on Secretary Powell. A retired four-star General and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from the outside it appeared that Secretary Powell had serious doubts about the necessity and consequences of a War with Iraq. We all hoped the wisdom of his extraordinary military experience might persuade civilians running the Pentagon to slow down and give peace a chance.

Concerned that Secretary Powell might not have access to the full range of peace options before the War, I decided to approach Powell at his home on January 8, 2003—the same day that I delivered my 11th letter to Andy Card. In the package for Secretary Powell, I included several of my earlier progress reports to Andy Card on our talks to resume the weapons inspections, including Iraq’s response to the 9/11 attack, dated September 24, 2001—and the comprehensive peace framework dated December 2, 2001.[252]

I advised Secretary Powell that the peace framework continued to be viable and productive.

On January 27, 2003, I returned a second time— just a few days prior to Secretary Powell’s infamous speech at the United Nations on February 5, 2003. In greater detail than before, I advised him that Iraq’s enthusiasm for the inspections was so strong during the preliminary talks from November 2000 to March 2002 that it was unlikely Iraq might be hiding Weapons of Mass Destruction.[253]

This message was not ambiguous.

On January 27, 2003, I told Secretary Powell:

“If what you claim is really what you want, this is a viable framework that would allow President Bush to declare a moral victory for his leadership. Working from a formidable position of power, having soldiers ready in the Gulf, the White House could achieve a victory without going to War.”

“What I have to say next will be more aggravating, but I have an obligation to advise you.”

“Given that Iraq has tried for two years to hold covert talks with the United States, with the promise of immediately resuming weapons inspections, there’s a very high probability that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction. Forget what the Iraqi Opposition has told you. They’re famous liars, and most desperate to engage the United States in their protection. You can’t kill 1.7 million people and return home after a vicious bombing campaign to a great parade.”

“No, Iraq emphasized for more than a year before Kofi Annan got involved, that Baghdad would jump at the chance to prove to the world they had no weapons. At any moment Iraq was ready for those inspections to begin, and that says to me that they felt always they had nothing to hide. They simply insisted that without U.S. support for the plan, it would have no benefits or meaning for resolving tensions. Current events have proved that they were right.”

“Don’t deceive yourself, Mr. Secretary that War would have no costs. Believing your own rhetoric at this moment would be the most rash and incendiary mistake. Fighting street battles searching for Saddam would entail deadly risks for U.S. soldiers. No matter what Iraqis think of Saddam, the common people hate the U.S. for sanctions and bombings, and they would consider it traitorous to help you. Under these circumstances, the brutality necessary to win this war would be consumption for the entire Arab world. It would produce a disastrous period of occupation. The Iraqis have fought occupations before. They would strike back wherever possible.”

“Outside Iraq, Islamists would point to the failure of west-leaning leaderships to protect the Iraqi people. Fundamentalists would seize on that failure to force concessions for their strict cause. There would be a shift to the will of the people alright. No wonder Iran has been chuckling to itself. Iran and Osama— not the United States—would be the greatest victors in this war. The Arab Street would rush to their side.” (Yes, I called the rise of Iran, here and in other papers.)

“Please let me help you. You can still achieve a greater victory, Mr. Secretary, and maintain the force of America’s moral authority in the world’s eye. The objectives of the Bush Administration can be achieved without igniting terrorist revenge and international boycotts. Or destroying political alliances in the War on Terrorism. Or forcing massive deficit spending that will prolong the U.S. recession and scare the hell out of Wall Street and the Middle Class. Or starting a Holy War—which this would become.”

Well, OK jury. What do you think?

Were those the words of a “foreign agent provocateur?” Does my analysis qualify as “treason?”

Actually, I believe I offered a rational argument worthy of Secretary Powell’s consideration. As a long-time U.S. Asset covering the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations, I had unique, primary access to special information that could benefit his decision-making. It was appropriate that I should take action to make sure he was formally advised of it. A military commander entrusted with the welfare of hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers needs as much input to define his options as possible. In this situation, Washington could have demanded anything from Baghdad, and got it all, without engaging in battle. The U.S. could have demonstrated victory without the hell of War and Occupation— a sort of “unconditional surrender,” without sacrificing U.S. soldiers or destroying the lives of Iraqi civilians.

And so I think my action was legitimate, so long as my language demonstrated proper respect for Secretary Powell’s seniority and stature, which I certainly tried to do.

Notably, in 2007, the Senate Intelligence Committee singled out the “outstanding quality” of intelligence reporting in January, 2003, calling it “one of the few bright spots” in Pre-War Intelligence.[254] The Senate Committee listed the specific warnings that I detailed in my January letters to Andy Card and Secretary Powell in its citation.

Senator John Warner (R-Virginia) called it “chilling and prophetic.”

As for Secretary Powell’s ability to identify me as an Asset, my CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz was Secretary Powell’s next door neighbor—and a well recognized member of the intelligence community. My relationship with Dr. Fuisz was easily discovered. Either a quick background check or a simple google search on the internet would have turned up our link together on Lockerbie. My knowledge of Secretary Powell’s home address had to come from next door. It’s not rocket science.

All of that makes it difficult to understand why Secretary Powell should have turned his copies of the Andy Card letters over to the FBI.—something he surely forgot when he gave his infamous interview to Barbara Walters in September, 2005.[255]

In that extraordinary sit-down exclusive that aired on “20/20”, Secretary Powell excoriated mid-level bureaucrats at the CIA—not the top dogs, but mid-level bureaucrats— for not warning him in late January 2003, before his notorious speech at the U.N.— that claims about Iraq’s weapons capacity were not realistic or substantiated. His Deputy, Richard Armitage likewise complained bitterly that no one had the courage or foresight to warn Secretary Powell off the bad intelligence that laid the foundation for his remarks at the United Nations.

Nobody except me.

And I got arrested for it.

As they say, no good deed goes unpunished in Washington.

But I was stupefied when I heard Colin Powell’s complaint to Barbara Walters. It was an appalling lie. There’s serious question as to whether General Powell violated his oath of military service to the detriment of the welfare of U.S. soldiers, when he made that false declaration. I think he should face a court-martial to answer for it. By then, I was gagged by the indictment, and locked up tight on Carswell Air Force Base. I could say nothing, while the Good General whitewashed the blood and dirt off his reputation.

Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was blessedly ignorant of the dark outlook for my future. I carried on my anti-war outreach to Capitol Hill and the United Nations in New York as passionately as ever.

Syria and Malaysia—The World’s Best Hope for Peace

The departures of Rani Ali and Ambassador Agam from the Malaysia Embassy did not handicap my efforts in New York, fortunately. Over the years I had cultivated widespread sources at the United Nations. With the storm of War darkening the horizon, I made every effort to use all of them. With the help of Rani Ali, I tracked down phone and fax numbers for every Ambassador’s office[256] in the U.N. General Assembly.

By January, I was bombarding senior diplomats at the U.N. with appeals to support peace. FBI wire taps prove I lit up phone lines all over the Security Council and key embassies.

I argued that the existing peace framework addressed all parts of the conflict, and thus rendered War with Iraq avoidable and unnecessary.

What we needed was the technical language to ratify Baghdad’s offerings to the United States—[257] just like we’d done with weapons inspections and the Lockerbie Trial.

In January and February, 2003, I floated an idea that the United Nations should draft Ambassador Agam—who had 30 + years of senior diplomacy under his belt— to lead a “working group” into Baghdad.

Recently, Syria had taken a non-permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. In a letter to Syria’s Ambassador Wehbe on February 3, 2003, I wrote:[258]

“Many more opportunities for diplomacy exist even now. I urge Syria and other peace-seeking nations on the Security Council to support the formation of a Working Group that could go to Baghdad, and build a framework as an alternative to War. After talks in Baghdad, the Working Group could present its findings to the United Nations for debate.”

“This framework would create a parallel track to War preparations. Its purpose would be to define the Iraqi Government’s own commitments on a full range of social and political rights that have been stymied by Baghdad’s necessary preoccupation with grinding sanctions. With that understanding, the United Nations could better decide whether War is necessary at all.”

In Washington style, I circulated the Wehbe letter all over the Security Council and General Assembly.

I also suggested the “Working Group” should be charged with implementing the collection of democratic reforms proposed by senior Iraqi officials in Baghdad a year earlier. Iraq’s proposal included some highly creative suggestions, such as housing Iraqi exiles in expanded embassy compounds, and granting Iraqi exiles the rights to establish political parties, party headquarters and opposition newspapers. Returning exiles would have had the right to announce their candidacy for office, and actively campaign for election around the country.

Each part of this framework would be ground-breaking. Above all, it could be guaranteed. The hardest part had been accomplished already. Baghdad had accepted the demands. All that was missing was a technical agreement to begin implementing the various components, which the “Working Group” could handle.

To his great credit, Ambassador Agam declared months before that he would come out of retirement, if necessary, to lead comprehensive peace talks with Iraq. He was fully committed to the project, and totally capable of delivering it.

At the February, 2003 meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Kuala Lumpur, Ambassador Agam and my old friend Dr. Saeed Hasan, now Iraq’s Deputy Foreign Minister, discussed the possibility. Traveling to Baghdad for talks would have been out of the question, because of loud whispers that War was imminent.[259] Nonetheless, talks could still be held in Geneva or Paris.

The situation was not hopeless. War was not inevitable. There was not a lack of viable options. That’s flat wrong.

It was only a question of who had the courage to pursue peace. Some of those answers are surprising. Malaysia’s special contribution to anti-war efforts, behind the scenes, deserves recognition, praise and appreciation from the international community.

As it turns out, Malaysia was not the only farsighted leader on the world stage.

On the evening of February 4, 2003, wire taps by my good friends at the FBI prove I contacted the Syrian embassy at the United Nations, and spoke directly with Syria’s Ambassador Wehbe.[260]

It helps to know that Ambassador Wehbe and I had been briefly introduced by Rani Ali at a Lebanese Taverna popular among U.N. diplomats. On other occasions, he observed me lunching with diplomats from Libya and Iraq. That stood out, since Western contacts with either of those countries was highly unusual in those years. My role in talks for the Lockerbie Trial would have been known to Syria’s diplomats, as well.

All of that helps explain why Ambassador Wehbe probably recognized who I was, during this phone call.

Ambassador Wehbe: “The Ambassador is speaking.”

Lindauer: (Laughs) “I did not expect you to answer your own phone.”

Ambassador: “Indeed!”

Lindauer: (Laughs) Ah, my name is Susan Lindauer…

Ambassador: “Yes.”

Lindauer: “And I ah, sent something to you by fax yesterday.”

Ambassador: “Yes.”

Lindauer: “It is pertaining to the Iraqi issue. This is ah, a peace framework.”

Ambassador: “Right.”

Lindauer: “I have been involved– I live in Washington.”

Ambassador: “Yes.”

Lindauer: “I have been a back door…”

Ambassador: “Hmph hmph.”

Lindauer: “between Iraq and the White House.”

Ambassador: “Yeah.”

Ambassador: “I know.”

Lindauer: “Okay.”

Ambassador: “I know.”

Lindauer: “Okay, good. I have sent that to your, ah, consular.”

Ambassador: “Did you ask for a meeting?”

Lindauer: “I was going to be in New York and I was going to have some meetings with a couple of other embassies.”

Ambassador: “Do you like to come ah, this evening?”

Lindauer: “I am in Washington.”

Ambassador: “Oh I thought you are here.”

Lindauer: “I realize you are incredibly busy, but I would like to share this. Let me put it this way. I do ask you please. I know you’re very busy, but it is very important that you see what I have sent.”

Ambassador: “Okay, I will ask for it.”

Lindauer: “Thank you so much.”

Ambassador: “I will ask for it, and I will see it.”

Ambassador Wehbe showed a remarkable degree of civility and respect for the contributions of an ordinary woman from outside his own country. If my experience has taught me nothing else, it’s that a government willing to discuss ideas put forth by ordinary people—and listen— is doing some things right. One might argue that listening to common people marks the foundation of all genuine democracy. I find it intriguing, therefore, to compare Syria’s handling of the situation to Colin Powell’s reaction to the very same information.

Syria’s Ambassador Wehbe did more than listen and read my proposal. To his tremendous credit, Ambassador Wehbe’s staff checked out the framework with Iraqi diplomats, and verified that the platform was accurately portrayed and entirely valid.

Then Syria followed through, and took action to carry it forward.

Kudos to Damascus!

Several weeks after President Obama’s Inauguration, in February 2009, I confronted the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington over the abuse that I suffered as an Asset, and the gross dishonesty of defaming Pre-War Intelligence, with such a strong peace framework on the table, ready for implementation.

At that point, the CIA reluctantly acknowledged that Syria had approached them with an identical proposal in early 2003, in the 11th hour before the invasion.[261]

According to Joseph Farah, who publishes the G2 Bulletin, CIA sources have confirmed that Ambassador Wehbe and Syria’s senior diplomats approached the United States covertly, possibly through a third party, seeking to open a back channel to the Secretary of Defense, in order to implement the comprehensive framework, which Iraq had accepted enthusiastically.[262]

According to the G2 Bulletin, Iraq offered six unconditional terms to Defense Department policymakers. The terms were:

•    Full support of America’s Arab-Israeli peace process

•    Support for U.S. strategic interests in the region.

•    Priority to the United States for Iraqi oil

•    Elections within two years, under U.N. auspices.

•    Disarmament—direct U.S. involvement in disarming Iraq. The U.S. could send 5,000 troops into Iraqi to search for weapons of mass destruction.

•    Full cooperation in the war terror—including the hand over of Abdul Rahman Yasin, who was involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. To this day, he is still at large.

The CIA implied that it arrived too late to act upon. The G2 Bulletin reported that Republican leaders laughed in Syria’s face saying, “See you in Baghdad.”

Why solve a problem when you can have a war instead?

In which case, they acted like fools.

And yet, like Malaysia, Syria deserves the most profound gratitude and praise from the international community, for the simple fact that its leadership had the courage to support peace to the very end. Syria and Malaysia handled this crisis extremely well. They could not have done better.

Their diplomats had the wisdom and courage to recognize the frightening consequences of this stupid war. Instead of getting paralyzed—or relinquishing responsibility for crisis resolution to the West— their leaders used their position on the Security Council to support dialogue, offering themselves as intermediaries.

That’s the U.N. at its best.

As someone who watches trends in the Middle East, Syria’s proactive spirit greatly impressed me. Syria’s diplomats saw the possibility of common ground, and put the good of the world community before any possible differences with Baghdad. I admire that tremendously. It speaks to Syria’s leadership potential in other Middle East conflicts.

Critically, when the CIA acknowledged all parts of Syria’s proposal, they acknowledged mine—since the two are almost 100% identical, and FBI wire taps prove that I shared it with Syria’s Embassy at the start of February, 2003.[3]

That is valuable for corroborating the legitimacy of the peace framework itself, and the success of my own role as a back channel. Clearly the peace option passed the vetting process with Baghdad, since Syria’s government required verification from Iraqi sources before submitting it to the Bush Administration. I was spot on

Unhappily, problem solving was not what Pro-War Republicans wanted. It was not in the best interests of Big Oil and the War Profiteers, the only winners of this catastrophic War. But a Great Peace was always possible.

That’s critical for the world to know. Although this conflict appeared overwhelming and intractable, dialogue and diplomacy could have achieved results right to the very last days—thanks to the courageous leadership of nations like Malaysia and Syria.

A substantial peace with Iraq could have achieved every objective demanded by United States and Britain as a justification for War. It would have been a prosperous peace, with oil and reconstruction contracts for the United States, Europe and Asia; weapons disarmament; cooperation with anti-terrorism efforts; even democratic reforms. Victory could have been declared without firing a missile, or killing a single Iraqi child.

By corollary, every sacrifice to support this War effort has wasted our financial resources and the talent of future generations. And it never had to happen.

For me, that’s a bitter disappointment. Yet it should give us hope for our future that we don’t have to go down this path again.

Resolving conflict is always a question of leadership, courage and vision. No matter how hopeless and bleak a situation looks, there’s always a path towards conflict resolution. It might appear difficult. But it can be done.

It’s always about dialogue, dialogue and more dialogue. When you go looking for allies, you will find them in the most unusual places.

To Syria and Malaysia, many thanks!

CHAPTER 14:

GOODNIGHT, SAIGON…

March 19, 2003. It was a cold and wet night in Washington, like heaven was storming tears of anguish. Or perhaps they were mine.

All of the peace community was grief-stricken.

For that was the night the United States and Britain launched what the military bragged would be the most ferocious “shock and awe” bombing campaign in the history of the world. CNN brought the whole nightmare right into our homes and living rooms. Watching that pounding horror of explosions and fires that streaked Iraq’s skies, the brutality of that bombing horrified many of us as well.

Around the world America would never be regarded in the same light of humanity and moral righteousness again.

With every bomb that crashed down, the tradition of America’s virtue got smashed and broken in the flames.

When Baghdad fell, so did we.

Granted, most of us didn’t know it yet. We could not have envisioned how America’s destiny of influence and prestige could be so interlinked to the perceptions of other nations and peoples. Without that recognition of America’s inherent goodness, other nations would no longer trust our moral leadership, and they would start to question us on a wide range of issues. I think history has already shown that America lost its Super Power throne on that dreadful night.

There are so many ‘what ifs’ that we face together as a people. If peace had triumphed instead of War, what would our nation look like today? Would we have a better health care reform policy? Would we have a stronger military? Would there be any major terrorist scenarios on our horizon? Would we have better job prospects for the Middle Class? Would our government face mountains of debt as mighty and treacherous as the Colorado Rockies?

We can only speculate.

That’s a lot to lose. I can’t really blame Americans still in denial about what the Iraq War has cost this country. They haven’t come to grips with it yet.

The rest of us, with our eyes open in dismay, have discovered that our Great America, protector of the weak and downtrodden, vanished from the world’s eye that night.

In its place stood a tyrant.

Well, that just doesn’t work for me. I don’t feel like handing my country over to a few stupid men, so they can ruin us. That makes no sense to me. America might have tyrannical leaders, but with all my heart, I believe we’re not a tyrannical people. And I bitterly resent any White House official hijacking what’s precious about Our Country to promote get-rich quick schemes for his Beltway Bandit friends in the oil and defense establishments.

But what could ordinary people do about it? That was a much tougher question.

Today, some Americans think Occupy Wall Street has the answer. “Occupy” has fire in the belly—not to mention strength in numbers to hold Washington accountable to the 99 % outside the Iron Gates of the Bilderberg Country Club. Americans of all political stripes have found each other. When our freedoms are challenged, we are fighting back together. A word of warning to Big Brother: We refuse to be victimized or disregarded by manipulative politicians on Capitol Hill.

Mediocrity in leadership insults us. Extremist politics aggravates us. We want workable policies. And together we have forced Washington to push Middle Class priorities to the top of their agendas.

Power to the people is back.

On that rainy night, however, the question of “what could we do?” felt much more lonely. I spent that bitter night driving along the neighborhood back streets in Maryland, poking at that question, and listening to the radio for news breaks on the war. I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t stand to watch the explosions and fiery skies of Baghdad on CNN or FOX News. And I couldn’t turn it off in my mind.

I was heartbroken and seething with rage.

And folks, let’s be honest. I had a lot to be angry about.

I could never forgive that Iraq had tried to resume weapons inspections from the opening days of the Bush Administration— a powerful indicator that Baghdad was not hiding WMDs. The U.S. had dragged its feet for two years before sending inspection teams. All that media spin from Washington and London disguised their fear of unmasking the game. It broke my heart.

And now Washington was bombing Baghdad in a foolish attempt to link Iraq with 9/11. It was another breathtaking deception contradicted by Baghdad’s determination to cooperate with the War on Terrorism!

Wouldn’t that send you into orbit?

On the night of March 19, 2003, that sent me through the roof. There’s serious question as to whether the “War on Terror” turned out to be a hideous fraud.

That struck me as unforgivable after such a grievous national tragedy.

In my opinion, our leaders have endangered the United States for the long haul with this calculated selfishness.

To put that in context, before 9/11 and Iraq, I estimate that only 200 to 300 men in the whole world focused their lives on destroying symbols of the United States. Many more fixated on Israel, agreed. But only real die-hard terrorists dreamed of glory attacking the United States. That would be half the size of a small high school auditorium.

Today, thanks to the Iraq War, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, I would put those figures between 3,000 to 5,000 individuals—whose entire lives now focus on attacking the United States any way possible. This War on Terror has multiplied the number of terrorists two hundred fold. Now that strikes me as a cock-up situation. If there are more terrorists today than when we started, our strategy has backfired.

Wouldn’t that make you angry, too?

Driving alone that dreadful, rainy night, my thoughts raced with images of the massive explosions in Baghdad, and the brutality that our leaders inflicted on innocent Iraqi people in our name as Americans. I trembled in fury that our leaders would launch such destruction so casually and cynically, knowing the range of choices for conflict resolution available for months before the War.

If you had told me on that dreadful night that within a year, I would get blamed for providing the poor quality of intelligence that led to this War, I would have beat you senseless. I mean it. I would have stomped you. You could not have crawled away like a dog on your belly.

That’s got to be one of the most outrageous and despicable lies ever told in Washington, which let’s be honest, tells a lot of them.

Instead that night, one of those really great DJs on the radio seemed to understand the shock and disbelief breaking over the devoted anti-war activists, who fill our community. Some wonderful DJ played the old Richard Harris version of “MacArthur Park” that’s so maudlin and sad[264]— MacArthur Park is melting in the dark, all the sweet green icing flowing down….

Just like Baghdad. I had to pull my car to the side of the road to cry.

Pain scorched my spirit. I had worked so hard to build a reliable peace framework, so the U.S. conflict could be resolved without bloodshed. I’d worked on this project for two years with Iraqi officials and U.N. diplomats, overseen by muckymucks at CIA making outrageous demands to protect U.S. interests. We had started before the threat of War emerged on the horizon. We’d worked proactively and energetically to achieve every imaginable U.S. objective. And we had succeeded on every single issue.

Someone left the cake out in the rain…I don’t think that I can take it, ‘cause it took so long to bake it. And I’ll never have that recipe again.

I sobbed, with my head on the steering wheel, as the song played on.

We did everything right. Our peace framework was tremendously positive for the United States, first and foremost. But it was also very good for our allies in Europe and the Middle East. And I think it was excellent for the Iraqi people, too.

None of that mattered. We could not overcome the insanity of our leaders.

I will win the worship in their eyes and I will lose it. And after all the loves of my life, I’ll be thinking of you. And wondering why?

I’ve asked myself a thousand times why they did it. Others have begged me to explain it, too. Honestly, I see no answer. War with Iraq was wholly avoidable and unnecessary. Such an incredible waste of human talent and life’s ambitions and dreams. For nothing. For no purpose at all. Nothing justified such sacrifice.

I thought of Richard Fuisz and Paul Hoven, and all of our years together, almost a decade that ended so abruptly, without explanation or goodbyes.

And I thought about what we’d lost that night as a nation.

America, what have We done to you? I wept with my head on the steering wheel.

I kept asking myself what could be done? How could We, the People resurrect what I hold to be the most beautiful values of our country, when our leaders are ready to smash us to hell on the rocks? And damn the consequences!

I drove all night until I ran out of gas. By the end, I thought I had an answer. It was admittedly very simple. But it sounded pretty good at two o’clock in the morning.

It was this. America does not belong to the politicians. It’s not theirs to take. It’s not theirs to destroy.

America belongs to the people.

And by God, we are going to take it back!

CHAPTER 15:

WARNING: THIS MESSAGE
CONTAINS DEMOCRACY

“The most dangerous man, to any government,
is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government
he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.”
H.L. Mencken, American Writer 1880-1956

I suppose you could call this my year in the wilderness. In which case, it helps to remember that I’m from Alaska. If anybody can survive in the wilderness, it’s me.

I was now on the outside. We were long past “burn notices” from the CIA, when the intelligence community declares an Asset trespassing or “persona non grata’. Otherwise, they’d be flapping all over my doors and windows, shooting down the chimney.

Oh but I was not alone. Trust me when I say the spooks stayed close and circled hard.

Oh, I see. You think I’m “paranoid.” Let me prove you wrong.

The peace camp in Washington folded up its tents shortly after the Invasion. Nonetheless, some die-hard friends and I wanted to make a difference to the Occupation.

What else could we do? Our efforts evolved continuously. Some of my wonderful activist friends, like Muthanna al Hanooti and Mohammad “Mo” Alomari, headed for Baghdad, and tried to help the Sunnis integrate into the “New Iraq.” They tried to show Sunnis how to participate in elections, and protect their political rights, without resorting to violence. Both Muthanna and Mo provided humanitarian assistance to Iraqi citizens during the U.N. sanctions, through a relief organization called “LIFE for Relief and Development”—the only NGO licensed by the State Department to transport medicines and supplies to Iraq under the sanctions. As a consequence of that effort, my friends had deep ties throughout Iraqi society.

Unlike al Hanooti and Alomari, Washington and London discovered that their own Iraqi allies— like Ahmed Chalabi— while exuberant in victory, had no friends or followers inside Iraq. Nobody supported them. The only Exiles who boasted small camps of supporters were Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, who founded the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and members of the Islamic fundamentalist Dawa Party. Both had sought refuge in Iran during Saddam’s reign. Most secular Iraqis bitterly despised their Iranian connections. And though the western media tried to downplay it, most Iraqis regarded the Exiles’ support for the miserable U.N. sanctions as unforgivable War Crimes against the Iraqi people.

Except for their protection by U.S. and British soldiers, returning Exiles would have been butchered on arrival, and orphaned by history.

Al-Hakim was assassinated shortly after his return to Baghdad by rival factions promoting Moqtada al-Sadr, whose family stayed with Iraq’s people during sanctions and Saddam.

Returning Iraqi Exiles appeared to grasp what a fragile position they occupied in the “New Iraq.” From the first weeks of Occupation, the Exiles executed one fundamental strategy for coming to power. Immediately after the fall of Baghdad, they started using American soldiers to burst into the homes of ordinary Iraqis in the midnight hours, in order to arrest former Baathist officials, teachers, Judges, civil servants, young and old, who might challenge their power base and authority in future elections.

That first wave of arrests by U.S. soldiers began months before the Iraqi insurgency kicked off. There was no popular resistance at that point. Al Qaeda had not emerged as a force of reckoning. But in some villages, any Iraqi male over 5 feet tall got taken into custody.

Right from the start, Exiles hunted out political competitors. They sought to remove any individuals who might create a leadership alternative in the community. Today it’s an open secret that Iraqis outside of the Exile Community, which nurtured its ambitions in London, Tehran and Detroit, are largely prohibited from participating in leadership of the country. In the 2010 parliamentary elections, 511 candidates were barred from the ballot, mostly domestic Iraqis.

When I saw this activity, I found my own purpose in the Occupation. I thought the Iraqi people should have real democracy and human rights— not what I call “gun democracy.” Banning candidates from the ballot negates all claims of fair and free election, as far as I’m concerned. In a true democracy, anybody who wants to run for office has the right to throw their hat in the ring. The opposition doesn’t get to choose candidates, or strike off winners.

So I took on the role of watch dog from Washington. And I stayed busy.

Tragically, the Occupation was already going horribly wrong. At the beginning of June, 2003, an explosive story hit the British press. British soldiers had photographed naked Iraqi prisoners graphically positioned to emulate acts of sodomy and oral sex. British soldiers stood by laughing. Another Iraqi was hung naked from a rope tied to a forklift truck, bound hand and foot.[267]

A very brave young woman named Kelly Tilford spotted the pornographic pictures taken on the battlefield at her photo shop in London, and called the police immediately.

“I saw the look on his face. He was petrified,” Tilford told the British Sun. “I will never forget that terrible stare.”

Another photo showed a close up shot of the naked backsides of two Iraqis, as if they were simulating anal sex.

This story broke almost a year before the exposé of identical torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, under U.S. control. Close similarities in the graphic sexual abuses practiced by British and American soldiers suggest the policy was deliberate and coordinated, in order to emasculate Iraqi males.

Indeed, sexual degradation was applied across the country, from north to south, since Britain and the United States subjugated different parts of Iraq.

British and American soldiers who got arrested for these gross human rights violations, like Gary Bartlam of the 1st Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers,[268] and Lynndie England of West Virginia in the United States,[269] should stop blaming others for their abusive actions, the likes of which have been condemned throughout military conflicts for the past 100 years. Each was convicted of photographing naked Iraqis, forced to perform or simulate sexual acts for the amusement of Occupation soldiers. Unforgivably, it’s evident that U.S. and British commanding officers winked at this sort of behavior. Senior officers failed to motivate soldiers under their command to act honorably towards Iraqi citizens. That command failure produced incalculable damage to subjugation efforts from the start of the Occupation.

On those grounds, I make no apologies for a letter that I submitted to British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock at the United Nations on June 4, 2003—[270] a year before Abu Ghraib broke in the media— on behalf of abused Iraqis.

“The British government should consider itself hereby warned of (our) intention to file criminal charges against Prime Minister Tony Blair and the United Kingdom for violations of the International Geneva Conventions of War. It is our intention to seek maximum financial compensation for all Iraqi victims of British and American war crimes, in equal measure to what Britain and the U.S. have demanded in the past for their own citizens.”

“You will find the price of degrading human life is not cheap, Mr. Ambassador.”

“To protect the British treasury—if not for human decency— we urge Britain and the U.S. to immediately allow the International Red Cross to gain access to all warehouses and camps where Iraqi Prisoners of War continue to be held. You should be warned, sir, that reports abound of prisoners being chained and hooded 24 hours of the day, and abused in circumstances worse than Guantanamo Bay.”

“It would be in Britain’s greatest national interest to guarantee a reversal in this horrific trend, for you should never doubt, sir, that Britain’s criminal actions will carry an enormous price. We are ready to protect and defend that law, with the knowledge and certainty that we are in fact defending the best moral values of humanity.”

And by God, I meant every word!

Amnesty International carried the day, forcing the British military to put several soldiers on trial for war crimes, and conduct a lengthy investigation of prisoner abuses that bear uncanny similarities to U.S. atrocities at Abu Ghraib.[271] Amnesty International kept Tony Blair’s government in the fire,, and forced attention at the command level.

As for myself, I began to explore avenues to raise money for a two-part legal project, both inside Iraq and at the International Criminal Court of The Hague. My goal was to hire a legal team inside Iraq to protect detainees captured in those midnight raids across the Sunni Heartland. Our team of Iraqi attorneys would establish a legal clinic, on behalf of impoverished families who desired legal representation for their captive sons and fathers.[272]

Investigators would also document the rampant thefts of cash and property like satellite phones and art treasures, stolen from Iraqi homes by American soldiers, and the many rapes of Iraqi women and random shootings by American and Coalition soldiers, routinely ignored by U.S. authorities. These abuses quickly embittered the largely impoverished Iraqi population. Our goal was to document offenses by Coalition soldiers, so that habitual offenders could be court-martialed and abusive practices could be outlawed at the command level.[273],[274]

Sadly, without that reporting mechanism, abuses of Iraqi citizens accelerated over the years. As of 2009, the U.S. military acknowledged that between 70 percent and 90 percent of Iraqi detainees never committed any crime, but suffered wrongful accusations for revenge or profit, since American soldiers paid cash rewards of up to $2,500 to informants for each arrest. Many of those Iraqis suffered detention without trial for years.[275]

The second part of my project focused on The Hague. I envisioned a team of international attorneys, backed by Iraqis, who would try to establish a legal precedent for mandatory human rights protections for citizens under Occupation, with financial penalties for violations.[276] That would have provided an enforcement mechanism for the International Geneva Conventions of War, a potentially valuable legal tool, which remains largely voluntary. The U.S. has mostly ignored it.

For this part of the project, I identified a highly respected human rights attorney named Stanley Cohen of New York City, who has pioneered the use of international law, to assert the rights of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. With courageous forward vision, Cohen’s team has sought to hold Israel accountable to international law, in order to shield Palestinians from apartheid practices. If the International Courts could staunch human rights abuses, the thinking goes, we might persuade them to trust the Courts, instead of resorting to violence to remedy their injustice.

Was our vision too idealistic? Perhaps, but that was my plan. I needed financing to the tune of $500,000 to pull it off. Half of that money would have paid for Stanley Cohen’s team at the International Criminal Court.[277] The other half would have financed the legal clinic inside Baghdad. It was a paltry sum compared to what great good our project might have accomplished.

Needless to say, the CIA did not appreciate in any way, shape or form, whatsoever that one of their former Assets was aggressively harassing the British Ambassador to the United Nations, and threatening legal action against the “Coalition of the Willing,” in order to protect Iraqi citizens from human rights abuses by undisciplined soldiers.

Oh no, they didn’t like that at all.

FBI wire taps captured my faxed letter to Ambassador Greenstock on June 4, 2003, along with dozens of faxes sent to Congress and the United Nations, protesting the War and Occupation policies.[278]

On June 12, I received a single warning from my old compatriots at the CIA to shut my god damn mouth on all matters tied to Iraq.

The threat was not ambiguous. It arrived as an email marked “life insurance policy” under the name of the former Iraqi diplomat, Mr. A——who, prior to the war, had agreed to help the U.S. identify foreign terrorists playing hide and seek with Saddam’s Intelligence Service. The use of his name in that email reaffirmed that U.S. intelligence understood our special relationship very well.

There was nothing subtle about the message. They weren’t going to limit their attacks to me. They were going to hunt down my old contacts in Baghdad, as well. The email said that if I wanted to keep them alive, I should go to ground and stay silent on all matters tied to Iraq.

That just pissed me off.

Hey, they were pissed off, too.

We were both at each other’s throats at this point— with daggers drawn. I recognized that email would not be the end of it. Spooks become dangerous animals when threatened. No doubt they decided that somebody better investigate what I was up to, and how far I had progressed. It didn’t take them long to mobilize.

As I have said before, when they want you, they will come and get you.

That’s exactly what they did.

Very early on the morning of June 23, 2003, I got a phone call at about 7 a.m.[279]

A man with a very slight Arab accent asked to speak with me that morning, before I headed off to work. He asked if I could meet him in the parking lot of a local restaurant called Savory. Clearly he’d scoped out my little peace-nik town. I’d walked my dachshunds that beautiful summer morning, and it appeared that he knew I was dressed for work when he requested the meeting.

Now most people would run like the devil in the opposite direction if they got a phone call like that. Assets are different creatures. We’re supposed to handle this kind of stuff. Though I was officially retired, once you’re in that game—and it is a game—then you are expected to play whenever called upon.

The game’s never over. You’re never really out of it.

On that expectation, I agreed to show up in 30 minutes, as requested.

We walked around my neighborhood for no more than 10 minutes. On our short morning walk, I learned that “Adam” claimed to have traveled from Michigan. He told me a small group of investors wanted to put together a peace project inside Iraq to influence the Occupation. Of critical importance, “Adam” claimed to know my friend, Muthanna, who’s also from Dearborn, Michigan. The conversation was necessarily brief, because I had to go to work. However, I agreed to meet him at a hotel in the Baltimore Marina later that night on June 23, 2003.[280]

Given who I am, I don’t take things on faith just because I’m told. The timing struck me as awfully suspicious. I’d sent my letter to British Ambassador Greenstock on June 4. I’d received the “life insurance” email on about June 15-16. And it was now June 23. So of course I made a connection. According to the schematics of the intelligence world, I recognized this approach as a rational action on their part. At the same time, something was in play, and as part of the game, I had to figure out what it was.

A lifetime of expectations influenced how I viewed this man. From the opening, I considered that I was dealing with his “cover,” and only a small part of it had been revealed on our morning walk.

Right off the bat, I saw it was possible— but not likely— that Adam’s cover was authentic. Perhaps he knew Muthanna. Perhaps he did not. Right then Muthanna was traveling in Iraq. So I could not inquire. That did not matter though. It would be remarkable, truly perplexing, if after a decade as a CIA Asset, I failed to grasp that some kind of game was in play. I’d have to erase every experience I ever had not to be confident handling this.

I saw three options.

One, Adam was a jihadi. That struck me as extremely unlikely, since all my Arab friends and contacts understood that I famously oppose war and violence in the Middle East in all directions. It would have been awfully risky to approach me. He could expect to get rebuffed. He would gain nothing from the attempt.

Two, he was a spook. That was always the most probable scenario, given my activities since the invasion, and the threat that I received a week earlier.

Here’s where it got interesting. If Adam was a spook, I saw two possibilities. Most likely, he was unfriendly and wanted to keep tabs on the progress of my projects. In which case, I had nothing to hide. My actions supporting democratic reforms and human rights in Iraq are legal in any courtroom in the world, outside of North Korea, Mynamar (or apparently New York City). There was no danger that he might distract me. Nothing could persuade me to abandon my work for democracy and human rights under any circumstances. If they wanted to know what I was up to, I would jolly well tell them. They could hear from it my own mouth.

There was a second possibility that intrigued me very much. Just maybe, Adam was a friendly spook, looking to build a team to go into Iraq for the purpose of countering bad actions by Occupation forces and strategic blunders in Washington. Maybe he was part of a faction that wanted to push things onto the right track.

What quickened my pulse was that the State Department had just got evicted from Iraq by the Pentagon. Right then, pro-Arabist cliques were regrouping in Washington, still hoping to influence the Occupation. If one of those groups was feeling me out, it might afford a worthwhile opportunity to exert pressure in a totally different direction. That possibility tantalized me. It would mean a choice between fighting the Occupation from the outside, or trying to make things better from the inside. It would be a hard decision. Either way, I intended to challenge the Occupation.

Third, Adam’s “cover” might be authentic. He might have told the truth that a group of Arab-Americans in Michigan wanted to finance a peace project inside Iraq. Given my strong reputation opposing military aggression and terrorism, I would be a safe American to approach. My involvement would give the others protection. Nobody could accuse them of supporting violence with me in the group. I’m proud of that fact.

Which of those possibilities would prove correct, I could not say.

But as an Asset, you’re expected to play. Paul Hoven, my old handler, always encouraged me to think of it like a dance. When a man asks a woman to dance, she’s supposed to say yes, because that’s what she’s gone to the Club to do. Then, over the evening, she’s supposed to identify her partner, and get to know him. She doesn’t have to go home with him for the night. Maybe she goes on another date, because there’s something they’d like to try out together. Maybe the relationship goes nowhere after three or four dates. That’s just like an Asset.

An Asset has to figure out who has approached you, and why. It’s sort of a courtesy to agree to the first meeting, because somebody has gone to a great deal of trouble to learn who you are, and understand your projects. That’s more difficult than it looks, because everything’s done on the Q.T. There are many obstacles that would have to be overcome, in order to collect that information. So it’s important to find out why a stranger made the effort.

All of that explains how I came to meet Bassem Youssef, aka “Adam” on the night of June 23, 2003, in a gorgeous five star hotel suite overlooking Baltimore Harbor.[281]

The Harbor had some historical significance, I noted gleefully to myself that hot summer night. Francis Scott Key wrote the “Star Spangled Banner,” while imprisoned on a British flagship during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812. Watching the guns blaze off British war ships throughout that unhappy night in Baltimore Harbor, Key wrote a beautiful poem that would become America’s national anthem, anxiously awaiting the morning to discover whether our young nation had prevailed in defending our independence against British forces. That evening I found the coincidence rather poetic, since my conversation with Youssef focused on how to guarantee the rights of fledgling democracy in Iraq, and whether a true democracy could be established at all.

Little did I imagine that I was conversing with a British agent-provocateur that night! And one sent on behalf of British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock to stop American citizens from championing democracy and self determination for other peoples!

I want an apology from the Queen!

For indeed, our conversation that night revolved around how to achieve genuine, meaningful democratic reforms and protecting human rights in Iraq. Thanks to FBI body wires worn by Youssef, there’s no denying that’s exactly what we discussed.[282]

Lindauer: “We would have a legal challenge in international court—

Youseff: “Hmph hmph.”

Lindauer: “that the Iraqi people have a God-given right— we call it an inalienable right—to choose their own Government and… that it would be a violation of International law for anything to impose a Government on the Iraqi people from outside. We would go to the International Court and file an appeal demanding that the Court enforce the rights of the Iraqi people to form political parties of their own choice and to hold elections, so the United States and Britain cannot, under international law, interfere with the domestic process of the Iraqi Government. That’s the point.”

Youseff: “Now—”

Lindauer: “I don’t know where you’re coming from. Even if you don’t agree with it entirely, just think about it. Because the next part of it is very important. We would sue. We would say one, we demand that the Court enforce the natural rights of the Iraqi people to choose their own Government and to form political parties, and do whatever the hell they want. No outside force can choose a Government for the Iraqi people. There can be no ‘puppet government’ of Iraq.”

Youseff: “Hmph hmph.”

Lindauer: “And secondly, only a Government chosen by the Iraqi people can spend Iraqi oil money. Only a Government chosen…”

Youseff: “That sounds reasonable.”

Lindauer: “—by the Iraqi people. Okay.”

Youseff: “Now, where are you and Muthanna and the lawyer in this process right now?”

Lindauer: “Muthanna is in Baghdad. He’s supposed to be identifying an attorney, or a team. Because it has to have an Iraqi face. It has to be the Iraqi people asserting their own integrity.”

Youseff: “Yes.”

Lindauer: “We have to help them, but we have to get out of the way, too. You know what I mean? We can’t do this for them. We need to empower them, and provide financial resources. In order to succeed, there has to be something. Now it doesn’t have to be a lot of money. I mean probably a tragically small amount of money is going to help them enormously.”

Youseff: “Well, for a good cause, I don’t think that there will be a problem.”

Lindauer: “And then there would be an international component that the Iraqis will organize from the inside. They would receive technical assistance in presenting their case to The Hague, filing briefs, doing the international attorney law work.”

Youseff: “Are there guarantees this would work?”

Lindauer: “There are no guarantees in international law.”

Youseff: “Of course.”

Lindauer: “But you know, the thing is, you have to try… You can’t just let the

United States get away with this. As much as possible, we need to use the precedents of international law that the United States has used for itself.”

Youseff: “Sounds reasonable.”

Youseff: “It seems from what you’re telling me that nothing is really finalized. This is something in the works.”

Lindauer: “It can only be finalized if the Iraqi people want it to be finalized.”

Youseff: “Well, of course.”

Several months later I would get arrested for what I told Youseff that night, and charged with “Organizing Resistance to the United States.”[283] And so, vigorously I dispute the notion that Pro-War Republicans supported democracy at the start of the Occupation. Ultimately, activists around the world compelled leaders in Washington and London to accept true democratic reforms—But only because we dragged them to it. In truth, they bitterly resented us for forcing it on them.

There would only be two meetings between me and Youseff— the first on June 23, almost three weeks after I contacted British Ambassador Greenstock. The second took place on July 17.

My birthday. I thought that was a nice touch.[284]

Close to the end of our first meeting, Youseff began to drop hints of his knowledge about my intelligence work on Lockerbie. However it was only at the start of our second (and final) meeting on July 17 that Youseff revealed he’d been thoroughly debriefed on my intelligence background.

The whole tone of the conversation changed immediately.[285]

Youseff: “I must tell you they like you so far very much.”

Lindauer: “Oh good.”

Youseff: “I have to ask you very seriously…”

Lindauer: “Okay.”

Youseff: “Are you ready to work with us?”

Lindauer: “Oh yes! Yes. That’s why I brought all of this. So you could see my

commitment is real.”

Youseff: “Excellent, excellent. And so far, we are very happy that ah, you are coming over to our side. That’s why I’ve asked you a very straight, very honest question.”

[A note to readers: This was an inside spook approach. Honest and straightforward does not begin to describe it. Quite the contrary, our conversation was loaded with double-entendres. It helps to remember that this is a perverse game with lots of diagonal cuts. However, this was my playground. I knew my way around the yard.]

Youseff and I had exchanged pleasantries for about five minutes in our second meeting, when he played a crucial card on the table:

Youseff: “We must know when you began your relationship with the ah, the Arab Intelligence agencies. It’s very important, because like I said, the people who are now over there, the Americans are talking to them. We don’t know who’s who.”

Hold the fort! Real people don’t talk like that! Right there Yousseff “aka” Adam outed himself as a spook. He could never go back on that. Everything changed in that moment. Youssef continued to ask for the names of my Iraqi contacts. And immediately I began to look for a chance to call him out as American Intelligence. It was important to put him on notice that I’d broken his cover. Only then could we have a real conversation.

So how would I do that? For one thing, from our first bright eyed morning walk in Takoma Park, Yousseff told me he knows Muthanna. That gave me a wedge. Our conversation was rolling fast now. For all the sweet talk at the beginning, it looked to me like a hostile approach. Unless proven otherwise, this was not an intelligence faction that I would ever support. Later, my friend, Parke Godfrey, would testify in Court that I told him about the meeting, and laid 50-50 odds that Youseff was an FBI agent.[286]

And yet— what if “Adam,” as he called himself was part of a State Department faction that recognized mistakes in the Occupation, and hoped to accomplish something positive to undo that damage? What if his team turned out to be hopeful, instead?

Though it seems unlikely to outsiders, frequently that’s what Intelligence factions have to do. Policymakers make a mess. Spooks go in to clean it up. I’d done that myself on several occasions, involving Libya and Iraq. If that was the case, I might want in.

So as this conversation rolled on, I kept juggling. How hard did I want to slam the door? How could I keep that door open a crack? And yet I had to be clear that I was drawing a line. I could not support the Occupation as it existed. If my commentary appears harsh, it should be understood that Yousseff’s group required candor, whoever they were, before they put me, an Anti-War activist, on the ground in a war zone, in Iraq of all places.

They needed to know my politics. And I needed to tell them. Neither one of us could compromise in such a situation. Brutal honesty mattered.

So how could I finesse it?

Lindauer: “What if we, uh, put a good list and a bad list? (Laughs)”

Youseff: “Okay.”

Lindauer: “Muthanna has done something that I’m very upset about.”

Youseff: “Hmph hmph.”

Lindauer: “Ah, Muthanna does not know about you.”

Youseff: (Unintelligible mumbling).

Lindauer: “Categorically.” [In other words, Youseff lied about how he learned of my work.]

Youseff: “You have not told anybody, anything about…” [Read that, yeah, I lied, but you haven’t exposed us for approaching you? That would be death to the whole effort, if we tried to do something later in Iraq.]

Lindauer: “Categorically.” [Youseff lied, but I hadn’t told Muthanna, who just returned from Baghdad, that a U.S. agent used his name to approach me.]

Lindauer: “Ah, but it, it shocked me, ah, that Muthanna was over in Iraq, and he was having daily meetings—Daily meetings! with the Occupation forces. He was trying to set up a consulting job with the Occupation forces.”

[That’s what I thought Youseff wanted to explore with me.]

Youseff: “Hmph.”

Lindauer: “He thinks he’s helping the Iraqis.”

Youseff: “This is what he told you?”

Lindauer: “This is what he told me.”

We began to discuss Iraqis I worked with in the past, and whether I could work with them again. The question remained whether I would want to.

Youseff: “And when you went to the Embassy, did you feel comfortable?”

Lindauer: “Oh, I have always had very, very good relations with Iraq.”

Youseff: “Always, from the beginning?”

Lindauer: “Very good relations.”

Lindauer: “Um, there is another man who is absolutely reliable, who it would shock me if he was not reliable. [meaning reliable for Youseff] I would be shocked.”

Youseff: “You said that list, who’s on that list?”

Lindauer: “Ah, Muthanna.”

Youseff: “Okay.”

Lindauer: “I’m sorry to say that. I’m very sorry to say that.”

Youseff: (unintelligible mumbling)

Lindauer: “He can’t even. I mean, Muthanna’s struggling. But the fact that he’s struggling… To me, it’s very clear cut.”

Youseff: “Hmph hmph.”

Lindauer: “There’s no way that I could go over to Iraq, unless I was working, doing it literally at your request.”

Youseff: “Absolutely.”

Lindauer: “I could not.”

Youseff: “And we will talk about that. Okay.”

Lindauer: “Yeah, I could never go to Iraq and pretend that it was acceptable. I couldn’t do it.”

Youseff: “Hmph hmph.”

Lindauer: “I mean, you’d have to be—you’d really have to, I mean, if you asked me to do it undercover…I would do it for you.”

Youseff: “Right.”

Lindauer: “But I would never just…”

Youseff: “Yeah.”

Lindauer: “I couldn’t. I couldn’t rationalize it. I couldn’t justify it.”

Youseff: “So we can be comfortable to say that you would not go unless we asked you to do that?”

Lindauer: “Absolutely, absolutely.”

Poor Muthanna would be horrified to hear himself described as a collaborator. He’s a loyal peace-maker and community builder. He dedicated his life to opposing sanctions and bringing humanitarian relief to the Iraqi people. But I had to get my point across. It was strictly a matter of necessity. I had to make my position crystal clear.

From that point on, our conversation turned to spook talk, and it would be ludicrous to pretend anything else. Until the end of the meeting, Youseff gave mixed signals as to whether his group wanted to improve the Occupation— or not. It frustrated me enormously not to know. By contrast, I underscored my opposition to Occupation policies with every breath.

One more exchange with Youseff illustrates the sinister aspects of the Patriot Act. In our second conversation, Youseff and I discussed my knowledge of Lockerbie, and I mentioned some papers he might like to see.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, to come home from work about a week later to find those papers laid out on my desk, and one of my filing cabinets broken and hanging crooked. In seconds, I recognized somebody had rifled through my home office. And I had no doubt who it was.

Now, I would have needed several hours to locate those papers, for the simple fact that my older documents are buried deep in my files. And I have a good idea where they would be. I suspect it would have taken Youseff several hours to find them, too.

Yet there was my Lockerbie collection, neatly laid out on my desk, next to my open computer screen. And behind it, a broken filing cabinet.

Welcome to the Patriot Act, friends. It’s a brave new world, friends.

That’s what Secret Police do in tyrannical Arab Capitals or Banana Republics in Africa.

There was no cause for a warrant, since I had engaged in no criminal activities. All of my actions supported democratic reforms and human rights in Iraq.

But under the Patriot Act, the government no longer requires legal cause to enter a private home, and conduct a search without the knowledge of the occupant. Federal agents have power to come and go at will, with no obligation to inform a household afterwards. I suspect I interrupted them, because the papers got left behind in the rush to get out my back door. Youseff recognized he had no business in my home, and fled.

Ah, the plot thickens fast. When the break in occurred, I did not know Youseff was an under-cover FBI agent, who had just executed a “warrantless search.” I concluded, quite reasonably, that Youseff was an unstable young man, pushed to the limits of reason by the War. I was frazzled, too. But I’m an unmarried woman. I don’t need unstable men breaking into my house and tearing apart my private office. Can you imagine it?

A few days later I got even more upset when Youseff phoned to ask for the papers left behind in his rush to get out of my house![287] I was floored! He made no apology for entering my house without permission. He just wanted the papers. With some consternation, I agreed to hand them over. Seriously, if he wanted them so badly, he could have them.

That wasn’t all. He asked me to leave the papers in a manila envelope in a children’s park close to my house.[288] Now I had to wonder if he’d been stalking me, perhaps while I walked my dachshunds, since he’d obviously studied the lay out of my neighborhood.

Oh joy! I was convinced that if I refused to deliver those papers, he would break into my house a second time, and take them. I had no idea what else he might do, given his apparently agitated state. I had no desire to find out.

So I did what he asked. I left a manila envelope in the park.

That illustrates in graphic detail what abuses the Patriot Act has inspired—and how it confuses ordinary, law abiding citizens who expect federal agents to interact rationally with the public. It should set off alarms in Congress.

First of all, it’s offensive that anyone who campaigns for democracy and human rights should be treated as a criminal. No one’s activism should be judged by federal authorities as a waiver of civil liberties under the Constitution.

When the Patriot Act was passed, Congress insisted “only terrorists” had to fear the highly invasive surveillance rules. Indeed, the Feds strongly implied only international communications would be subject to monitoring.

My experience makes a lie of that promise. The Feds are using the Patriot Act to hunt activists too, even those of us who champion non-violence and democracy.

Ask yourself: What’s going to happen when the Feds come up against a law abiding American who defends her rights under the 2nd Amendment? Somebody’s going to get shot. And speaking from personal experience, I will feel no sympathy on that day when some abusive character like Bassem Youseff gets caught red-handed, stealing papers without a search warrant, and gets a bullet from somebody who has no idea why he’s there. It’s a vulgarity. It’s a gross violation of everything our country stands for. And it’s guaranteed to cause a lot more problems, because the law was so badly written in the first place.

As for me, Youseff was damn lucky that I got home before my housemate, Alyce— an honest, law abiding woman— who happens to have a concealed weapons permit.

Alyce carries a gun in her purse at all times to protect herself from muggers— and home invasion. If she caught Yousseff, aka “Adam” rifling through her underwear drawer, she would have shot him point blank. What if she killed this unidentified male FBI agent with no search warrant? Should she face prosecution? What if he fired back, as a more expert marksman—and killed her inside her own home? Who would be to blame?

I’ll tell you: It would be the members of Congress who approved this wretched law. The Patriot Act was a declaration of war against honest American citizens, in flagrant violation of all Constitutional protections.

Members of Congress who voted for the Patriot Act are traitors to our country.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

About three weeks later, I got another agitated phone call from “Adam,” aka Youseff, saying that some federal agents had interrogated him, and he was scared.[289] I gave him the name of a good attorney, but I couldn’t tell if Youseff was using that ploy to drop me, or if he was really in trouble. He still claimed to have “investors” who might finance my democracy project in Iraq. I had no idea if they would be as explosive and unstable as he evidently was. His behaviour frightened me.

But how could I possibly get in trouble for giving somebody the name of a good attorney? We haven’t reached a point where that’s illegal. (Or have we?)

Against this backdrop, the situation in Iraq was deteriorating rapidly. Somebody urgently needed to reverse the disastrous policies of the Occupation. Iraq was getting ready to blow. And I had a very good understanding what that would mean.

If Youseff hoped to distract me from my projects, he failed miserably. I took my threat of legal action to the United Nations. In a letter faxed to French Ambassador Jean Marc de la Sabliere on July 23, 2003 (also captured by FBI wire tap), I praised the “courageous foresight (of) President Chirac in rejecting” this war.[290]

I wrote: “We intend to prove that the International Courts can achieve justice for less powerful nations against the tyranny of unlawful usurpers…. forcefully and effectively, without necessitating violence.”

“Thwarting the Courts of Law would be the greatest mistake in a military conflict already fraught with bad decisions. If the U.N. tries to prevent the Courts from guaranteeing the protections of international law to all peoples, uniformly and without prejudice, then it would become difficult to argue that violence is not the only avenue to justice. In which case, nations that send soldiers and weapons to Iraq would become primary targets.”

I would get arrested for this, friends. My support for free elections and prison without torture would be categorized as “Organizing Resistance to the U.S. Occupation.”[291]

In the indictment, dear Youseff would pretend to have posed as a Libyan Intelligence Agent.[292] Which astonished me. If one thing was clear, it’s that I believed he was American Intelligence. And there was no third meeting.

The Justice Department might have hoped to hang me in the court of public opinion, but they couldn’t possibly sell that to a Judge and jury. And they knew it.

Shocking, isn’t it?

If you ask now, was it worth it? I would say absolutely yes. If supporting genuine democracy anywhere in the world qualifies as “Organizing Resistance to the United States,” then by God, sign me up! Something has gone terribly wrong in America. It’s time to make a stand right now, and take our country back!

What’s extraordinary is not why I chose to devote my activism to supporting a platform of democracy and human rights in the “New Iraq,” but why the U.S. and British governments attacked me for it. My arrest makes a lie of liberation, doesn’t it?

I can sense you’re puzzled. Surely the U.S. and Britain supported democracy in Iraq, without need for watchdogs like me? Wasn’t that a primary justification for the invasion?

Not originally. Not when you read the fine print. Free elections were not part of the original blueprint for Iraq’s future. Working together, activists inside Iraq and around the world brought the U.S. government to it. We won a critical victory in the end. But it was a people’s victory over politicians and bureaucrats. For all of the media hype afterwards, Washington and London did not appreciate our interference at all.

No, the original U.S. policy announced by Paul Bremer, Tsar of Iraq, on November 15, 2003, declared that the Iraqi People would have no direct vote in choosing their new government.[293]

In the original transition plan, Bremer’s staff at the Coalition Provisional Authority intended to hand pick the new leaders, who would form a transitional government.

Each of Iraq’s 18 provinces would hold a political caucus run by “professionals, experts and tribal leaders.” Participants in the Caucus would be screened by a 15 person “organizing committee,” which would also be hand-picked by the Americans.

The Caucus would choose representatives from its own group to attend a National Convention. The Convention would write a Permanent Constitution and choose candidates for a 250 member transitional assembly.

The assembly would elect a President and cabinet from within its ranks. Through this convoluted process, direct elections by and for the Iraqi people would be delayed for several years.

You could have heard a pin drop when Bremer announced this thinly disguised plan for U.S. autocracy in Iraq. Then there was shouting from all quarters. No! No! No!

So many bad decisions had been foisted on Baghdad by this point. Efforts to deny Iraqis a direct vote for the new government was the last straw. There was open rebellion to the plan.

Ayatollah Sistani emerged from seclusion in Najaf to declare a fatwa—a religious edict—opposing Bremer’s proposal.

“There is no guarantee that the council would create a constitution conforming with the greater interests of the Iraqi people and expressing the national identity, whose basis is Islam, and its noble social values,” Sistani decreed.[294]

That’s what saved democracy in Iraq. A religious edict. An Ayatollah’s fatwa! Democracy resulted from an uprising of the people so powerful that it overturned the autocracy of Washington.

Oh yes, whatever happened to my good friend, Muthanna al Hanooti?

While other Iraqi Exiles floundered trying to establish a base of political support inside Iraq, Muthanna flourished—always a peace maker, never a collaborator. Unlike exiles from London, Tehran and Detroit, Muthanna brought humanitarian relief to the people during the hated sanctions. Now they honored him for it. He emerged as a respected bridge builder, enjoying a remarkable level of support among the common people.

If Muthanna al Hanooti had won a role in the top leadership of the “New Iraq,” the world could have breathed a huge sigh of relief. It would have created a shot at real peace in the region. Muthanna’s that good.

So what did the unpopular Iraqi Exiles do to knock down this outstanding man?

Jealous of his extensive contacts throughout Iraq, former Iraqi Exiles campaigned vigorously for Muthanna al Hanooti’s arrest in the United States. Five years after the fall of Saddam, they finally got their wish. In March, 2008 Muthanna got indicted as an “unregistered Iraqi Agent,” on the ridiculous allegation that he received 2 million barrels of oil from Saddam’s government.[295]

Two million barrels of oil?

I was dumb-struck when I heard this. First I was speechless. Then I laughed uproariously, because it’s so incredibly stupid. I first met Muthanna in 2002, while we both campaigned against war and sanctions.[296] Because of my past, I made it my business to know a great deal about Muthanna’s private life. Chalk it up to occupational hazard. Anyway, those accusations were the kind of baffling nonsense only the Iraqi Exiles could invent. They’re highly imaginative in their scheming. In all my years covering Baghdad, I never got over my sense of amazement for every new fantasy they concocted, with such embellishes and bellicose lies. I was sure they should win prizes for literary fiction.

They say you can judge a man by the strength of his enemies.

If the Iraqi exiles don’t like somebody, you know that person’s got integrity—like Muthanna al Hanooti.

The corollary is that if pro-war factions in Washington led by Vice President Cheney and Senator John McCain oppose your activities, you must be doing something right.

I was about to discover that for myself.

CHAPTER 16:

THE CRYING GAME

“I am bound to say what seems right to me,”
responded the Senator.
“But if you say it, I will kill you,” the Emperor warned.”
–Senator Robert Byrd
Floor Statement Opposing Homeland Security Act of 2002
Congressional Record, 11/19/2002

Those few rose petals died quickly in the Iraq summer sun.

Simple things in modern life, like shortages of electricity and food, turned Iraqi frustrations to hatred and rage. The hunt for WMDs bagged nothing, disgracing a key justification for the war. And Americans soon realized the only Al Qaeda forces in Iraq arrived shortly after the fall of Saddam, mocking another rationalization for our misadventure. In no time at all, American soldiers hunkered down behind razor wire and concrete barricades, without adequate body armor, while the War of Ramadan launched a full scale insurgency using suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices made of absolutely anything. Violent resistance swept from the mosques to Sunni strongholds in Fallujah and Mosul, and Shi’ite dominated Najaf and Nasiriyah.

The stagecraft of victory collapsed within months. Liberation doctrine lay battered beneath the rubble, smashed beyond recognition, alongside charred claims of triumph.

It happened so fast.

Americans woke up one morning to find themselves a losing army, a conquered Occupier.

“Vietnam” was on everyone’s lips. Soldiers who expected to serve one tour in Iraq got sent back four times, more badly scarred by post traumatic stress with every deployment.

The country demanded to know why. Americans resent getting tagged as “bad guys” in any conflict. Our soldiers want to be the “good guys.”

In Washington, Congressional leaders got scared. They had shut their ears to hundreds of thousands of voter pleas, in letters and faxes and phone calls and demonstrations that begged Congress to stay out of Iraq, and let U.N. weapons inspectors finish their job. Americans never wanted to sacrifice for this war. Now we had to mortgage our future to sustain the failure of it.

Congress faced bitter recriminations and vicious election fights against a backdrop of the most passionate anti-incumbent sentiments in years.

Iraq and 9/11 were ubiquitous killjoys in the debate. Were Republicans really more qualified to lead the War on Terror? Had they accomplished what they promised? People started to ask some important questions: When did the CIA get its first itch that a terrorist attack could be imminent? There started to be low rumblings that we expected the 9/11 strike. It would take more time, but whisperings of truth would break out, as ever it does.

The Presidential sweepstakes towered frightfully large. If the Democrats could beat the GOP machine, they would take down a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Congress fretted. They whined. And they looked for a scapegoat—anything to avoid taking responsibility for their own mistakes in rushing to War. Iraq cost America all of her prestige abroad, and the critical ability to foist a U.S. agenda on trusting international allies. Not to mention boatloads of cash needed for schools and public works projects and police departments.

It was a great deal to lose, exactly as the Intelligence community warned it would be.

Their own congressional seats would be a great deal to lose, too.

Now that would be truly disastrous! If they had to take responsibility for this war, their political careers would be over! They’d be ruined! Oh my!

But what if someone else could take responsibility for them?

Intelligence Assets, perhaps. Someone like me.

Come again?

That’s right. Assets who put together Pre-War Intelligence reports for the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency. What if we could take the blame instead?

There were very few of us—maybe a dozen, at most.[297] If blame could be shifted to our “faulty intelligence” that guided their decisions before the War, they would be saved!

Say now, that was a plan. Congress and the White House could channel public fury onto the Intelligence community, arguing for the failure of Assets and our handlers. Over and over Congress could rip us apart for lacking aggressive risk-taking and strategic thinking skills—“imaginative risk taking,” a Presidential Commission would accuse later on.[298]

Officially, the White House and Republican attack machine would declare that Assets had performed “incompetently.”

That would have frightening and ominous implications for my future.

It took a Washington heartbeat—which is slow, like a snake— for Republicans and Democrats alike to see that Assets would be the perfect fall guys.

The stakes were so high. I’m sure they expected us to understand.

There’s a time honored tradition on Capitol Hill. When Congress makes a mistake, blame always falls on congressional staff.

As a former staffer myself, I was expected to know this. It’s never a Senator’s or Congress member’s fault that an important speech or constituent meeting got missed. It’s the scheduler or press secretary who screwed up. Republicans are every bit as guilty as the Democrats in this regard. There’s nothing partisan about this trend. It’s the unhappy norm on Capitol Hill.

Unfortunately, playing hooky from responsibility becomes habitual, without consequence.

Cowardice ruled over Capitol Hill

That selfishness, and to a large degree cowardice, explains a lot about why Republicans and Democrats united so quickly to heap scornful epithets on the so-called “incompetence” of the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency before the war.

It was the ultimate Crying Game. Democrats and Republicans both played the role of victims to what they called a massive “intelligence failure.”

In the months ahead, former Rep. Jane Harman, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, swore that Assets bore the blame for failing to develop options to War, or speak up to correct assumptions if our work got misrepresented in the public debate. Why didn’t any of us try to set the record straight?[299]

Rep. Harman concluded that the failure of Assets to take a proactive role in correcting “misinformation” compelled Congress to acquiesce to the White House, instead of resisting the debacle of this war policy. Congress had no options, because Assets created no options.[300]

There was just one serious flaw in that strategy of denial: I had done all of those things. I had even debriefed Congresswoman Harman’s own Chief of Staff about the CIA’s alternative framework for ending the conflict with Iraq. Her senior legislative staff got copies of the Andy Card letters, too.

Therein lay the problem for Congress.

I wasn’t “feeling” their pain quite the way they hoped.

When I established “Citizens for Public Integrity” after 9/11, I chose the relatively conservative moniker because I despised this lack of accountability. I wanted truth with teeth, not a whitewash. I wanted to take this fight to their door, and I would not stop until I knocked it down. Frankly, I was sick to death of Washington doing business this way.

After the Invasion of Iraq, in my watch dog role, I continued to distribute papers on Capitol Hill, decrying human rights abuses in the “New Iraq.” I championed the rights of detainees to have legal counsel to protest their arrests by U.S. soldiers in the dead of night. I insisted on their rights not to be attacked by dogs or sexually degraded.[301] I’d already heard horrors about Abu Ghraib by August or September, 2003—months before the scandal broke. It was right below the surface.

Finally, I campaigned hard for Iraq’s right to form political parties and map a political future without relying on Iraqi exiles, who violently squashed political opposition.[302] The “New Iraq” had to be borne from inside, not imposed from outside.

At home, I made no secret that I despised Republicans particularly for lying about our advance knowledge of 9/11, and boasting of their “outstanding leadership performance” on matters of counter-terrorism and national security. That was political fraud, from where I sat.

I scorned suggestions that 9/11 resulted from a lack of mid-level intra-agency cooperation. I whispered through the Washington gossip mill that Republican appointees at the top of the Justice Department had refused requests for multi-agency planning to block the 9/11 attack. Cabinet-level authorization was required for cooperation to occur. Lower level people— read that, non political appointees, like me— recognized that cooperation was vital. Unhappily, we lacked authority to require it to happen. But we certainly raised the alarms. That’s why my CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz, urged me to approach Andy Card at his home in Arlington, Virginia in mid-August, 2001. We wanted to bypass that political constipation at the Justice Department.

Based on threats I delivered to Iraqi diplomats myself from April and May, 2001 onwards, there’s no question that top White House officials had analyzed the 9/11 scenario and seized on it as a rationalization for war with Baghdad. The intelligence community correctly anticipated the strike in all specific details. My own handlers urgently tried to stop it. But that secret agenda to create a war with Iraq was already in motion. Instead of heeding our urgent and proactive warnings, the top echelon of White House policymakers ignored simple counter-measures that would have blocked the terrorists, like alerting NORAD or hoisting a single anti-aircraft gun on top of just one of the Twin Towers. Knowing what was coming, Cabinet officials stood down from their obligations to protect the sovereign territory of the United States, an act of deliberate command negligence. And that’s unforgivable.

There were also serious questions of what happened to all that “black budget” money designated for field-work after 9/11. Almost $75 billion got appropriated by Congress— Yet somehow it got siphoned off from active projects “on the ground” like mine, and diverted to Washington bureaucracy and high-tech gadgetry. There are strong indications that substantial sums of Black Budget money vanished into the private bank accounts and fancy houses of the Beltway Bandits in the CIA’s own back yard.

Where federal dollars for anti-terrorism did not get invested was on Assets like me— who perform the daily work of anti-terrorism — or the recruitment of Agents in the Middle East, like my high ranking friend in Iraq’s Intelligence Service, called the Mukhabarat. That’s the motherlode of counter-terrorism. It would have allowed the U.S. to track who entered Iraq, when, where they stayed, who they met, and their activities.

Our team’s $13 million allotment from the 9/11 investigation should have employed 20 senior FBI Agents in Baghdad, plus a cadre of CIA analysts at Langley Headquarters dedicated to overseeing this Iraqi Agent’s packages. He was that significant. Instead all that taxpayer money got spent on architectural designs for A Single Mega-Mansion in Virginia.

If anti-terrorism policy mattered to Washington beyond the level of propaganda, those problems would fire off alarms all over Capitol Hill. Such a major debacle should demand a Congressional investigation, and an immediate overhaul of “black budget” rules for the oversight of funds. It would demand very serious scrutiny.

And yet Congress has steadfastly refused to examine “black budgets,” or hold federal agencies responsible for financial mis-management. Beltway Bandits are faithful campaign contributors—which sort of implies that “black budget” money gets funneled back to Congress at election time. Those are American tax dollars, friends. That tax money comes from a teacher in North Carolina, a plumber in Ohio, a realtor in Scottsdale, Arizona and a techie geek in Silicon Valley. American taxpayers work hard for that money. There should be accountability.

Who was to blame for all of this?

Indisputably, the Republican Party controlled these federal agencies, for the simple fact that whoever controls the White House controls executive policy and top appointments throughout the executive branch.

This happened on the Republican’s watch. If Democrats had done such a mediocre job managing funds for national security after 9/11, Americans would scream bloody murder against them, too. These are seriously flawed decisions that undercut national security, and continue to threaten us now.

Instead, Republican leaders demagogued 9/11, whipping up the nation’s emotional pain for their own vainglorious ambitions.

Senator John McCain and Vice President Cheney—not the Democrats— played the 9/11 card to incite irrational fears about Saddam’s alleged ties to terrorists. Again and again, top-shelf Republicans paraded on FOX News, making phony demands on Baghdad to ignite public hysteria and ramp up support for War.

On Capitol Hill, I hit back hard—with facts— about our success securing Iraq’s cooperation with U.S. anti-terrorism policy. I called foul.

If Republicans truly believed terrorists were using Iraq as a sanctuary, as they proclaimed on FOX News, an FBI Taskforce on the ground in Baghdad would have provided a strong force of deterrence. In fact, the FBI could have been operating inside Iraq from February, 2001 onwards—nine months before 9/11. Baghdad agreed to this proposal after the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October, 2000.

Yet after inventing a phony problem, Senator McCain rejected a valuable tool to address the challenge at a core level.

Likewise, Senator McCain demanded that the FBI must have access to Mr. Al Anai, the Iraqi diplomat who allegedly met 9/11 mastermind, Mohammad Atta in Prague. Once more officials in Baghdad consented to the interview a few hours after McCain issued his demand. I received confirmations myself from an Iraqi delegation visiting the U.N, and communicated Baghdad’s response to the White House on December 2, 2001.

Ignoring the facts, Senator McCain continued to posture for the media. McCain declared the interview with Al Anai to be of paramount importance to the 9/11 investigation. Then he failed to exert his leadership to guarantee the interview would take place, as agreed. That’s more hard evidence of Republican grandstanding after 9/11. It exposes a gross lack of sincerity on national security. And that’s unforgivable.

Worst by far, the Republican Leadership took no action, indeed refused, to close down the financial pipeline feeding Al Qaeda—which I consider the most dangerous and idiotic government decision of this century. Republicans refused to accept banking and financial transactions, because that treasure came from Iraq— which arguably possessed the most valuable intelligence cache on Al Qaeda cells in the whole world. Nobody on the planet tracked jihadi groups as aggressively as Saddam Hussein. Saddam was obsessive in his paranoia. He made it his business to know all of radical Islam’s secrets and hiding places. And Republican leaders refused to take it from him.

Those finances continue to fund global terrorist activities to this very day. Even worse, they finance Taliban operations against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That $3 billion a year from opium sales is used to attack our own soldiers, and undercut a U.S. victory. It’s the single reason why a rag tag army of Afghan mountain fighters has beaten a coalition of 42 NATO nations in a brutal 10 year War, despite the West’s superior weapons and military training.

With its financial empire intact, Afghanistan’s mountain fighters have the where-withal to fight indefinitely.

And yes, I do fear terrorists will deploy those finances in the next attack on the United States—probably moving to advanced planning stages today.

That next strike on U.S. soil will be bigger and badder than anything before, probably a dirty nuclear device targeting the financial district of New York City. On that day, former White House leaders should be “court-martialed,” and stripped of any honoraria and pensions in retirement. They should be forced to bear responsibility for the harm that negligence causes.

No matter what Republicans in Washington promise, it’s too late to change that outcome.

And let me tell you why.

Saddam’s Curse

From the first threats of War, Iraqi diplomats warned that Washington would be gravely disappointed if the U.S expected to invade Baghdad and capture those financial documents through warfare and occupation.

Diplomats stressed that Washington faced a trade off. If the United States embraced Iraq as a global partner against terrorism, Baghdad would hand over those financial records, and we could achieve all of our greatest objectives in the fight against Al Qaeda together. But the converse was also true. In a War with Iraq, America would lose everything that Baghdad could contribute to the War on Terror. All of those financial documents would be destroyed, the intelligence lost forever.

Baghdad had no intention of allowing the United States to profit from both wars.

That threat posed a serious problem when Republicans raced to claim triumph in the War on Terrorism, clinging to national security to placate voters enraged about U.S. failures in Iraq. Republicans projected their own wishful fantasy of success onto a suspiciously unquestioning media.

In fact, they had failed.

The one thing that could have guaranteed absolute victory in the War on Terrorism— the chance to cut off the financial pipeline for Al Qaeda —no longer existed.

Saddam made a bonfire of those documents once bombs started falling on Baghdad. As of February, 2003, diplomats in New York assured me the documents still existed— but not for much longer. At the very end, Iraqi Ministries worked over time shredding documents. It was an irrevocable setback. Those financial documents had been collected covetously over a decade of U.S. embargo, and held as a valuable chit for ending the sanctions. It would be impossible to amass such a historical record ever again.

Oh yes, Saddam played that card strategically. He swore that America could not receive that intelligence outside of a comprehensive resolution of the overall tensions with his country. And I have no doubt that Saddam kept his word.

And so miraculously, that cash pipeline linking global terrorists from the Middle East and Egypt to the Philippines and Indonesia and Afghanistan survived the 9/11 attack, which should have obliterated it. Documents that would have pinpointed early hiding places, so that supply lines could be cut off—and hundreds of millions of dollars seized—all were sacrificed for the vanity of taking down Saddam.

And so it has gone. Any politician in Washington who claims otherwise would be a liar. He would be committing gross leadership fraud against the people.

For those reasons, I believe that effective immediately the House and Senate Intelligence Committees should be purged of all members, Republicans and Democrats alike, on the grounds that Congress has failed abysmally to provide effective oversight of White House activities. Failed oversight has enabled Republican officials to make claims about their performance that went unfulfilled, to the severe detriment of U.S. and global security.

Ironically, oversight is about the only contribution Congress actually makes to anti-terrorism. They give money, and they watch. That’s it. And for all the grand speeches, they could not exert what little authority they have. It was a fiasco.

Finally, I am dismayed that Republican leaders so callously refused to investigate Iraq’s claims about a Middle Eastern connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing, which destroyed a nursery school, among others, in the Alfred P. Murrah building. I guess toddlers don’t vote. But until their parents assure me it’s OK to stop hunting Timothy McVeigh’s co-conspirators, I don’t think the Justice Department has a right to ignore this sort of intelligence. It would have spotlighted the Inter-Arab origins of Al Qaeda, which coalesced from several different groups. Inaction was stupid and wasteful. It cost us something precious.

Frankly though, it surprises me. On June 17, 2002, I met with senior staff for Senator Nickles of Oklahoma and Rep. JC Watts of Oklahoma to debrief them on Iraq’s claims.[303] Both Nickles and Watts served on the Republican Senate and House Majority Leadership, respectively. Their offices could have launched this investigation on behalf of their own Oklahoma constituents with a single phone call. In fact, I left both offices convinced appropriate actions would be taken immediately.

Low and behold, there was no follow through.

That hurts me on behalf of those Oklahoma families. Their own elected leaders gave them lip service, then took no action to advance their cause.

It wasn’t my failure as an Asset that anybody had to worry about. It was the mediocrity of leadership on Capitol Hill. Their fraud. Their grandstanding to exaggerate their performance. Their self promotion that was empty like a Hollywood movie script once the TV cameras rolled back on the soundstage of FOX News.[304]

In all of this, Republicans carried the most guilt, by an order of magnitude. They created political theater from the War on Terror, playing stridently to the emotions of the people, and turning 9/11 into a spectacle for election campaigning. Unhappily, there was nothing substantial backing up the hoopla. Once you got past the front gates of Guantanamo and the opening title of the Patriot Act, Republican terrorism policy was awfully empty on performance.

It was all trash talk and campaign propaganda. A lot of noise. A lot of bells and whistles. But the actions that would have accomplished something real to shut down terrorism at the field level, much of that was never done.

After a decade of field work, I saw it as a con job to attract voters. I was bitterly astounded by the waste of it.

I’m still angry about that.

Therein lay the problem for Congress.

I was not going along with the program. As a long-time Asset, I wanted Americans to have the facts. I wanted to talk. And any truth telling at all would have made it impossible for Congress to sell its deceptions to the voting public.

That put me on a collision course with Capitol Hill.

Two actions finally tipped the balance against me. In February, 2004, to appease public unhappiness, President Bush was forced to appoint a blue ribbon commission to examine failures in Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence.

Within days, I approached the senior staff of Senators Trent Lott and John McCain, and formally requested to testify in front of the new Commission.[305]

FBI phone taps captured several conversations with Senator Lott’s staff, proving that I identified myself as a U.S Intelligence Asset. I told Senator Lott’s staff that I possessed by far the most extensive knowledge of Pre-War Intelligence as a primary source. I told staff I wanted the new Presidential Commission to hear my story for the public record.

One of those conversations with Senator’s Lott’s staff is documented in the first chapter of this book.

From a work phone, I also called the office of Senator McCain on my lunch hour. On my mother’s side, my great grandmother pioneered Arizona at the turn of the century. I assured McCain’s staff that I’ve got ties from Tucson to Tempe and Chandler, across to Scottsdale and Phoenix and Glendale, all the way up to Flagstaff and Payson and Pinetop in the White Mountain Apache Reservation. My grandfather taught me to fish on Lake Roosevelt.

I had my address book. I read through every zip code to prove that my father, cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles are McCain constituents in Arizona to this day. Above all, I insisted that my own flesh and blood had a right to hear details about my activities as an Asset before the War.

Just to make sure I got my point across, I took a second critical action. I sent a fax to every Congressional office in the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans alike. I admit this was like waving a red flag in front of an unhappy bull. But frankly, they deserved it.

My friends at the FBI captured my flash bulletin, gratis of the Patriot Act:[306]

“There’s a lot of bad information circulating in government circles about Iraq’s pre-war activities. For the sake of historical clarity, I am releasing the following letters that were signed and delivered to Andy Card, Secretary of State Colin Powell and the U.N. Security Council. The letters detail Iraq’s efforts to resume weapons inspections, beginning the month before President Bush’s inauguration and Iraq’s attempts to cooperate with the International War on Terrorism after September 11.”

“Contrary to reports coming out of the White House, they knew very well that Iraq tried for two years to prove it had no Weapons of Mass Destruction. Iraq always behaved like a nation anxious to prove its compliance.”

“The White House also knew that Iraq had invited the FBI to interview human assets in Baghdad for the War on Terrorism, including Mr. Al-Anai and others holding information about Al Qaeda, as well as the Oklahoma City Bombing. Baghdad was convinced this information would be prized by the Intelligence Community. Yet the U.S. refused to conduct those interviews.”

“Unhappily, the Leadership of the United States was more excited by the grandiose disinformation circulated by the Iraqi Exiles than by warnings of the Intelligence Community or Anti-War Protests by American voters.”

“Many of us are gravely concerned that those Iraqi Exiles have so easily manipulated America’s Leadership.”

“But this is NOT, repeat NOT the failure of U.S. Intelligence. It is most definitely the failure of a Leadership that refused to consider any information that did not fit into its agenda—an agenda created wholly to benefit an Exile Community famous for its lies and deceptions. Most tragically, this policy is igniting more attacks on the U.S. and thus damaging U.S. security.”

Now Congress had a serious problem.

The blue ribbon commission on Iraq was supposed to spotlight the failure of the intelligence community. If my information got in front of the public, Americans would discover that some parts of the intelligence community had done a pretty damn good job. We aggressively sought to warn Congress off this War.[307] Not only that, a substantial peace option had been available throughout the public debate, which would have achieved every U.S objective in the conflict without firing a shot, or costing one young American his arm or leg.[308]

Any way you cut the cards, though only a small handful of us qualified as active Assets engaged with Iraq, my team’s actions would have deflected from mistakes by any other source—if politicians on Capitol Hill had been willing to consider peaceful diplomacy as an alternative to military conflict. We’d laid a path out of their troubles.

That truth especially scared the hell out of leaders on Capitol Hill. The existence of a credible peace option couldn’t be allowed into the public debate. Not with the Presidential and Congressional election sweepstakes running neck and neck, amidst skyrocketing anti-incumbent sentiments. I would have to be stopped.

Both Democrats and Republicans alike hoped to double-talk their way out of trouble with voters.

But only one party was dirty enough to point the cross-hairs of its attack guns at Assets involved in anti-terrorism and Pre-War Intelligence.

When I phoned the offices of Senator John McCain and Senator Trent Lott, Republican leaders pinned their sights on me. My own cousin, Andy Card, Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush gave Republicans the green light to do their worst.

No question about it. This decision came from the very top.

CHAPTER 17:

THE PATRIOT ACT

In a time of universal deceit,
telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
–George Orwell

In the parlance of the intelligence community, it’s known as “termination with extreme prejudice.”

“Extreme prejudice” involves the assassination of an intelligence operative, or such physical destruction to body and soul that speech would be rendered impossible or meaningless. It goes far beyond the destruction of an Asset’s credibility or reputation. That’s secondary, a side dish for sadists. The central purpose of “extreme prejudice” is annihilation, purposefully killing an Asset’s physical and spiritual being.

It’s the most severe degree of punishment that gets meted out to those whose actions would irrevocably damage the intelligence community, or otherwise threaten to expose its dirty laundry. Ah, and what’s classified “top secret” if not something the government urgently does not want people to know? Like our advance warning about 9/11. Or Iraq’s cooperation with anti-terrorism. Or the Iraq peace option. And so, finally, “extreme prejudice” gets invoked as a policy of last resort, when Assets pose a significant threat to crooked politicians desperate to escape exposure and blowback for their own schemes gone awry.

When truth becomes treason, when something’s so dirty that somebody powerful will stop at nothing to hide it, that’s when “extreme prejudice” comes into play.

It explains why there’s a sort of urban legend in the intelligence community— that an Asset has no future. Only a gunshot to the head when what you know becomes too inconvenient.

Foreign assets captured by the other side typically get tortured before dying, so as to squeeze out every bit of intelligence they’ve handed over to the Americans. Or so I’ve been told. The bullet at the end becomes almost a symbolic act of mercy. For old times sake. In remembrance of whatever comradeship existed before the betrayal.

Until that moment, the Asset faces maximum pain for payback.

Surely they couldn’t do that to me? I “had people” watching my back all those years. They could vouch for my past— even if my anti-war activities infuriated them in the present. (Otherwise they would be guilty of perjury.) I’d done exactly what I told Hoven and Dr. Fuisz from the very start of our adventure. I opposed any second War with Iraq. I never imagined that my faith in my handlers was naïve— though I’d been warned you can’t trust your friends in the intelligence community any more than you can trust your friends’ enemies.

My CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz, used to say it’s nothing personal. Assets are simply expendable. One side will trade you to the other in a heartbeat.

I just never imagined it would be my heartbeat.

And what code of honor had I violated?

I wanted to proudly represent the voice of dissension on War policy, which got a lot of things right, thank you! In Congressional testimony, I would explain that I’d done exactly what Assets should, building a message platform to sound the alarms about mistakes in assumptions on Capitol Hill. We practiced healthy and vigorous debate in the best tradition of our democracy, which embraces a wrangling over ideas. Oh yes, and I would testify that back-channel diplomacy produced substantial opportunities for conflict resolution. The foresight of this faction had guaranteed Washington controlled the agenda in Baghdad, and maximized advantages for the U.S. in any post-sanctions period. Only pro-war Republicans in Congress and the White House had opted for different policy scenarios.

Those would be the same pro-war Republicans who now sat on the blue ribbon Presidential Commission charged with investigating Pre-War Intelligence, who desperately sought to shift blame for their own judgment failures onto my shoulders, as the Asset. They looked at Assets as easy scapegoats. If there were fewer of us in number, so much the better. There would be fewer of our voices to shout down.

I was a paradox certainly, on a number of levels. But if they hoped to shout me down, I had no intention of obliging. I believe the people have a right to accountability from our leaders. We have the right to confront them over decisions they make as our representatives. So there might be fewer voices, but mine would be loud.

Mine would roar.

For sure I would see them in Hell before I, a life-long peace activist, would take the blame for this catastrophic war that I worked so hard to prevent.

Can you imagine the absurdity of blaming an Asset like me for faulty pre-war intelligence? After all of my urgent (and correct) forecasting about the horrific consequences of this mistake? All those issue papers sent by blast fax and staff emails throughout Capitol Hill and the U.N? Distributed to every Chief of Staff, every Legislative Director, every Press Secretary and Foreign policy assistant in the House and Senate? Democrat and Republican alike?

I shouted from the rooftops!

And now they imagined that I would take the blame?

I’d see them damned first.

Hell and damnation were exactly what Dick Cheney and John McCain had in mind.

As an Asset for many years, I had counted as an investment. However, by this time, I’d paid all my dividends. Now I was a distinct liability.

I had kicked up a hornet’s nest with my request to testify about my activities.

While I waited, Congressional staff were busy getting subpoenas alright. They were racing to issue subpoenas before a grand jury in New York City, seeking my indictment as an “unregistered Iraqi agent.”

It’s almost funny.

The White House and Justice Department frantically crafted a plan to knock me out of the loop and silence me forever.

Whatever it took, they would stop at nothing to bury the truth.

Later, Andy Card would receive high marks for his cooperation with the grand jury in Manhattan, preparing my indictment.[309] There’s just a small problem that somehow he forgot to explain I had worked as a long-time Asset supervised by the CIA and Defense Intelligence. He could hardly plead ignorance. My special history had been explained in progress reports on our back channel talks to resume the weapons inspections. Andy Card was fully knowledgeable that my work in anti-terrorism lasted nine years, starting with my advance warning about the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and encompassed Libya, Lockerbie, Iraq, Egypt, Syria/Hezbollah, Yemen and Malaysia.

Apparently he forgot all that when he addressed the grand jury.[310]

Perhaps it was “stage fright.” The indictment was political theater, after all.

In truth, there had been 11 progress reports on Iraq before the War.[311] Andy Card forgot to mention any of those papers to the grand jury, either. He deliberately concealed his knowledge of my identity and the purpose of our long-term communications, which was entirely legitimate.

In which case, it appears that Andy Card was guilty of perjury before the grand jury, and definitely obstruction of justice.

Ordinary Americans would face prosecution for such a thing. By contrast, Andy Card’s grand jury statement got sealed from view. Despite numerous challenges over the next five years, my attorneys and I were never allowed to examine it —or any of the other grand jury statements. All the while, my federal prosecutor Edward O’Callaghan repeatedly denied in Court before Judge Michael B. Mukasey, and then Judge Loretta Preska, that grand jury testimony had authenticated my role as a U.S. Intelligence Asset.[312] The prosecution claimed total ignorance throughout the proceedings.

If that’s true, it can only mean Andy Card lied.

It was a breathtaking lie, of course. And there’s a big question mark next to O’Callaghan’s reliability. However FBI Special Agent Chmiel, in charge of the investigation, sat silently in court next to O’Callaghan, when he said it.

O’Callaghan’s own statements validate my grievance. Worst of all, knowing that White House officials lied to the grand jury, the U.S. Attorneys Office in the Southern District of New York protected them by blocking access to evidence of their crimes.

In which case, the Justice Department knowingly shielded White House officials in the commission of criminal acts against private citizens

It wasn’t just Iraq, either.

Notoriously, senior officials at the Justice Department benefited directly from the U.S. Attorney’s deceptions, as well. At that moment, the 9/11 Commission was finishing its report,[313] which would bewail the incompetence of the intelligence community for failing to anticipate the attack. The 9/11 Commission would strongly condemn the lack of cooperation at the mid-levels between law enforcement and the intelligence community to stop the hijackings.

Imagine, if at that moment, I went to trial and highly reputable witnesses testified under oath in a federal court of law—1,000 yards from Ground Zero—about my 9/11 warnings and my team’s aggressive requests for inter-agency cooperation at the Justice Department to thwart the attack. The entire premise of the 9/11 Commission report would collapse in embarrassment.[314]

My warnings in August, 2001 smashed ‘plausible deniability’ for Attorney General Ashcroft’s private staff and the Office of Counter-Terrorism. The 9/11 Commission would have been forced to acknowledge its findings were politically constructed to deflect responsibility from the top levels of government.

That would have been a train wreck for Republican leaders.

In all probability, revelations of that nature would have impacted the outcome of elections for President Bush, in his tight race with John Kerry— not to mention House and Senate races all over Capitol Hill. Educated voters would have demanded hard answers to tough questions about the GOP’s performance on national security overall. Attorney General Ashcroft would have faced criticism, too, for misleading Congress about the command failure before 9/11, feeding the popular frenzy to oust incumbents flourishing across the country.

And so a Cover Up was born.

Oh yes, a lot of powerful Republican leaders and lobbyists on Capitol Hill benefited from keeping me silent. Their strategy for damage control was so Machiavellian, however, that it would have done the old Soviet Union proud in the grand old days of Joseph Stalin and the Gulags.

In my wildest imaginings, I could not have conceived what the Feds were cooking up. I guess I wasn’t paranoid enough.

It started early on the morning of March 11, 2004, about a month after my phone calls to Senator McCain’s and Senator Lott’s offices. I awoke to the shock of FBI agents banging on the front door of my house in Takoma Park, Maryland.[315]

I was even more astounded to discover that the FBI had come with handcuffs and a warrant for my arrest. They’d come to take me!

Low and behold, I gained a new distinction in my career as an Asset. And it was every bit as dramatic as my advance warnings about the 1993 World Trade Center attack, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, the 9/11 attack; starting negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial with Libya; and holding preliminary talks to resume weapons inspections with Iraq’s Ambassador to the United Nations.

After Jose Padilla, I was now distinguished as the second non-Arab American to discover the slippery and treacherous legal terrain of the U.S. Patriot Act.

With supreme irony, the indictment categorized me as an “unregistered agent of Iraq,” in “conspiracy with Iraq’s Intelligence Service” for purposes undisclosed.[316] That gave me a legal status pretty close to an Enemy Non-Combatant. You’ve got to admit, that’s pretty amazing for a life-long peace activist! The Patriot Act, which Congress rushed to approve in hysteria after 9/11, was first used to punish an American citizen who spent a life-time opposing all violence in terrorism or war, and who gave advance warning about the 9/11 attack in precision detail, and sought Arab cooperation with the 9/11 investigation.

At first blush, invoking the Patriot Act contradicted its objectives. However, on closer examination, prosecuting political defendants like me leverages the law to its most logical purpose. The act creates a legal framework to interrupt individual questioning of the government in power. The Patriot Act equates terrorism with any civil disobedience that challenges government policy. Both are cast in the category of Sedition. Using that line of reasoning, the Patriot Act applies the same tools to smash political dissention that Congress intended to interrupt the workings of terrorist cells.

That’s the logical end, though, isn’t it?

Free thinking leads to criticism of government policy. Criticism must be treated as a threat to the functioning of the State, and crushed when necessary to protect the elite.

In short, the Patriot Act lays a road to the Gulags. Most Americans don’t understand— yet— that it creates a judicial framework for fascism, and the beginning of all dictatorship in America.

My case demonstrates how “benevolent” such dictatorship can be.

Like Alice falling through the Looking Glass, I had stumbled into a “Brave New World” at the Justice Department, with frightening similarity to the visions of Aldous Huxley and Franz Kafka.

Before it ended, I would discover the Patriot Act has crafted the ideal arsenal for silencing whistleblowers, making it the premiere tool for government cover ups. My legal nightmare would spotlight a number of critical reasons why the Patriot Act should be repealed immediately, in order to safeguard our country and our freedom.

On the morning of my arrest, I did not know that yet.

Inside a tiny holding cage at the federal courthouse in Baltimore, I studied the indictment against me. The cage was approximately 3 ½ X 3 1/2 feet—big enough for a bolted metal desk and stool. My first reading so enraged me that I could have ripped the bars out, like some kind of Super Woman.

I was formally accused me of “acting as an unregistered Iraqi Agent,” on the flimsy grounds that I delivered a letter opposing the war to my second cousin, Andy Card, practicing freedom of speech in my own family circle.

What was in that letter that made Andy’s blood boil? A prescient warning, it turns out. I gave Andy Card a simple history lesson. For thirteen years the U.S. had dropped bombs on Iraq at a constant pace. That bloodshed, plus the extraordinary suffering caused by U.N. sanctions, had stirred a deep abiding hatred for America. In war-time, ordinary Iraqis could lay hands on the source of their misery, and their vengeance would be overwhelming. Thousands upon thousands of jihadis would rise up in Iraq to fight U.S. troops.[317]

My crimes against the State turned out to be simple accuracy: Forecasting the failure of the Occupation with tragic clarity to the Chief of Staff for President George W. Bush. There was nothing hostile or threatening in the letter. I closed with the promise that I “would pray for Andy” to support peace.

That did not matter under the Patriot Act.

Opposition to Republican war policy qualified as treason to the end degree. It rendered me an “Enemy of the State.” End of discussion.

Machiavelli would have been proud. My indictment allowed Republicans to play it both ways. In grand Washington style, I got indicted for telling Republicans the truth about Iraq and 9/11. Then, once I was “legally indisposed—” and safely removed from the debate, members of Congress marched out to complain on CNN and Fox News that Assets like me never spoke up to correct mistakes in the Congressional debate before the War. Our silence duped Congress into racing off the cliff.

Pretty clever, huh?

Something more sinister was obfuscated in the indictment. The treasonous letter in question was actually delivered to two individuals—Andy Card, and also Secretary of State Colin Powell, who lived next door to my CIA handler.[318]

In the shadowy world of the Patriot Act, I was never allowed to know which man— Andy Card or Colin Powell— filed the original complaint against me. Under the Patriot Act, the superior power and social standing of both men afforded them additional rights over mine, such as protection from being exposed as my accusers. They could lie and hide, and I still faced punishment, though I demanded my right to confront them in open Court. That sort of consideration, based on the greater political access of one’s accusers, rings ominously similar to the legal system of China or the former Soviet Union. It’s the prerogative of dictators and their collaborators. It is decidedly prohibited by the Constitution of the United States.

One critical safeguard in our judicial system proves that Secretary Powell definitely gave his copies of the Andy Card letters to the FBI. In legal discovery, my attorneys received photocopies of the manila envelope with Powell’s address and my handwritten notes.[319] So we know that Secretary Powell participated in the FBI witch hunt leading up to my indictment, though my Defense team was never allowed to view his statements to the FBI or grand jury.

Shockingly enough, in five years of indictment, my legal team was never allowed to read a single one of the FBI witness interviews or grand jury statements.

Under the Patriot Act, we had to take the Justice Department’s word for everything.

The grand jury essentially functioned as a “Star Chamber.” That turned out to be the greatest obscenity of all.

Access to legal discovery supporting my Defense was restricted to documents pulled off my computer; transcripts of phone taps; and captured faxes. Ironically, that in itself was a bonanza for my Defense, since the FBI captured 28,000 phone calls; 8,000 emails, and hundreds of faxes, date and time stamped to prove transmission.[320]

We had plenty of evidence to slaughter Republican deceptions on Capitol Hill— but not a single grand jury statement or FBI interview of potential witnesses, who might support my defense.

Ironically, my defense was hardly a burden, despite those handicaps. My identity was easy to verify, thanks to my work on the Lockerbie Trial with Dr. Fuisz. That was the caveat to Andy Card’s alleged perjury before the grand jury. Even if the Prosecutor was correct that Andy Card gave false testimony and created temporary confusion over my role as an Asset—and if the FBI failed to grasp the scope of my relationships to the intelligence community before my arrest— they would have figured it out rapidly afterwards. Once the FBI interviewed Dr. Fuisz and Hoven, they would have quickly recognized their mistake. Within the first two weeks after my arrest, the facts surrounding my identity should have emerged with crystal clarity.

If Dr. Fuisz or Hoven made false statements to the FBI, I would demand that they face prosecution for obstruction of justice today. Ordinary Americans have the right to enjoy protection from false indictment and false imprisonment just like powerful and elite Americans.

Interestingly, Dr. Fuisz and Hoven denied participating in the strike against me, or knowing about it in advance. I’m told they learned about my arrest on CNN and Fox News. Both were allegedly floored the FBI would come after me like this. I’m told they considered it a stupid thing to have done.

For one particular reason, I believe them.

It’s sort of “inside baseball.” Within the intelligence community, it’s considered a big mistake to go after an Asset without first consulting that Asset’s handlers. What is the Asset legitimately doing? What could come back to bite everybody else if it got exposed? In my case, it appears the White House and Justice Department wanted so desperately to silence me that they failed to perform the most elementary due diligence within the agencies, a sort of internal background check.

The FBI did not learn before arresting me, therefore, that Dr. Fuisz and Hoven had made a critical decision at the beginning of our relationship, calculated to protect me in any legal setting.

Since I would be working on counter-terrorism, in direct contact with pariah governments in Tripoli and Baghdad, my handlers decided that I should not be required to sign any non-disclosure agreements.

And I never did. Not once in nine years. In Court, I could disclose everything.

By the time I approached Libya in 1995, there was already a tradition at the Justice Department of legally harassing anyone who disputed the official story of Libya’s guilt in the Lockerbie bombing, as our team intended to do. They’d gone after Lester Coleman,[321] imprisoned as pay back for his book, “Trail of the Octopus,” which exposed the role of heroin trafficking in the Lockerbie conspiracy. Dr Jim Swire, spokesman for British families of the Lockerbie victims, declared: “The gross maltreatment of Coleman by the American authorities appears to fit a pattern of victimizing people who challenge the official story that Libya was solely to blame for Lockerbie.”[322]

Vince Cannistraro, the CIA’s former Chief of Operations and Director of Intelligence Programs for the National Security Council[323] likewise got indicted— and acquitted—as punishment for challenging the official story of Lockerbie.

Clearly this fight carried serious risks. Since our team was part of the same faction that opposed the Lockerbie cover up, too, for my own legal protection, it was agreed that I would retain my rights to total disclosure for all times. If attacked, I would have legal recourse to tell everything in a court of law, as necessary to protect my liberty.

That decision probably saved my life.

It should have stopped the Feds cold from coming after me. If they had known.

Their obvious ignorance suggests Dr. Fuisz and Hoven told the truth that nobody spoke to them before my arrest.

They would have thrown cold water on this thing in a jiffy. Because in fact, if the goal was to silence me, the worst thing you could do would be to shove me into a courtroom with subpoena power. I could conduct my very own oversight investigation live on Court TV. I could whomp everybody. If the White House wanted to silence me, going to Trial would be a very bad way to do it.

That explains why, after the shock of my arrest wore off, I had a great big smile on my face for the rest of the day, waiting for my bail arraignment. They’d handed me a golden opportunity to wallop them all.

By the end of the day, I have no doubt that Andy Card realized it, too. The White House had made a monstrously stupid mistake. They had gotten blinded by visions of vengeance, and the desire to thrash me for criticizing their war policy. They never thought to the next step—my trial, where I would give them a thrashing right back. It was typical of the Republican Party not to think ahead to consequences before taking imprudent actions.

Ironically, it means that while Andy Card probably lied to the grand jury—so the Prosecutor, Edward O’Callaghan insisted throughout my indictment[324]—O’Callaghan himself also lied in Court, when he scorned my defense arguments, filed pro se at one point, that the FBI investigation supported my claims.[325]

Oh we know what witnesses told the FBI. They freely repeated their statements to my own attorneys—Brian Shaughnessy and Ted Lindauer, for the Defense. We know that they fully corroborated my story. And we know that O’Callaghan was guilty of gross prosecutorial misconduct and withholding exculpatory evidence, when he stood up in Court, hand on heart, and denied confirmations of my long-standing relationships with Hoven and Dr. Fuisz.[326][327] O’Callaghan perjured himself in front of Judge Mukasey, who later replaced Alberto Gonzales as U.S. Attorney General.

Appallingly enough, the Patriot Act sanctions this sort of behavior—with its despotic rules on “secret evidence.”

Medieval despots would have adored this law. Friends of Joseph Stalin in the old Soviet Union and Communist Eastern Bloc would have quavered in rapture for the hypocrisy of it. Anti-democracy forces in China and Mynamar must chortle in delight. Tyrants love this stuff, because it’s ideally constructed to smash anti-government activists, and crush truth-tellers who expose government corruption.

Indeed, Stalinists would recognize that its 7,000 pages plagiarize much of the old Soviet Criminal Act of 1926, which established the KGB and Siberian Gulags.

As Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s head of the dreaded secret police said proudly, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”

In “American Lawbreaking,” in Slate in 2007, Tim Wu provides ugly evidence that U.S. Prosecutors are chasing the same scripture—especially U.S Attorneys in the Southern District of New York, who argued for my indictment.

At the federal prosecutor’s office in the Southern District of New York, the staff, over beer and pretzels, used to play a darkly humorous game. Junior and senior prosecutors would sit around, and someone would name a random celebrity — say, Mother Theresa or John Lennon.

It would then be up to the junior prosecutors to figure out a plausible crime for which to indict him or her. The crimes were not usually rape, murder, or other crimes you’d see on Law & Order but rather the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield: Crimes like “false statements” (a felony, up to five years), “obstructing the mails” (five years), or “false pretenses on the high seas” (also five years). The trick and skill lay in finding the more obscure offenses that fit the character of the celebrity and carried the toughest sentences. The result, however, was inevitable: Prison time.

I was a premium catch in this macabre game. Think about it. With the CIA’s Chief Intelligence Asset on Iraq out of the way, Congress and the White House had free reign to rewrite the history books on Iraq and 9/11. They could exaggerate their performance on national security to their heart’s content.

And that’s exactly what they did.

In the holding cage at the Baltimore courthouse, I saw at once the indictment was loaded with payback, if not criminal actions.

Advocating the use of international law to protect democracy and block human rights violations was decried as “Organizing Resistance to American forces,” under the Patriot Act. Apparently it’s now a crime to hold Washington responsible for its actions, or apply the Geneva Conventions of War to U.S. soldiers.

I could not be prouder. The accusation itself trumpets the cynicism of the Republican age, launching international campaigns to promote democracy throughout the Middle East and Asia, while criminalizing support for democracy at home.

And yes, with “extreme prejudice” in play, clearly some factions of the intelligence community (but not all) seized the chance to punish me for not going along with the official story of Libya’s guilt on Lockerbie.

Like children squabbling on a playground, it sent a zinger to me.

We finally got you, bitch.

Oh yeah? Tell it to the Judge! (I didn’t think so.)

My witnesses don’t have to lie. Yours have to lie. And I will prosecute the hell out of them when they do.

And I wasn’t kidding.

Surprisingly enough, I felt safe. If my indictment was loaded with payback, it was also packed with desperation.

Studying the indictment calmed my nerves. Politically motivated or not, I saw at once that no Prosecutor could risk taking such a case to trial. Nothing in the indictment rose to the level of a misdemeanor, much less a serious crime worth exposing the enormity of leadership fraud on Capitol Hill—all that huffing and puffing about the superiority of Republican leadership on national security.

Those masks would be ripped off in the first minutes of testimony. Their lies would be naked, an Emperor with No Clothes.

My reaction strikes me as entirely reasonable.

Alas, we were wrestling in the mud and the muck of the Patriot Act. This would be the starting point of this legal nonsense.

Nothing would be logical. Nothing would be rational.

Nothing would be Constitutional.

Four years into this drama, my legal debacle would prompt a marvelous headline on an incisive political blog, WelcomebacktoPottersville.com:[328]

“Susan Lindauer, Meet Franz Kafka.”

Hey, you gotta love the feds.

Secret Charges and Secret Evidence

My case shone a klieg light on how the Patriot Act damages essential protections in a courtroom, regardless of the U.S. Constitution.

Courtroom proceedings were scattered with “secret evidence” and “secret testimony.” I lost the right to face my accusers at a public trial or hearing.

Most offensive of all, the indictment contained two “secret charges” that illustrate the real dangers and abuses of the Patriot Act. My attorney and I were given the dates that the two offenses allegedly occurred, one on October 14, 1999, a very specific date almost five years before my indictment, the other “approximately” October, 2001.[329]

Beyond those dates, my attorney and I were not allowed to know what my actions allegedly consisted of, or what laws I might have broken. The Justice Department had no obligation to describe my alleged crimes, even in the most generic language. (For example, on October 14, the defendant entered a liquor store. The defendant robbed the liquor store using a gun. That action constitutes armed robbery.)

I got none of that. The Justice Department invoked the Patriot Act to declare that some unidentified action occurred on October 14, 1999, which violated some unidentified law— That’s all we got to know.

The Justice Department was quick to inform the Court, however, that conviction of either of those “secret charges” would catch me five years in federal prison.

If that was not Kafkaesque enough, the Patriot Act relied on “secret evidence” to justify those “secret charges.” Quite literally, the Prosecution had the right to ask a jury to convict me of “secret charges,” without revealing any evidence whatsoever that the alleged criminal misdeeds even occurred. The Prosecutor had no obligation to provide a shred of evidence that I engaged in the actions, let alone demonstrate why they rose to a level of criminal behavior that deserved prison time. The Patriot Act requires a jury to “take it on faith,” because the Prosecutor says so.

If a Judge so instructed, a jury could be required to ignore the lack evidence in their deliberations. The Judge could simply instruct a jury that the Justice Department regarded the evidence as “sufficient” to constitute a crime, and that would be “sufficient grounds for conviction.[330] I am not making that up!

“Guilt beyond reasonable doubt” got shattered under the Patriot Act. The jury system in the United States got bludgeoned to a pulp

Most ominously, evidence that might exonerate me of the charges could be ruled “secret and classified,” and therefore inadmissible, as well. My attorney and I would be prohibited from knowing of its existence. It remained to be seen whether the Court would allow us to present sensitive information to a jury, if we located it on our own. Evidence seized from my own home, which belonged to me, got blacked out and redacted, sometimes absurdly, too.

For example, one lengthy phone call to United for Peace and Justice in San Francisco was marked “classified” by the Justice Department[331]—though it’s one of America’s largest anti-war groups. Suspiciously, phone conversations with journalists at Fox News in Washington got stamped “classified,” and blocked out, too.

The serious question is why?

Grand jury testimony was “classified” because it involved public officials. The Justice Department barred it from my sight or use in pre-trial proceedings, even though it should have authenticated my claims that I worked as an Asset, and resulted in the immediate dismissal of the major charges in my indictment. I would have been saved. Yet as a defendant, I was prohibited from receiving it or using it. Stacking the deck against me even more, the Patriot Act authorized the Prosecutor to submit papers “in camera” to the Court—for the Judge’s eyes only. My attorney would not be allowed to receive copies of the Prosecutor’s submissions to dispute them. The Justice Department has no obligation to acknowledge that an “in camera” submission has been made.[332]

Along those lines, if big shot Washington politicos like Andy Card or Colin Powell lied to a grand jury to advance a government cover up of 9/11 or Pre-War Intelligence, the Patriot Act has a full arsenal of judicial weapons to protect them from exposure.[333]

Those in power win. Those out of power go to prison.

That’s the Patriot Act. It’s the new American way.

This point must be underscored. No matter if evidence or witness statements tossed out the whole case against me, and might save me from years in prison, under the Patriot Act, my attorney and I would not be entitled to know of its existence, or receive copies of it, or examine it. My own attorney could not argue its merits in front of a jury.

That’s exactly what happened to me.[334]

Oh yes, the proceedings would get very, very scary before the end.

How Secrecy Rules Work

Within the category of “secret evidence,” the law pretends to establish a safeguard by allowing two levels of secrecy.[335]

Under the main category of secrecy, both the attorney and defendant are prohibited from laying eyes on evidence.

In the second sub-section, the defense attorney may petition the government for a security clearance, in order to review some parts of the “secret evidence—” but only what the Prosecutor chooses to reveal. The process of getting the security clearance drags out for six months to a year, typically, while most defendants languish in prison waiting for trial. (In most national security cases, there’s no bail. And because the case involves the Patriot Act, most male defendants get locked up in solitary confinement, even pre-trial. I learned that the hard way. I had to fight tooth and nail to stop from getting stuck in “the hole” myself.)

Needless to say, applying for an attorney’s security clearance costs valuable time for reviewing evidence and planning a rebuttal.

That’s not all. Depending on their backgrounds, different attorneys qualify for different levels of clearances. Activist attorneys with a history of pro bono cases, working for the American Civil Liberties Union or the Center for Constitutional Rights, might qualify for very low security clearances. Previous case-loads might pose a “threat to the State,” if an attorney has made a career supporting socially motivated causes that conflict with current government agendas. As a result, one attorney might have more or less access to secret evidence than another.[336] But a Defendant choosing an attorney would not know the difference until the security review is complete.

By then, you’re close to Trial. It’s too late to change.

Mostly it’s irrelevant, unfortunately. To put that in context, in five years under indictment, I had two separate attorneys with vastly different levels of security clearances. My first public attorney, Sam Talkin, had no experience on cases of this sort. My second outstanding attorney, Brian Shaughnessy, was a former chief federal prosecutor assigned to Judge John Sirica’s court in Washington. In his elite law practice, Shaughnessy regularly handles the highest level domestic and international cases involving national security and U.S. intelligence.

Yet neither Shaughnessy, who is extremely clever and blessed with a top security clearance for much of his career, nor my first public attorney—who was not—could ever determine what those two secret charges contained. Neither attorney ever got to review the “secret evidence” behind those “secret charges.”

And so, lest hope floats and expectations rise, the safeguard for attorney clearance turns out to be largely meaningless and procedural anyway. It’s window dressing.

Even after a security clearance is granted, the attorney does not get to examine the full range of “secret evidence.” It’s the prerogative of the Justice Department to decide what merits disclosure.[337] And a Defense attorney has no way to challenge the security classification, because the Defense has no idea what evidence is still hanging out there in the legal ether.

See the difficulty?

And here’s the fine print—Regardless of access levels, the attorney is strictly prohibited from confiding the nature of “secret evidence” to the Defendant anyway. It’s for the attorney’s eyes and knowledge only. The Defendant cannot see it or know about it, and therefore cannot provide an effective response to it.[338]

An attorney who violates the Patriot Act, by confiding the nature of “secret charges” or “secret evidence” to the Defendant could face court sanctions, or disbarment from the legal profession—even criminal prosecution, under the law

That’s right, under the Patriot Act, an attorney would risk going to jail or losing the right to practice law entirely, if he or she informed the defendant about the nature of secret evidence, even in non-specific terms, for the purpose of building a rebuttal to the charges.

It’s flagrantly unfair. Not surprisingly, most attorneys are afraid to challenge that rule, however, because the cost of testing the law would be too high, even for the most skillful practitioners. They’d risk everything.

Notably, by this rule, the Patriot Act cripples a defendant’s capability to assist in preparing a rebuttal strategy to an unreasonable degree that surely impacts the outcome of the proceedings.

In the strictest interpretation, invoking the Patriot Act renders any defendant “incompetent to assist in his own defense.”

It’s an interesting point, because it has nothing to do with a defendant’s competence to function in daily life or understand courtroom procedures. Legal competence pertains exclusively to a defendant’s capacity to assist an attorney in preparing a defense. And that’s frankly impossible without knowing the charges, or seeing the evidence that would make or break the case.

Ah, the plot thickens.

Speculation on Secret Charges

Wait now! I can hear some of you sputtering! Surely the American people can trust the Justice Department to restrict “secret evidence” and “secret charges” to only the very highest matters of national security. Indeed, such legal matters must be so sensitive as to require the most delicate touch!

Are you ready to stake your freedom on that?

Let me enlighten you.

In five years, my Defense could only speculate about the “secret charges.” But on our end, we certainly could identify my activities during those time frames. We surmised that with regards to October 14, 1999, I got indicted for blocking the Iraqi Government from making financial contributions to George Bush’s Presidential Campaign in 2000.

That’s right. At the urgent instructions of my handlers, I stopped Iraq from making illegal campaign contributions to George Bush— at least through my channels.

Ironic, isn’t it? Saddam Hussein anxiously desired to renew his old friendship with the Bush Family. Iraqi diplomats pushed me very hard for help— something I reported immediately to the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency in October, 1999. Hence the FBI’s knowledge of the exact date of Iraq’s first request.

My Defense Intelligence handler, Paul Hoven, was apoplectic, threatening to go nuclear on Baghdad himself if I failed to stop them. Iraq’s efforts would have been highly embarrassing for Republicans at all levels of the government. For that reason alone, I had been commanded to do everything in my power to stop Baghdad.

Notably, my actions were reported to Andy Card in two letters, dated March 1, 2001 and December 2, 2001.[339] That’s right! The White House got alerted to this conundrum by me! My attorneys speculated that, perhaps, GOP leaders feared Saddam might have succeeded through some other channel. And they didn’t want anybody snooping around, or digging into campaign records to determine which fundraisers might have drawn the illegal money.

If we’re correct, that illustrates graphically how the Patriot Act can be abused to protect political ambitions. Obviously there’s nothing remotely illegal on my end, because I stopped a crime from occurring.

Nevertheless, I got arrested! And secrecy got invoked to protect Republicans from embarrassing revelations that might damage the party apparatus. The welfare of the American people had nothing to do with it. I was gagged by indictment and threatened with five years in prison to stop me from alerting voters—who, let’s be honest, have a right to know who’s buying access to power in Washington.

As for the second charge, my Defense was always in the dark about what occurred “sometime in October, 2001.”[340] However, we speculate that it involved my efforts to collect health statistics from Baghdad on depleted uranium from the first Gulf War.

Depleted uranium has resulted in a spike in Iraqi birth defects and cancer rates from long-term exposure. In Baghdad, health officials say cancer in children is more prevalent than the flu. It’s an epidemic.

A public debate at trial would have raised the profile of those health problems, causing discomfort for the Pentagon. Especially with American soldiers serving three or more tours of duty in Iraq, prolonged exposure to depleted uranium poses serious health risks for them—and their unborn children, too.

There’s the rub. Birth defects rise in male soldiers as well as female soldiers. That would raise expectations about the U.S. military’s financial responsibility for long term health costs, as from Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome.

That’s all it took to categorize “depleted uranium” as a “secret charge,” supported by “secret evidence.” The deception was designed to stop American soldiers and their families from receiving vital health information.

Only by invoking the Patriot Act could the Justice Department claim authority to arrest an American citizen for collecting public health statistics. Only by invoking “secret charges” and “secret evidence” could the Justice Department pretend that such meaningful activities qualified as something sinister and criminal that should be punished by imprisonment.

Look, it’s so terrible, we can’t tell you what it is.

It turns out that it’s only terrible for Pro-War Congress members who want to withhold health benefits from hardworking American soldiers.

And that’s a real crime!

The X-Factor

The wild card or X-Factor in any criminal prosecution on the Patriot Act would be the Judge. The outcome of my case depended how Judge Michael B. Mukasey— later named U.S. Attorney General— decided to apply these Constitutional restrictions.

At the start, his predilections were unknown. Over time I came to see that Judge Mukasey had a razor sharp eye on the bigger picture of my case. I’m convinced he could see that once the hype was stripped away, my actions never rose to the level of criminal activity that justified prosecution.[341] If the Justice Department acknowledged my work as an Asset— and my handlers cleared up a few minor points— the indictment would have collapsed into dust.

Worst by far, the case made a lot of bad law, creating dangerous precedents that could be cited in other cases, affecting other defendants. I believe Judge Mukasey questioned if the mediocrity of evidence justified the potential damage to due process throughout the U.S. Court system. For those reasons, one could not blame Judge Mukasey if he wanted the case out of his courtroom.

I believe that’s critical to understanding his actions.

It was clear that I could never plead guilty to any of these charges. Organizing resistance to the United States? Forget about it. Performing as an Iraqi Agent? Conspiracy with Iraqi Intelligence? Not on your life!

A plea bargain was impossible.

I had to demand a Trial. In which case, Judge Mukasey had to find another way to kill the case, and clear it out of the federal court system.

The question was how? That’s not so easy to do.

And so I forgive him.

The Patriot Act is so dysfunctional that it took one of this nation’s truly preeminent Judges to outmaneuver it.

A lesser Judge could not have done it.

That’s truly frightening, given how it was ultimately done. The actions against me provide the most damning evidence anywhere why this horrific law should be repealed immediately to safeguard the integrity of the judicial process. Our path through this Constitutional mine field would be monstrously evil. And yet, from the Judge’s perspective, it would be the lesser of two evils, compared to applying this atrocious law to court procedure for all defendants.

Aggravating difficulties, a senior attorney would have been capable of fighting on the merits, possibly knocking out parts of the Patriot Act altogether. Unhappily, I had a junior public attorney, who lacked the sophistication to handle such a thorny law.

My ordeal taught me a terrifying lesson why our Constitutional rights must be regarded as sacrosanct for all defendants, and protected at all costs. The Patriot Act bludgeons those rights in the most unthinkable ways. With every blow, I discovered most painfully why those rights are vital to the judicial process.

And so I will give thanks until the day I die for Judge Mukasey’s perspicacity in using the tools available to his office to kill this case. He saved my life and my freedom.

Because what the Justice Department tried to do next was pretty close to attempted murder. This was “extreme prejudice,” after all.

The Justice Department and the Intelligence Community could not allow me to survive. Once the attack swept into play, they had to carry it all the way to its most vicious conclusion. Anything short of total destruction would have left ground to take down Republicans on national security, overall.

On the morning of my arrest, I did not understand that yet. I vowed to go all the way to Trial, come what may.

In an awful sort of way, I regarded this attack as the greatest honor Republicans could pay me. I am intensely proud that I stood out like a thorn for warning Congress of the catastrophe of War, and trying to tell Americans the truth about 9/11. I have never for one day regretted the consequences I paid.

Still, I had no idea that my nightmare under the Patriot Act was just beginning. I was ignorant that all of our most sacred constitutional rights, enshrined by our founding fathers to prohibit political prosecutions, would be lost to me.

I had no idea that the Patriot Act would devour five years of my life.

I would never get my day in court. There would be no trial by jury, according to the Constitutional protections guaranteed to all Americans. By the end, I would come very close to getting destroyed—body, mind and soul.

The powers that control the government had every expectation the abuses I suffered would lead to a lifeless Susan Lindauer, physically and spiritually damaged and discredited beyond repair.

Frighteningly, but for one honest Judge, they would have succeeded.

Come into my nightmare now, and let me show you why.

CHAPTER 18:

THE CASE OF
THE MISSING TRIAL

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs
and blaming it on you—
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
but make allowance for their doubting, too—
If you can wait, and not be tired by waiting
or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies;
Yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise—
“If” by Rudyard Kipling

The Justice Department had mounted a high stakes bluff by indicting me. But I had no intention of backing down. The Republican leadership would need its “big guns,” because I intended to put up one helluva fight. And I intended to win.

I was never afraid of going to Trial. And I never considered pleading guilty. Not for a moment. I had my entire legal strategy mapped out within the first couple of hours after my arrest. I could see lots of mistakes in the indictment, and I quickly identified which witnesses and evidence would be necessary to repudiate the whole lot.

I viewed it as legal harassment. But I also recognized that once a trial exposed the ridiculous nature of the charges, I would win. More importantly, the public would win, because they’d learn some important truths about Iraq, 9/11 and lost opportunities to advance counter-terrorism policy at a substantial level—like collecting financial records on Al Qaeda from Baghdad, in order to close down the cash pipeline feeding terrorism.

The public just didn’t know who I was— yet. That would change radically with witness testimony. A trial would not be boring, for sure. Thanks to my work on Lockerbie, I could swiftly prove my anti-terrorism credentials. Once a jury in New York City understood the scope of my work on the 9/11 investigation, I was convinced they’d be appalled by the proceedings, and vote for acquittal.

Proving my CIA credentials as an Asset was easiest of all. My stellar cast of witnesses included former Congressional staff and journalists, like Ian Ferguson, who interviewed my CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz for the Glasgow Sunday Herald during the Lockerbie Trial.[342] One of Scotland’s finest Solicitors, Edward MacKechnie, who won acquittal for his Libyan client, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, in the Lockerbie Trial, immediately promised to travel at his own expense to testify for me about Dr. Fuisz’s intelligence credentials and our long work relationship.[343][344] MacKechnie’s generous offer to assist my Defense, backed up by emails, was beyond dispute.

I had no worries on that score. Speculation to the contrary would be completely inaccurate— strictly disinformation by the Justice Department.

Another stroke of luck, I could present Dr. Fuisz’s deposition from the Lockerbie Trial, taken in the U.S. District Court of Alexandria, Virginia in January, 2001.[345] The deposition before Judge White established Dr. Fuisz’s role in Middle East anti-terrorism from the 1980s onwards, expounding his direct knowledge of events leading up to the bombing of Pan Am #103—aka Lockerbie. The deposition included a list of 11 names of terrorists who participated in the attack, under double seal, which mapped out the conspiracy showing how all the tentacles combined together, in a sort of paramilitary defense of heroin trafficking out of the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.

The CIA requirements were extraordinary. Sealed inside the United States, the deposition could only be opened by another federal Judge—like Judge Mukasey—or any Judge in Scotland. Translated from government speak, the truth was so devastating the CIA only allowed the deposition to go forward on condition that nobody inside the United States could read it. In all likelihood, my jury could never examine it, either. However, it would be invaluable for advancing Judge Mukasey’s understanding of the extraordinary nature of my activities with Dr. Fuisz. Without question, the Lockerbie deposition simplified my legal strategy enormously.

At Trial, MacKechnie’s testimony, combined with Dr. Fuisz’s deposition, threatened to blow open the Lockerbie case again.[346] That meant serious headaches for the Justice Department, which has tried to clamp down discussion of Libya’s innocence, arguments that are well known in Europe and the Middle East, but poorly understood in the U.S.

As for proving Dr. Fuisz’s ties to Iraq-related issues, that was remarkably simple as well. Dr. Fuisz had testified before Congress in 1992,[347] identifying an American corporation that supplied Baghdad with SCUD mobile missile launchers before the first Gulf War. That testimony established Dr. Fuisz’ expertise on Iraqi military purchases. Armed with a slew of Congressional documents from Rep. Charles Rose’s inquiry, I had more than sufficient proof of Dr. Fuisz’s knowledge of Iraq.[348] It would be an easy matter to establish his bona fides supervising my back-channel efforts to get the U.N. weapons inspectors into Baghdad.

I was in great shape. Very few defendants could hope for so much. Without question, I felt strong enough to shoulder this load.

I just had to practice patience for a few months—until after the November elections, unfortunately. But hey, I was free on $500,000 bond. Notoriety did not frighten me, or I could never have engaged with Libya and Iraq for eight years in the first place. I considered it disgraceful that top Republicans had orchestrated the false arrest of an Asset, as part of a strategy to actively deceive voters about key election issues—9/11, Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence, and above all, Republican performance in the War on Terrorism.

What a fiasco! Anti-terrorism was not the “outstanding success” that Republicans pretended. The truth was flagrantly opposite. However voters would be denied the facts until after the Presidential elections.

When Americans learned that truth—at my trial!— I was convinced they’d be furious. I was keenly aware that the calculated nature of this GOP deception might trigger an impeachment debate in President Bush’s second term of office.

It was transparent that Republicans couldn’t face voters with the truth. So they resorted to the tactics of tyrants, arresting truth tellers, so they could hold onto power. With knowledgeable sources tied to real events out of the way, GOP leaders could salley forth to invent achievements and falsify their score card on national security.

Oh, but my trial would debunk those lies. It would show Republicans are cheaters.

In flights of fantasy, I envisioned Republicans wearing dunces’ hats on CNN, and placards that proclaimed: “I Will Not Lie to Voters About Terrorism Again.”

In the aftermath of Bush’s surprise upset in 2004, and the emergence of Senator John McCain as a powerhouse on the Republican stage in 2008, the question must be asked: Would Bush have won a second term as President if Americans had known the truth about our 9/11 warnings and Peace Options before the War? Would voters have been forgiving? Would failures in the 9/11 investigation have derailed GOP ambitions?

Myself, I seriously doubt Bush could have won.

Inner circle Republicans must have doubted it, too— or they would never have arrested me.

In March 2004, getting through the Pre-Trial phase struck me as more obnoxious and frustrating than anything else. My natural resilience kicked in, and I was determined that I would survive and prevail.

From the opening hours of my arrest, the international media began hammering on my family relationship to Andy Card, Chief of Staff to President Bush.

The White House faced serious blowback. It wasn’t going to bite the Democrats that a former Congressional press secretary in a couple of Democrat offices got jumped as an accused “Iraqi Agent.” It was going to bite the Good Old Boys in the GOP that I delivered 11 progress reports to my second cousin, White House Chief of Staff, detailing Iraq’s agreement to resume the weapons inspections.

Worse for the White House, I’m convinced my old handlers, Dr. Fuisz and possibly Hoven, frantically contacted the top brass at U.S. Intelligence, reminding everybody that no non-disclosure agreement existed to stop me from talking.[349]

I could tell everything. And I would.

Andy Card’s day had to be going from bad to worse.

All of the world’s media crushed into my tiny hamlet of Takoma Park, in the suburbs of Maryland, just a few miles from Capitol Hill. Russian television interviewed shopkeepers and neighbors. Friends caught the story in Taiwan, Malaysia, France, Canada and Great Britain. The global media gleefully proclaimed the same story: Andy Card’s cousin got arrested as an Iraqi Agent. Oh joy!

Even more salacious, some media wrongly reported that I was accused of spying for Iraq. Though untrue, it added to the damage for the White House.

Now then, I’m notoriously tenacious and stubborn in the face of controversy, or I could never have dealt with Libya and Iraq in the first place. The same could not be said for my dear cousin, Andy.

While I was locked in the holding cage at the Baltimore Courthouse, with the global media pounding the White House for sound bites, Andy Card’s “Susan Lindauer problem” mushroomed by the hour. Andy’s cabal must have raced frantically to find a solution. They needed something to knock me off the pedestal of media martyrdom. From those first hours, I’m supremely confident the White House recognized the mistake of going forward to trial. They could see that I would never submit quietly to a guilty plea, as they must have hoped (foolishly). That message was spattered in blood on the jailhouse wall. A trial would be loud and ugly. And they would lose, because I could easily prove that I’m telling the truth. And it’s a good truth.

I was like a tornado that threatened to rip open the Grand Old Party’s circus tents, giving voters everywhere a clear view of the stage props and parlor tricks in the Greatest Show on Earth, known as the “War on Terrorism.”

Andy Card’s cabal needed a strategy to shut me down. And they needed it fast.

At the start, their assault looked so innocuous. It was deceptively simple, in fact.

At the end of a long and tiring day locked in that holding cage, my case finally got in front of federal magistrate, Susan Gauvey at about 4pm. She had the honor of deciding my bail in Baltimore, and approving my extradition to New York City.

The Prosecutor ran forward to huddle in front of the judge. Apparently he had “information.” Breathlessly, he informed Judge Gauvey that a family member had told Pre-Trial Services I threatened suicide several weeks before my arrest. On those grounds, the Justice Department was demanding that I submit to a psychiatric evaluation, as part of my bail conditions. Otherwise, the Justice Department had no objections to my release, since I was not a flight risk and maintained strong ties to the local community, including owning a home.[350]

It was a simple psychological evaluation. That’s how it started.

A wonderful public defender was handling the bail release for me in Baltimore. He scurried back to drop this bombshell!

I was astonished. I had no idea that I was suicidal. I imagined Andy Card slapping some White House colleague on the back! Good job, man! All those democrats are crazy!

Hey, if you’re opposed to George Bush and the Iraq War, you’ve got to have a screw loose, right? It wasn’t Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who made a mistake in Iraq. It was me, the Asset. My incompetence. My lack of risk taking and problem solving.

“Suicidal?” I laughed in his face. “You are kidding, right? There must be two Susan Lindauers in court today, because I promise you they’ve got the wrong lady. I’ve never been suicidal in my life.”

I was so “not suicidal,” that I had told friends many times before my arrest if anything happened to me, they should confidently scorn suggestions of suicide. I was admittedly paranoid that somebody might try to stage my death to look like suicide, given my unpopularity in the intelligence community. But friends understood I would never do such a thing. Life’s a great adventure, even in the worst of times. Even today.

Hearing this preposterous suggestion, I demanded that my public attorney march right back to the Judge, and deny the Prosecution’s report as ridiculous, politically motivated nonsense.

“Your story’s running all over the media,” the attorney told me. “The White House is in serious trouble over your arrest. They’re looking for a way out. We’ll deny that you’re suicidal, but really you don’t have a choice. They’re willing to accept bail, if you accept the evaluation. The Judge will see that as very reasonable. Then you can go home.”

I looked at the clock. It was 4 pm. I looked at the rows of journalists crowded into the judge’s hearing room, waiting for the next play.

The White House wanted to make the evening news.

Well, okay. Getting out of that tiny holding cage and sleeping in a proper bed that night sounded like a fair trade to me. Doesn’t that argue for my sanity? The evaluation would take an hour. They promised it would be completed that evening. Afterwards, I would spend the night at a half-way house, until my father arrived from Phoenix. Then I would be released into his custody. I’d wait at home in Maryland until Trial.

I could go along with that. I had no emotional issues to chat about to a psychologist. I’m not the kind of personality that finds psychology attractive. Quite the opposite, I consider it whining and malingering, a waste of time and energy. As for this preposterous suggestion that I’d been suicidal a few weeks earlier, that showed desperation. The Justice Department was playing dirty. Surely any honest psychologist would debunk the lie. It was just one meeting. I’d tell the guy I had no interest in counseling.

How much trouble could one psych evaluation cause?

A great deal apparently. In retrospect, I should have refused. At that moment, I made a fatal concession, which irrevocably damaged my reputation and the rest of my case.

That evening after my arrest, I just wanted to go home. Having no prior experience with the courts, a psych evaluation appeared trivial and meaningless to me. I thought it best to show the Judge that I was cooperative to get bail, and set a positive precedent for my future proceedings.

If only somebody had warned me, I would have protected myself from some outrageous character assassination that flagrantly contradicts the facts of my life. Over time, I developed a strategy for beating back the corrupt practices of court psychology, but only after some hard lessons, unfortunately.

I remember that night keenly, in living color. I was so exhausted and hungry that I kept falling asleep. The jerk psychiatrist kept banging on the table to wake me up. My eyes kept closing and my head bounced up and down, when he smacked the table. I dug my fingernails into my hands desperately trying to stay awake. He complained to the Court that my “responses wandered.”

Fortunately, my first public defender in Baltimore was terrific. He insisting on postponing the evaluation until the following day, so I could get some food in my stomach and a good night sleep. The day had wiped me out.

Did the wise and perceptive psychiatrist pick up on that? No, the rational attorney did. The shrink doing the evaluation tried to inflict maximum damage, dismissing my adamant denials that I’d been suicidal, and that I had no idea where such a ridiculous allegation came from. He concluded that I was “not aware” of my suicidal impulses, but they must be there somewhere. (Oh that makes a lot of sense! I don’t know that I wish to kill myself. It’s a secret! I mean, give me a break. I was appalled.)

Somebody also told the feds that my brother has bipolar disorder— which is not exactly true. My brother, John, experiences symptoms of ‘seasonal affective disorder,” a.k.a the winter blues. I lacked the heart to tell my brother that he’s worse than bipolar. He’s confident, creative and intellectual, the most virulent threat to psychology out there.

Demonstrating a profound lack of logic, the shrink declared that if my brother suffered bipolar swings, than obviously I must, too. (My brother and I are evidently identical beings.) In fact, there was no sign of bipolar disorder in our interview, since I was practically asleep. My attorney and I expected some measure of honesty in that regard. However, the shrink omitted any reference to my exhaustion in his report. That was my first lesson of the gross dishonesty of court psychology, which invents, falsifies and ignores for its own purposes.

But it was my word against his. I would learn that lesson again, with more devastating results, until I discovered a solution. There are ways to protect yourself from this kind of psychology fraud that make all the difference to the outcome.

By sheer dumb luck, I had done one thing right. I refused to meet the psychiatrist unless my attorney could be present. So my attorney stopped the loony shrink from doing even worst damage. My public defender put the Baltimore psychiatrist on notice that we intended to get a second evaluation from a different source closer to my home, over the weekend if necessary, before I faced Judge Mukasey in New York. Any counseling referral would be performed by the second evaluator. So the first shrink could not grab a contract for himself—which it became obvious he wanted to do. He wanted the business.

That night I learned the hard way that psychology has become the new ambulance chasers in the Courts, defaming defendants as a source of income.

Providing a community service for stressed defendants is no longer the motivation of court-ordered counseling. Psychology has nothing to do with “helping people.” It’s a power trip. Psychologists approach these evaluations as trolling for long-term accounts. They’re out to nab defendants as a business contract, so they can pay the mortgage and make the car payment. Defendants are cash cows, an ATM card to make withdrawals off the state and county budgets. The Feds pay beautifully. The shrink gets a fee and their practice gets a fee. Everybody makes out. As such, cherry picking defendants has become supremely popular at every possible opportunity. It’s all about money.

It’s also highly subjective—not scientific in the least. That explains how the second evaluation two days later by Dr. John S. Kennedy, a psychiatrist at Family Health Services in Hyattsville, Maryland, reached a wholly different set of conclusions.[351]

Notably, Dr. Kennedy told me he’d never faced such intense political pressure to deliver a negative evaluation in his whole career. Apparently, Pre-Trial Services in Baltimore and Greenbelt phoned several times to impress him about my need for a psychiatric intervention. He told me he was shocked by it, that he regarded it as “unprofessional and unethical” to slant an evaluation for political purposes. And he would not do it. He would report only what he saw.

Here’s what Dr. Kennedy submitted to Judge Mukasey:[352]

“Two days ago, Lindauer was indicted on four counts of being an Unregistered Agent of a Foreign Government. There was considerable media interest in the case. (Her) father told authorities that his daughter had recently spoken of suicide. Thus, within hours of the indictment, (Lindauer) was evaluated by Dr. Roskes, a forensic psychiatrist. Dr. Roskes felt she was “hypomanic or manic,” and prescribed olanzapine 5 mg.”

“Lindauer describes herself as a very energetic and creative person. She is outgoing and intense. She becomes engaged in projects and may work late into the night. However, she denies longer periods of sleeplessness, or loss of reality testing. She denies depressed mood or suicidality. She denies the use of alcohol or illicit drugs.”

“Mental Status Exam: Eye contact was fair. Kinetics were activated. Speech was rapid and somewhat pressured. Affect was congruent and full in range. Thought processes were logical, linear and goal directed. Thought content was free of hallucinations, delusions, homicidality, or suicidality. She expressed confidence in an acquittal. Judgment and insight were fair. Cognition was grossly intact.”

Dr. Kennedy discontinued olanzapine, and prescribed Depakote instead, for use if I should become panicked or excessively frightened during my indictment. It was not for daily use, only to calm down if I started to feel overwhelmed. I had no prior arrests. There’s no way to know in advance how you’ll respond to such a threat. I could not anticipate whether I would use the drug or not. You can experience some bad days under indictment, for sure. A defendant must stay calm, in order to focus on preparing a legal strategy. I agreed to have the Depakote with me, in case I needed it. There were some days that I took it. I got one prescription refill (30 tablets) over the next 18 months.

Once they snagged me for the evaluation, however, the psych crowd would not let go. Dr. Kennedy recommended 4 to 12 weeks of counseling,[353] while I sorted out my emotional reaction to the indictment. I considered it tedious, but I could tolerate it for 12 weeks.

By the time I stood in front of Judge Mukasey. Pre-Trial Services and the Prosecutor demanded that I undergo court-ordered counseling right up to trial, as a condition for bail. The phony suicide threat had done its worst.

I was very curious as to how Pre-Trial Services concocted this bizarre suicide threat. Apparently somebody asked my father, who lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, what he knows about my life in Washington, DC. The truthful answer was “not much.” My father volunteered that several weeks prior to my arrest, he mailed me a newspaper advertisement, seeking healthy women to participate in gynecological experimentation of a new drug for ovarian cancer. Since my mother died of ovarian cancer, he thought I might want to participate in medical testing of the new drug.

I was not so altruistic, with regards to loaning my female anatomy to the National Institutes of Health for use by medical researchers. So I tossed the paper in the trash can.

Pre-Trial Services seized on that action: Tossing the crumpled advertisement into the trash constituted a suicide threat, they decided, because my mother died of that form of cancer.

Outrageously enough, that’s how the court-order on forced psychology was imposed.

Given what I would suffer because of the order forcing me to attend psych meetings, I have come to regard the phony suicide threat as defamatory sexual harassment and a degradation of women prisoners. I consider it grossly unprofessional and sexist. Friends have compared my situation to “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood. Indeed, it resonates.

It’s sort of humorous, in a dark and Kafkaesque, because people asked me all the time “why I’m still alive” after dealing with the government in my case.

I told everybody it’s because I refused to die until I got my trial. So I was probably going to live forever.

I mean, suicide? Me? It would never happen. Seriously, you need drugs!

In any event, that explains the twisted path that led from the White House to a court-order forcing me to attend psychology meetings in Maryland. Psychology was a political tool to discredit me.

There’s no question but that I plainly hated the order to attend weekly meetings. Still I obeyed for a year, until the following March, becoming progressively annoyed as no trial date emerged.

Dr. Taddesseh, the Maryland psychologist who saw me at Family Health Services, agreed that the court order was instigated to combat international media attention on my family relationship with White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card.

Ominously, Dr. Taddesseh warned that Pre-Trial Services in Greenbelt phoned repeatedly, asking him to put me on drugs. When he refused, Pre-Trial Services requested that he refer my case back to them, so I could be assigned to another psychology practice. Dr. Taddesseh told me, in his opinion, the government was shopping for somebody to drug me. He considered it grossly unprofessional and corrupt for Pre-Trial Services to interfere with our psych meetings. He regarded it as more evidence of politics trying to guide the application of psychology against me. Thankfully, he resisted.

After the stunt pulled by the first psychiatrist on the night of my arrest, I had no doubt that somebody with less integrity would go along with Pre-Trial Services, in order to keep their business. Court psychology is rife with corruption and fraud. There’s an attitude that if they’re lying and making up stories, it benefits the defendant who somehow will escape punishment, because of a psychologist’s opinion. Aren’t we lucky that they’re willing to manipulate the Court on our behalf! That’s become a bizarre justification for poaching off the courts. And it seems to rationalize their system of dishonesty and corruption.

Even Dr. Taddesseh, who had vastly more integrity than most in the psychology business, was shocked to discover that I was wholly disinterested in anything he had to say. I told him that I had no intention of changing anything about my life. In one year I intended to be exactly the same person as when I first walked into his office.

I took a cook-book to the first meeting, and forced him to listen to recitations of recipes, sans commentary. When he asked if I intended to cook any of the recipes, I assured him I would never do such a thing. I said I considered his insights as useless as a recipe that I would never bake.

Dr. Taddesseh had the good sense to feel embarrassed. At subsequent meetings, he’d bring a copy of the Washington Post, and we’d discuss news articles and current affairs. That’s all I remember about our meetings. In fact, I don’t recall that we discussed anything except the Washington Post and my complaints how psych meetings interfered with my employment, since the bail order stopped me from working full time. I had to take a part-time job, which killed me financially. It was a huge waste of tax dollars.

It was also incredibly tedious. I called it my “babysitting job.” I joked with friends that I had to go “check on Taddesseh once a week to make sure he was okay.” For awhile, to create conversation, I counted how many traffic lights flashed red versus green on the short drive to his office. This gave us something to chat about. He asked once what traffic lights “symbolized” for me. I rolled my eyes, and said that obviously it symbolized him, and the stop-and-go boredom of these road blocks thrown up by the Justice Department to delay us from going to trial.

Another morning, I stared off into space, experiencing serious brain death. Apparently I sighed deeply. “What is it, Ms. Lindauer? What are you thinking?” He leaned forward intensely. “I’m thinking about what kind of ice cream to buy for lunch. I’m thinking if I should stop at Baskin Robbins or go to A & W for a root beer float.”

Dr. Taddesseh sighed. “I can’t help you with that.”

“Of course, not,” I snapped back at him. “Do you honestly think I would consult you on something so important as ice cream!”

After a year of this nonsense, I point blank refused to continue. If the Court wanted to revoke my bail, so be it. I told Taddesseh that he contributed nothing to my life. I accused him of selfishly interfering with my employment, so he could make money off the court. He was happy to see me go.

As fate would have it, our meetings had some unexpected value, however. The 12 months of observation notes on my mental status, submitted by Dr. Taddesseh to Pre-Trial Services, provided a critical reference in my terrible court fight to come.[354]

Here’s what Dr. Taddesseh documented in his monthly reports to Pre-Trial Services:[355] (See Appendix.)

May, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer appears to maintain psychological stability.”

June, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer appears to maintain stability and reports no major psychiatric symptom that may require additional or special attention.”

July, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer reports no mood swing or other psychological problem. She points out that she is not taking any medication. She considers that she is stabilized.”

August, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer expressed concern about her future due to the legal problem. She appears stable and reports no symptom of mood or other psychological problems.”

September, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer reports for therapy as scheduled. She expressed concern and frustration about her legal problems. She shows no unusual sign of mood or anxiety, and she feels comfortable and capable of managing her psychological and emotional challenges without aid of medication.”

October, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer reports for therapy on a regular basis. She reports no symptom of mania or psychosis. She seems stable and focused on her legal problem. At times she gets anxious and worried of fear of going to jail.”

November, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer’s mental exams show no sign or symptom of psychosis or delusion. However, at times she gets tense and excited when talking about her legal ordeal. Yet she seems goal directed, and her judgment is within normal range.”

December, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer reports for scheduled sessions as arranged. She shares her feelings and thoughts in an open manner. She expresses concern about her freedom and her future. She shows no sign of mood disturbances or psychosis and delusions. She seems focused and goal directed.”

January, 2005: “Ms. Lindauer reports for therapy as required. She appears to maintain psychological stability and shows no sign or symptom of mania or psychosis. However, she appears concerned about the outcome of her legal problem.”

At the conclusion of one full year, in March, 2005: “Ms. Lindauer remained concerned about her legal problem. So far she has shown no sign of mania or depression and symptom of any psychosis that might require additional intervention.”

Those session notes provide critical observation of my mental and emotional stability for 12 months after my indictment—in the same time period, as the psychiatric evaluations for the Defense and Prosecution.

According to Family Health Services, there was nothing wrong with my mental status. I was just fine— mentally, psychologically and emotionally.

What’s more, because those observations had been filed with Pre-Trial Services in Greenbelt, Maryland and the Southern District of New York, the Justice Department was fully aware of it, too. I demonstrated no history of mental defects, or any emotional upset of any kind— “no symptoms that might require additional intervention.”

Interestingly, despite my demands for copies of those session notes, Pre-Trial Services in Greenbelt and New York argued for months against releasing them to me. They flat out refused to hand them over. So I had to get sneaky. I pretended that a wonderful lady in the anti-war movement was actually a psychologist who might start meeting me privately. I requested that copies of Dr. Taddesseh’s session notes should be sent to her,[356] explaining that she needed to know the current status of my “mental health,” Otherwise I could never have laid my hands on these documents at all.

Thank God I did! Those observation notes proved most precious indeed.

Dr. Taddesseh and I could not know that in the future, those session reports would provide critical documentation that would save me from the most horrific abuse ever attempted against a U.S. Asset since the Cold War. It would be my only protection from the vicious brutality conceived by the Justice Department. But it would be enough.

For that, I thank Dr. Taddesseh forever. He had ethics and integrity in a court psychology business short on both. He never tried to hold onto my case for profit, and he faithfully documented my mental stability, so the Court order could be lifted. It’s not his fault that Pre-Trial Services in Greenbelt and New York was so corrupt in desiring to protect Republicans in Congress that they abused the psych order, which should have existed only for my benefit, not for any politicians’. There was no justification for forcing me to attend these meetings. But it was Dr. Taddesseh who ended them— over heavy resistance from Pre-Trial Services, which he called “unprofessional and unethical.”

At the time, however, I could not see past my fury at the court’s intrusion into my private life. I considered it a Soviet-style abuse of psychiatry, like what Moscow inflicted on intellectuals and dissidents under the Communists. It was Stalinist, for sure. I regarded forced psych meetings as slanderous to my reputation, for the purpose of diminishing my credibility before trial. I resigned myself to suffer through it. In fact, I had no choice.

But I resolved that when the Justice Department was forced to play its hand, all of those puffed up, empty accusations would crash back down on them. The worst they behaved, the worse it would fall for them.

Never did I contemplate that the Justice Department had discovered a powerful weapon to stop me from going to Trial.

I understood my rights under the Constitution.

I did not understand my lack of rights under the Patriot Act.

And I had no idea that in New York, my public attorney, Sam Talkin, had just been invited to a classified debriefing at the Justice Department to discuss my case.

I was about to get blind-sided in the most horrifying and unimaginable way possible in a modern court of law.

This was “extreme prejudice,” after all.

CHAPTER 19:

SECRET DEBRIEFINGS AND
THE “NEW PSYCHIATRY”

(A LITTLE INTELLIGENCE WAR)

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time
with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
–Thomas Jefferson

Or as Cardinal Richelieu put it more bluntly: “Treason is a matter of dates.”

I was gunning for trial. Unbeknownst to me, my public attorney, Sanford Talkin of Manhattan, had been invited to a “classified debriefing” to discuss my case.

Somewhere in the bowels of the Justice Department, that “secret debriefing” occurred on February 10, 2005.[357] There’s no record of who attended, or what intelligence agencies were represented. I was completely in the dark that it occurred, though that meeting would have profound and grave consequences for my legal rights and freedom. Only four years later, when Talkin finally turned over his copies of my legal discovery to the private attorney who replaced him, the esteemed and honorable Brian Shaughnessy, did we learn about it. In typical style, Talkin forwarded the legal discovery one week after the case got dismissed[358]— and 16 months after Shaughnessy officially took over. That speaks volumes in itself. It was grossly unethical, but par for the course. Talkin refused to cooperate on any matter of my defense.

Amidst thousands of pages of legal documents and wire taps, Shaughnessy and I discovered a “Non-Disclosure Agreement for a Classified Debriefing,” signed by Talkin.[359] The agreement acknowledged that information contained in the briefing justified a security clearance. It expressly prohibited Talkin from disclosing whatever transpired during the debriefing to anyone, including me, or any subsequent attorney, without written consent from the Justice Department.

Welcome to the New America.

I’d just been stung by the Patriot Act, with its rules of “secret evidence,” and its extraordinary authority to force attorneys to withhold vital communications and “classified evidence” from defendants or other attorneys involved in the case.

The non- disclosure agreement for the secret debriefing was handled by the Department of Justice, Compliance Review and Litigation Security Group, Security and Emergency Planning Staff.

The two page document reads in part:

“I hereby accept the obligations contained in this Agreement in consideration of my being granted access to classified information…. marked or unmarked….including oral communications.”

“I hereby acknowledge that I have received a security indoctrination concerning the nature and protection of classified information, including the procedures to be followed in ascertaining whether other persons to whom I contemplate disclosing this information have been approved for access to it.”

“I will never divulge classified information to anyone unless… (b) I have prior written notice of authorization from the United States Government Department or agency responsible for the classification of the information.”

It was signed by Sam Talkin on February 10, 2005. (See Appendix.)

The pages are in black and white. So the fact that a “classified debriefing” occurred in Washington or New York cannot be disputed. Since I was never told about the meeting, though I had an urgent right to know, it appears the fact of the debriefing itself was regarded as “classified,” too.

Predictably, the secret meeting had nefarious ambitions. Up to that point, Talkin had promised to file a “government defense,” arguing I had authorization to deal with Iraq because of my Asset status. As of early February, Talkin also promised to travel to Scotland for a face interview with Scottish solicitor, Edward MacKechnie from the Lockerbie Trial, who could verify the CIA credentials of Dr. Fuisz. In Scotland, Talkin also could read Dr. Fuisz’s deposition for the Lockerbie case, which is sealed in the United States.

Without warning, that “secret debriefing” on February 10, 2005 coincided with a remarkable sea-change in Talkin’s defense strategy.

Abruptly and without my knowledge, external forces determined that I was not going to use a “government defense,” after all.

In fact, I was not going to have a trial.

In flagrant contradiction of the most fundamental protections guaranteed by the Constitution, which I cherish, my right to a trial would be denied over my most bitter objections.

At the start, I had no idea it was happening. My own attorney kept me in total ignorance of this extraordinary development in my case.

After replacing Talkin, Shaughneessy and I still had no idea what he’d done. Talkin never told us how he came to throw my case— though his actions convinced us he had. We could see the proof. And we felt the sting of the consequences. It was damn foolish. When Talkin reconstructed my defense to please the Justice Department, he broke the cardinal rule of warfare: Never let your enemy choose the battleground. You do so at your own peril.

Voila! My winning Defense strategy was gone.

Shaughnessy and I are not helpless by our natures. As defendant, I had copies of the original papers from the FBI after of my arrest. That totaled 28,000 phone taps, 8,000 emails, hundreds of captured faxes, and every computer document that I ever created. However, through subpoenas, we’d picked up crucial supporting evidence, including bank records of Dr. Fuisz’s payments to me[360] in May and October 2001, which demonstrated the strength of our relationship during the critical months of my indictment.

Likewise, Talkin acquired supremely valuable documents from Scottish Solcitors in the Lockerbie Trial, relating to Dr. Fuisz’s CIA credentials and his central role in the 1992 Congressional investigation of a U.S. corporation that supplied SCUD mobile missile launchers to Baghdad before the first Gulf War.[361]

Talkin withheld all of that documentation, until after the case got dismissed.

The Patriot Act injected an extra burden to this dynamic. Under the rules of “secret evidence,” Talkin was barred from informing me whatever transpired in his conversation with the Justice Department, resulting in their collusion.

I’m sure Talkin did not relish my reaction if he had.

I would have blown a gasket. I was fully conscious of my rights, which I refused to relinquish. Relentlessly, I demanded my right to face my accusers at Trial, and challenge the evidence in open court. Trials are never pleasant. However my position was simple, but logical. The Justice Department has no business filing criminal charges against any American citizen, if they’re not prepared to back it up in a court of law. Political prosecutions to attack opponents of government policy should be exposed and fiercely condemned, for the sake of other activists. Political prosecutions must never be tolerated in the United States of America.

Indicting a U.S. Asset for allegedly eating a cheeseburger with a diplomatic source, during a terrorism investigation, smacks of foolishness to begin with. Indicting an American citizen for supporting democratic reforms and human rights in Iraq screams of hypocrisy. The charges against me should have been dismissed immediately, with an apology. However once the Justice Department made those accusations, as the defendant, I had a Constitutional right to prove my actions did not rise to the level of criminal activity. I’m not even the woman who ate the cheeseburgers. As for my anti-war activism, that’s free political speech. That’s something I will fight for.

Unhappily for the White House, a defendant’s right to plead “not guilty” is sacrosanct anywhere in the world. The right to a trial has been recognized by tyrant monarchs since the feudal age. A defendant could get a trial in China, North Korea or Iran. A trial would never be denied because of a “secret debriefing.” (Well, maybe in Mynamar!)

Yet that’s exactly what happened to me.

A Soviet Brand of Psychiatry

Once the deal was cut, the Justice Department required a vehicle, or pathway, for implementing what was now a “secret decision” to deprive my rights to a trial.

About two weeks prior to the classified debriefing, on January 18, 2005 Talkin asked me to attend a psychiatric evaluation by Dr. Sanford Drob, former Director of Psychological Assessment at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.[362]

In April, 2005, Dr. Drob joined the faculty of Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California, where he teaches how to perform psychiatric evaluations for the Courts. At Bellevue Hospital in New York, he was responsible for establishing criteria for psych assessments, and training staff how to conduct evaluations.[363]

My evaluation by Dr. Drob was presented as routine and benign, a method of exploring possible strategies to help our case. At this point, Talkin and Dr. Drob did not advise me that they intended to challenge my competence to stand trial. I would have been appalled if they had. It’s legally absurd, given my background. Instead the interview was portrayed as a non-specific assessment to determine what, if any, psychology angle could be used in my defense. I thought about my chronic fatigue and anxiety after the 9/11 attack. At least that would be honest. Whether it mattered to these court proceedings, I could not say.

The interview with Dr. Drob took place in New York on January 18, and lasted approximately 2 ½ hours before I drove home to Maryland.

To put that in context, psych evaluations typically require 8 to 10 hours of interview time. Our meeting time was far below acceptable standards, except in hospital triage, confronting an individual in crisis, which obviously I was not.

There was a follow up meeting for a Rorschach Ink Blot Test, a couple of weeks later.[364] Dr. Drob arrived late, and that second interview lasted no more than 35 minutes, including greetings and good byes.

There was no other psychological testing, including no MMPI. That’s a personality test from the 1970s, which consists of 500 multiple choice questions, with yes or no answers. It poses such incisive queries as, are you afraid of mice? Are you afraid of thunder or lightning? Did you play with dolls as a child? Do you like to climb trees? Do you like to talk to people? Do you like to read books? It’s loaded with 500 questions that are all equally inane.

In the religion of psychiatry, the MMPI is considered “the Bible” for evaluations. That’s important, because I never took it until after psychiatrists for the Defense and Prosecution both issued their findings.

No, I drove 214 miles from Maryland to Manhattan, and home again, to take a Rorschach Ink Blot Test for 35 minutes. Gracious!

By now I could see that Dr. Drob lacked any understanding of the stress of intelligence operations, which would be necessary to explain my anxiety and performance pressures after 9/11. To show I grieved for it, I would first have to prove it occurred. So this evaluation was premature.

Ironically, any sign of post traumatic stress (PTSD) had vanished from my life by this time. Therefore, PTSD never registered as a “diagnosis,” though I continued to be highly susceptible to it. Fresh traumas or anxiety would provoke it later on, like flare ups. However at this stage, it was non-observable. Interestingly then, the one condition that might have been legitimate never got flagged.

And so, after the Rorschach test, I pointedly informed Talkin and Dr. Drob that I had no intention of using psychiatry in my case. I wanted to stick with a straight “government defense,” proving I worked as a U.S. Asset. I was polite but frank. I had no interest in the evaluation, and honestly, I find psychology itself to be pretty worthless.

Most critically, in advance of our meetings, I signed a waiver for Dr. Taddesseh to submit the 12 months of observation notes to Dr. Drob and my attorney.[365] Those papers documented that on a constant basis, I suffered “no delusions,” “no mood disturbances,” “no psychosis,” “no emotional or mood instability.” Most damning of all, several weeks after Dr. Drob submitted his evaluation, Dr. Taddesseh declared that I “required no further or additional psychiatric intervention.” (See Appendix).

If the session notes had revealed any sort of emotional disturbances or “mental instability,” Dr. Drob would have been entitled to cite it. Instead, he was fully apprised that a year’s worth of weekly psych observations emphasized the absence of “mental health symptoms” of any kind.

What’s more, Dr. Drob was aware that Dr. Taddesseh and I were taking action to end the psych meetings, which I considered a huge waste of time and taxpayer dollars.[366] From Dr. Taddesseh’s perspective, the psych order existed only to protect the Court, if I got overwhelmed by the indictment and tried to harm myself— something I showed no inclination to do. Both of us agreed there was no point in prolonging the agony of boredom for either one of us.

It’s probably of great importance that I complained to Dr. Drob that Pre-Trial Services refused to give me copies of those session notes. Very likely he believed I would never lay eyes on them. Drob had no idea that I had resorted to a sneaky end run to overcome Pre-Trial Service’s objections. I arranged for the psych records to be sent to a fellow anti-war activist in Washington, whom I pretended was a private psychologist, needing to understand my “mental health history,” for possible future meetings.

Through this ruse, I got hold of Dr. Taddesseh’s notes. I felt greatly protected when I saw them. We had a year’s worth of documentation of my sterling mental health. It would be fraud and malpractice to pretend anything else. Wouldn’t you say?

Finally, Dr. Drob could see for himself that no “symptoms” manifested in our conversation. Hence, the 2 ½ hour meeting that ordinarily would last 8 to 10 hours.

Our interview on January 18 was blasé at best. There were no emotional issues to chat about. Dr. Drob scrounged for conversation, and I had no inclination to provide it. Psychology flat out bores me. I consider such whining and malingering to have no place in the courts, except under the most striking circumstances. A defendant had better suffer serious schizophrenia to earn my sympathy. A battered wife or child who strikes back against an abuser would merit my compassion. Otherwise I’d vote to convict. Low IQ doesn’t cut it for me. I don’t want to hear that somebody suffers bi-polar disorder, and therefore won’t accept responsibility for embezzling money, bank robbery, identity theft, or what not. Psychology provides no excuse for criminal behavior, in my opinion.

I think Judges are terribly victimized by the confusion created by psychiatry in the courtroom, for the sake of its own self-importance and grandiosity. Psychiatrists falsify and embellish their testimony. Then they spout nonsense of how their interpretations are “scientific” and “medical,” and must not be questioned. They desperately fear confrontations with participatory witnesses, who have engaged in events and daily life, because it exposes flaws in a psychiatrist’s thinking.

“Reality contact” is not helpful for psychiatry.

Psychiatry’s not helpful to defendants, either. It’s much better to take responsibility for good and bad decisions in our lives. Then each of us has the capacity to make new choices, and develop new habits. Ironically, psychiatry robs us of empowerment. Calling bad decision making a “disease” stops people from making new choices and decisions to repair their lives. They’re designated as throw-aways. Change is a hopeful thing. Rejecting victimization is the first step to self-improvement.

I did not sugar coat my opinions for Dr. Drob. I spoke candidly against using psychiatry in my Defense. I told him I objected to distracting my attorney from vital work to prepare for trial. Drob was fully conscious of my antipathy towards psychology, and my strong desire to prove my innocence, when he left Talkin’s office.

A perceptive psychiatrist would have anticipated that such deeply held beliefs would stay constant and unchanging. I’m a strong personality. I’m not a Defendant who appreciates efforts to manipulate a Judge. That offends me enormously.

As for post traumatic stress, psychiatry might have clarified the impact of chronic fatigue on my life after 9/11, and how exhaustion delayed my understanding of the nuances of White House policy on Iraq. On the other hand, it might not have mattered. After 9/11, Republicans obfuscated their intentions on Iraq. They had a secret agenda that they chose not to share with anyone—certainly not a Peace Asset opposed to sanctions and War engaged in bi-weekly dialogue with diplomats from the Iraqi Embassy.

Psychiatry could contribute no real understanding of that dynamic— except to explain that I was too exhausted to figure it out for myself, without somebody telling me directly. And nobody did.

Once I met Dr. Drob for our first meeting on January 18, I saw that he could offer no insight to my stress after 9/11.

I’m convinced Dr. Drob recognized it, too, which explains why the evaluation was so perfunctory. After the Rorschach ink blot test, he left my attorney’s office straight away, and I headed home to Maryland— a huge waste of driving time.

Psychiatry appeared to be dead on arrival.

Then, on February 10, 2005, the Justice Department hosted that “secret attorney debriefing,” as evidenced by the non-disclosure agreement.[367]

Low and behold, psychiatry hurled its ugly weight onto my case.

Three weeks later, on February 28, 2005, Dr. Drob issued an extraordinary report, declaring me “incompetent to stand trial.”[368]

Welcome to the New Psychiatry!

A declaration of insanity would have required evidence to substantiate the “diagnosis,” and there was none. But incompetence?

Dr. Drob offered the most sparse and perverse logic to justify his findings:[369]

“Ms. Lindauer insists that she does not want to proceed with an insanity defense, and insists that her lawyer follow up leads and witnesses that will demonstrate (1) that she did not receive the alleged moneys, (2) that she was an extremely important intelligence asset working for the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] and CIA. It is Ms. Lindauer’s insistence upon her relationship to CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz that is apparently frustrating counsel’s efforts to provide her with a viable defense.”

“It is not simply Ms. Lindauer’s refusal to go along with counsel’s suggestion of pursuing a psychological defense in this case that renders her incompetent.”

“It is rather Ms. Lindauer’s insistence that counsel pursue witnesses and leads that may make her, by reason of mental illness, incapable of effectively cooperating with counsel in her own defense, and which is apparently actually impeding counsel in preparing a viable defense.”[370]

That was Drob’s “medical diagnosis:” My desire to authenticate the facts of my life through highly credible, independent sources and alibi evidence qualified as a “major psychological impairment” that rendered me “unfit to stand trial.”

Put another way, my desire to prove my innocence qualified as a mental defect.

Now I would say that’s crazy.

It’s also bloody well unconstitutional. You can’t deny somebody a trial on the grounds that she has asked for a trial. That’s legally absurd.

Yet that’s how psychiatry attacked me.

Months later, when I finally received a copy of Drob’s report, I was struck by the undertones of sexism, ignoring the history of women’s contributions to intelligence work, dating back to World War II. The idea of a woman engaging in anti-terrorism was apparently beyond Drob’s “reality consensus.” So he cited his psychiatry credentials as proof that it’s impossible for a woman to perform this work— A ludicrous supposition.

Otherwise, Drob offered no explanation for the disparity with Dr. Taddesseh’s observations that I suffered “no symptoms of mental defect” in the previous twelve months.

Drob had copies of those monthly reports. He ignored all of it.

A year later Judge Mukasey would call a special court meeting, demanding an explanation for that discrepancy.[371] Unhappily, by then, our “learned professor” from Fielding Graduate University had done his worst damage. And it would be savage.

No, “Dr.” Drob’s degree in psychiatry was supposed to suffice for Judge Mukasey to accept his opinion as “scientific fact.” And so, in contradiction to multiple witness statements, a mediocre Rorschach ink blot test, and a short conversation that manifested no emotional upset of any kind, Drob concluded that I was “unable to assist in my Defense.”

Strikingly, I was not allowed to know that Dr. Drob’s evaluation was finished, or what it contained. I was not allowed to review it, or provide corrections and clarifications. For months and months I had no idea that Drob had already told the Court I was “unfit for Trial.” Talkin continued to promise we would go to Trial, as I urgently demanded.

Truly I believe that “secret attorney debriefing” at the Justice Department marked the turning point.

Interestingly enough, Drob’s “diagnosis” of incompetence matched up precisely to complaints by Senator McCain, Republican leaders (and a lot of Democrats) on Capitol Hill at that very moment. Congress was hard at work on CNN and Fox News, bashing Assets for failing to build options to War, or correct faulty assumptions in war planning— all the things I was indicted for doing. According to Congress, Assets provided wrongful assessments throughout the intelligence process. The “incompetence of Assets” had thrust our nation into the abyss.

Dr. Drob’s evaluation lined up perfectly with that Republican message, though surely my actions rebutted their complaints.

All of my bona fides, my hard-won achievements, got cast aside in preference for Dr. Drob’s fanciful inventions about my personality and private life— which were suspiciously non-specific—and unsupported by real life events.

Dr. Drob constructed a whole new reality, contradicting all facts.

And it happened within three weeks of that “classified debriefing” at the Justice Department.

“It was a game play straight out of the Cold War, a strategy that paralleled the psychiatric abuse of writers and intellectuals in the old Soviet Union,” said Brian Shaughnessy, my brilliant Washington attorney who replaced Talkin after Carswell. “That’s what struck me the first time I heard Susan’s story. And that’s why I took her case. Her story reminded me of the “Gulag Archipelago” [by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn] and “Darkness at Noon” [by Arthur Koestler].

Indeed, the similarities to Soviet psychiatry are frightening Westerners are prone to forget that right up to the fall of Communism in 1988, one-third of all Soviet dissidents and intellectuals arrested for “anti- government activities,” got locked up in mental institutions. Soviet psychiatry took up the government’s cause, declaring that opposition to Soviet policy indicated serious mental disease. “Correction” required electro- shock and heavy dosages of psycho-tropic drugs, forcibly administered as treatment for what Moscow hailed as “sluggish schizophrenia.”

Soviet psychiatrists admitted that most intellectuals and dissidents showed no outward symptoms of “mental disease” or behavioral defects.

The Director of the Moscow School of Psychiatry, Professor Andrei Snezhnevsky, who invented the diagnosis for “sluggish schizophrenia,” agreed that most “patients” functioned normally in a social sense. Their “symptoms” typically resembled a “mild neurosis.” The tell- tale indicators were “paranoia and grandiosity.” For example, individuals with paranoid symptoms overvalued the importance of their contributions to society, and believed the Soviet government was persecuting them. They exhibited grandiose ideas for reforming society, including “reform delusions,” the “struggle for the truth,” and “the idolization of perseverance.”

Though these political dissidents functioned normal in every way, Dr. Snezhnevsky insisted that he and his Soviet colleagues were justified in forcibly treating them to stop the progression of their “mental illness,” which would be observable later on, if left untreated.

And so these brave men and women, who embraced freedom from Soviet oppression, were no longer regarded as “activists” or “dissidents.” They were degraded as “patients.”

After several years locked up on a psych ward, tyrannized by political conformity and lobotomized by psychotropic drugs and electro-shock not surprisingly, many Soviet intellectuals could be persuaded by doctors and frightened family members to reconsider their “anti- social” criticism of government policy. Once Soviet dissidents learned to agree with the government, they would be judged “mentally healthy” again.

Of course, a psychiatric record diminishing their credibility would now exist. If that person ever “relapsed” into anti-social behavior criticizing the government, he would be picked up by “concerned” authorities once more.

That’s what the Justice Department planned for me.

It’s shocking for the novice who expects psychiatry to employ some rational methodology and integrity. However, according to the constructs of psychiatry as defined by Dr. Drob and others like him, reality does not depend on external factors and measures. It depends on the interpretation of a psychiatrist.

Factual evidence does not have to be considered at all.

But that would not end the debate. Unhappily for Dr. Drob’s brand of psychiatry, factual evidence and witness testimonials would surface non-stop to repudiate his outrageous allegations.

The horrors of my case would demonstrate beyond any doubt that psychiatry is neither medical, nor scientific. It cannot survive the most basic scrutiny or “reality testing.” On the contrary, it requires the suspension of reality in order to gain credence. It is wide open for corruption.

Once reality comes into play, psychiatry falls apart.

So it happened to Dr. Drob.

My Achilles Heel

Imagine the absurdity of my situation.

A year after my indictment, I was gunning for trial, totally ignorant of my attorney’s collusion with the Justice Department. I was fully innocent of the various methods of corrupting a psychiatric evaluation, or that the easiest way to manipulate the Court, apparently, involves declaring a defendant “unfit to stand trial.”

That could mean anything.

Most ironically of all, since I had no idea what my attorney was up to, I proceeded full steam to help prepare my defense. I was too poor to hire a paralegal. So I rolled up my sleeves, and applied my best efforts where I could. Mostly I wrote background papers on witnesses. I also culled computer records to establish alibis for dates that I was not in New York eating cheese burgers with Iraqi diplomat, Salih Mahmoud. I persevered in ignorance, while Talkin promised that he was still preparing for trial.

And I found the alibis!

I gained such expertise as a paralegal, in fact, that later on, I helped my second attorney, Brian Shaughnessy submit a legal brief to the United States Supreme Court for another client. If my skills are good enough for the filing protocols of the Supreme Court, I’d say they’re good enough for the Southern District of New York any day.

Alas, according to psychiatry, the very fact that I pushed Talkin to “interview witnesses and follow leads” confirmed the diagnosis of my “mental defect,” which rendered me “incompetent to stand trial.”

The only way they could advance this crazy scheme was to keep me ignorant of their actions—which they did for several more months.

I trudged on in the dark. Yet something didn’t feel right. Friends started asking questions about my rights to a speedy trial.

And I began to worry that not a single one of my key witnesses had been interviewed. That gnawed at my gut. You see, I had just one Achilles heel, but I recognized it was a critical flaw in my defense. I had a public attorney. Talkin was over-worked and underpaid for such a complex case. Most worrisome, he lacked any basic understanding of how the intelligence community operates, and showed no inclination to learn.

Aggravating his ignorance, Talkin had bad instincts. Briefly, Talkin hired a criminal investigator in New York who traveled to Washington exactly once— on the night of the 2004 election.[372] A lot of my witnesses are tied to national politics, and probably stayed up late into the night watching election results. Most took the next day off. Talkin’s investigator got frustrated, and left town that afternoon. Then he refused to drive back to Washington. Talkin shrugged it off. That hurt us.

Other simple things got messed up. The wrong phone company got subpoenaed for calling records.[373] Restaurant receipts in New York were date and time stamped. If phone records could prove I was at home in Maryland —not eating cheeseburgers in New York— we could argue for dismissal of the minor charges.

Makes sense, right?

Through my own efforts, I’d struck out four days already. We had five more to go. Then I would be home free! Phone records were logical and simple.

In Talkin’s mind, it didn’t matter which phone company got the subpoena, because they would all possess the same records for all customers in the Washington Metro area. Nine months passed, while he haggled with the wrong phone company,[374] ignoring my urgent pleas to go back to Judge Mukasey for the correct subpoena. Unhappily, by the time Talkin acknowledged his mistake, Starpower had merged with a new phone company, and older calling records got erased. It was a great loss for my defense.

Some of the mistakes were more outrageous.

Talkin subpoenaed the Defense Intelligence Agency for all records in my file. Yet he made no challenge when the agency limited its search to “unclassified” documents” in “a two hour search window.”[375] (See Appendix.)

Like that would do any good!

We know this, because the Defense Intelligence Agency was required to outline the scope of its research in answering the subpoena. So we have hard documentation of their actions. According to their communications with Talkin, all “Top Secret,” “Secret” and “Confidential” documents got excluded from the search.

A “two hour search” of “unclassified documents”—only— was deemed sufficient to pull out all relevant information pertaining to my contributions to anti-terrorism from 1993 until 2003, covering Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria/Hezbollah, Yemen and Malaysia.

That two hour window covered my warning about the 1993 World Trade Center attack; the Lockerbie negotiations with Libya ; the Lockerbie Trial; the bombing of the USS Cole; the Oklahoma City Bombing; my team’s early investigation of Osama bin Laden, right through our team’s 9/11 warnings, and efforts to secure Iraq’s cooperation after 9/11.

I’m not the slightest bit surprised that “unclassified” records turned up nothing from Defense Intelligence. All of my work would have been “Secret” or above. “Unclassified” was probably the only category that would be worthless. It would yield nothing.

And what about this two hour search? Did Defense Intelligence seriously expect to perform a thorough review of all those terrorism cases in a single afternoon?

That was a joke. Realistically, it should have taken a whole legal team a couple of weeks to pull everything for our subpoena.

Yet Talkin registered no protest when Defense Intelligence demurred from a more thorough inspection of its files—or that the subpoena instructions stipulated “verification is unnecessary.”

There was another ugly twist. The Defense Intelligence search was conducted on February 4, 2005—one week prior to the classified debriefing on February 10. That’s the “secret meeting” at the Justice Department that culminated in the “secret agreement” to deny me a trial.

Drob’s declaration of my “incompetence” was filed February 28.

And the dagger drops.

A Few Good Men

Ah, but you see, there’s one critical factor in any Intelligence War: My enemies had power over their actions. They had no power over mine.

I would not play their game. I would run their blockade. That’s what any good Asset does.

Right at that moment, Providence smiled with a true gift for my case. My own extraordinary and beloved uncle, Ted Lindauer.

Ted has a deep care for family. He’s got four children of his own, and six step-children. And he would go through any sort of hell to protect all of them. Actually, they’re upstanding and educated professionals. I got into more trouble than all of them combined. Yet Ted made a special effort to protect me, too.

Blessedly, Thayer “Ted” Lindauer has also practiced commercial and civil law for 40 years. As a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School years ago, he’s got the legal savvy and brilliance in the law to work his way through any crisis situation, which mine was quickly becoming.

I relied on Ted’s tenacity and dedication many times before this nightmare ended. At critical moments, he would appear and take action that would save me. He would go to a great deal of trouble on my behalf, when Talkin could think of nothing to help me.

It’s almost eerie how Ted Lindauer arrived on the scene exactly as my court-appointed attorney cut a deal with the Justice Department. My prosecutor, Edward O’Callaghan, had just demanded that I meet his psychiatrist, Dr. Stuart Kleinman. And I was pushing Talkin to get on the ball interviewing my witnesses— which had not occurred a year after my arrest.

Regarding psychiatry, Ted told me not to worry. No matter what psychiatry hoped to accomplish, I had the right to a hearing. I had the right to call rebuttal witnesses, and submit evidence of my own to the court. That year’s worth of session notes from Dr. Taddesseh in Maryland started to look awfully appealing.

More worrisome, several witnesses voiced alarm that Talkin had snubbed efforts to set up phone interviews.[376] More than once Talkin looked me straight in the eye, and swore that my star witnesses from the Lockerbie Trial never responded to our outreach. Unhappily for him, MacKechnie had copied me on every email.[377] So the bald faced lie got smashed at once. Nevertheless, Talkin insulted a top international criminal attorney willing to travel at his own expense to New York for my trial, possibly waiting several days to testify on my behalf. It was an act of extraordinary generosity, and Sam Talkin threw it back at him.

I could sense his inertia, even if I did not understand what triggered his passivity. But what could be done?

Ted Lindauer jumped on it.[378] (See Affidavit in Appendix). He made a special effort to contact Eddie MacKechnie, and quickly verified the chief elements of my story, including MacKechnie’s validation of Dr. Fuisz’s CIA credentials and our work on the Lockerbie Trial. Once we established those CIA connections— and our work together on anti-terrorism, my defense would be locked in. That was the key requirement.

MacKechnie would be a gem of a witness, priceless for any defendant. As Scottish solicitor, he’d won acquittal for one of the two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing, an extraordinary victory. It helped that Al-Amin Fhaima was innocent, but MacKechnie had an uphill fight to overcome Scottish prejudice. He triumphed spectacularly in a landmark terrorism trial at a special court at Camp Zeist.

And Sam Talkin would not reply to his emails.

Uncle Ted was far more gracious.

After his conversation with MacKechnie, Ted called me, jubilant. “You are totally safe,” he said.

“You’re going to win this thing. You can prove everything you’ve told me.”

Eddie MacKechnie was a powerhouse witness, alright. Ted confessed that he felt greatly relieved by the superiority of my witness line up.[379]

Ted also spoke with Parke Godfrey, who confirmed the authenticity of my 9/11 warning[380] and Paul Hoven, who doubly validated the CIA identity of Dr. Fuisz and our long working relationship. To this point, we know that Hoven told the truth about our work, though the intelligence community urgently wanted my case to go away.[381]

Needless to say, I was very pleased.

That should have been the undoing of psychiatry in my case. Indeed, on the basis of Ted’s interviews, we could have argued for dismissal of the major charges.

Meeting Dr. Kleinman for the first time, I felt remarkably at peace. I could handle a trial, I assured him. I had no intention of pleading guilty. Ted had finished his interviews the week before, and I enjoyed the supreme calm of knowing that I could rise to the standard of proof required by Judge Mukasey. That’s what I told Dr. Kleinman.

Alas, I had not read Dr. Drob’s evaluation. I had no idea Dr. Drob had sabotaged me viciously, attacking the integrity and superior quality of my witnesses. I presumed his evaluation was still in planning stages. So after my conversation with Dr. Kleinman, I made a special effort to alert Dr. Drob to Uncle Ted’s success on my behalf, as well.

By the time I hung up the phone, Dr. Drob was fully aware of the supreme caliber of my Scottish witnesses from the Lockerbie Trial. And he heard my sharp criticism of psychiatry for distracting my attorney, such that family members felt compelled to jump in to help me. I concluded that I was very lucky my uncle had practiced law for 40 years at such a senior level.

Alas, one crucial mistake would cost me everything. I trusted the integrity of psychiatry.

I imagined that once psychiatry received validation of my story, the evaluations would have to acknowledge that truth. If Dr. Drob had questions, he could have spoken with Ted directly, who would vouch for it. If the evaluation was finished, wouldn’t Drob have an ethical obligation to correct mistakes in his conclusions?

Alas, I did not understand the corrupt practices of psychiatry in the courtroom.

Combating Psychiatry in the Courtroom

Learn from my mistakes, people, and remember these few tips. These suggestions might save your freedom and your reputation some day. If only somebody had warned me, I could have protected myself. These simple rules apply to everything from criminal cases to custody battles.

You have a right to protect yourself. There are ways that you can.

Rule Number 1: Never do a psych evaluation on an empty stomach, or if you’re tired. If you’re already at court, your attorney should get you a sandwich before starting. On the night of my arrest, I was so exhausted and hungry that I kept falling asleep. The jerk psychiatrist kept banging on the table to wake me up. Wisely, my attorney insisted on postponing the evaluation until the following day, so I could get some food in my stomach, and a good night sleep. Still the psychiatrist tried to smear me. That cost me.

Rule Number 2: Always take a tape recorder. Never attend any psych evaluation for any reason without a recording device. My case is littered with examples of psychotic shrinks inventing things. They’ll tell you straight up– “It’s my word against yours. Who do you think they’re going to believe, you or me? I am a doctor.”

You won’t believe it until it happens. Then it’s too late to save yourself.

Get a tape recorder. I would pay a terrible price for not recording the first two psych interviews with Dr. Drob and Dr. Kleinman. Once I stopped relying on the professional integrity of psychiatry, my second attorney, Brian Shaughnessy pounded them again and again. They would shift from one falsification to another. We’d expose the nonsense, and they’d move right on to the next lie. And we’d blow them apart again.

Only now, because it was All On Tape, they couldn’t lie so easily any more. Once I got it recorded, their appetite for lies dropped substantially.

Stick to your guns on this one. Any psychiatrist who fears tape recording a conversation is going to burn you in court. If they say no recording, you say no meeting. No Judge is going to stop you from protecting yourself by recording what you’ve said in a conversation.

It’s okay if they want a copy of the tape. But you must forbid the psychiatrist from handing it over to the Prosecution or spousal attorney in a custody case. You have protections under the 5th Amendment. Specify on tape at the start of the interview that you would appeal to the Higher Courts to stop the Prosecution from violating your rights against making forced statements to its surrogates. And you reject any request to share that tape. If your attorney over-rides you, you’ll file a complaint to the Bar Association.

Get that on tape!

Rule Number 3: Demand to see all documents cited in the evaluation. Warn the loony Psychiatrist that you are prepared to challenge their conclusions, even to the point of seeking financial damages in a malpractice lawsuit. Hey, real doctors have insurance! Be warned: Some of my private papers got rewritten by psychiatrists to appear more outlandish. Always double check. If you have supporting evidence, like my 12 months of observation notes from Family Health Services in Maryland, specify that those must go to the Court, too. Put the psychiatrist on notice why it’s important.

Rule Number 4: Never meet a Prosecution psychiatrist outside the presence of your attorney. Their job is to screw you. That’s what they’ve been hired to do. Everything you say ends up with the Prosecution. If there are topics you want to avoid, you have every right to refuse to discuss them. Do not present your defense. By showing the Prosecutor how you intend to rebut the charges, you are providing leads for how to attack your defense in Court. Always invoke your 5th Amendment rights under the Constitution. Unless you’re pleading guilty, refuse to answer questions regarding events tied to your alleged crime. They will try desperately to compel or manipulate you to talk.

You’ve got to be firm, but you must refuse.

If your attorney attends the interview, he can stop a psychotic shrink from asking the same questions twenty times, which they do. It means they don’t like your answer, and they want you to say something different, so they can twist it.

Stay alert. The first answer is the right answer. After you’ve replied to the same question twice, you have a right to politely decline to answer it a third time.

The proper way to handle this is to say, “We’ve already discussed this issue. Do you have any other questions? Or shall we end the interview?”

Rule Number 5: If something’s off topic, don’t discuss it. The simple response is, “this matter has no relevance to the current legal situation. I’m not going to discuss it. If you’re going to pursue that line of questions, then we’re finished with the interview. Are there any other topics, or are you done?”

They’re fishing. Don’t give them anything. Later, they would try to attack my faith in God and my spirituality. Because we never discussed my religious beliefs in our interviews, they had nothing to work with. Mums the word of the day! Don’t offer up anything. Keep your comments to the barest minimum. And remember that you don’t have to answer their questions.

Rule Number 6: Never presume that a psychologist who appears reasonable and benevolent in discussing your life is actually rational in their own thinking. Psychology can attract individuals who are seriously disturbed in their own lives. A court-ordered psych evaluation is a power trip. They think they look important if they’re screwing people. It sounds unbelievable until it happens to you.

That’s why you must get it on tape. Going into an evaluation without some form of recording device could be the greatest mistake of your life.

It could destroy you.

Think I’m paranoid?

What happened next was the most frightening nightmare of my life. It would scare the hell out of anyone.

Clearly I was not paranoid enough.

CHAPTER 20:

INCOMPETENT
TO STAND TRIAL

Franz Kafka, Meet Susan Lindauer
–WelcomebacktoPottersville.com

There was no warning. Just a message that Judge Mukasey wanted to see us in Court the following week. Talkin swore he had no idea why.

I was not stupid. I had not been called to Court in 17 months, since shortly after my arrest as an “Iraqi Agent.” Something was up. My uncle, Ted Lindauer, was concerned too, and immediately promised to fly out from California to come with me.[382] It was inconvenient, for sure. Ted was in the midst of relocating to Illinois to become Chief General Counsel for a corporate client. But both of us sensed something was not right. Not for the last time, Ted dropped everything to help me. Andy Card and the White House might be against me, but I was not without loyal family support.

I’d been pestering Talkin for months about when we could see the psych evaluations. I’d met Dr. Sanford Drob for the defense in January, and Dr. Stuart Kleinman for the prosecution in April.

It was now September. According to Talkin, Dr. Kleinman still had not submitted his evaluation. As for the court meeting, maybe Judge Mukasey was getting anxious about the psych reports, too, he shrugged. Maybe the Court wanted to hold the Prosecution’s feet to the fire, and get things moving.

So did I! I still had no idea if Dr. Drob had updated his evaluation after learning of my uncle’s success. I had explained Ted’s law credentials. I did not offer Ted to Dr. Kleinman. Still, I trusted both psychiatrists to have the integrity to acknowledge my authenticity. The FBI and the Prosecutor had verified my background, too.

Pretending my story lacked independent validation would be perjury at this stage. It would amount to gross prosecutorial misconduct by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and an ugly breach of ethics by Drob and Kleinman, equivalent to professional malpractice.

As for Talkin’s incompetence, I’d have to rely on Dr. Drob’s perceptiveness to read between the lines. Surely an insightful psychiatrist would recognize that calling on family help for something as significant as witness interviews suggested my court-appointed lawyer was under performing. Talkin required extra help. I had recognized my attorney’s need, and answered it effectively.

Score ten points for the defendant!

Unhappily, I was used to Talkin mumbling alibis for why something important had not got done. So when he demurred that he had no idea why Judge Mukasey was calling us to Court, I figured Talkin really had no clue. Surely the Court could see that nothing was moving. I thought it was a good bet Judge Mukasey wanted to force the question.

I expected Mukasey to haul us into court and apply some arm-twisting for a plea bargain. In which case, Ted’s appearance could be critical. If the Prosecutor believed Talkin was the extent of my legal defense, I would get royally screwed. O’Callaghan had to know Talkin was dickering around. It was much better to have a tough attorney like Ted Lindauer on the scene to challenge the merits of the indictment, based on hard facts of alibis and witness corroboration for my story.

That’s what should have happened.

Tragically, I had no concept of how psychiatry has become highly skilled at manipulating the courts. Or how defense attorneys, not functioning to the best of their abilities, are eager to help them do it.

Still, neither Uncle Ted nor I was prepared for what awaited us that September afternoon in the Southern District of New York.[383]

When Ted Lindauer and I arrived together at Talkin’s office in the Wall Street District, Talkin swore a thousand times that Dr. Kleinman’s evaluation was not available to the defense. He flat out denied having read it. Talkin speculated that it would be ready in time for our meeting with Judge Mukasey.[384]

Ted’s appearance unnerved Talkin. He expected me to appear alone, without family guidance and support. By contrast, Ted projected legal muscle, aggressively filling the role that Talkin should have performed himself. Ted’s companion, Ashala, was traveling with him in New York, so there was a third party witness to all of what transpired that afternoon.

Almost immediately Talkin started whining. While insisting he had absolutely no idea what Dr. Kleinman’s report said, if it was negative, he said the prosecution would probably ask for some sort of psychiatric detention to explore my competence further.

Ted Lindauer jumped on point: “That’s bullshit! Susan’s not incompetent. There’s no way that’s going to fly. We will fight it. She’s not going anywhere until that happens.”

Ted continued: “I’ve been reading the laws on psychiatry. She’s entitled to a hearing before the government takes action against her. She’s entitled to call rebuttal witnesses, and show evidence that she’s been wrongfully attacked. We intend to exercise her full rights under the law. Her family will not allow this to go unchallenged.”[385]

Sam Talkin started to sweat. And whine.

“I don’t have a single piece of evidence that proves her story’s true.”

Ted Lindauer turned to me: “Fire this man. Right now.”

He turned back to Talkin. “I have spoken to Susan’s witnesses— I had no trouble locating any of them.[386] They were all eager to help. She’s got a great case, Sam. If you’d interviewed them yourself—” Ted growled—“you would know that. You could have pushed for dismissal months ago.”

Then Talkin got scared. “I don’t know what the Prosecutor’s going to do. I just think maybe, it could be, that the Prosecution would want her to go to some facility for a few months, just to see if she’s okay. If something can be done to make her competent, we can go ahead with a trial like she wants.”[387]

Ted jumped in again: “Are you fucking nuts? Do you understand what you’re dealing with here! Andy Card and his cronies at the White House will never let her go, once she’s locked up in some prison psych ward.”

“Andy’s my own flesh and blood. But I will tell you frankly, he’s a hatchet man for the Bush family, going back decades. His worked for Daddy Bush in Massachusetts. He was Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House and Secretary of Transportation for Daddy Bush. That’s before he went to work for George, Jr.”

“And he didn’t get those jobs by being a nice guy, Sam. Andy Card is vicious. And his friends are vicious. That’s the only life in politics they know. Somebody like Susan would get screwed to the wall if these people get a chance at her. They wouldn’t give a damn that they have stomped somebody so small. Have you read the indictment?” Ted glared at Talkin. “Susan’s in their way because of what she knows about Iraq. If she goes into some psych prison, they are never going to let her out. She’s going to be fucked!”

“She’s going to get trapped there, Sam!”

Mercifully, on that awful day I had no idea how accurate his prediction would be.

Talkin started whining: “I don’t know what’s going to happen yet. We have to wait and see the report.”

Ted stayed on point: “No matter what that report says, Mr. Talkin, I am telling you right now— We, her family, are demanding a hearing. We are going to challenge the reliability of those psych evaluations. We’re not going to lay down and let the Prosecution screw her.”

I turned to Ted, grabbing for that hearing. “Ted, we’ve got a year’s worth of session notes from Dr. Taddesseh at Family Health Services. He’s on record saying there’s nothing wrong with me. No depression. No mood disturbances. No psychosis. No delusions. Nothing! Those are current records, which show that I’ve exhibited no “psychiatric symptoms” throughout my indictment. We’ll get those papers to the Judge. And we’ll get Dr. Taddesseh to testify at the hearing.”

“It’s all political. And we can prove it!”

Ted was fierce and unwavering: “Mr. Talkin, you are going to tell the Judge that we demand a hearing.”

“If you don’t tell him, then I will.”

“Susan, you must tell the Court that as of right now, I am acting as co-counsel in your defense.[388] Then I can address the Court myself on your behalf. If you can’t handle this case, Mr. Talkin, then we’re going to replace you. We’ll do that today if we have to, as well.”

Talkin sputtered how it was too early to get excited.

It was a short walk to the Federal Courthouse on Pearl Street, but I felt like I was on death row walking to my execution. This was far worse than anything I had imagined. It was surreal that my public attorney would lay down the fight, so the Justice Department could trample us. Uncle Ted looked numb.

Not for the last time, I thanked God for Uncle Ted. I tried to breathe, and stay calm in the face of this shocking turn of events.

A funny thing happened on the way to the courthouse. Talkin vanished. He told us he had to make a couple of phone calls to check the status of the Kleinman report. I’m sure he wanted to warn O’Callahan that I brought the cavalry with me, ready for battle. I was not traveling alone to New York, as they expected. Whatever worst scenario they’d plotted, they had a strong challenger in my Uncle Ted. He’s more of a powerhouse in the courtroom than either of those two lightweights put together.

They would need some dirty tricks to pull off this judicial fiasco.

Once again, as fate would have it, Uncle Ted and I were not paranoid enough.

When Ted, Ashala and I entered the courthouse, we were ushered into the jury room. Talkin met us, and immediately tossed a copy of the missing evaluation by Dr. Kleinman on the table. It was open to the conclusions.[389]

My jaw dropped, as I read the following:

1. “(Ms. Lindauer) grossly overestimates the likelihood of her prevailing at trial. Criminal defendants commonly (grandiosely) overestimate their chances of winning at trial— and associatedly act self- defeatingly. Making poor choices and being (legally) incompetent are not synonymous.”

“Ms. Lindauer’s erroneous judgment, however, emanates from a reality distorting mental illness—which primarily determines how she assesses and approaches her legal case. She irrationally applies her superior intellectual ability and believes she very likely will win at trial—and that even if she does not, she will be heroically regarded for her purported “anti- terrorism” efforts, and consequently, not be sentenced according to the federal sentencing guidelines.”

“She understands the concept of the (federal sentencing) guidelines, but because of her mental illness misjudges the reasoning that would likely be employed in applying them to her.” (sic)

2. “She distortedly evaluates the utility, including existence— or at least availability, of evidence she reports she intends to use in her defense.”

“The evaluator does not offer an opinion regarding the far ranging covert Government relationships and authorizations she asserts.”

“It is, however, reasonable to conclude that it is not reality-based for her to believe she will be able to present convincing evidence she was one of the—if not the Government’s primary “anti-terrorism asset(s)”, and that once jurors learn of all she declares she has done to safeguard the welfare of the United States, they will 1) indignantly regard her being prosecuted, 2) overlook evidence against her, and 3) probably acquit her. She largely contemplates a psychotically-based defense of justification, in which she projects onto jurors how she views herself and her role in the world.”

3. “She irrationally rejects a potentially viable defense, i.e., the “insanity defense.”

“The evaluator does not offer an opinion whether her mental state satisfies the criteria (for an insanity defense)—only that it is reasonable to consider employing it.”

Thus concluded the psychiatric evaluation by Dr. Stuart Kleinman, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Well, looking this over, it struck me that a burst of insanity had suddenly seized the Court proceedings. I was appalled.

Ted Lindauer couldn’t believe what he was reading, either. He was aghast. In 40 years as an attorney, he told me that he’d never witnessed anything like this before.

In the jury room, he turned to me abruptly.

“Susan, you must fire Mr. Talkin immediately. Fire him, Susan! Or your defense is lost!”[390]

“Tell the Judge that you’re naming me co-Counsel, while you bring a new attorney on the case. Then I will address the Court. I will tell the Judge that I have personally interviewed your witnesses myself. They are highly credible, and your story checks out in total. And I will demand a competency hearing to challenge the wrongful assumptions in these evaluations.”[391]

“We’ll have a list of witnesses to his clerk by close of business tomorrow. You got that, kid? You’ll have to work fast to get it ready. Do you understand?”

(I nodded, gratefully.)

“But you must fire Sam this moment,” Uncle Ted pleaded with me, fiercely. “You cannot delay. You cannot hesitate. You’ve got to act right now.”

I was in a state of shock.

My whole life was flashing before my eyes. I’d worked in anti-terrorism for nine years covering Iraq and Libya. But I was not competent to stand trial?

In my brain, I did a reality check.

In August, 2001, I warned the Office of Counter-Terrorism about a 9/11 style of attack, involving airplane hijackings and a strike on the World Trade Center. Before the 9/11 Commission issued its report, the FBI confirmed my warnings in its interview with Parke Godfrey.[392] I suspect Dr. Fuisz and Paul Hoven also verified it—since they freely told the New York Times about our team’s warnings.

But I was not competent to stand trial?

I gave advance warning about the bombing of the USS Cole, and the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. But I was not competent to stand trial?

I started negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial with Libyan diplomats in New York. Then I held preliminary talks on resuming the weapons inspections with Iraq’s Ambassador Saeed Hasan and senior Iraqi diplomats.

But I was not competent to stand trial?

It had to be a joke. A sick and twisted joke.

Give me a subpoena, and I could prove my bona fides in any court in the land— with lightning speed. I would humiliate these idiots!

Psychiatry had tossed reality straight out the window. These people were crazy! I mean, seriously disturbed!

Had Dr. Kleinman actually read the charges against me?

I was accused of acting as an “Iraqi Agent.” Obviously I had contact with Iraqi officials over several years. That’s one thing the Justice Department and I agreed on.

As for my so-called “grandiosity,” thinking I was one of a very few Assets covering Iraq, well golly! Banner headlines in the “Washington Post” bemoaned CIA Director George Tenet’s grief that he could “count on one hand the number of Agents inside Iraq.”[393] Only three of us covered the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations, and my co-defendants got recruited after 9/11. Before 9/11, in all likelihood, I was the only Asset covering the Embassy![394]

Clearly if I was an Asset, I was one of the very few. That’s a statistical fact.

And my work heavily engaged in anti-terrorism. That was no joke, either.

Would a New York Jury respect my team for our advance warnings about 9/11? Or that I was up to my eyeballs winning Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation?[395] Would they be impressed that I persuaded Baghdad to invite an FBI Task Force into Iraq? Or that Iraqi officials agreed to hand over financial records on Al Qaeda figures?

Given the fruits of my labor, might New Yorkers express disgust that the Justice Department sought to punish me for allegedly eating a couple of cheese burgers?[396] Or would a New York jury understand that work was done on their behalf?

I’d say it was a good bet. They’d probably start asking hard questions about the 9/11 investigation, too!

Ah, but could I authenticate my story through independent sources? That was the clincher.

The answer was absolutely yes!

Flipping through Dr. Drob’s evaluation on the table next to Dr. Kleinman’s, I saw quickly that it was not updated after my exuberant phone call, crowing with victory about Uncle Ted’s success on my behalf.

My heart dropped. Dr. Drob’s evaluation scorned my confidence in the quality of my Scottish witnesses from the Lockerbie Trial particularly, as evidence of my “mental impairment.”[397]

This was the Twilight Zone. My witnesses included Congressional staffers, journalists, and university faculty. Their support stood as remarkable testament to my credibility within my own circle of Middle East and international contacts.[398]

It was a challenging case, but I could win.

Certainly I had no reason to throw it.

I was dumb-struck. Talkin had fallen down on the job. But my uncle jumped into the breach and saved the day[399]— as Dr. Drob was fully aware. His conclusions could only be calculated to mislead the Court’s understanding of the strength of my validation.

That struck me as grossly unethical and dishonest.

I had a strong defense alright. Nobody at CIA or the Justice Department had to worry for little old me. Really, their concern touched my heart!

The Prosecutor, O’Callaghan, might have some difficulties, though. He’d have to explain why I was indicted for eating cheeseburgers during the 9/11 investigation. He’d have to explain why supporting democracy in Iraq constituted a major felony. Or why an Asset should face indictment for recruiting a senior Iraqi Mukhabarat officer to help identify foreign terrorists playing hide and seek with Iraqi Intelligence in Baghdad. That was phenomenally valuable to any serious anti-terrorism effort in Iraq. It was platinum value. And the Justice Department called that “Conspiracy with Iraq’s Intelligence Service?”

Did the FBI understand anything at all about intelligence work? (Maybe not.)

As for this nonsense about Sentencing Guidelines, the Supreme Court had struck down the compulsory nature of federal guidelines, making them advisory only. If a jury did manage to convict me of eating a cheeseburger, the nature of the action was so innocuous— sharing a lunch that cost $15 in New York City— it would be reasonable to expect a Judge to adjust his sentencing, accordingly. It’s doubtful my actions would send me up the river for 10 years.

Under the circumstances, my choice of legal strategy and my expectation of the consequences of a conviction struck me as entirely “rational” and “sensible.”

On such a black day, I had to smirk that after 10 hours with me, Dr. Kleinman admitted he “could not offer an opinion if (my) mental state would qualify for an insanity defense.”

I rolled my eyes. Obviously there was no grounds for an insanity defense. The Justice Department anxiously wanted me to use a psych defense, regardless of better options. It would be like falling on my sword to save the Bush Administration and Republicans in Congress, who had invented a wild story about the failure of my Pre-War Intelligence activities and 9/11—(and their brilliance on national security).

Republicans were very fond of that story.

That’s a bloody stupid argument for making bad legal decisions, however. My prosecutor was a fool indeed, if he thought I would allow him to choose my defense.

My problem was not poor legal strategy, but a mediocre court-appointed attorney who wasn’t playing straight with the Judge. Talkin did not have 40 years in the law, like Ted Lindauer. He was over-worked and under-paid. A trial required a great deal more effort than he could put into the case. This was an easy exit.

Psychiatry was corrupt enough to oblige him.

I was horrified. This was like a John Grisham novel.

“Fire him, Susan!” Ted Lindauer pulled me out of my shock. “Fire Talkin right now, and I will demand a hearing. That’s the law. We’re going to hold the Feds to it.”[400]

From my shocked consciousness, I heard Talkin start to speak, kind of apologetic, kind of whining.

“Well, see, there’s going to be a problem having a competency hearing. You know? See O’Callaghan (the prosecutor) wants her to go for a psych evaluation. It’s not really a hospital. It’s not a prison. Yeah, I guess it’s a prison. No, not really.”

“She just has to go there for four months. They’ll decide whether she’s competent to stand trial. Then we can decide what to do next. If she’s not competent, they’ll probably just drop the charges. It’s just for four months—” Talkin whined.[401]

Clearly, he’d known all along what the Justice Department was going to hit us with.

My jaw was suspended open. We had just gone from John Grisham straight to Franz Kafka.

“Four months?” Ted was appalled. “Are you serious? We don’t agree to that! We don’t care what the Prosecutor wants. That’s not a deal that Susan wants to accept. Do you, Susan!?”

I shook my head, aghast.

“I have researched this law, Mr. Talkin. There’s a fail safe that protects her from incarceration until there’s a hearing. We intend to use it to challenge these reports.”[402]

Uncle Ted was ferocious. Even in an ambush, he stayed on point.

“I can see holes all the way through these evaluations. I can straighten out some of this when I speak to the Judge this afternoon. We’ll address the rest of it at the hearing.”

I learned that day that Ted Lindauer is a damn fine attorney, who does not crack under pressure. Throw him a poisoned brief, if you will. He will fight for his clients to the death. He was immediately ready and repositioning himself to thwart any unexpected challenge. It was very impressive that afternoon. Trust me.

Ted turned back to me, fierce.

“Fire him, Susan! Do it now!” He pleaded with me, deadly earnest.

I could only nod. I couldn’t even speak. I felt numb and disoriented, in a state of horror.

My emotional shock was about to take a deep turn for the worst.

Bowing out of the room, Talkin returned moments later with Judge Mukasey’s senior law clerk. She had a message for us.[403]

She spoke crisp and staccato, as if addressing a full court room, instead of speaking to us privately in the jury room.

“We understand that you’re thinking of replacing Mr. Talkin, so Ms. Lindauer can demand a hearing. Judge Mukasey is aware of this. We want to make clear that if Ms. Lindauer moves to do that today, she will be seized immediately and taken to prison. As of today, she will forfeit her bail permanently— until the end of the case.”

“If she agrees to forego the hearing until after completing a four month psychiatric evaluation in prison, she will be allowed THREE days to get her affairs in order before surrendering to prison on MONDAY MORNING.”

It was now Thursday at about 4 pm.

On the jury room wall, “EXTREME PREJUDICE” was scrawled in blood graffiti behind Judge Mukasey’s clerk.

Can anyone imagine such a nightmare! There I was, falsely condemned in the Drob evaluation, which wildly impugned the strength and integrity of my witnesses. The Kleinman report proclaimed me incompetent, on the basis of declaring my innocence. And now I was denied my fundamental rights to a simple pre-trial evidentiary hearing, just in case, maybe, I was telling the truth.

Instead, I would go straight to prison without a guilty plea or any sort of hearing. Andy Card and Colin Powell would be spared the embarrassment of facing me in open Court. Republicans on Capitol Hill would be free to continue spinning wild and inventive stories about 9/11 and Pre-War Intelligence without threat of public exposure. They could accelerate boasts about their outstanding leadership performance on national security! I especially loved their patriotic outbursts of devotion to Assets like me on CNN and the Fox News Channel.

Campaign season thrilled my heart! Presidential Debates were especially fun, listening to John McCain!

My story shattered those myths irrevocably! The Democrats were just as bad about reinventing the truth. But only the Republicans imprisoned Assets to stop us from exposing leadership fraud and voter deceptions. My co-defendants— both Assets like me— spent 18 months in prison before getting deported. And now I was declared “incompetent” and thrown in prison without a trial, too!

If you ask me, they exhibited a form of “group psychosis.”

Politicians hated the reality of Iraq. They couldn’t admit it was “delusional” to pretend their War policy was successful. I must be “delusional” for calling it a disaster.

Obviously my thinking had to be corrected— not theirs.

Psychiatry was a farce. Seriously, if I’m incompetent, it’s time to shut down the entire Court system. We probably need to shut down the Intelligence Community as well!

Stunned and disoriented, Uncle Ted and I shuffled into Court to face Judge Mukasey. The room was packed with U.S. Marshals. Ted whispered he’d never seen so many marshals in one courtroom at a time, not for the most violent criminal offenders.[404]

We were slightly reassured when Judge Mukasey appeared dubious of the evaluations. He assured us that he did not automatically give credence to what psychiatrists said about any defendant. (I tell you, my Judge was incredibly smart!)

Judge Mukasey said something to the effect of, “just because they’ve said these things about Ms. Lindauer, doesn’t make it true. But I am willing to allow you to pursue it, Mr. Talkin.”

In exchange for my cooperation, he relented slightly on the timing. If I would agree to a voluntary surrender, he would give me 10 days to get my affairs in order – not three days, as the Clerk told us.

Ten days.[405]

Ted Lindauer nodded that I should stay on the Judge’s positive side as long as possible. It might not last very long.

Really though, I had no choice. I had a mortgage and pets. It would be a lot to lose if I couldn’t work out a support strategy for coping. My household was not prepared for a prison surrender of all things. I joked with friends that it’s a good thing I’m capable of running my own affairs. Otherwise I could never have pulled everything together on such short notice.

It could hardly be termed “consensual,” however. I adamantly refused to forfeit my rights to a trial or hearing. Judge Mukasey was very much aware of that.

Still I gasped, more deeply shocked than moments before, when O’Callaghan stood up to announce where the Bureau of Prisons was sending me.

My prison psych evaluation would be handled at Carswell Prison—inside Carswell Air Force Base outside of Fort Worth, Texas.

Not only would I be denied a trial— to punish me for believing in my innocence—I would be locked up in prison on a Texas military base, as an accused “Iraqi Agent” to determine if I “could become competent in the future.”

Talkin put up no objections to this de facto plea bargain—which he cut on my behalf, without my knowledge and over my strongest objections.

As for my statutory rights to a competency hearing, I could still have it— after I completed my prison sentence.[406]

To be fair, a Judge who regularly sentences defendants to five, ten, twenty years in federal prison looks on four months as a slap on the wrist. And honestly, it is. It’s the best sentence any defendant could hope for in the federal system. The women I met at Carswell shook their heads in envy of my promised 4 month discharge. From the Judge’s perspective, this might have been sensible. Afterwards, the case could go away. If unpleasant for me, it would be short-lived. And it would get us out of his courtroom.

Still, prison’s prison. No defendant should ever get shipped off to a prison cell without a trial or a guilty plea. Nobody. Ever.

My heart sighs to recall it, even today.

All of that explains how on September 23, 2005, Judge Mukasey ruled that I would be detained at Carswell Prison for a maximum of 120 days— four months and no longer, according to restrictions laid out in federal law.[407]

I would self-surrender to Carswell Prison by twelve noon on October 3, 2005.

On February 3, 2006, Carswell would have to release me.

After the court meeting, Judge Mukasey’s clerk told Uncle Ted that he expected the prison evaluation to finish more rapidly. Most likely, I would be home within 60 days, the normal timeframe for these sorts of evaluations. That would be after Thanksgiving, but in time for the Christmas holidays. That gave us reason for hope.[408]

Those crazy psychiatrists had not won a real victory yet. Carswell still had to uphold a finding of incompetence. Prisons don’t like doing that without a very good reason. Judge Mukasey expected Carswell to throw it back.

Now, it’s risky for defendants to second guess a Judge’s thinking, though none of us can resist. In my gut, I believe the Patriot Act influenced what happened that day.

I’m convinced a straight arrow like Judge Mukasey hated the Patriot Act, which strips away constitutional protections, and mucks up the U.S. court system. I could be wrong. But for months before that dreadful September day, Judge Mukasey had options to fast track my case. He could have rejected the finding of incompetence outright, or granted my request for a hearing. For that matter, he could have hauled us into court months earlier to set a trial date.

Instead, he gave my Defense every chance to maneuver out of this mine field. He gave us latitude to work out an end-game, which was extremely generous of him, in the larger scheme of things. With a seasoned, ferociously dedicated attorney like Ted Lindauer, my Defense would have had more options. With Brian Shaughnessy, my attorney after Carswell— who regularly swims with the sharks in the most complicated international cases— we would have enjoyed vastly more options still. Shaughnessy had a shot at overturning the Patriot Act. He’s that good.

It would have been a different ball game. But like Judge Mukasey, both Shaughnessy and Ted Lindauer had 40 years in the law.

On September 23, 2005, I had a public attorney running scared from his own mistakes. And I had no money to replace him. I was fucked.

Those crazy shrinks saw nothing about my nature, however. All of us face tragedy of some kind. A survivor knows there’s a moment of clarity when you see what’s coming, and you make a conscious decision—You will face this storm without breaking. You will survive. You will bend far. You might stoop low. But you will get through it—whole—on the other side. Because there is no other possibility for you. That is your spiritual truth. And that becomes your reality.

I admit that I had a good cry on my way home to Maryland that night. A State Trooper stopped me for a speeding violation on I-95, and let me go without a ticket.

By the time I hit Takoma Park, I was resolved to endure. I had 10 short days to get my affairs in order. I was thunder struck, but my grief would have to wait.

I had to pack up all of my personal possessions.

I had to arrange for the payment of my mortgage and utilities.

I had to break the news to friends, who shared my disappointment that I’d lost my chance for a trial.

And I had to arrange for the care of my two dachshunds and two cats. My beloved friend, Karin Anderson, the angel of animal protection in Takoma Park, promptly agreed to board my precious dachsies, Raqi Bear and Mahji Bear at her home. She promised to take them to play in our yard once in awhile. My cats would stay at my house, including 19 year old Midnight, who waited faithfully by the front gate every afternoon for my return, as the months rolled on.

Karin would find renters to live in the house, while I was gone. My dear friend and companion, JB Fields would stay in the house, too, and watch over Midnight and Lou Lou cat. As necessity required, Karin would cough up her own cash to hold my household together.

Several small miracles would occur in Takoma Park in my absence, thanks to this dear lady.

Activists understand the concept of duct tape to fix everything from broken pipes to an empty wallet.

We persevere. Whatever comes, we take. We go on whistling in the dark. We don’t fall apart.

Oh yes, they found a fighter in me.

Oh, but you still think I’m paranoid?

Not nearly enough, friend. Not nearly enough.

On September 23, 2005, my nightmare of “extreme prejudice” was just beginning.

CHAPTER 21:

THE BRIGHT SECRET

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy
–Shakespeare, Hamlet

On the drive back to Maryland that unhappy September night, I thought about the two things psychiatry hated about me. I confess I was surprised by the depth of that hatred, and the bitterness of it. Until this point, I’d never been hated like that in my life.

It was illuminating, to say the least.

Looking over the evaluations, it appeared Dr. Drob and Dr. Kleinman hated my spirituality. And they hated my strength and motivation as a woman. They wanted me to grovel with apologies for it, and I refused. That angered them. Perhaps it hurt their pride. I’m not sure I was worthy of their attack, but I’m content that I never backed down.

Because you see, I have a deep spiritual life, which is constant for me and private. I’m not evangelical, needing to convert others to my way of thinking. I’m not discouraged by anyone else’s lack of faith. I’m not even terribly religious, perhaps the greatest irony of all. I never discussed my viewpoints with Drob or Kleinman at all However faith and spirituality happen to run deep in my soul.

So as long I’m confessing everything else, I confess this freely, too—

I believe in God.

I believe in angels.

I believe in grace.

I believe in prophecy that comes from ancient times, and comes still to those who open our hearts to listen.

Almost nothing astonished me so much as the insults I suffered for the private expression of my faith during my legal ordeal. Interestingly, the men who attacked me had strong connections to the Republican Party, which formally espouses support for religious viewpoints.

My own prosecutor, Edward O’Callaghan left the Justice Department in July, 2008 to work for the Presidential Campaign of John McCain and Sarah Palin. He was assigned to Sarah Palin’s top campaign staff in Alaska, handling “Troopergate.”[409]

Yet in the hypocrisy of the moment, I was subjected to the most blistering and vicious attacks for quietly practicing my faith more moderately than Sarah Palin herself.

O’Callaghan lampooned the focus on spirituality in my life— in federal court of all places, where citizens should be protected from such attacks. That kind of hypocrisy by a Republican operative should disturb all Americans, regardless of political stripe or personal religious beliefs. It provides damning evidence that the GOP manipulates faith for the sake of political advancement, while privately holding spirituality in the greatest contempt. I have nicknamed it “Campaign Christianity.” It’s a false front to get votes and money. There’s no spirituality backing it up. It exploits religion. That should be offensive to anybody who really believes in God or the integrity of the electoral process.

That said, I freely declare that as part of my work in anti-terrorism, I invoked my spirituality in establishing contacts with Arab diplomats, in keeping with my anti-war philosophy.

For me, it was important for proving society doesn’t have to rely on threats of violence to accomplish these goals. And the Arabs responded graciously to my communications.

They recognized that my opposition to violence had a spiritual motivation, and our relationships evolved more closely as a result.

I hold strong beliefs that terrorism manifests from intense spiritual pain that gives rise to violence. And I strongly believe that you can not oppose violence without love. You can not fight evil with evil. You need love to diffuse hatred, and mercy to diffuse intolerance. And yes, for me, that includes a mindfulness of God.

Throughout the 1990s, those beliefs guided my actions in all of my contacts with Libya and Iraq. And I have never recanted. Surely I have a right to invoke a spiritual dynamic in my own life to protect myself from absorbing the violence around me.

My spiritual viewpoints are uniquely my own. Still, it explains why I faced open hostility in pro-war circles, which resented acknowledging what I accomplished through tactics of non-violence. I wanted to prove that military aggression could be avoided. I wanted to show that my anti-war approach to the Arabs could achieve cooperation in multiple areas, while reducing the stress and tensions that spill over into violence.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see my approach has fallen out of favor. I have faced severe criticism, even scorn, by those who don’t understand what I was doing.

Nevertheless, I would argue that my approach accomplished a lot of good. I’m content to know that, even if I’m alone in thinking it today, because of the change in politics.

In my defense, my handlers, Hoven and Dr. Fuisz were fully knowledgeable of that influence. After my advance warning about the 1993 World Trade Center attack, Dr. Fuisz and Hoven supervised me closely. We met weekly for debriefings until 2002. All together, I met approximately 800 to 900 times with both men. In addition, from May, 1995 onwards I met 150 times with diplomats from Libya. And from August, 1996 onwards, I met 150 times with Iraq. I also covered Egypt, Syria /Hezbollah, Yemen and Malaysia.

That speaks for itself. My approach was highly successful, or neither the Americans nor the Arabs would have engaged with me for so many years. Either side could have shut off contact.

Instead, Libya’s former Ambassador to the United Nations, Issa Babaa once paid me a supreme compliment, saying that “if everyone approached anti-terrorism like you, Susan, all of the Arab countries would want to help America.”

Most people aren’t in the mood to respect Islam after 9/11. However, as somebody who has done this work successfully for years, I would argue that respect for faith creates a bridge between cultures, and establishes a common system of values, which transcends our differences. By relying on those common values, Islamic governments can become allies and partners for the greater good, in solving problems through non-violence.

That’s not popular today. But as our governments search for new ways to address conflict, it’s worthwhile to understand what kinds of strategies achieved so much good in the past. I believe that’s hopeful for the future. I believe this approach could work effectively again. At least it’s worth trying.

I am not alone in believing that a spiritual life heals more injuries than focusing on negative experiences and pain.

Nonetheless, psychiatry openly despised me for trusting God to stay with me through my ordeal. They wanted me to doubt. They scorned my faith that God cares what happens to someone so insignificant as me. The evaluations by Dr. Drob and Dr. Kleinman dripped with sarcasm, using ridicule to discourage me from vocalizing my faith.

Did I think I was big enough for God to love? (No, I thought I was small enough for God to love.) I thought that I too could be worthy of receiving the bountiful love of the universe, the force of God, the Unnamable. And I was grateful for that love.

And no, never on the worst days of my ordeal did I believe that God stood apart from me, or somehow betrayed me.

I never recanted my faith. I was never tempted to abandon my beliefs to escape the criticism that psychiatry tried to beat me with. I never allowed their attacks to trick me into believing that God had somehow failed to save me from their abuse. Throughout this ordeal, I felt deeply that God never left my side. I believed that God was my witness.

There’s a true story that you can choose to believe, or not.

The weekend before my arrest, I had no idea that my life was about to capsize irrevocably, almost immediately. I awoke one morning and experienced a genuine state of grace. It lasted for hours. It’s the kind of thing that you hope for if you have any kind of spiritual life. It’s sort of a nirvana thing, if you’re Buddhist. It’s an epiphany, if you’re Christian. The Arabs call it “seeing with an open heart.” It’s a mystery, if you appreciate mysticism, as I do. When it came upon me, I felt a deep sense of connectedness to that greater force of creation and beauty in the world, a synchronicity that comes from active mindfulness. It was remarkable and distinctive. I would describe it as a gentle and pervasive force that washed over me with the purest cleansing love.

Before my troubles started, it gave me redemption. And wholeness. And love.

In short, it blessed me with grace.

I had no idea that a grand jury was closing its debate over my indictment in New York City.

I had no idea that I was days from getting arrested for treason on the Patriot Act.

I was only mindful that something so beautiful, a force that I call God, was leaning to embrace me, and lift me up. And it fully immersed me in a pure source of beauty and serenity and love—whether anyone believes in God or not. I remember thinking that people suffer through all sorts of ordeals and indignities. (I had no idea what was coming!) And all of us wait for just one moment like this. A moment of abiding mercy. And it puts perspective on everything else, including what’s bad. It washes all of your pain away. And it cleanses your soul with unconditional love.

This deep feeling of grace, that’s what it was—came out of nowhere. There was no external explanation that I could see. Nothing special happened that morning to invite it to me. It was suddenly there. And it washed over me for hours. I remember thanking God, or the universe, whatever you want to call that greater essence that we belong to, for all my blessings, though my life had been incredibly difficult recently.

I thanked God for staying with me.

I wanted to celebrate that moment of grace. So I went out to a nursery and bought a tree to plant in my front yard. A beautiful Japanese weeping cherry tree with tiny white blossoms that peak in the spring-time. I call it my “peace tree.”

Five days later I got arrested for treason on the Patriot Act.

And yes, I think there’s a force of God or something phenomenal out there. And I think it knew. I believe it saw the forces converging on me, and it reached down to comfort me. And it came to me before my troubles. And it gave me love. And it told me that everything was going to be alright. It saw my confusion before I ever experienced it, and it eased my sense of betrayal. And it took away my shame.

I believe that. In my heart, I am sure of it.

CHAPTER 22:

CARSWELL PRISON

With what iron, what blood, what fire are we made
Though we seem pure mist and they stone us,
and say that we walk with our heads in the clouds.
How we pass our days and nights, God only knows
–Odysseus Elytis, Nobel Poet Laureate, on the Greek Resistance to Fascism

I will always remember Carswell as my own private Guantanamo.

As an accused “Iraqi agent,” I was as close to an enemy-non combatant as you could get. Locked up in prison on a Texas military base had to be the last place on earth I wanted to be, while U.S. soldiers were losing a War that I had loudly criticized.

Yet there I was, handcuffed to enter the prison gates at Carswell Air Force Base, north of Fort Worth, Texas.

There would be a reckoning for this. Some things are unforgivable in a democracy, and this would be right at the top of that list.

A Franciscan friend urged me to brace for prison as a sort of “monastic experience.” He urged me to stay calm and reflective. I could choose my own thoughts, even if I could not choose my surroundings. It was excellent advice, and that’s how I resolved to live. His idea worked well for the first few months of my incarceration, until events got ugly.

Even so, I was plenty shocked when the full tide of prison life crashed over me.

The prison is located inside Carswell Air Force Base. The main buildings are the site of the former hospital where prison lore tells that President John F. Kennedy died after the shooting in Dallas. (He died at Love Field).

It’s not without irony that some of the more sophisticated inmates declared that we walked in the footsteps of Jackie Kennedy.

My first vision of Carswell was gray concrete blocs towering over a flat, barren landscape, protected by two walls of 20 foot razor wire fence. There was no shade, just vast concrete buildings, and a brief walkway to the Administrative headquarters and visitor center.

The land was grassy green inside the perimeter fence, and the sky a vivid blue. Beyond the double razor wire fences, a few oak trees created a lush green buffer to the military base beyond. But otherwise the land had no distinction.

If that’s all you ever saw of Texas, you would never want to go back.

Why the rush? I asked myself, as I waited through the indignity of strip searches and inmate processing.

It was October 3, 2005. I’d been under indictment since March 2004, without a single court appearance— not one. All of a sudden, after 19 months on bail, the Justice Department urgently required that I surrender to prison within 10 days.

What was going on that made it so critical to get me out of the way? There had to be a reason. I was removed because something was happening. What was it? I would have many days to ponder that question.

“Why do you think they’ve declared you incompetent?” One of the prison psychologists demanded skeptically, during my in-take interview. “Inmates declared incompetent are generally so mentally crippled that they can’t control their functioning. They suffer non-stop hallucinations or schizophrenia, for example.”

“You’re nothing like that. We can see already that what they wrote in these evaluations bears no resemblance to you.”

“Maybe it’s because of post-traumatic stress from my work in anti-terrorism?” I suggested, not sure what to say in this first conversation, without digressing into all the politics of my case.

“Post traumatic stress would rarely qualify for incompetence.” The prison psychologist shook his head decisively. “Otherwise most prisoners in the system would be exempt from prosecution.”

He looked at me hard. “How would you describe your attorney’s handling of this case?”

He nailed it. Still, I hesitated how much to admit about my attorney’s failings. If I told the prison psychologist, he would tell the Prosecutor. That could not be good.

“Sir, you raise an excellent point,” I replied, distinctly and slowly.

“That’s what I thought,” he nodded. “Sometimes attorneys get overwhelmed by complicated cases like yours. Especially public attorneys who tend to be overworked in their case loads. They see this as an easy way out.” He said, reading my reticence with a high degree of perceptiveness. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to accept it, you understand.”

I nodded. Inwardly, I groaned. Thanks to my idiot attorney, I was going to serve a prison sentence, without a plea bargain. Then I’d have to start back at square one and go to trial, with a new attorney who would require private financing. The only thing to recommend this strategy was if the case could go away after Carswell, and I could go on with my life without a conviction on my record. That was the trade off for four months in prison. It looked doubtful.

“Judge Mukasey said the evaluation must be completed by February 3rd, but it might finish sooner.” I pressed him. At least I had an exit date.

“Oh it won’t take that long.” He shook his head. “I just don’t understand why you’re here. I’ll have to make some calls about this.”

I understood. Anybody could see it was obscene to pretend I’m “incompetent—” though I understood the desire to bastardize me. Unforgivably, this psychiatric “diagnosis” lined up beautifully with false claims on Capitol Hill about intelligence failures before the War. It communicated what Congress wanted Americans to think— that “incompetent Assets” shouldered the blame for bad decision making. Assets failed to perform— not elected leaders. Since I was an Asset, I must be incompetent, too.

Psychiatry accommodated Washington’s agenda with unforgivably corrupt and unethical evaluations.

You had to hand it to Republican leaders at the Justice Department, however. This brute force attack was a masterful strategy to hide the truth about the Iraqi Peace Option and our advance warnings about 9/11. First, the false indictment gagged me from discussing what I had done before the War, which contradicted everything Americans had been told. Then the finding of incompetence killed my reputation as an Asset. Denying me a trial stopped me from gaining a forum in a court of law to expose the deceptions on Capitol Hill.

Finally, burying me in prison on Carswell Air Force Base outside of Fort Worth, Texas gave the White House free reign to rewrite the history books without challenges. Even if I was stoic enough to speak out afterwards, in the eyes of many, my reputation and credibility would be destroyed. Nobody would listen. I would be alone.

Oh yeah, I understood alright.

Why the rush, though? That nagged at me. Why, indeed?

When I arrived at Carswell, the prison was so over-crowded that a batch of us new arrivals, about eight of us, had to go to the punishment block, called the SHU, or solitary housing unit.

That’s where I got locked up for my first two weeks at Carswell. They had no other beds.

Actually solitary confinement would have significantly improved my living conditions. The cell was a standard eight by ten feet. Crammed into that tiny space, four inmates slept on two metal bunk beds. Our few possessions, including a change of prison clothes, got stored in small bins tucked under the bottom bunks. There was an open toilet in the corner without a lid or proper seat. Toilet paper got rationed between the four of us.

Whoever got the idea that federal prisons are country club havens for pampered inmates has obviously spent no time in either facility.

Sitting on the cold concrete floor, leaning against one bunk, I could stretch my legs and hit the other bunk with my feet. I got a top bunk. Most of the day I had to stay there— crouched on the bed 22 + hours daily.

Twice a week, each of us got to leave the cell for showers. Since it was the punishment block, we had to be handcuffed through a slot in the door any time we left our cell. Even in a medical emergency, inmates on the SHU had to get handcuffed before guards could enter a cell, such as when a cellmate went into diabetic shock early one morning at 4 a.m.

We looked forward to showers all week, so we could stand for 45 minutes, getting the cramps out of our legs. Inside the shower room, we had to strip for a visual inspection before we climbed into the shower. After the shower, we had to stay stripped for a visual inspection before dressing to return to our cell.

Often on shower days, guards allowed us to wait inside a small exercise room, with a large, bright mural painted on the wall. That mural probably saved the sanity of more inmates in the SHU than all the psychological counseling at Carswell combined.

Outside prison there’s a presumption that inmates have a basic right to one hour of exercise every day, even in a maximum security setting. In fact, all of us on the SHU got one hour outside every week or 10 days, locked inside a fenced yard with a basketball hoop, surrounded by a sky high fence. What passed for that one hour of recreation included the time necessary to shackle us all, and stand us in line. And the time to march us out to the prison yard. Just as we relaxed enough to enjoy the sunshine, it would be time to get handcuffed and marched back to the SHU. When all that time got accounted for, we probably spent 30 minutes outside about every 10 days.

Some of these women got locked up on the SHU for months at a time. Nobody at Carswell started off crazy. But I did meet several women at Carswell, who had been punished on the SHU for such long periods that I questioned if they might be broken. The pattern of their detention was sadistic, their offenses so minor as to warrant a more measured response. Clearly the guards wanted to damage their souls. I saw women whimpering and shattered. Trust me when I say the SHU could be a form of torture, especially without access to recreation or daylight.

The cell was extremely uncomfortable. The bunks stood away from the walls, far enough that inmates could not enjoy such small comfort as resting our backs against a hard wall surface.

We had thin foam rubber pads for a mattress and one thin blanket. Most of the women slept all day, so mostly the lights stayed off during the daytime. To stay occupied, I read trashy books from the library cart, or wrote letters home to friends. During the daylight, I would hunker under the one narrow window of our cell to catch the sunlight.

I confess that in those first days I felt too intimidated to lobby for keeping the lights on. My bunk mates had spent a few more nights at Carswell than me. I’d never spent the night in county lock-up, let alone federal prison.

My first week at Carswell, small talk with these women scared the hell out of me.

One pretty Latina inmate looked so young and innocent in our tiny SHU cell. What crime could she possibly have committed, I wondered? Ah, but appearances can be deceiving in prison. At 18 years old, she got hit with a 20 year sentence, which sounded dreadful. In late night conversations, she admitted hanging out with a Los Angeles street gang back home, driving around with guns and drugs in a car. And oh yeah, one of the guys got high on crack and started firing a gun. (Sounded like a drive-by shooting to me, but I didn’t push it.) Hey, that happens, right? Somebody smokes a little cocaine and starts acting crazy, shooting out of the backseat. Next thing, you’ve all got 20 years in prison! What a bummer!

Another inmate I liked very much had tattoos of two tears by one eye. Prison staff kept stopping by our cell to ask about those tattoos. One of the wardens visited the SHU specially to see her. The guards really appreciated the artwork!

Very sweetly she explained that in prison, tattooed tears usually indicate how many persons an inmate has killed. And she had two tears! She winked at me with a big smile. Most prisoners only have one! Registering my immediate shock, my cellmate swore that she hadn’t murdered anybody! Girlfriend just liked the look!

Yeah, so did I.

And what are you in for? They leaned close to hear.

Oh, I’m in for treason! Because I opposed the Iraqi war. But really they think I ate a cheeseburger.

I wasn’t about to ask these women to keep the lights on, if they wanted to sleep. I would read in darkness rather than poke an argument in that cell. I imagined I was totally at their mercy. Once I got my bearings, I discovered I had nothing to fear from (most of) these ladies. Most of us wanted to “do our time” as quietly as possibly, and avoid the stress of unnecessary confrontations. Prison staff at Carswell would be far more dangerous to my future. My fellow inmates would help me through it, despite their own traumatic pain.

One man occupied a lot of my thoughts in that dark SHU cell, where prisoners mostly couldn’t tell if it was day or night.

That man was former Secretary of State Colin Powell, retired head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces. Three weeks before my prison surrender, Secretary Powell broadcast a major television interview with Barbara Walters on “20/20” on September 8, 2005.[410] It aired at the exact moment the Justice Department was mobilizing to ship me off to Carswell without a trial or hearing.[411]

It was a most enlightening interview. Colin Powell complained vehemently to America’s First Lady of investigative journalism, Barbara Walters, that nobody at CIA tried to warn him off claims about Iraq’s illegal weapons stocks and manufacturing capability, as grossly exaggerated by Iraqi exiles. Powell angrily denounced the intelligence community for failing to speak up before his big speech at the United Nations, weeks before the War. He particularly criticized “lower-level personnel.”[412]

Powell said, and I quote: “There are some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn’t be relied upon.”

“And they didn’t speak up. That devastated me.”[413]

There was just one problem. It was all a lie.

Colin Powell had been warned explicitly—by me— identified as a primary Asset covering the Iraqi Embassy in New York, that he should question dubious claims about Iraq’s weapons capacity. Twice that January, 2003, I left papers at Powell’s home for his review— not difficult since he lived next door to my CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz. I pleaded for him to support peace. And one week before his speech at the United Nations, on January 27, 2003, I respectfully urged him to consider the following:[414]

“What I have to say next will be more aggravating, but I have an obligation to advise you.”

“Given that Iraq has tried for two years to hold covert talks with the United States, with the promise of immediately resuming weapons inspections, there’s a very high probability that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction. Forget what the Iraqi Opposition has told you. They’re famous liars, and most desperate to engage the United States in their protection. You can’t kill 1.7 million people and return home after a vicious bombing campaign to a great parade.”

“No, Iraq emphasized for more than a year before Kofi Annan got involved, that Baghdad would jump at the chance to prove to the world they had no weapons. At any moment Iraq was ready for those inspections to begin, and that says to me that they felt always they had nothing to hide. They simply insisted that without U.S. support for the plan, it would have no benefits or meaning for resolving tensions. Current events have proved that they were right.”

“Don’t deceive yourself, Mr. Secretary that War would have no costs. Believing your own rhetoric at this moment would be the most rash and incendiary mistake. Fighting street battles searching for Saddam would entail deadly risks for U.S. soldiers. No matter what Iraqis think of Saddam, the common people hate the U.S. for sanctions and bombings, and they would consider it traitorous to help you.”

“Under these circumstances, the brutality necessary to win this war would be consumption for the entire Arab world. It would produce a disastrous period of occupation. The Iraqis have fought occupations before, and they would strike back wherever possible.”

“Outside Iraq, Islamists would point to the failure of west-leaning leaderships to protect the Iraqi people. Fundamentalists would seize on that failure to force concessions for their strict cause. There would be a shift to the will of the people alright. No wonder Iran has been chuckling to itself. Iran and Osama—not the United States—would be the greatest victors in this war. The Arab Street would rush to their side.” (Yes, I called the rise of Iran, here and in other papers.)

“Please let me help you. You can still achieve a greater victory, Mr. Secretary, and maintain the force of America’s moral authority in the world’s eye. The objectives of the Bush Administration can be achieved without igniting terrorist revenge and international boycotts. Or destroying political alliances in the War on Terrorism. Or forcing massive deficit spending that will prolong the U.S. recession and scare the hell out of Wall Street and the Middle Class. Or starting a Holy War—which this would become.”

I knocked it out of the ballpark. My advice addressed every one of the complaints raised by Powell. What’s more, he received my second warning on January 27, one week before his speech to the U.N. General Assembly on February 5.

Far from valuing my efforts to provide quality intelligence feedback in the run up to War, Secretary Powell complained to the FBI that somebody so junior as myself dared to contact him!

He turned over those papers to the Justice Department, and I got indicted for approaching him and Andy Card![415]

He forgot to mention that to Barbara Walters.

His fireworks of fury was a stage act, a spectacle of political theater. Whether you agree with the war or not, that was a selfish and ugly fraud.

Everybody presumed my “beloved” cousin, White House Chief of Staff Andy Card lodged the original complaint to the Feds. Actually it appears Colin Powell did the dirty deed, though Andy certainly cooperated with the FBI investigation. Powell began it, and John McCain seized on it as justification for my indictment, so I could be silenced while Senator McCain’s Presidential Commission issued some very silly findings about Pre-War Intelligence. But there’s no question that Powell played a key role as instigator. The FBI cited copies of my handwritten notes to Powell and the manila envelope delivering papers to his home, as evidence against me

At Carswell I dreamed of showing those papers to Barbara Walters! In fond moments, I imagined her reprimanding General Powell for lying to his fellow officers and American soldiers, and stripping some of those medals off his chest!

If I had my way, the man would face a court-martial.

As if that wasn’t awful enough, days after that “20/20” broadcast—on September 17— the Justice Department rubberstamped the order that I was “incompetent to stand trial.”[416] That guaranteed Powell’s lie about Iraq would not face public challenge. I could never confront him or Andy Card as my accusers in open court, per my rights under the Constitution.

While Powell launched his “press junket” to rehabilitate his reputation, the feds booked me a bed at Carswell prison on a Texas military base, squashing my rights to a hearing on September 23, courtesy of the Patriot Act. While he washed the blood and dirt off his place in history, I faced punishment without trial, for daring to approach the former Chair of the Joint Chiefs with my analysis that Iraq did not possess WMDs.

That made Colin Powell “crook of the year” in my book. Truly it was Kafkaesque. My first two weeks in the SHU, I reeled from the shock of it. Every time I got strip searched and handcuffed in the SHU, I smoldered in rage as I thought about Colin Powell and that mockery of an interview with Barbara Walters. That “20/20” interview rammed home that I was suffering so powerful men in Washington could rewrite their place in history, and sanitize their reputations.

Still, I had no choice but to adjust. In the SHU, I learned how Carswell fit into the schematics of the federal prison system.

It’s worth considering that according to the U.S. Census Bureau, one of every 100 Americans are housed in prison every day of the year.[417] Indeed, the United States boasts the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

Officially called Carswell Federal Medical Center, it’s the only federal women’s prison in the United States that provides hospital and chronic health care for inmates suffering cancer, HIV/AIDS, heart disease, post-surgical rehabilitation, hepatitis and liver disease, and other chronic medical conditions.

Out of 1,400 prisoners, about half require medical care.[418] The other inmates are completely healthy. That sounded reassuring, and I was hopeful. At first.

Unfortunately, Carswell has a scandalous reputation for providing horribly poor medical care to prisoners. While I was at Carswell, the Board of Hospital Certification kept threatening to revoke Carswell’s board approval, unless they cleaned up their act.

And let me tell you why:

A woman I met with diabetes got sent off for surgery— and got the wrong leg amputated.

Another older woman had heart surgery shortly before surrendering to Carswell. Prison staff refused to give her heart medications prescribed by her cardiologist for post-surgical recovery. Almost immediately she suffered a heart attack, and lay on the floor for several hours. Prison staff stepped over her body, while inmates had the respect to walk around her. But nobody tried to get her off the floor and into bed until she regained consciousness three to four hours later. At that point, she crawled off the floor, and hobbled to her bunk by herself, with no staff assistance.

Another woman had a bulging hernia. She carried her intestines with both hands and arms, lifting her belly at all times. Despite her obvious suffering, Carswell refused to authorize medical tests or surgery, though her condition qualified as a medical emergency. Carswell provided no medical treatment of any kind. We’d sit in the prison yard, while she’d groan in pain. Prison staff appeared totally indifferent to her physical agony.

As we watched, the hernia got larger and larger, as if all her intestines had spilled into her gut.

I rather expect she’s dead now.

Notably, Carswell takes out a life insurance policy on every inmate, and collects financial benefits for every woman who dies. That practice has become embroiled in controversy over whether Carswell has a financial incentive to withhold care until sick prisoners die. It’s not a question of mercy. It’s a question of profit versus basic human dignity.

Dying at Carswell is a nasty way to go.

The scent of urine wafted through the vents of the hospital wing, making a permanent stench that suggested inmates upstairs were left soaking in their own excrement. At the very least, bed pans could not have been cleaned frequently enough.

An ant infestation got so bad in the hospital wing, a few months after I shipped out, that Betty Brink, a journalist for “Fort Worth Weekly” reported the “tiny biters were crawling on comatose and dying patients in their beds, and covering the body of at least one paralyzed inmate.”[419]

Before prison inspections, there’d be a rush to paint the hallways bright white. Miraculously the air quality would improve, a blessed reprieve for our olfactory senses. Prisoners would joke that the Feds must be coming. Still, it raised our spirits, because conditions would get better for a few weeks.

Within this prison that warehouses every sort of chronic medical ailment— and hundreds of healthy prisoners to boot— there’s a small unit on the third floor called M-1. Here, I came to believe, was every prisoner’s worst nightmare in the flesh, and Carswell’s greatest shame.

M-1 houses 40 to 50 women at a time. About half of the M-1 inmates get shipped to Carswell for psychiatric evaluations before sentencing. The rest are long term inmates with special mental health or physical needs that require close observation. No inmate could be judged criminally insane, but some prisoners had suicidal impulses that required special monitoring. Detox was common for chronic heroin users coming into prison. Some had epilepsy. One suffered Alzheimers dementia. No one got special care on M-1. It just mitigated the prison’s liability until their release.

Regrettably, closer staff observation on M-1 did not translate to a higher standard of care. A 27 year old woman died of sleep apnea on M-1 several weeks before my arrival, because Carswell denied her access to a special breathing machine at night. Her Judge had mandated her right to use the machine. But Judges’ orders got flouted all the time at Carswell, even when defendants headed back to court, asking to enforce the original medical orders. It never happened.

That time, a very young woman died. Carswell covered its liability, because she’d been housed on M-1. And the prison collected the insurance.

That’s how the system works.

And yet M-1 looked so good after two weeks locked up on the SHU.

By now I felt like I was starring in my own spy thriller movie: I imagined my acceptance speech at the Oscars. “I would like to thank the Academy for getting me off the SHU. God bless you all!”

At the start, I had no idea that in a few short months, I would fall down on my knees and beg God, truly, to let me off M-1, as well.

But at the start, I was so innocent. I had no idea of Carswell’s full reputation.

As for why the rush to get me into prison, the answer fell into my lap quite unexpectedly, just days after my release from the SHU.

.Late one night, I got a big clue, watching CNN on prison television. Democrats on Capitol Hill were trying to launch a congressional inquiry on Iraq, led by Rep. John Murtha (D-Pennsylvania) in the House, and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan) in the Senate.[420] Democrats weren’t taking the Republicans’ word on anything. Who could blame them?

Democrats wanted to investigate whether Republicans in Congress had smoothed things over for the Bush Administration—which of course, they had.

In part, the Democrats also wanted to explore if and how pro-war Republicans had punished individuals who dissented from their war policy.

Oh ho! That would shine a harsh spotlight on my case, front and center!

As long as Republicans controlled the podium, they could block hostile testimony. If Democrats controlled the inquiry, the truth would come out. And it was an ugly truth.

I would have made trouble alright! They were correct about that.

By the time I finished describing in graphic detail how my two co-defendants and I all got arrested on trumped up charges as “Iraqi Agents,” there would be no doubt Republican leaders had lied to America and the world community about Iraq, the CIA’s advance knowledge about 9/11, fraud in the 9/11 investigation—and the ludicrous rationale for the War on Terrorism itself.[421]

I would wax eloquent how my two young Iraqi co-defendants—Assets like me—helped the FBI because they wanted to stay in America, and the FBI promised to fix their visas. They betrayed their own father, an Iraqi diplomat, to do it. The Justice Department repaid them cold heartedly, by arresting their brothers and sisters, and throwing the whole family into prison in New York. Leveraging the siblings as hostages, the Justice Department pressured the boys to sign false confessions that they deliberately supplied bad intelligence to the U.S. before the War, and informed Iraqi Intelligence about exiles living in the U.S. who opposed Saddam’s government.[422]

These two boys worked at a dry cleaners and a video store in Manhattan.[423] They didn’t know any Iraqi exiles. None of the evidence supported the accusations. But the whole family got locked up for a year in prison, while the Justice Department extorted those boys to confess to non-existent crimes.[424] One of the boys demanded a trial, and got locked up for 18 months. Then they all got deported with a forced non-disclosure clause.

Transcripts from prison phone calls told their whole nightmare.

It’s something Saddam Hussein would have done. It’s against everything our country stands for.

Oh yes, I would have a few things to tell a Congressional Inquiry.

Understanding that, Republicans turned villainous, removing sources like me, so the Democrats would be starved for bloody meat, and the inquiry would go nowhere.

It was truly despicable and cowardly.

I watched the game play out on prison television, and I, the expendable pawn.

I remember Rep. Murtha saying “Assets are slowly coming forward to tell us what really happened.”[6]

It was late at night before lights out. There was a night guard. I pulled him into the TV room.

“Murtha’s talking about me,” I told the guard, practically in tears. “And I can’t testify because the Justice Department has locked me up here to get me out of Washington.”

“I should be testifying on Capitol Hill right now. Not locked up in prison without a trial. Murtha wants Assets to come forward to expose what really happened before the War. Democrats in Congress want to hear what we have to say.”

The guard looked at me sadly, truly sympathetic. “They don’t want you talking, Lindauer.” And he shook his head, prophetically. “They’re not ever going to let you talk. If you want to get out of here, you’re going to have to go along with them.”

The Democrats’ inquiry explained a lot. Yes it did.

Watching CNN that night, I steamed with impotent fury. I vowed to myself that I would hold the truth inside myself until it was safe to reveal. I would not let this go for the convenience of lying politicians. That truth was too important.

And yet bitterly I saw the obstacles ahead of me, if I spoke up. My credibility had been so brutally destroyed by false allegations of “mental incompetence.”

Who would listen to me now?

I resolved to tough it out. They had power over their actions. They did not have power over mine. Really though, what else could I do?

I stayed focused on my release date. February 3rd burned onto my brain. I kept my cool, and waited. It was four months. Okay, I could do that. I’m a pretty tough lady. I’ve got my wits, and I’m mostly calm under pressure. I could do that time “standing on my head,” as the saying goes.

Four months. Then it would be over. Or so my attorney, Sam Talkin, swore to me in prison phone calls. The White House had its pound of flesh for my transgression, opposing Andy Card’s war. Colin Powell’s reputation had got whitewashed and redeemed. The Justice Department would drop the charges, Talkin promised. And the case would go away. I would have no prison record. No conviction. For the first months of my incarceration, I had no choice but to trust him. He’d cut the deal. And he sounded awfully convincing. Uncle Ted and I wanted so much to believe him.[426]

Could you blame us?

Uncle Ted and I had a back up plan if anything went wrong. Ted would demand a hearing on my behalf immediately. But surely this would be the end of it? That’s why they’d done it. To have an end game. That’s what Talkin kept promising us.

I got tons of letters of encouragement from friends. I stayed active, walking four to six miles a day on the outdoor track. That’s 80 to 120 laps every day. I read lots of books. An old college friend sent me the complete Harry Potter Series, which delighted me and calmed my nerves. I read lots of spy thrillers and crime mysteries. New York Times Crossword puzzles entertained me for hours. I got pretty good at identifying four letter words for “betrayal.”

Quickly I settled into the “monastic” experience of prison life, and tried not to get eaten up by bitterness. What else could I do?

I tried to be kind to other women, and made friends I will cherish forever. These women provided a strong support network. We cheered for each other victories, and ached for each other’s private battles. We prayed for each other constantly. Though it sounds unlikely, I am a better person because I have known these women.

M-1 had its quirks. It’s a locked unit. Why it’s locked, nobody could explain, since it’s a punishable offense for prisoners to wander beyond their designated areas. We spent lots of time waiting for guards to open the doors, so we could go outside, or come in. The guards griped about it constantly.

A second unit, called M-2, houses another 70 to 80 prisoners after sentencing, whose health conditions range from heart disease to moderate suicide risk, bulimia and old age. That’s not a locked unit. It’s also not highly medical in function. That’s where my older friend collapsed from her heart attack—in full view of a “nurse’s station.” Yeah, it’s kind of a joke. That’s the point.

The hospital wing takes up the top floors. Tragically, I saw lots of wheel chairs at Carswell, mostly transporting young women suffering AIDS or cancer. It’s a distressing sight. They sank faster, because although Carswell supposedly functions as a hospital, the nursing staff had a suspicious lack of medical supplies.

Poor medical care was not the only hazard faced by women inmates.

Coercive sex and outright rape are not uncommon at Carswell, either. Since 1997, eight professional staff at Carswell have been convicted of rape, averaging one staffer every year. They include two prison chaplains, a gynecologist, a psychologist, a supervisor of food services and three guards.[427] Some abuse involved sex for bribes—special access to contraband cigarettes, or staying out of the SHU, if prisoners got caught breaking rules. However, some abuse qualifies as violent rape. Women prisoners are helpless to fight back, without getting accused of assaulting a prison officer—which adds extra years on her sentence. That makes it difficult not to yield, and difficult to prove afterwards that sex was forced, not consensual.

It’s shocking to think of the sorts of high level staff who have sexually abused prisoners.

In 2008, Vincent Inametti, Carswell’s Catholic Chaplain for seven years, got sentenced to four years in prison for what his judge called “surprisingly heinous sexual crimes” against two women prisoners.[428] The Court speculated there might have been more victims who got released or feared to come forward. Inametti had a terrible reputation when I was at Carswell in 2005-2006. Other women whispered that we should never accept favors from Inametti, or get caught alone in his office. We always stayed in pairs, dealing with that man. He was the prison’s Catholic Chaplain, and women inmates couldn’t trust him one on one, even for spiritual counseling.

In addition to rape, abuse of inmates’ legal rights was a serious problem at Carswell, too. But I didn’t know that at first.

I was determined to stay good-natured as long as possible.

I settled into prison life, helped by the generous and devoted support of my companion, JB Fields, waiting at home for me in Takoma Park.

JB Fields was a computer techie, who worked in Naval Intelligence on submarines before going to the Peace Corps and the U.S. State Department. He used to joke that he spent six years of his life under water. He was a free thinking intellectual with a blue collar streak a mile wide. He argued passionately in defense of civil liberties, and never hesitated to tackle tough issues, like the rights of gays to work openly in the military.

Most famously, he rode a BMW motorcycle! Every weekend he took off on a road trip or scavenger hunt. He had an “Iron Butt” badge to prove he rode 1,000 miles in 24 hours. He loved diners and pubs. He was gregarious and generous and opinionated. And he loved to blog.

JB was my companion and lover, though some friends were told of our relationship, and JB kept others in the dark. Some of his friends urged him to leave me to protect his career. But he never took the easy way. After my arrest, we applied our own peculiar brand of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” for the sake of his work. He stayed with me through prison, but died of lymphoma cancer before my case got dismissed.

In fact, JB got a Top Secret Security clearance after he moved in with me. So much for the Feds’ argument that I posed a security threat as an “Iraqi agent!” Before Carswell, we talked about getting married. His support was phenomenal to my spirit. He was my white knight of chivalry. I could never have survived without him.

I had 300 minutes of phone time for all prison phone calls every month. That’s five hours of phone time, in maximum 15 minute blocks. At Christmas, prisoners got an extra 100 minutes. JB and I would count them down together. When I’d run out, there’d be such regret in his voice as he begged me to hold on until I got my next batch of minutes on the 1st of the month. He’d be waiting for my call that morning.

To this day, I have a phobia against cell phones, because it reminds me of counting minutes from prison.

If JB was alive today, he would be an Oathkeeper—dedicated to upholding the U.S Constitution. JB came out of Naval Intelligence. So he made a special effort, in our conversations, to insist that neither of us disrespected the military, though we both hated this Iraq war. All phone calls were monitored by prison staff, and Lord love him, JB tried so earnestly to communicate that it’s patriotic to defend the First Amendment. He used to say that old military guys like him signed up to protect the best parts of our liberties and our Constitution, including the right to dissent from the government. Disagreeing on political issues didn’t mean we loved our country any less. Throughout history, American soldiers have died to protect this very cause.

So JB swore, with hand on heart! And so my first couple of months at Carswell passed without breaking my spirit.

The large outdoor track in the prison yard was the focus of all inmate recreation and social life. For the sake of exercise and burning off stress, I walked four to six miles a day, half in the morning, and half in the evening, when the harsh Texas sun cooled off. As the nightmarish months trudged on, my release date becoming a distant fantasy, like an impossible dream, I used to imagine that by the end of my detention, I would have walked enough miles on that track to take me all the way home to Maryland.

Twice a week, M-1 got “treated” to in-door recreation. Carswell had a small crafts room and a micro gym, with four tread mills, four exercise bikes and four Stairmasters. It was somewhat inadequate for a population of 1,400 women prisoners, but very much appreciated. Carswell would be a sorry excuse for a country club. Some surprisingly child-like activities qualified as in-door recreation, such as bowling with gargantuan plastic pins that got knocked down with huge plastic balls twice the size of basketballs. Board games like Monopoly, Sorry, LIFE and Chutes & Ladders entertained us for hours in the TV room, just to fill the time. We played card games constantly.

Sometimes we got very silly, like the night we played “Monopoly,” and I pulled a “Get out of Jail” card. I took it to the guard, and asked to go home.

There was also a small prison library, which amused us enormously by specializing in True Crime dramas, stuffing every book shelf. We joked that the prison’s choice of reading would teach our fellow inmates how to make up better alibis the next time out.

To put that in perspective, when a college friend shipped me a complete set of Harry Potter books, other inmates tried to buy it off me for commissary (prison currency, legal or otherwise).

Otherwise, for recreation, women crocheted endless dolls and blankets for children and boyfriends back home. There was always a buzz over new yarns, colors and designs and patterns, and haggling over who wanted to trade a blanket for commissary.

For the most part, Carswell inmates are not violent or destructive. In fairness, ten years ago a large number of these women would not have got arrested at all. Today there’s a mentality that favors sweeping out households, particularly in drug cases.

Nowadays, grandmothers get locked up for refusing to testify against their adult children caught dealing drugs, while grandma cares for their babies. Most people forget that these grandmothers are holding their little worlds together, keeping children out of foster care. And the Courts punish them terribly as a result. One woman at Carswell was a quadriplegic who got locked up in a drug sting. She could not possibly have walked out on dope dealing family members, since she was paralyzed from the neck down.

Another woman caught 15 years for “contempt of court” for refusing to testify against a corrupt Los Angeles cop, who threatened to kill her younger brothers every time her case went before the Judge. He’d show up at her brothers’ jobs, force one or the other into a squad car. Then he’d drive up and down the California highways, pointing out isolated spots where he could dump their bodies. Or he would describe how he could plant drugs on them, and send them to prison like their sister. Or how he could fake an attack on himself, so it looked like the kid assaulted a police officer.

This woman was eight years into her sentence when I met her. And she never broke the law in her life. Not a speeding ticket. Her attorney begged the Judge for mercy, since the cop continuously threatened to kill her family throughout her imprisonment—in case she changed her mind about testifying. Nobody cared.

That’s the new prison system. Some inmates committed major offenses, like drive by shootings. Others opened the front door for druggie friends of their adult son or daughter, living at home and dealing meth or heroin in the basement. Under federal sentencing guidelines, they all get sentenced as if they actively participated in the drug conspiracy. It’s a cautionary tale.

And it’s a legitimate reason why some Judges allow psychology to mitigate sentencing. Some of these women have stories the Courts need to hear.

One young woman at Carswell had been living on the street as a prostitute since she was 16. She’d run away from home because her brother raped her. A serial killer picked her off the street at 19, and confined her to a torture chamber for several days, chained from the ceiling. She got cut up and raped. When the guy went to work, she jumped out a window, naked, and flagged down help. She was a lucky survivor. Police found bodies of other prostitutes buried in the back yard.

Her attorney asked for mercy in sentencing on a drug charge a few years later, citing post traumatic stress from hellacious abuse throughout her young life. She was only 23 when I met her, and this was probably the only break she ever got in her sad life. Should we as a society begrudge her that small compassion? A proper psych evaluation (unlike mine) would allow her to share that horrific experience with the Judge, and appeal for mercy. I hope she got it.

One of my most beloved friends at Carswell was a grandmotherly inmate, who cared for the Alzheimers woman on M-1, and brought hugs and comfort to the whole unit. Her brother, a “fire bug,” put a pipe bomb in her attorney’s car, which exploded when the ignition turned on. She was indicted for conspiracy in that attack, which happened while she was at Carswell for a psych study on another charge, linked to abusing prescription drugs, like Valium. She was self-medicating to stay calm, after a life of intense trauma.

It turns out her brother, who’s criminally insane—and free— burned her home to the ground twice before, with her children inside the house. While she was in prison, he burned down her teenage children’s house a third time. Alas, he was out of control—and untouchable in the Courts.

Apparently, she and her siblings grew up in the most tragic circumstances. There were hints of incest and severe beatings and alcoholism. Her own father shot her in the foot with a gun. I saw the scars. She showed up with a bloody gun shot wound at school the next day, and teachers took her to the emergency room.

Now this darling woman was maternal and non-violent, except she had survived a childhood of sheer hell. It broke her brother completely. But she has not committed violent crimes herself that I know of. It’s doubtful she ever would. She does animal rescue work, and studied for the ministry. I loved her because when I first got to M-1, she helped me make my first prison bed, which has a trick to it. And she was God-sent for the Alzheimer woman on the unit, who had no idea she was in prison, and was terribly frightened and confused by other inmates. This grandmotherly inmate kept her safe.

I believe her Judge acted wisely and compassionately in considering the full picture of her history before sentencing her with leniency. Her attorney survived the car bombing, and supported the reduced sentencing!

The case of the Alzheimer woman illustrates the exact opposite of compassion in sentencing, what happens when the Courts refuse to weigh mitigating factors of a defendant’s personal story.

Obviously this woman suffered dementia and couldn’t be left alone. So her daughter—an incorrigible drug runner in and out of Mexico—took her elderly mother to pick up drug supplies with her. They got arrested together coming back across the border. Her daughter should be strung up for this. But the Judge made no allowance for the Alzheimer mother’s state of incompetence, and sentenced her to seven or eight years in prison. The poor old lady would wander the hallways, lost and confused, looking for her children, who are now grown up. She imagined somebody had stolen her children. At night she’d get frightened, and wander into different cells. She also thought some inmates were family members. She needed a nursing home. But with a drug conviction, it’s doubtful any place will take her.

All of this explains how, after my initial fury at getting labeled incompetent, I recognized there’s a time when this sort of sentencing has merit, and should be applied.

With regards to my case, apart from psychiatry—which I despise— I think there’s a special angle to incompetence that relates to the Patriot Act, uniquely.

Incompetence applies strictly to a defendant’s ability to assist in preparing a defense. Under the Patriot Act, there’s serious question how any defendant facing “secret charges,” “secret evidence,” and “secret grand jury testimony” could possibly assist any attorney in preparing for trial. “Classified” evidence that I’d worked as an Asset for nine (9) years in counter-terrorism got suppressed, though it would have freed me of the most serious charges and some of the minor counts. My attorney attended a secret debriefing at the Justice Department, where legal strategy was discussed,, which he was prohibited from sharing with me or other attorneys working on my case. Thus, I could not participate in my defense at a serious and meaningful level.

By its very structure and nature, therefore, it could be argued the Patriot Act renders the most capable defendant “incompetent to stand trial.”

During these months at Carswell, I came to question if perhaps Judge Mukasey used such a line of logic to decide my case— different than the official psychiatry, but a logic, nonetheless, that weighs whether a defendant has become incapacitated by circumstances beyond the defendant’s control. During those months at Carswell, I spent many afternoons walking the track, wondering if his decision to kill the case was more inspired by repugnance of the Patriot Act.

There’s no question but that my case created a new and different kind of precedent for incompetence. Judge Mukasey was fully aware of all those different factors when he chose to accept the finding of incompetence.

And so, while avoiding the mess of psychiatry— which I revile— I would argue that attorneys confronting the Patriot Act should cite my case as a precedent that the law itself creates an artificial state of incompetence to assist in defense strategy.

It could be argued that Judge Mukasey would concur— within a range of non-violent activities. Non-violence would be key, also the likelihood of steering clear of criminal behavior in the future.

Until Christmas, I was not afraid. In a Christmas card to JB Fields, I posed for a photograph in front of a life size mural of a motorcycle, with a brave smile, which I thought would comfort him.

Soon I’d be home. Or so everybody believed.

Storm clouds had churned over my case when I arrived. But I had not allowed them to swell into gales.

Carswell’s psychology department had two tasks. First, prison staff had to deliver an opinion whether the incompetence finding should be upheld or thrown out. Secondly, they got to recommend what might be done to restore my competence, so prosecution could go forward. Judge Mukasey had the final say, regardless.

From my first days in the SHU, Carswell established that I was obviously not suffering hallucinations, or depression, or hysterics, or threatening violence towards myself or others. The only thing left was for Carswell to examine at a basic level whether my story could be validated.

It’s critical to understand the predicament that brought us to this point. I got locked up, because the Patriot Act allowed the Prosecutor to withhold “exculpatory” knowledge from the Court, corroborating my identity as an Asset, under rules for “classified evidence.”

The FBI verified my story early on. Witnesses repeated to Ted Lindauer— and later my second attorney, Brian Shaughnessy—everything they told the FBI. In ordinary circumstances, the Courts require Prosecutors to acknowledge “exculpatory information” as soon as it’s discovered. Unhappily, in my case, the U.S. Attorney refused. The Justice Department wanted to see if my Defense could validate my story by ourselves, without their automatic cooperation. It was a test.

The false and grossly irresponsible allegations by Dr. Drob, casting aspersions on the quality of my witnesses, caused tremendous damage and confusion, resulting in my loss of freedom.[429] Of course it was flatly untrue. Dr. Drob acted recklessly and dishonestly, by failing to update his report after learning of Ted Lindauer’s success on my behalf[430] That was not “last minute” corroboration. That was six months before Carswell. Dr. Drob had plenty of time to update his findings. He could have spoken with Ted himself, if he doubted me. He chose not to.

But reality has very little to do with psychiatry. It’s about ego. Evaluations are scripted to suit arguments before the Court.

I refused to play their game. If they expected to rely on Dr. Drob’s evaluation, they would be sorely disappointed.

Immediately upon surrendering to Carswell, I gave the chief psychologist, James Shadduck, the phone numbers and email addresses of two high-powered witnesses eager to vouch for my credibility.[431]

The first witness, Ian Ferguson, was a former Scottish journalist and co-author of “Cover Up of Convenience: the Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie,”[432] a revealing expose of the bombing of Pan Am 103.

After the conviction of Libya’s man, Abdelbaset Megraghi, Ferguson jumped on board the Lockerbie Appeals as Chief Criminal Investigator, spearheaded by Edward MacKechnie, my star witness. His background qualifies him as one of the foremost experts on the bombing of Pan Am 103.

Ferguson is loyal to truth wherever he finds it. His integrity as an old school investigative journalist requires that he speak up when he observes injustice or political malfeasance So I had confidence he would not stand by idly, while the Justice Department locked me away on a Texas military base without any sort of hearing.

True enough, within a few weeks of my surrender, Ferguson began bombarding the psychology staff with phone calls, while they desperately tried to ignore him.

His input was critical.[433] Most significantly, Ferguson could vouch for the Intelligence background of my two handlers, Dr. Fuisz and Hoven, and our close working relationships. Ferguson had direct confirmation of Dr. Fuisz’s CIA ties from the Lockerbie Trial. As for Hoven, at the point of Ferguson’s introduction to our team, his sources told Ferguson that Hoven was the Defense Intelligence liaison on Lockerbie. That’s why Ferguson wanted to talk with us— If I was wrong about Hoven’s identity, then Ferguson would testify other members of U.S. Intelligence were also mistaken. And that didn’t matter, because Dr. Fuisz was unabashedly CIA.

That’s all my Defense had to prove— unless the Justice Department protested the legality of a CIA operation inside the U.S. Then Hoven’s role as liaison to Defense Intelligence would become important. Otherwise, Dr. Fuisz’s ties to CIA would be plenty.

Once the intelligence connection was established, it would be absurd to suggest a long-time CIA operative like Dr. Fuisz could not be interested in Libya and Iraq at the same time. It would be particularly ridiculous since public records showed Dr. Fuisz testified before Congress about a U.S. corporation that supplied SCUD Mobile Missile Launchers to Iraq before the first Gulf War.

Ferguson provided the construct of my defense in one knock-out punch. After that, my identity as an Asset, supervised by members of U.S. Intelligence, should have been indisputable from Carswell’s standpoint.

Parke Godfrey was the second witness waiting to speak with Dr. Shadduck. A computer science professor at York University in Toronto, and a close friend since 1990, Godfrey earned his PhD at College Park, Maryland. Until 2000, he visited my home and spoke with me several times a week. He would swear that he observed no signs of mental illness or instability in all of our 15 years together.[434]

More critically, Godfrey would provide valuable confirmation of my team’s 9/11 warnings, and how in August 2001 I told him “the attack was imminent,” and he should “stay out of New York City, because we expected mass casualties.”[435]

There was nothing delusional about any of it.

Godfrey promised to make sure Dr. Shadduck understood the FBI was fully debriefed about my 9/11 warnings in Toronto in September 2004—a year before I got sent to Carswell.[436]

Denying my 9/11 warning would be incredibly stupid and politically dangerous at this stage. Given the range of confirmations— to the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, lying to Judge Mukasey would smack of a major government cover up that would bite everybody, if exposed.

That might explain why prison documents show I had to push Dr. Shadduck for almost two months to interview Ferguson and Godfrey.[437] Obviously, Carswell was reluctant to confront the truth that I was pushing so hard to verify. The psych staff had a knuckle-tight grip on “plausible deniability,” and they were reluctant to let go.

Thankfully, Ferguson and Godfrey were both gravely frightened for my safety, and worked tenaciously to get through to prison psychologists. Ferguson was especially vigilant, calling Carswell repeatedly from his home in France for several weeks. Prison staff told Ferguson that Dr. Shadduck was on vacation throughout November—a flagrant lie. Ferguson would not give up. And neither would Godfrey. Everyone recognized the grave risks that I faced, and the intensely political nature of the Justice Department’s attack against me. They were determined that it should go no farther.

I was at the prison gym, running on a treadmill, when Dr. Shadduck rushed to find me. Wide eyed, hands shaking, he asked for Ian Ferguson’s phone number.

They’d been talking on the phone to France, where Ferguson lived, when the phone cut off. Shadduck had a lot more questions. But “yes,” he stuttered, “your story checks out. It’s all factually true.”

Shadduck told me that he spoke with Godfrey later that day.

Godfrey later testified in Court that it was a short conversation.

Short enough to learn that I had definitely warned about a 9/11 style of attack involving airplane hijackings and a strike on the World Trade Center in the spring and summer of 2001.

I gloated. The Justice Department’s deception in the Court had been thwarted. Ferguson and Godfrey had provided knock out punches on my behalf.

Needless to say, I felt profoundly relieved. Few defendants could hope for so much.

And think what that meant—

Staff for the Bureau of Prisons had received confirmation that an “Iraqi Agent” locked in their prison was really a U.S. Asset involved in Pre-War Intelligence, who gave advance warning about the 9/11 attack. And they were fully aware that the FBI had previously confirmed that truth, as well.

From that point on, any action to harm me would qualify as a government cover up, impeding accountability to the people of New York, where I was supposed to stand trial before a Jury of My Peers, who would render judgment on my actions before and after the 9/11 attack.

Of critical importance, Carswell received all this verification within my first 60 days at the prison. Staff could have authenticated my story earlier if they’d returned Ferguson’s phone calls from France.

In any non-political situation, the psych evaluations by Dr. Drob and Dr. Kleinman would have been debunked. My Asset work and the 9/11 warning stood up to scrutiny. Long time friends in Maryland reported no signs of mental instability. After those witness interviews, it should have been time to ship me back for trial, or dismiss the case, if the Justice Department wanted it to go away quietly.

But my indictment was off the charts, politically speaking. The competence question was a legal farce. In which case, both Ferguson and Godfrey’s testimony had tremendous value for a different reason: If O’Callaghan reneged on his promise to kill the case, it was critical for the Justice Department to know I wasn’t operating from a weak position, as Dr. Drob labored to imply.

No matter. For the rest of December, I experienced as much peace as prison allows.

Yes, I was stuck in prison for the Christmas holidays. But surely the Justice Department had done its worst already.

Just a few more weeks and Judge Mukasey would either the drop the charges entirely— or the Court would move for trial, and hear the truth, too.[438]

I could wait them out.

Everything moved my way in December, as I counted the days to my release. Down in Texas, locked behind a razor fence, I thought about the weeping Japanese cherry tree in my front yard— my “peace tree—” waiting to flower in Maryland. Friends reminded me the tree would start blossoming shortly after I got home. JB Fields was excited, too.

For Christmas dinner, Carswell feasted us with Cornish game hens, corn bread stuffing, green beans and macaroni and cheese, with pecan pie for desert— a real treat from our daily fare. I was so delighted that I wrote down the menu, and sent it home to JB, since I’d run out of phone minutes.

My phone calls to JB ended exuberantly with a promise I’d be home by Valentine’s Day. Then we’d be together. JB promised to pick me up from Carswell on his BMW motorcycle. He swore that he’d ride all the way to Texas to get me. We giggled how I would hop on the back of his bike at the prison gates, and we’d zoom off to glory. Our future looked so hopeful.

Christmas at Carswell was one of those times in my life that I stopped to be mindful of my blessings. In a few weeks I would be home. In the meantime, I had met some strong and fascinating women—Sharon, Nancy, Toie, Jessica, Renee, Karin—very special ladies who, for whatever reasons, got caught in a bad spot. We laughed and joked together. We cried together. We played silly games to entertain ourselves. We poured over law books at the prison library, studying our cases together. I hope we came to respect each other.

I was counting those last days. Other women came in for psych studies, and left after six or seven weeks. I should have gone home myself, but the Bureau of Prisons wanted to hold me until the 120th day allowed by federal law for these sorts of competency evaluations. There was no purpose to it, except maximizing the sentence.

Alright then, I could wait until February 3rd. This, too, would pass. The government had made its play. There was nowhere to go but dismissal or trial.

Or so we fervently believed.

That all changed on December 23, 2005, two days before Christmas.

Carswell had already authenticated my story. Infamously, they now started looking for ways to eradicate it.

My nightmare of “extreme prejudice” was about to begin in earnest.

CHAPTER 23:

IF AT FIRST YOU
DON’T SUCCEED,
SHOOT THE HOSTAGE

“I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,” said cunning old Fury;
I’ll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.”
–Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

The warning shot fired at my head two days before Christmas.

On M-1, one of the prison staff, Dr. Collin Vas, hustled up and thrust a paper in my hand.

“Notice of a medication hearing?”[439] My hands started to shake. “What the fuck is this?”

Drugs? But I knew at first glance. This was “extreme prejudice” for sure. If I understood the intelligence community at all, a serious attack was coming.

And with sudden clarity, I understood why. I had to grimace.

My upcoming release posed new threats to the so far successful cover ups of 9/11 and Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence. So long as the Justice Department locked me up tight in prison on a Texas military base, the truth got locked up with me. But once I got released and the indictment got dismissed, that truth would crash down like an avalanche on the political comforts of Washington. Republicans—and a few big name Democrats, too—had staked their reputations on a massive public fraud about the “effectiveness” of anti- terrorism policy and Iraq’s phony lack of cooperation in the 9/11 investigation. They had adjusted to that lie most comfortably. I took that comfort away.

My threat level had multiplied in prison. The abuse I suffered in their cover up—false arrest and false imprisonment on the Patriot Act— showed deliberate and calculated malevolence towards our system of political accountability. It suggested premeditated deception involving top ranking Republicans. My federal prosecutor, Edward O’Callaghan would later join the senior campaign staff of John McCain and Sarah Palin in the 2008 election. The man who covered up my team’s 9/11 warnings would brag of advising McCain’s Presidential campaign on anti-terrorism policy, according to his internet biography.[440]

If the corporate media woke up from its coma, this would be a hellacious scandal.

Psychiatry had already whored itself once to the White House by pretending I was incompetent. As behaviorists, I’m sure they recognized that once they sold out their professional ethics, the second act of corruption came much easier—floating the idea that I should be drugged until I abandoned my claims about Iraq and 9/11. I doubt very much they stopped to consider how obscene their proposal really was.

If they hadn’t considered it, I was ready to connect the dots for them.

The internal “medication hearing” was scheduled for December 28, 2005[441]— five days away. The hearing notice advised that I was entitled to present witnesses and evidence from outside the prison. I could also call prison staff. But with such short notice from Carswell, the week between Christmas Eve and New Years would be impossible to accommodate my rights, since witnesses would be traveling for the holidays. Adding to my difficulties, I had used up my phone time. So I could not contact witnesses until January 1st, when I got a new batch of minutes. Oftentimes an attorney flies in to attend prison hearings, as well—a role Ted Lindauer could have played.

Without delay, I ran to Dr. Shadduck for an explanation, along with an urgent request for a one week postponement, so I could pull everything together.

Shadduck explained that this “medication hearing” was the first of its kind in the federal prisons.

As luck would have it, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers defendants from New York and New Jersey, had just handed down a crucial decision regarding the rights of federal inmates to reject drugs in prison. The 2nd Circuit had ruled that inmates must have the right to an internal hearing before drug recommendations are presented to the Court. Through this hearing, inmates would receive notification of what prison staff wanted to do, and they would have an opportunity to proffer a rebuttal. Above all, the Appellate Court stipulated at length that inmates have rights at these medication hearings, chiefly the right to call witnesses from outside the prison, and show any evidence that supports their cause against drugging.

It was a critical tool for prisoner rights, and an outstanding appellate decision. I cannot express sufficient gratitude for the inmate who fought for all of us. It must have been a bitter fight. I was profoundly grateful for it, and I wanted to make full use of it. Indeed, I would be the first inmate anywhere in the federal prisons to invoke my rights under this decision.

Most significantly, it afforded me the opportunity to prove my authenticity to the wider staff at Carswell, and debunk the stupidity and dishonesty of psychiatry’s attacks on the superior caliber of my witnesses. On those grounds, I explained to Shadduck that I wanted Ian Ferguson and Parke Godfrey to testify by speaker phone. I reminded Shadduck that he’d already spoken with both men, and they confirmed the salient points of my work with Dr. Fuisz and my 9/11 warnings.

There was nothing delusional about any of it.

Whatever crooked scheme Carswell hoped to achieve with this “medication hearing,” I intended to wreck. Other prison staff would be forced to confront what Shadduck already knew. My story was easily verifiable. Carswell was up to its eyeballs in a vicious cover up scheme.

Oh yes, high caliber witnesses would always be my best protection, in Court or in prison.

I just had to cross my t’s and dot all my i’s to show that I met the highest standards of proof. They were playing games. Obviously I could not afford to. I had no intention of relying on the integrity of the psychology business after what I’d suffered at their hands already.

As for my “mental health” status per se, Parke Godfrey had been a close friend in Maryland since 1990, visiting my home every week, and speaking with me by telephone two or three times a week. By December, 2005, he’d known me 15 years. Godfrey was ready to testify that he saw no evidence of mental illness or instability of any kind in my behavior.[442] That would certainly make “involuntary drugging” difficult to justify over my strenuous objections. And I had no intention of going along with such a thing. I abhor drugs of any kind. I would take this fight all the way to the Supreme Court if I had to. Even then, I would never agree.

This testimony mattered enormously.

My request for a one week delay was justified to guarantee fairness in the proceedings. After the 1st of January, when I got my new batch of phone minutes, I could send for the Andy Card letters to show my communications to Andy Card and Secretary Colin Powell had been professional and respectful at all times— never threatening or hostile. Finally, I would submit the 12 months of observation notes from Family Health Services in Maryland,[443] which documented that Dr. Taddesseh saw nothing wrong with me— “no psychosis,” “no depression,” “no mood disturbances,” “no reason for additional psychiatric intervention” That was pretty definitive.

I was confident Shadduck already had copies of Taddesseh’s notes from Maryland. But I wasn’t taking any chances. I had to go into this “medication hearing” with all my ducks in a row.

It meant a one week delay, and no longer.

Shadduck refused the postponement.

I was shocked, frankly— and worried. This new “medication hearing” had been crafted to protect inmates in circumstances exactly like mine. By refusing to accommodate a legitimate request to call witnesses and present evidence, Shadduck was deliberately thwarting the 2nd Circuit’s intentions. A one week delay would hardly drag down the system—not after three months in prison, with no action at all.

For his part, Shadduck recognized the critical importance of what Ferguson and Godfrey would say to his colleagues. He wanted their statements shut out of the prison record for the same reasons I wanted them in. He understood that rejecting my request for a short delay would violate the spirit of the 2nd Circuit decision.

He did so anyway.

Not for the first time I was reminded how reality terrifies psychiatrists, and how fiercely they fight against it, desperate to protect their authority in the courts. Reality goes right out the window, while psychiatry labors hard—and violently— to deny it’s there.

At Carswell, I coined a phrase for this phenomena. I call it “delusional psychiatry.” It’s the elephant in any courtroom.

I was right to be paranoid.

On the morning of the “medication hearing,” I was ready to rumble. Even so I was aghast to discover the full macabre horror that Carswell had schemed up for me.

Waiting for me was Dr. Collin Vas and Dr. William Pederson. Shadduck was not present.[444]

Immediately I was handed an internal document titled “Notice of Medication Hearing and Advisement of Rights,” and instructed to sign it. The paper left large blanks under the names of witnesses that I desired to speak on my behalf.[445] Carswell wanted to pretend that I had not requested testimony by Ferguson and Godfrey. Dr. Vas grabbed the paper out of my hands when I declared my intention to insert their names under the blank witness list.

On the paper, Dr. Vas wrote for me, “Ms. Lindauer refuses to sign,” with an X on the signature line.[446]

There was no time to express outrage over such critical dishonesty.

My attention quickly shifted to the section of the paper marked “Reason for Treatment: Restoration of Competency, Treatment of Delusions.”[447]

And above that: “Proposed Treatment: Anti psychotics, Benzodiazepeines, Antidepressants and Mood Stabilizers.”[448]

My jaw hit the floor.

Seizing on the most important aspects, the list of drugs for “treatment,” I launched my defense with a strong offensive, pounding the irrational nature of proposing treatment for non-existent conditions.

“I want the record to show that I have requested a delay to get witness testimony, and that has been refused.” I started off.

“Let’s take a look at this. I see here that some of these drugs are for treatment of delusions? Are we here to talk about drugs for me? Or drugs for you? I ask, because you’re the ones who appear to be denying reality in my case.”

My voice dripped with sarcasm.

“What’s this drug for delusions?” I demanded.

“Haldol.” Pederson was tight lipped.[449]

“Haldol? To treat delusions, I see. A rhinoceros tranquilizer, I’ve been told.” I forced a smile.

“If you’re really so worried, Dr. Pederson, I suggest that you delay this meeting for a week, so we can get these folks on the phone. You can ask them yourself. Nobody has to take my word for anything. I’m quite confident that you’ll find there’s nothing delusional about any of it.”

Indeed, testimony by Parke Godfrey and Ian Ferguson, via speaker phone, would have smashed this “diagnosis” in seconds flat. Session reports by Dr. Taddesseh at Family Health Services in Maryland would have provided another knock out punch.

“Perhaps you’re not aware that your colleague, Dr. Shadduck, has already interviewed these witnesses. He’s already verified my story.[450] Dr. Vas, here, knows that very well. So I cannot imagine why you think I’d go along with this.”

“Here’s some “reality” for you, Dr. Pederson. The Justice Department is pretending that I’m incompetent because Republican politicians in Washington don’t want to take responsibility for their mistakes in Iraq. They want to blame Assets, as if it’s our fault that the U.S. marched soldiers into Baghdad.”

“You’ve got to love Washington, though. First they arrest me for telling them the war would be disastrous. Now they’re up on Capitol Hill holding press conferences, complaining that I never spoke up to warn them off the invasion. They’re nothing but god damn cowards.”

“I think that’s the “real” reality, Dr. Pederson.”

“Well let me set you straight: I would never agree to put psychotropic drugs in my body to help out a Republican politician who got himself in trouble in Washington. I’m not going to put poison in MY body to help out George Bush or John McCain. No fucking way.”

I started lecturing them at that point:

“Whether you talk to my witnesses today or not, your staff has already verified my story.”

“If you go into court, and submit a falsified report saying my story was not authenticated while I was at Carswell, you would be committing felony perjury in a federal court of law.”

“You would be lying to a senior federal judge. And I swear before God, I would make sure you pay for that. Perjury is a federal crime. You could go to prison. And I would not hesitate to prosecute.” Then I laughed. “A lot of women are at Carswell today, because THEY LIED to a federal judge or the FBI, too. So you had better stop and think about what you’re doing.”

“If you want my witnesses to repeat what they’ve already told Shadduck, we can make that happen. I have no problem with that. I’d love to do it, in fact!. I wanted to delay this meeting until next week, so you could hear what they have to say.”

“But I’ve already made them available to your staff, Dr. Pederson. It’s too late for you to deny my authenticity. At this point, if you falsify claims to the contrary—if you lie to a federal judge—you could face prosecution. Do I make myself clear?”

They looked at me, stone-faced and silent.

“Now that we understand each other, let’s see this list of drugs you’ve got. Oh my, anti-depressants!” I started reading the list of proposed drugs.

“Prozac.” Dr. Pederson shot back.

“Prozac! My, my! That’s a serious anti-depressant alright! How extraordinary that you think I should take a very powerful drug like Prozac when I don’t suffer from depression at all!”

Dr. Vas spoke up. “Maybe someday— in the future— you might suffer depression. So this way you won’t suffer it. You could be looking forward.”

I reamed him: “Wait a minute. I don’t suffer depression in prison, which has to be the most stressful and awful experience. Here, I’m active and motivated. I work on my case at the law library. I walk 4-6 miles a day on the track. I suffer no symptoms of depression of any kind. But maybe— someday in the future— years from now— we don’t know when— I might suffer depression. Someday I might. So I should start taking anti-depressant drugs now?? Do I understand you correctly?”

Dr. Vas got all puffed up: “You admit that you suffered a period of depression 20 years ago, when you lived in Seattle. So you admit that it happened before.”

I had forgotten all about that. But I didn’t let up: “Twenty years ago!?! You’re not serious? Twenty years ago I was a kid right out of college, trying to figure out my life. I lived in Seattle, where it rains non-stop. All the time! Yes, I got depressed. So I left Seattle. And I grew up. And guess what? I stopped feeling depressed.”

I turned to Dr. Pederson: “You cannot seriously think that I would agree to take Prozac today because 20 years ago I got gloomy when it rained in Seattle? That’s not going to happen. No. You can forget about it.”

Dr. Pederson pouted: “So you are opposed to drugs. We call it medication, by the way. And you’re telling us that you don’t believe that you need that, and you’re not going to take it.”

“That’s right,” I replied. “I’m not going to put drugs in my body for non-existent conditions. Not Prozac or anything else! I consider it irresponsible for any “doctor” to suggest it, and I won’t do it.”

“Let me repeat: I will not put drugs in my body for non-existent conditions. Now what’s this other stuff?”

“Ativan. That’s a mood stabilizer,” Dr. Pederson replied. “It’s for stress.”

“Well, considering that my only stress comes from prison, I’m sure I’ll be just fine once I’m released on February 3rd. So the answer is no. I don’t intend to stick around long enough to need Ativan. I haven’t needed it in the three months that I’ve been at Carswell. And I certainly won’t need it when I go home. I repeat. I am not going to take drugs for non-existent conditions. Not to save a bunch of crooks in Congress afraid of losing the next election. It’s not going to happen.”

“My witnesses have already verified my story for Shadduck. After the first of January, I’d be happy to hook you up. That’s not a problem at all.”

I don’t remember what else was said, but I’d swear on a stack of Bibles this accurately recounts our battle engagement at this “medication hearing.” I was tough all the way through.

Friends, this was as bad as it gets. I went back to my cell shaking in fear, as I crawled into my bunk.

Haldol? Prozac? Ativan?

I finally understood what three months locked in prison on a Texas military base had not convinced me. The Justice Department, the CIA and the White House seriously wanted to destroy me. They had no intention of letting me go. I didn’t know how they could rig the system to hold me. But this was scary stuff. I gave thanks that I’m a tough street fighter, and fast thinking on my feet.

But that day I was blinded by the light.

I confess there’s something about “extreme prejudice” that doesn’t sink in until you face the brutality of it full force. “Extreme prejudice” shoots for absolute physical destruction and spiritual annihilation of the Intelligence Asset—the death of body, mind and soul.

Trying to chemically lobotomize an Asset certainly qualifies as “extreme termination.”

When they come at you like this, they pull every dirty trick in the book. You have to take every dirty punch. And you have to fight. And fight. And fight.

Because if you stop for anything— to cry or complain that it’s not fair— they will take you out. That’s the whole point.

And they are bigger, better financed, more powerful and absolutely fucking corrupt. More than anything, they are unashamedly corrupt.

It’s a dirty fight until you’re down.

But you have advantages, too. You are small. You can pivot in your strategy. And the old intelligence rule still holds: Everything that comes at you is either a weapon or a tool.

To fight back, you have to keep hold of your wits, and you have to build a counter-strategy and take them on proactively. You cannot afford to be reactive or passive.

One thing more, not everybody opposes you. In an intelligence war, there are always factions. In “extreme prejudice,” one faction holds superior force— for the moment—like the pro-War camp in the Republican Party, which supported the selfish and malicious Iraqi Exiles on Capitol Hill. And they take no prisoners.

However, they are most likely to shoot the hostage in “extreme prejudice” when they are going down or about to fall. That’s when they fight dirtiest. That’s when they’re most sensitive about their vulnerabilities. They’re still at peak. So they can attract weak allies, like corrupt prison psychiatrists willing to prostitute their credentials for a few bucks, and get their hands dirty.

For a moment those psychiatrists got to play in a real intelligence game. But that’s not their world. They are pawns. They don’t recognize how the pendulum swings back the other way— the sword of Damocles, as I call it. When it comes back, they’re out in the open, and the forces that gave the kill order have left them high and dry.

Other factions hone in on that. So you’re out there, fighting alone, and somebody behind the scenes recognizes the tides are turning, and they throw you a wrench, so that you can wage a stronger battle.

You keep fighting alone. But now you’re fighting with a wrench. Even so, you can’t flinch. You have no choice but to take every dirty blow.

Once extreme prejudice came into play, I was fighting for my life and to protect myself from a chemical lobotomy, which this cocktail of super potent psychotropic drugs (Haldol, Ativan and Prozac) definitely intended to inflict. Secondarily, I was fighting for my freedom, to get out of prison. Protecting myself from drugs was my greatest priority, however, without question.

Calling me “incompetent,” ironically, meant nothing to me. Sticks and stones, baby. Smear tactics don’t work on me. Notoriety doesn’t frighten me, or I could never have dealt with Libya and Iraq— or the CIA— in the first place. No insult by a psychology freak ever mattered to me. Reputations are for sissies in games like this.

What terrified me was the threat of forcible drugging. I abhor drugs. I consider that my brain and my consciousness are precious gifts, and I would not destroy or alter my thinking and the magnificent working of my mind or soul for anything in the world.

That was unacceptable to me.

I would come out of this fight standing or dead. There was no middle ground.

That first morning, I made a critical decision. I would not allow them to kill me. And I would not accommodate them on any level in this terrible game. As the fight continued, my strength would ebb and flow, but my knowledge and confidence of who I am would grow stronger, because to wage this battle, I had to know who I was. I had to believe in who I was. And from that moment, the illusion of their power to decide who I was, was lost. They couldn’t take away my identity, because so long as I stayed alive, I was my identity.

Deep in my gut I understood that if I could survive this brutality, once the pendulum swung back, I would be resurrected. The truth that I carry would stay constant and unyielding, no matter who controlled the White House. This truth mattered—or Republican leaders would never have fought so violently to destroy it.

Many times at Carswell I murmured a prayer by the great Rev. Martin Luther King. “The arc of the universe bends towards justice.” Over and over again.

A chemical lobotomy, however, would be living death for me. It was too grotesque to contemplate.

And so, while I waited, tense and frightened, for Carswell’s internal decision on “involuntary drugging,” as they were now calling it, I could not help but consider the powerful forces arrayed against me. My adversaries were powerful, indeed.

My own cousin, Andy Card served as Chief of Staff to President Bush all the time I was locked up at Carswell. I often thought of Secretary Colin Powell, stumping on CNN to wash the blood and dirt off his reputation.

The only thing more dangerous than “delusional psychiatry” turned out to be “delusional” White House officials and Congressional leaders so desperate to hold onto power that they denied responsibility for their own hellacious stupidity. They lacked the courage and integrity to take responsibility for their own decisions. They had to destroy me to obliterate evidence of their weakness.

Shortly after my release, John McLaughlin, a powerhouse Washington journalist and host of the McLaughlin Group, lamented how the White House and Congress created “a virtual reality about Iraq,” and fought desperately to attack anybody who threatened to expose the cracks in their reality.

I was not alone in recognizing the “group psychosis” seizing the GOP war camp.

Unhappily for me, my case tossed together “delusional psychiatry” with “delusional War policy—” And the crazies in Congress held the balance of power so long as I remained in prison and under indictment.

I was Dorothy lost in a Land of Oz created by White House Wizards. The fact that I was right meant nothing. They could not allow Dorothy to pull back the curtain, and show that all of their spectacle and glitz was a bunch of circus tricks. They were so vulnerable and weak. They could not tolerate the smallest person poking at them.

Once little Dorothy entered the stage with Toto, the Wizard of Oz was finished. Republicans in Congress recognized that little Dorothy might quickly metamorphis into Susan Lindauer.

I thought about all of these factors as I waited anxiously for Carswell’s internal decision on involuntary drugging. Thinking proactively, I began mapping a strategy for appeals if they attempted to carry out this terrifying threat.

My heart was pounding when prison staff thrust the internal staff decision under the door of my prison cell.

I ran to grab it, and flipped anxiously through the pages to the end of the report, my heart thumping fast and hard.

“Involuntary medication not approved.”[451]

I gasped. I had won this round! I laughed deliriously and hugged my cellmates. I danced around our cell, jumping up and down like a kid. I was elated.

When I calmed down, I examined the internal report more carefully. [See Appendix] On page 4, the hand-written “Summary of Evidence” stated the following:[452]

“Lindauer reported she was against medication of any kind, including psychotropic medication.”

“She denied the possibility of mental illness, once again reporting in detail her belief that the government is having her detained because she represents a threat to the Administration due to her differing beliefs about their policies on Iraq. She states she has been a government agent for 9 years working in “anti terrorism.”

“Lindauer denied any wish to hurt her or others, and denied any history of aggressive behavior.”

“The document is signed by William M. Pederson, MD and Collin Vas, MD.”

There was no ambiguity in that hand-written memo.

The summary provided damnable and irrefutable evidence in itself of the Bureau of Prison’s logic and rationale for “treatment.” Harsh psychotropic drugs had one single purpose— to “cure” my beliefs that I worked as a U.S. Intelligence Asset.

No other evidence from Carswell was offered to justify drug treatment. Staff described no depression, no weeping or hysteria, no behavioral problems dealing with guards or other inmates. There was no mention of hallucinations or hearing voices, or suggestions that I suffered disjointed thoughts, and showed poor cognition skills.

No, the rationale for psychotropic drugs was strictly to “correct” my claims of working as a “government agent for 9 years in anti- terrorism.” Carswell suggested drugs would be necessary to “cure” my “detailed belief” that the government was prosecuting me for dissenting from Republican policy on Iraq.

There was just that small pesky problem. My story happened to be true. And they all knew it.

Even the corporate media had acknowledged from its coma that the White House had a fondness for punishing dissension to protect its War policy. And now Carswell had made a play straight out of Soviet psychiatry in the Cold War.

My strong offensive at the internal “medication hearing” stopped them. When I saw that document however, and I saw the desperation and illogic behind it, I knew that prison staff would not stop trying. They hadn’t figured out how to do it yet. But it seemed doubtful that they could resist looking for another way.

Under a second page of the report, there were boxes:

Had the inmate requested witnesses? Dr. Pederson marked “No.”453, 454

Liar!

Under the second box marked “Evidence Presented,” there was a category for “Statement of witnesses.” He checked off “Not applicable.”[455]

Bastard liar!

That told me a lot. Carswell would not acknowledge my witnesses, even if falsifying a report amounted to perjury in federal court—which would be a punishable felony.

Well, they’d been warned.

I took a deep breath. I’d won this round!

If it was only up to prison psychiatrists, the question of involuntary drugging had been decided. I had won the argument. They couldn’t pull it off.

But I was sure that if the White House or the Justice Department intervened from outside the prison, this attack would not stop.

I was willing to bet it would get really ugly.

On January 1st, I called JB Fields and told him that it looked doubtful that I would be coming home on February 3rd.

Sometimes it helps to be paranoid.

CHAPTER 24:

CORRUPTION AT
CARSWELL

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
–Edmund Burke

Something more sinister was happening at Carswell than prison rapes and withholding health care from very sick inmates— as if that wasn’t bad enough.

Much worse, the prison had a history of refusing to release women inmates after the completion of their sentences, on the most flimsy grounds.

It happened more often than anyone would like to think.

The first time I witnessed it, I could not believe it myself.

A woman prisoner from Chicago had won a tremendous victory in the United States Supreme Court. She’d filed what’s called a “pro se” appeal, meaning that she prepared a legal brief by herself without an attorney’s assistance. She challenged her conviction and sentencing alone.

That the United States Supreme Court took up her appeal at all was quite impressive in itself. No matter the merits of a case, there are umpteen thousands of appeals that never get heard, most filed by experienced attorneys, let alone those submitted “pro se” by defendants. From out of that multitude, the Supreme Court chose her case for review.

More impressively still, the Supreme Court granted her appeal, striking down all or part of her conviction, with a declarative order that she should be released from Carswell immediately.

That’s a tremendous victory for any defendant, manna from on high! It’s what we prisoners dream of, getting our day in the Supreme Court—and winning! It almost never happens. Even if a Supreme Court Justice agrees to review a petition, at best you hope that parts of it are accepted. In her situation, the Supreme Court Justice accepted her argument in total. And she wasn’t sent back for re-sentencing. The Judge expressly ordered her to be freed with time served!

I read it with my own eyes.

So what do you think happened to this woman who’d just triumphed at the Supreme Court of the United States, getting her conviction and sentencing overturned?

Given Carswell’s history of dealing with other appellate court rulings and federal judges, do you think prison staff gave a damn what a Supreme Court Justice had to say?

They didn’t care what the 2nd Circuit Appellate Court had to say about inmate rights at “medication hearings.” They didn’t care what federal judges had to say about the rights of prisoners to have sleep apnea machines, or access to heart medication for post-surgical recovery. Prisoners have died, because Carswell flouted federal court orders.

And so, horribly enough, Carswell Prison refused to let this woman go home.

She had filed her appeal “pro se,” so she had no attorney on the outside to enforce the Supreme Court order on her behalf. Instead, Carswell sent a message to all those other women inmates who might think about filing appeals, too. It wouldn’t do any good. Carswell prison staff would mete out punishments. No outside court authority, no Federal Judge was going to contradict them.

If a defendant had a court order from the United States Supreme Court itself, Carswell would not be compelled to obey it.

And so, while the Supreme Court ruled in her favor sometime in November, Carswell poohed and pouted about filing the paperwork for her release, dillydallying with the central Bureau of Prisons until mid-April.

She suffered an extra five and a half months of prison detention.

With a Supreme Court decision in her hand, carried from office to office, never leaving her person 24 hours a day, that freed woman could not leave the prison.

One prison staffer snidely told her that “when she got to Washington, she could complain.”

Unconstitutional? Without question. On all counts, it was despicable and corrupt. That’s Carswell, in a nutshell.

Flouting a direct Supreme Court order wasn’t the only example of Carswell manipulating procedures in order to deny prisoners their freedom at the end of a sentence.

The case of Kathleen Rumpf, a Ploughshares activist and Catholic lay worker, exposes another way that Carswell routinely skirts the courts, in order to hold prisoners after their release dates. Rumpf spent 8 months at Carswell for “rewriting the welcome sign for the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, to read “School of Shame.”[456] The School of Americas is also called the “School of Torture” by peace activists, because its graduates include members of the violent juntas of Latin America, famous for murdering intellectuals and political dissidents.

For messing up the sign, Rumpf and four fellow Ploughshares activists each got sentenced to one year in prison and fined $2,000.

On the day of her release, other peace activists gathered at the prison gates to celebrate. “West Wing” actor, Martin Sheen, a Ploughshares activist with 58 arrests in his own right, flew in from Los Angeles to welcome Rumpf home.[457]

Carswell Prison Warden, J.B. Brogan, didn’t like those rabble-rousers outside his gates. He decided that Rumpf would be ordered to sign a promissory note for the $2,000 fine—or else she would be held “indefinitely” at Carswell. As part of the promissory note, she had to agree that if she could not pay the fine, she would be subject to re-arrest and sent back to prison.[458]

Rumpf, who lives on Social Security disability, refused on the grounds of poverty.

Very well, Brogan refused to grant her release. She would stay at Carswell until she worked out her finances.

Maureen Tolbert, Rumpf’s attorney, called it “unconstitutional,” pointing out that the obscure federal statute “basically allows prison officials to re-sentence someone who has already served his or her time.”[459]

Carswell is one of the very few prisons that enforce this mostly unknown twist in the legal code. When women prisoners can not pay court fines, Carswell continues their detentions until family or friends post the money on their behalf. If they can’t pay, because they’re alone in the world, often times they don’t go home at all—though the prison sentence has been completed. If they promise in desperation to meet a payment schedule and break it, they are subject to re-arrest and indefinite detention.

No Judge oversees the extended imprisonment. The Warden makes the decision without Court consultation. There’s no hearing, no right to an attorney, nor any time restraint on how long the Bureau of Prisons can hold prisoners who don’t sign the agreement—even if they are desperately honest that they can’t be sure how they would honor it. Most ex-cons are incredibly poor, with limited job prospects after prison. An agreement like this poses serious burdens as they try to reintegrate with society. It could even force them to commit more crimes, so they could pay the prison bill.

As Rumpf discovered the hard way, that’s a matter of habit at Carswell. In her case, friends paid the fine on her behalf. She stayed in prison an extra two days. Others are not so lucky, and their release gets delayed much longer, sometimes for months. It’s prison gossip, when it happens. And it happens more frequently than anyone wants to imagine.

The Story of Neeran “Nancy” Zaia

Politics guides so many decisions at Carswell. But the fates often have a tragic sense of humor, as well.

As it turns out, I was not the only prisoner with a case tied to Iraqi War politics who arrived from Washington on October 3rd, 2005. An Iraqi émigré named Neeran “Nancy” Zaia got shipped to Carswell for an extensive psychiatric evaluation, too.

Our friendship was more extraordinary because our cases proved antithetical in all ways. While I got accused of acting as an “Iraqi agent” on behalf of Saddam Hussein’s government, Nancy Zaia got indicted for trying to help other Iraqis escape Saddam’s religious and political persecution before the War.

She denied helping anyone enter the United States illegally. What she’d done was help families of Iraqi Chaldean Christians secure proper visas from Jordan to the nation of Ecuador, about 200 in all. The visas were legally acquired from the Embassy in Amman, as part of a policy to encourage wealthy Iraqis to establish residency in that impoverished Latin American country.[460]

The Justice Department claimed some of those Iraqi refugees kept moving northward after arriving in Ecuador. About 40-50 of those Iraqis ended up in the United States, including infants and children. Nancy swore that she had nothing to do with that. She had no contact with the Chaldean families after they left Jordan. However the Justice Department insisted that she should be responsible for their final destination. Nancy’s attorney argued the U.S. was running interference in Ecuador’s visa policy. Her defense claimed the arrest was extra-territorial, in attempt to strong arm Ecuadorean officials into reconsidering their friendly immigration policy towards Iraqi refugees. It reflected American paranoia after 9/11. But it had nothing to do with her actions.

The hypocrisy in Zaia’s case was that Congress cited Saddam’s torture practices as justification for the War.

If that moral outrage had been authentic, Nancy Zaia should have been praised as a hero— not imprisoned as a criminal.

Nancy Zaia had been sent to Carswell for a psychiatric evaluation because Saddam’s security forces had tortured her in Baghdad. She claimed that Iraqi Intelligence hanged her 3 year old son by his throat with a rope from a ceiling fan, and turned it on, so that the fan blades started rotating.

Then, one of the men took a butcher knife and started slashing the blade at the screaming, choking child. Nancy kept grabbing for the toddler. Trying to shield her little boy from the knife, she got slashed herself.

She had a 10 inch jagged scar on the inside of her arm to prove it.

Nancy Zaia was also forced into an arranged marriage at age 13, with a much older Kurdish man involved in the Northern Resistance movement. He had raped her repeatedly throughout her teenage years. When she fled Iraq with her young children, she was fleeing an abusive (mostly absent) husband, and the political troubles that his resistance work caused for her family. When Saddam’s security forces could not lay hands on him, they were not above inflicting pain on her.

Her attorney argued that those facts of her life in Iraq should be given substantial weight in the proceedings.

And so it was that Nancy Zaia and I arrived together at Carswell the first week of October, both of us arrested for political reasons that exposed the illogic of the government’s position on Iraq, and both of us subjected to the shenanigans of prison psychology at Carswell.

Unfairly, both of our psych evaluations had strong political overtones—in opposite directions. While I believe that I showed myself fully capable of assisting my defense, it would be difficult to make the same arguments about Nancy. At the first mention of Iraq, she would become so emotional, paranoid and overstressed that she could scarcely participate in a rational conversation for 10 minutes to discuss her defense.

Twice her attorney flew in from Washington. Nancy hid from him on both visits, because she couldn’t handle a simple attorney conversation about the charges against her. Guards searched for her everywhere. Our circle of inmates found her curled up on the floor of a bathroom stall in a fetal position. She was lost in memories of Saddam Hussein and her old life in Iraq. She couldn’t get past that pain. It’s doubtful that Nancy could have sat through a trial without an outburst, screaming in Arabic at the Judge and jury. Seriously, I could imagine her suffering a heart attack during trial.

Even dealing with me as a friend, she was subject to bursts of paranoia about my arrest as an “Iraqi Agent” that would stop her from speaking with me for days.

Nevertheless, in the highly politicized world of psychiatry at Carswell, Nancy’s evaluation flatly refused to acknowledge her incapacity to contribute to her defense. Carswell decreed that Nancy Zaia’s refugee status, and her personal comprehension of the suffering of Chaldean Christians in Iraq and the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s government, had no impact whatsoever on her actions. The personal oppression that she’d suffered as a 13 year old victim of spousal rape by a 35 + year old man was completely irrelevant. The attack on her children by Iraq’s Secret Police, the “Mukhabarat,” should have no weight in Court.

According to Carswell, she experienced no irrational outbursts or paranoia that impacted her ability to assist her defense.

It’s questionable how much of the court proceedings Nancy understood, given her wild volatility. She was deeply paranoid and prone to hysteria. She saw all events through that prism. During our months together on M-1, we walked hundreds of laps on the outdoor track, talking about our families and legal cases. Notably, she told me that Carswell offered her a finding of “competence” in exchange for a guilty plea, with time served. Carswell promised that she would go home to her family. They pushed Nancy hard, knowing she could not handle a trial, because of her explosive emotions on the subject of Iraq.

Complicating the matter, the fear of rampant abuse on M-1 hung over all of us. All of us were terrified of what we saw psych staff do to other inmates. Not surprisingly, Nancy was afraid to press for a finding of incompetence, though she’s one of the few inmates who I thought qualified for it. Almost nobody else had justification that I saw.

After I left, Nancy got stamped competent, in exchange for that guilty plea.

Only somewhere along the way, Carswell pulled a double-cross. It’s unclear how it happened—Nancy could not explain it later, when my brilliant attorney, post-Carswell, Brian Shaughnessy contacted her in prison, at my request. Somehow, after dangling time served in front of her while I was at Carswell, her choices changed starkly. The Justice Department recommended a 15 year sentence, which Nancy felt compelled to accept.[461] I was horrified when I heard. They told her she could have a 10 year sentence, if she agreed to deportation back to Iraq. But by now she’d lived in the United States 25 years. All of her children and grand children are here. She accepted five extra years in prison so that she wouldn’t have to relive her trauma in Iraq. That says it all.

By any measure, 15 years was excessive. She got much tougher sentencing than “coyotes,” who run hundreds of illegal immigrants from Mexico to Texas and California. Only about 50 Iraqis entered the United States illegally, including children and infants, and her guilty plea declares that she only arranged for their passage to South America—which was handled legally.[462] I can only say that I watched Carswell play head-games with Nancy, manipulating her past emotional traumas to get the guilty plea. Then they nailed her after she agreed.

But was she competent to accept the deal? I seriously question it.

All of the arguments to defame my competence absolutely applied to her. Nancy was so paranoid and explosive that she could not sit in a room with her attorney for an hour to discuss her legal strategy. She’d crawl into a fetal position and hide in the bathroom. Yet the same prison staff who declared me “unfit for trial,” swore that Nancy was competent to accept a guilty plea.

Go figure. That’s the nature of psychiatry at Carswell —inconsistent, political and unredeemably corrupt.

The Question of My Competence

Then, of course, there was me.

Brass tacks— Was I actually incompetent?

Given my bona fides, it begs the question: Are those the actions of an incompetent Asset? Is it fair to suggest that an Asset who warned about 9/11 and the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, and the 1993 World Trade Center attack; who started negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial with Libya, and the return of the weapons inspectors to Iraq, had performed poorly in this role?

Would the CIA tolerate an Asset to function as a back-channel to Libya and Iraq for 8 years, if that individual was untrustworthy analyzing trends and anticipating events? Given the advanced, proactive requirements for even the most basic intelligence work, does that make sense? Much less that my contacts involved the most volatile region of the world? And my work targeted nations considered potentially hostile to U.S. interests?

I think that’s very doubtful. Crazy like a fox, maybe, and non-conformist in my political viewpoints, definitely.

I’ve always believed that you’re judged by the strength of your enemies. Mine included Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Senator John McCain, Senator Trent Lott, Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales.

How flattering.

But was I really “incompetent—” as Republican leaders in Washington claimed, when I put together a message data base for all House and Senate offices—including every Chief of Staff, Legislative Director, Press Secretary and Foreign Policy assistant—Democrat and Republican alike?[463]

Was I “incompetent” when I warned about a $1.6 trillion dollar price tag for the War and Occupation of Iraq, and how that would financially stress Wall Street and America’s national debt?[464]

Or when I foretold the rise of Iran as a regional powerhouse?

Or when I predicted the rise of charismatic Al Qaeda leaders inside Iraq, and the flourishing of terrorist cells, in a violent backlash against the Occupation?

Or when I forecast that forces of democracy would transfer power to Islamic fundamentalists, away from moderate Arab governments?

Those rose petals died awfully fast in the desert sun, just as I forecast.

Was that incompetence on my part?

Or was I scapegoated for somebody else’s mistakes?

In 2007, the Senate Intelligence Committee cited specific warnings identical to mine, in declaring that reports from January, 2003 qualified as one of the “few bright spots” in Pre-War Intelligence.[465] They called it “outstanding.” I campaigned on every single one of those arguments cited by the Senate. I was so aggressive, in fact, that the Justice Department cited my January, 2003 warnings to Andy Card and Colin Powell,[466] as grounds for my indictment.

In 2007, Senator John Warner of Virginia called the substance of it “chilling and prophetic.”

In 2004-2006, it was called “treason.”

And I got condemned of “incompetence.”

Could psychiatry really be so corrupt? To put it bluntly— yes.

I had watched other women come in for psych studies, and leave after six or seven weeks. That’s all it took for these evaluations. There wasn’t much to it. Prison staff would interview us two or three times, typically. Then they’d speak with a couple of outside sources, like Ian Ferguson and Parke Godfrey.

If there was a previous psychiatric history, Carswell would review it. In my case, that would be Dr. Taddesseh in Maryland, who documented that he observed “no psychosis,” “no depression” and “no mood disturbances” in my behavior. His year’s worth of observations finished six months before I got sent to Carswell, so it was quite recent. I had a clean bill of “mental health” before I got to prison.[467]

Prison conversations with loved ones at home, and a generous outpouring of letters from loyal friends showed that I had good relationships throughout my life. Phone conversations with JB Fields revealed a healthy and mutually supportive relationship. I am not drawn to abusive or violent men. Likewise in prison, I was not socially isolated from other women. Quite the opposite, I quickly made friends on M-1, though inevitably some got transferred back to court for sentencing, or sent home after psych studies. I got left behind. That’s how prison works.

I required a subpoena to get my hands on observation notes by social workers and activity coordinators, who saw me daily on M-1. But when I succeeded, I found them highly informative.

Without exception, staff notes were brief and positive. Every monthly report declared that I “socialized well,” with “good intellectual functioning,” and “good physical health.”[468]

Shadduck and Vas and Pederson could hardly complain about that, could they?

Staff notes said, “Ms. Lindauer is functioning well on the unit.”[469]

Other handwritten notes[470] said, “Functional and not a behavioral problem.” That was underlined by M-1 staff.

Another staffer wrote, “Not a problem when confronted about anything.”

Another guard wrote, “She is low key and cooperative. Cares for self, good hygiene. Zero behavioral problems. She is focused on getting a trial.”

Another wrote, “Pleasant, appropriate appearance, clear speech, good eye contact.”

Another wrote, “Cheerful and cooperative.”

And another, “Calm, pleasant, appropriate grooming. Good eye contact.”

And another, “Pleasant, smiling, appears to be happy, cooperative.”

By December, Carswell’s goal for “restoring competency” was that I should “A: Explain clearly the pros and cons of legal options within 90 days.”[471]

And “B: Demonstrate the ability to work with (my) attorney in a rational manner within 90 days.”

Nothing in those staff notes described behavioral problems that justified forcible drugging. Or voluntary drugging for that matter. It was medically absurd—like psychiatry itself.

As a precaution, I signed every monthly report with a written declaration that Carswell should get on the ball interviewing my witnesses to verify my story.[472] Clearly I understood that the Court required independent sources to authenticate my claims. I was anxious to provide those assurances. With my signature, nobody could say I hadn’t lobbied hard to get it done – hardly the act of a defendant who expected the Courts to take my word for everything.[473]

Sure enough, when Shadduck finally got around to questioning Ferguson and Godfrey, my story checked out.

Even Carswell was compelled to rule against “involuntary medication,” after the internal hearing.[474] There was no medical basis for it.

Any other inmate would have gone home after that, or back to court, whereas I faced a hard reality that the Feds intended to hold me for the full 120 days allowed by federal statute. This would be my only prison time. The Justice Department wanted to squeeze every possible day out of me. I had to cope with that.

One more thing protected me. Or so I believed.

I had a fail safe option, a statutory right to a hearing before the decision on competence got finalized. Federal law guarantees the right to call witnesses and show evidence opposing psychiatric evaluations.[475] Courts are never supposed to rule on competence without due process. That’s a flagrant violation of an individual’s rights.

My story illustrates poignantly why those rights should be held sacrosanct.

To protect myself, I buckled down at the prison law library and read up on the law. I also filed a “pro se” request for a hearing with a list of witnesses, according to all the requirements of the law. My request was registered in an appropriate and timely manner.

I clung to the promise of that hearing like a sacrament. Truly I believed that I was covered on all fronts, whatever followed.

Ineptitude of the Court-Appointed Attorney

So what tripped me up?

As part of a competency review, it’s standard practice to assess whether a defense attorney might be shrugging off a complex case by using an incompetence defense. From the first in-take interview, Carswell staff honed on my public attorney’s difficulty maneuvering the morass of my legal situation.

From my first days on the SHU, Carswell was informed that Uncle Ted felt compelled to interview strategic witnesses, because of Talkin’s bumbling. Ted himself forcefully assured prison staff that he had personally investigated my story, and I checked out.[476]

In prison phone calls, Ted emphasized that he was reading up case law on psychiatry. By all objective measures, he was fiercely devoted to watching over me.

The need for legal intervention by a family member should have set off alarms over whose competence should be questioned— mine or my public attorney’s. Even Judge Mukasey was aware that it had been necessary to seek a family member’s help.

Under normal circumstances, questions about an attorney’s performance would disqualify an incompetence defense automatically. In my situation, however, Talkin’s fumbling was carefully overlooked.

Ominously for my legal rights, by 2006, the United States and Britain were officially losing the War in Iraq. Insurgents had seized control of the chaos, and threatened to fragment the country in a violent bloodbath that polarized Shi’ite- Sunni relations from north to south. As battlefield casualties mounted, frothing on Capitol Hill reached new heights of fever over the failures of Assets involved with Pre-War Intelligence.

Politicians liked that story. They liked it very much.

From a psychiatric standpoint, Capitol Hill was suffering a major “psychotic breakdown.” Congress aggressively labored to reinvent themselves as the victims of deceptive intelligence practices to escape the fury of voters. Not surprisingly, the facts about Pre-War Intelligence are vastly different than what politicians in Washington told Americans and the international community.

And so the Justice Department got its marching orders: Nothing and nobody would be allowed to challenge the story that Republican leaders were selling to the American people. That was the “reality” that mattered at Carswell.

And so Carswell psychiatrists set about constructing a whole new reality of my work as an Asset that protected political interests in Washington—a game that pretended I suffered a “psychotic disorder not otherwise specified.”[477].

It’s doubtful I was ever “incompetent” or “psychotic.” All those months, I showed no “symptoms of mental illness”—except post traumatic stress triggered by the Justice Department’s refusal to end my imprisonment on my release date.[478] That’s a fairly sane response to the events, I’d say.

My judicial abuse provides striking evidence of a leadership breakdown in Washington. For all the falderol, Congress failed badly to provide support and oversight protections for me as an Asset.

Where was the Senate Intelligence Committee when an Asset needed them? Or the House Judiciary Committee, for that matter? What about my old boss, Senator Ron Wyden? Or Maryland’s Senator Barbara Mikulski— Both serve on the Intelligence Committee.

Why didn’t any of those powerful Senators take action to protect a woman Asset who came under attack for claiming to be a woman Asset? As if it was laughable that women could do such work. All of Congress bragged about its “outstanding leadership support” for the anti-terrorism work that I devoted 9 years of my life to performing. This was the time to prove it.

So why did nobody help me?

Infamously, one morning I challenged one of the psychiatrists that Carswell should expect a hard hitting Congressional investigation of the abuse I suffered in their prison.

The man laughed in my face: “They don’t care what happens to you. Nobody’s going to help you. They’re quite pleased with the way we’ve handled this.”

If so, it was a terrible judgment call. My imprisonment set a dangerous precedent in the intelligence community. It borrowed the old Soviet game plan from the Cold War, punishing Assets for knowing “inconvenient truths,” and viciously trying to “correct” my thinking, in order to cover up their own political mistakes.

The question was, how low would Republicans sink?

The answer was, as low as possible. They would inflict as much damage as they could get away with.

Everything depended on Judge Mukasey. Ted Lindauer swore that Judge Mukasey was nobody’s fool. He wanted a vehicle to end the case, Ted speculated. But he’d see what they were up to. This incompetence strategy was what Talkin handed him. That’s what the Court had to work with.

Really though, I had no idea what to think.

According to federal law, the maximum detention for a competence evaluation is 120 days—and no longer.[479] After 120 days, if a person shows no signs of violence towards himself, others or property, he or she must be released back to the community. That’s plenty of time, by the way. Most psych studies can be completed within 60 days, unless it involves a drug detox.

That should have put me outside the prison gates on February 3, 2006—and not one day later, according to federal law.

Grimly, I waited.

As my big day got closer, other women inmates began to notice that basic steps for my release were not taken. There started to be whispers on M-1 that something wasn’t right. That kind of prison gossip travels fast.

And so the day of my release approached.

February 3rd started like any other day. There were no goodbyes the night before, a prison ritual with prayers and hugs for those left behind. No staff woke me before dawn to usher me quietly out of the prison before other inmates woke to see me go.

With quiet stealth, the Bureau of Prisons website reported that my release had been postponed “indefinitely.”[480]

Back home in Maryland, friends and family finally panicked. They could not believe what had just happened.

Locked inside prison on a Texas military base— an accused “Iraqi Agent—” I was terrified.

CHAPTER 25:

PRISON DIARY

Courage is resistance to fear, and the mastery of fear—
Not the absence of fear.
–Mark Twain

“What are you saying? They lied? What do you mean? They fucking lied?”

“They can’t lie to a federal judge! That’s perjury! That’s a federal crime. They know it’s a crime. Half the prisoners here got arrested for making false statements to the FBI. The other half got sentenced for obstruction of justice. They know they can’t do that.”

“That’s right,” Ted Lindauer told me. “People lie in court all the time.”

“Yeah, criminals lie. Not staff for the Bureau of Prisons! They’re supposed to be the ones telling the truth.”

It was February 3rd. My 120 days were up. I was supposed to board an airplane in Dallas to fly home to Maryland. I was practically hysterical as Uncle Ted gave me the low down on my release, which Carswell had delayed “indefinitely.”[481]

That wasn’t the agreement. Granted, they cut the deal without my knowledge or consent. However, it looked pretty good that morning. In exchange for overlooking the violation of my right to a hearing before detention, and my cooperation for the sake of “national security” the Prosecutor was supposed to drop the charges and send me home— not detain me “indefinitely!” That was the end game they sold to Judge Mukasey.

Worst yet, Carswell was arguing that I should be strapped to a gurney, and forcibly drugged with needle injections of Haldol,[482] until I stopped claiming that I worked as a “U.S. Intelligence Asset in anti-terrorism for Nine Years,”[483] and that I warned about a major terrorist attack involving airplane hijackings and a strike on the World Trade Center throughout the spring and summer of 2001.

Carswell decreed it a “psychotic disorder, not otherwise specified.”

This attack came out of nowhere.

Or did it come straight from Republican headquarters?

At that point, I had not seen Carswell’s report prepared by Dr. James Shadduck, but Ted had. Apparently, it carefully overlooked the unhappy truth that my story checked out in total. The report faithfully omitted critical acknowledgements that Shadduck himself had spoken with two witnesses, and fully authenticated the key structure of my history.[484] Documents in Maryland proved my CIA handler’s expertise on Iraq, including his Congressional testimony on Iraq’s SCUD Mobile Missile Launchers in the first Gulf War.485, 486, 487

I checked out alright. Not a problem.

Dr. Shadduck had also spoken with Parke Godfrey, who provided critical corroboration of my 9/11 warnings.[488]

Godfrey had promised to make sure Carswell understood he was repeating what he’d already told the FBI in Toronto in September, 2004. So the FBI and my prosecutor, Edward O’Callaghan, already knew it, too—a year before I got sent to Carswell Prison.

My insistence on pre-trial validation had strategically removed “plausible deniability,” whereby one party shields another from responsibility for their actions by withholding vital information. They couldn’t hide behind the pretence of ignorance—a favorite Washington trick.

I had blocked “deniability” from every angle.

Everybody understood I was telling the truth. The FBI. The U.S. Attorneys Office in New York. Uncle Ted. The hack psychiatrists at Carswell. They’d all verified it.

Distinctly, the only individual who had not verified my authenticity was Judge Mukasey. And he was forced to rely on the integrity of the Justice Department, which has a sworn obligation not to lie about such things to the Court.

Dr. Shadduck was on the inside of the cover up. He could see that Ferguson and Godfrey were eager to bring clarity to the legal confusion. At trial, there would be more high-powered witnesses, who would expose more truth. In this pre-trial phase, however, Dr. Shadduck had more than sufficient validation for his purposes.

Knowing all of that, Shadduck deliberately structured his psych evaluation to suggest that no independent corroboration existed. In so doing, Carswell effectively falsified its psychiatric report to Judge Mukasey—who was also hearing the financial lawsuit by World Trade Center owner, Larry Silverstein.[489] And Carswell psychiatrists sought to forcibly drug a known Asset to stop me from saying that I was an Asset who warned about 9/11.[490]

With a high enough dosage of psychotropic Haldol, Carswell argued I could be made to forget the details of my activities at the Iraqi Embassy, which contradicted the fanciful “truths” invented by Republican leaders, including my own dear cousin, Andy Card, Chief of Staff to President Bush.

As for “indefinite detention,” Carswell argued that I should be locked in prison until whatever time psychiatrists could guarantee the “cure” had been effective.[491] Psych evaluations speculated this “cure” would require many years of detention, because my beliefs in my Asset work are so deeply engrained in my psyche. (It ain’t easy to eradicate reality, even for psychiatry!)

If that’s not Soviet style revisionism, I don’t know what is. It’s something Stalin would have done in the Cold War to crush opponents and enforce political conformity. For sure, when O’Callaghan and Shadduck falsified that psych evaluation, they committed gross professional misconduct.

Vital exculpatory knowledge was withheld from the Court, which Judge Mukasey urgently “needed to know—”

For those outside the intelligence community, “need to know” status gets conferred when any individual, federal judge or not, risks making a decision that would damage the functioning of intelligence operations, or otherwise cause negative blowback on the Intelligence Community. The person “needs to know” to guide their actions, so they don’t do something incredibly stupid or dangerous.

Threatening to forcibly drug an Asset to “cure” her of knowing real intelligence would certainly qualify as a most obscene sort of mistake.

It rendered psychiatry an instrument of State Fascism.

And it put Judge Mukasey in the position of judicially endorsing a cover up of my team’s 9/11 warning and Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence—something he would never have done of his own volition.

O’Callaghan and Carswell didn’t stop to consider the consequences for Judge Mukasey’s integrity. They only imagined that if they could forcibly administer enough psychotropic drugs, we could all lie about 9/11 and Iraq together!

They wanted to chemically lobotomize me. And they sought to compromise a senior federal Judge to do it.

Drugging was a political weapon, alright. And my prosecutor, O’Callaghan was nothing if not a political animal. He left the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York to become a top adviser to John McCain and Sarah Palin’s Presidential Campaign in 2008.[492] I could never forget— or forgive— that I got arrested 30 days after contacting McCain’s Senate office in Washington, asking to testify before the Presidential Commission on Pre-War Intelligence.

The next thing I know, I’m under arrest. What a coincidence that my Prosecutor worked for McCain at election time.

O’Callaghan now works at the Law Firm of Peabody Nixon, the haunts of former President Richard Nixon.

You can only imagine the horror that I experienced receiving this news. I was terrified beyond words. Ordinarily, “indefinite detention” implies the maximum prison sentence, 10 years in my case. Typically that’s how the Courts handle violent offenders who get declared incompetent. They get hit with the full sentence. It appeared the Bureau of Prisons wanted to test whether the Patriot Act could be categorized with other major crimes, pushing me into a permanent legal abyss.

On February 3rd, in a moment of blinding panic, I wasn’t sure what part of my situation was the worst— Getting stuck in prison indefinitely, without due process, because of a bogus psychiatric evaluation. Or getting threatened with forcible injections of Haldol throughout my incarceration.

I would have to say drugs tipped the balance.

Haldol was a rhinoceros tranquilizer. It’s a zombie drug that imitates the stone-like effects of Parkinson’s Disease. It kills all daily functioning. And they wanted to shoot me up like some street junkie.

Honestly, I would rather get water-boarded.

There was never any question of compromising on drugs, in exchange for freedom. I would stay in prison as long as it took, but I would never put drugs in my body. Not to save some hack politician in Washington. Not in this lifetime. This would go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. Ted Lindauer and I were confident there’d been enough irregularities that we could overturn forcible drugging in the 2nd Circuit Appellate Court, if Judge Mukasey ruled against me.

“Indefinite detention” could still be in force in that equation. We did not know. Honestly though, for the next months, I was more terrified wondering whether the Court would allow us to “stay” a decision on forcible drugging— to stop Carswell from strapping me to a gurney, while the Court appeals raged on. That frightened me more than anything else.

Uncle Ted demanded that I must not panic. He promised to visit me in Texas, so that we could work out a counter strategy together.[493] Obviously, my attorney, Sam Talkin was out of his depth, and unable to cope with this shocking twist in events. He took no action to fight for my release. He appeared to be stumped as how to proceed.

My beloved Uncle Ted swore that I was not alone. Ted has such a forceful presence as an attorney that he’s practically in the cell with you, talking side by side, hammering out strategies. Ted promised to exert his best energies to broker a solution with the Judge that would get me out of the “hoosiegow,” as he called it.

Ted kept my courage strong in moments of absolute terror and despair. I could never have survived—and won—without him.

But inside those prison walls after February 3, 2006, a surreal drama began to play out. Reality was thrown out the window. Staff aggressively declared that my Asset work in Pre-War Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism from 1993 to 2003 was manifestly delusional, and must be corrected. They began to impose their own psychosis on me, brutally reinventing the truth of my life. All external factors stopped mattering, by order of prison psychiatry. A life-time’s work against war and violence, the support of senior. Congressional staffers, journalists, attorneys from the Lockerbie case. U.N. diplomats who watched my work for years—None of that external reality mattered any more. .

They had tried to force me to recant voluntarily. And they had failed. Now they proposed physically crippling me, so that I would be too destroyed to speak. Or think.

On several occasions, I protested to Dr. Vas that Dr. Shadduck had spoken to witnesses who verified my story.

To which he replied: “That doesn’t matter. I’m going to tell the Judge you made it up. Who do you think they’re going to believe? You or me?”

“I am a doctor.”

In one terrifying episode, a psychiatrist declared, “Don’t worry. I’m going to give you so many drugs, you won’t be troubled by those memories any longer.”

Who cared about reality at Carswell? Who cared about the law? Who cared about ethical behavior and truthful testimony?

Nobody that I could see.

One of the psychology staff said to me: “Reality is whatever I say it is.”

I remember that I looked him hard in the face. I wanted to stare him straight in the eyes, inmate to prison officer, when I shook my head and replied: “You Are Wrong.”

For these reasons, I am firmly convinced that Carswell should be closed to all psychiatric evaluations immediately. Some women prisoners should be entitled to new evaluations, and a reconsideration of their sentencing and any court-ordered drugging. This corruption of psychiatry did not start with my case. And it did not end with my case either. It’s endemic to Carswell’s approach to psychiatry and the Courts. A lot of other women inmates have suffered from it, and a lot of other Judges have been fooled by it. Those sentences should be reconsidered at once.

As for me, my nightmare of “extreme prejudice” was beginning in earnest.

It comes down to the old cliché that courage is not the absence of fear, but fighting through fear. Thinking back on it, I was terrified beyond words— and the odds of my victory were stunningly low, at least in the first round, without an appeal to the higher court. Prison staff on that Texas military base had no doubts they would prevail against me. They did not expect me to win.

I began to have a recurring nightmare.

In my dream, I was living in a room filled with water up to the ceiling. I could only breathe through a small air tube that snaked up to a vent above me.

In my dream, the tube was thin, and breathing was difficult. I had so little oxygen.

I was chained to the floor. Looking up through the water, I could see the vent. But I could not see behind it to know if my oxygen would be cut off by some unseen hand. In my dream, I feared that hand intensely.

I remember distinctly knowing that I must stay focused, and concentrate on breathing. If I panicked, I would lose what small source of oxygen I had, and the effect would be catastrophic.

I could not lose control. Yet I had no control. You see?

Imagine a place where prisoners can be physically tortured, crippled and maimed without any rights to stop the abuse. That abuse continues month after month, year after year, until inmates are utterly destroyed beyond the possibility of healing.

Now you’ve got an inkling of what I’m talking about.

My daily life was controlled by an extraordinary confluence of fairly decent prison guards— and a group of sadistic psychology staff. Unhappily, the psych staff appeared to relish their power to inflict tremendous suffering on inmates through crippling dosages of drugs. The women on M-1 had no legal right whatsoever to protect ourselves from their abuse— which had no correlation to prisoner behavior or real life personality traits.

Forcible drugging was about power.

The experience haunts me to this day.

Prisoner Abuse_

Lots of bad things happened at Carswell. But nobody suffered like the women inmates on M-1. Black, white, Hispanic, everybody got hurt. But black women especially got victimized by the All Caucasian psychology staff— and not only those who are poor, less educated and less familiar with their legal rights.

Middle class black women got attacked savagely, too. Apparently it wasn’t “normal” to live outside the ghetto. Think Jennifer Hudson”s role in “Sex and the City.” That’s exactly the sort of black woman targeted on M-1. No joke. The torture of those women would astonish and devastate most Americans. It would break your heart if you saw them. They had no legal counsel that cared for them.

The outcome was hideous. During my 7 month detention at Carswell, I saw these women at the time of their arrival at the prison. Mostly they were in good health, confident and friendly, not violent, not threatening. Just nice people. That was the most striking thing about their behavior. They smiled. They joked with other inmates. They were the girls next door who’d got into trouble, without criminal intent. Mostly their boyfriends or husbands engaged in some criminal act, and they got picked up together. A large number of these women wouldn’t talk to the FBI— called “obstruction of justice—” or else they got hit with making “false statements” to protect their men. (Ladies, that’s a bad idea!) Loyalty to their men caught them several years in prison.

Over the weeks, I would watch their transformation from happy and confident to something terrified and confused. Then zombie-like. It was the most God awful transformation that you could imagine only in your worst nightmares. You would be heartless to wish this sort of violence on an enemy.

None of the prisoners on M-1 showed signs of schizophrenia or hallucinations. That turned out to be another joke about court psychiatry. Almost none of these prisoners qualify as mentally ill. Not until the prison got hold of them! Most of us suffered “post traumatic stress” after the abuse— but nothing else.

In the schism of prison society, we were the Most Normal. We were not the murderers or thugs. We were not predatory towards other inmates. We were the “guests” who shouldn’t be in prison at all. We were strikingly out of place in prison culture.

All of that makes the abuse by prison staff more ugly in that, by all rational assessment, it was totally unnecessary.

Instead of getting abused by hard-core inmates, we got preyed on by vicious, self righteous psychiatrists, who sought to double punish us through crippling dosages of drugs. It’s a great tribute to the strength of these women that despite our lowly legal status, the brutality of the psych department prompted every one of us to discover extraordinary personal resources to survive the damage Carswell tried to inflict on us. Some of these women are truly admirable in how they persevere every day, with graciousness and stamina, through years of prison trauma.

One of my cellmates kept a haunting poem by Maya Angelou taped to her locker.

“And still I rise.”

She stood in front of it every day to read it— like a prayer.

On M-1, Maya Angelou gained fresh significance that would dismay the Poet Laureate herself.

A lot of inmates on M-1 got drugged so badly that they slept 15 to 18 hours a day. Throughout the unit, beds would be full by 1 o’clock in the afternoon every single day.

We ate lunch at 10:30 in the morning, and dinner at 3:30pm. Then everybody on M-1 would take their afternoon drugs and go back to sleep until about 6:30 pm. They’d get up to microwave a snack before the evening count. After the inmate count, most of the women would sleep until the next morning, when prison staff required us to report for in-door recreation. A striking number of inmates would collapse on the floor of the recreation rooms. Drugs knocked them out cold.

Black women always got drugged the worst.

They could not walk. They could not speak in sentences or answer questions. Typically, a response would be “what?” “dunno,” “huh?” Like that.

Eating took tremendous effort for a lot of women on M-1, white or black. They could not lift a cup to drink without shaking hands. They would spill juice all over their clothes. They could not lift a fork to put food into their mouths, without intense concentration.

They wet their beds at night, because they could not coordinate their body movements to climb out of bed to use the restrooms. There was such sympathy that inevitably one of the other cellmates would get up in the middle of the night, and wash their sheets, if they got diarrhea and couldn’t make it to the toilet.

Urine could wait until the next morning, except for the stink.

Nobody complained about washing their sheets. We grieved for these ladies.

Most hideous of all, they could not bathe themselves. Staff and fellow inmates had to take these women to the showers, strip them naked, and wash them. Every time they bathed, they required help. It was not an occasional thing.

I can still hear those voices in the shower room. They are the stuff of nightmares:

“Raise your arms. Lift your titties, so I can wash you. Let me see your back side. Spread your cheeks for me. Good girl. Can you stand up? No? Let’s get the chair. Sit on that chair now. I’m going to wash your hair. Lean your head back. Don’t get soap in your eyes. Let me towel you off. Let’s dry you off, so I can get your clothes back on you.”

“Do you want me to pull up your underwear? Let me pull up your pants. Can you do that? No? OK, I’ll do that for you.”

Showering in a nearby stall, I would sob for these women. I mean it, I would turn on the water, and weep as I listened to the humiliation they suffered. These adult women had become infantile, like very small children, totally incapacitated.

I would cry for them. It was grotesque and humiliating.

These were young women in their 20s and 30s. They weren’t old or handicapped. They’d been normal until Carswell got hold of them. I cannot emphasize sufficiently that nothing in their outward behavior justified such heavy overdrugging. But Carswell used psychotropic drugs as a form of punishment. Drugs offered another way to inflict suffering, and degrade women who’d already lost their families and freedom anyway. It was sadistic and abusive.

One black woman in her 30s had been tortured like this for years. She suffered all the worst side effects of Haldol, and whatever drug cocktail Carswell kept feeding her. She was docile like a baby. She could no longer speak in sentences. Or eat. Or dress. Or bathe. She slept 18 to 20 hours a day, and wet the bed frequently. All family ties had been lost, since she could not talk on the prison phones.

But she could sing gospel like an angel. Her name was Priscilla, and she could sing beautifully. We’d have to start the lyrics for her. Then something in her memory would kick in, and she’d start singing. The whole room would go silent to listen. Her voice was so melodic and pure, and it accentuated our grief for her daily suffering.

Her prison life was the stuff of nightmares.

Another black woman, about 32 years old, could no longer speak properly. She had trouble eating. Very slowly she would raise a fork, and stare at it for a long time, before putting the food in her mouth. But she made a special promise to the other women on M-1 that she would go to the showers by herself every night. She wanted no help undressing or washing herself. She would persevere in cleaning herself, no matter how bad it got. And it got very bad.

Her ability to shower by herself was the only dignity left in her pride. In all other ways, Carswell had utterly destroyed her. To help her out, other inmates kept a chair in the shower room at all times, so she could sit down. By this stage, it had become an arduous task to look for a chair, or carry it any distance. Those simple actions were beyond her skill level.

Understand— this would continue for years, throughout their sentences. It was a thousand times worse than prison itself. You can survive prison. It’s not pleasant. But this stuff qualifies as actual torture. It’s cruel and unusual—and grossly unnecessary.

The greatest irony was how Carswell quickly screened prisoners in the pre-trial phase, according to whom prosecutors wanted to take to trial, and those they wanted to block from going to trial— like me.

If a pre-trial defendant arrived at Carswell, toying with a psychology angle at trial, Carswell took an entirely different approach.

Let’s say the Defense wanted to prove “diminished capacity” on the basis of a long-time bipolar disorder, a common ploy for leniency from the Courts.

The first thing Carswell asked was whether the new inmate used anti-depressants or mood stabilizers? Almost nobody arrived at Carswell on harsher drugs than that.

If the answer was yes, Carswell would pull back the drugs to test whether the condition was authentic.

Taking defendants off prescription drugs was the number one method for restoring competence to stand trial— or otherwise proving a defendant suffered no true diminished capacity. (Mostly Carswell rejected claims of incompetence.)

Guess what? After a few weeks of detox, most prisoners would be just fine without drugs. They’d show their true personality. Low and behold, there would be nothing wrong with those women. Carswell would argue in Court—and I would have to agree, based on their behavior— that they’d been taking prescription drugs for years without cause. Somewhere along the way these women got “mis-diagnosed,” and encouraged to confuse personal problems with mental defects. They’d gotten comfortable taking prescription drugs. Drugs provided a crutch for their lives. But they functioned just fine after a medically supervised detox.

That surprised some of these women, who’d limited their expectations to fit the constraints of their so called “mental diseases or defects.”

Some of these women thanked Carswell after the detox! They felt empowered getting off psych drugs!

Once they got cleaned up, Carswell shipped the women right back to federal court. They were judged competent to stand trial, or plead guilty for sentencing without much leniency.

That says a lot about how psychotropic drugs affect personal performance and self expectations—and not for the better.

It speaks volumes about the phony medical credentials of psychiatry, too, and its propensity for inventing “disease” out of non- observable “symptoms,” or double prescribing a second set of drugs to mask symptoms created by the first set of drugs.

But heaven protect women inmates who arrived at Carswell for a psych evaluation as part of sentencing, or those of us declared incompetent over our objections, because a prosecutor really had no evidence to support the case against us, and we, defendants refused to accommodate the Court by accepting a guilty plea.

Women like us suffered the most. Carswell would declare us “delusional” and “lacking responsibility” for insisting on our innocence. Then they would file requests to the Court requiring obstructionist defendants to take massive quantities of drugs, usually Haldol, Ativan and Prozac, as part of their “rehabilitation.” That was standard practice. Everyone got the same cocktail of drugs. Even prisoners outside of M-1 and M-2 got heavy doses of psychotropic drugs.

I was at Carswell long enough that I observed new prisoners upon their arrival–healthy, in good spirits, full of good conversation. None of these women struck me as violent or threatening. To the best of my knowledge, I never saw women on M-1 threaten other inmates or guards. Most of the women were guilty as charged. Very few got convicted of serious crimes like bank robbery or child killing. Some might have benefited from counseling, which ironically, was very mediocre at the prison. But 9 times out of 10, they committed crimes of stupidity, drug crimes, tax fraud, or crimes associated with a husband or boyfriend. They’re not instigators. They’re not diabolical. They are followers. They would not be repeat offenders if they got jobs after prison. Employment would be the decisive factor.

All of a sudden, these women could not speak anymore. They could no longer read a book, or write letters home to their families, because they could no longer grip a pen in hand, or process ideas from the written word.

Ominously, I’d hear prison staff talking about how a certain woman liked to read the newspaper—particularly black women.

A black woman wouldn’t read newspapers at Carswell for long. Drugs would take care of that literacy problem.

Other prisoners had to write letters home for them, though most of these women could hardly put together a sentence to tell us what to write. We would suggest greetings, while they sat next to us, mute. Sometimes tears would stream down their cheeks, nodding or mostly grunting, as we proposed messages to their families. It would take considerable effort to express a simple thought.

Since they could no longer read a book, or process ideas in any form, most definitely they could not work at the prison law library. So they could not appeal their sentencing or assist their attorneys– who let’s be honest, did not want their help anyway.

One woman, dragged to Carswell by U.S. Marshals on a bail revocation, could not remember her husband’s phone number, though they’d been married twenty years with an adult son. We took her to the Chaplain’s office, so she could try to phone home, and she stumbled several times trying to dial. This simple act was so difficult that we questioned if she had a husband at all.

It turned out that she was a former Carswell prisoner who stopped taking court-ordered drugs after her release. So the U.S. Marshals picked her up, and doped her to the levels required by Carswell, then shipped her back to prison. She was so over-drugged that she’d lost the ability to perform the most simple tasks, like dialing a telephone. Her husband had no idea what happened to her. She could not speak to anybody. She had trouble washing herself. All of the ugly things.

Horribly enough, prior to her imprisonment, this woman worked in a bank, in a supervisory position—She was a bank manager, with no history of mental illness. She got picked up by the Feds in their sweep of an embezzlement scam by other bank employees.

Ignoring the reality of her life, Carswell declared her incompetent over her desperate objections. Like me, she wanted to fight the charges. Suspiciously, Carswell overruled her demands, then filed a request to forcibly drug her with heavy dosages of Haldol. She lost the fight against forcible drugging, and was detained 11 months. The Court released her on condition that she take the drugs voluntarily. After about a year, she stopped.

Now she was back in prison—but with a different attorney, who challenged the original indictment. The new attorney questioned why the first attorney argued she was “unfit for Trial” in the first place. Critically, her co-defendants filed affidavits saying that she had nothing to do with their crime.

This poor woman wasn’t guilty after all. With the help of her new kick ass attorney, Carswell pulled back the amount of drugs that she was forced to take.

And guess what? This poor abused woman showed no signs of mental illness whatsoever. There was nothing wrong with her. It was another case of Carswell brutalizing a woman prisoner just because they could.

Her story proves something of critical importance to the debate on prison psychiatry:

If you change the attorney, you change the prisoner “diagnosis.” You change the defense strategy, and all the psycho-babble goes away—It rushes away. That’s because most of the time, psychological evaluations are scripted to support the attorney’s legal strategy— not a reflection of the defendant’s true state of mental health. So when you start poking, there’s almost nothing left of a psychological profile, except in the most extreme situations of genuine schizophrenia, or severe bipolar disorder, or long term domestic violence or child abuse.

To put that in context, in 7 ½ months at Carswell, I saw exactly one prisoner with schizophrenia, two prisoners suffering bipolar disorder to a crippling degree, and two prisoners who heard voices— which might have been caused by the heavy psychotropic drugs they were forced to take.

The rest of the inmates were normal, but they broke the law. For whatever reason, they engaged in criminal activity. And they got sent to prison for it.

Psychology in the courts is all about legal strategy in disposing of a case, so an attorney can get out of it. Like mine.

Unhappily, this poor lady, once a bank supervisor, suffered through Two Tours of Carswell to prove it. The first time she served 11 months. The second time she served four months. Plus, she had time at home between Carswell, suffering the crippling effects of Haldol, which had been wrongly administered at high dosages for punitive reasons.

Last I heard, she intended to file a lawsuit.

It was sheer hell from start to finish, and all because Carswell abuses its authority in the courts, and advocates excessive, unnecessary drugging for all prisoners.

That’s what Carswell wanted to do to me. And remember, this was happening in Texas. Think of every worst stereotype of corrupt Texas prison staff, and you’re beginning to get the idea.

Without the “inconvenience” of due process, Carswell can get away with anything. And they know it. When the Hospital Accreditation Review Board shows up to survey the prison facilities, the most chemically lobotomized women get transferred to the SHU until the performance review has been completed. That way nobody on the outside is troubled to see them. And Carswell doesn’t have to answer questions about the crippling impact of drugs on their daily functioning.

It’s a serious problem. I am not the exceptional inmate who was abused at Carswell. I am the exceptional prisoner who escaped abuse.

I escaped, because I fought back as hard as I have fought anything in my life.

For the good of all prisoners, Carswell should lose the right to perform psych evaluations for the federal courts, and all drugging orders should be reviewed with fresh eyes. Cruelty should never be part of that evaluation process. And corruption should never be tolerated when drug recommendations are imposed on prisoners, forcibly or not, in a court of law.

My Own Private Guantanamo

My nightmare was double-force.

When I describe Carswell as my own “private Guantanamo,” and my status as pretty close to an “enemy non-combatant,” there are good reasons why.

After Jose Padilla, I was the second non-Arab Americans ever indicted on the Patriot Act. There’s great irony to that. Congress approved the 7000 page law that eviscerated our Constitutional rights in a midnight vote, without reading it first, in frenzied hysteria after 9/11. The Patriot Act supposedly exists to empower law enforcement to break up terrorist cells.

Yet one of the very first Americans to get clobbered by the Patriot Act was an antiwar activist and whistleblower—not exactly what comes to mind when Congress argued for the Patriot Act.

Unforgivably, the Patriot Act was first used to keep Americans ignorant of national security issues, when ordinary people started asking Good Questions about White House policies. Those of us who know the truth got ravaged by the Patriot Act to silence us, while Congress glorified its performance and manipulated the public debate That’s what the Patriot Act accomplished. It has been crafted as an ideal tool for any government cover up. The government arrests the whistleblower, and politicians are safe to make up stories to protect their access to power.

Soldiers at Carswell Air Force Base had no idea that I was a U.S. Asset who got in trouble for providing accurate forecasts about the War in Iraq They had no idea I warned about 9/11, and contributed extensively to the 9/11 investigation.

If you read the mainstream media, I was caught “spying for the Iraqis.” That’s what a lot of soldiers on Carswell Air Force Base believed. The indictment was dirty smoke and propaganda. But soldiers believed what they were told. An accused “Iraqi agent” was locked up on their military base. Having lost my rights to due process under the Patriot Act, I lost my ability to challenge their perceptions of my alleged crimes.

At that moment, American soldiers were losing the War in Baghdad. U.S. forces sustained heavy casualties in 2006, including thousands of amputations, paralysis and head injuries from suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). While I was locked up at Carswell, Sunni factions attacked the golden dome of the famous Al-Askariya Mosque in Samarra, launching bloody sectarian strife against the Shi’ites. U.S. soldiers had lost control on the battlefield, and were heading back for third tours of duty away from wives and children. Returning U.S. soldiers showed deep emotional scars and post traumatic stress. The U.S. military faced daunting pressure of two battle fronts, with angry Mujahedin in Afghanistan on the sidelines of Baghdad.

Locking up an accused “Iraqi Agent” inside a Texas military base was like waving a suicide bomb vest in front of a battalion. They couldn’t stop Al Qaeda in Iraq. But they could sure as hell punish me, an “enemy non-combatant,” (read that, Iraqi spy).

They tried their damnedest to screw me every chance they got.

My beloved Uncle Ted Lindauer kept his promise to drive 700 miles from southern Illinois to visit me at Carswell Air Force Base, northwest of Fort Worth, Texas. It’s an 11 hour road trip, driving straight through—in each direction.

When he arrived, Ted identified himself as part of my legal defense team, a fully accurate description by this point. He carried documentation to verify his attorney’s license. Critically, the soldiers understood he was visiting the “accused Iraqi Agent.”

The Sentry guard refused to let Ted Lindauer enter that military base.

The first time it happened, soldiers swore there was no prison inside Carswell Air Force Base. And I was not a detainee. Quite perplexed, Ted assured soldiers at the sentry gate they were mistaken. He had Court papers ordering my surrender to Carswell, and letters postmarked from the prison. He asked to speak with a commanding officer. The commanding officer on duty came out to meet him, but refused to acknowledge that a prison was located inside the military base, either.[494]

Ted explained that he had traveled 700 miles, and he was quite positive the prison was there. They didn’t care. He wasn’t coming onto their base. Ted doesn’t give up easily on anything, and he doesn’t play. So they spent a good couple of hours arguing over whether there was a prison inside Carswell Air Force Base. Above all, Ted argued aggressively for my Constitutional rights to attorney access.

Oh yes, the Iraqi agent wanted an attorney.

Ted warned that he would go to the Judge and file a complaint. And that’s exactly what he did. He notified Judge Mukasey’s clerk that he had been denied access to the prison on a weekend— when it was open for family members, attorneys or not. And he complained that my rights to an attorney visit had been violated.

That was Ted’s first attempt to visit me at Carswell Prison. The second time Ted drove 700 miles and 11 hours from southern Illinois, soldiers had a new excuse for denying him access to the base.

Yeah, soldiers at the entry gate acknowledged. Carswell prison existed. But the Sentry swore up and down that the prison had no visiting hours on the weekends. Again Ted argued that was ridiculous. Again the sentry contacted a ranking officer on duty. He came down and refused Ted’s request to enter the base, with the flagrant lie that the prison had no weekend visiting hours.[495]

Meanwhile, other families visiting the prison got ushered through the gates around Ted. Inside Carswell, other inmates had visitors all day.

Ted Lindauer had his attorney papers. He had contact names inside the prison. He was on my visitor’s list. None of that mattered. Soldiers told him not to come back the next day, because they would not let him onto the military base then, either.

The Iraqi agent was not getting an attorney visit. End of discussion.

All this time my attorney in New York had done nothing to secure my freedom. If any solution could be brokered, it would have to come from Ted. There was nobody else to do it. This visit was critically important to ending our stand off.

Knowing that, Ted had done everything properly. He notified the Court that he was performing as Co-Counsel for my defense. Judge Mukasey had observed Ted’s presence in Court the day I got ordered to Carswell, and recognized the importance of our relationship. The prison staff on M-1 was fully aware of his close involvement in my case.

He’s also 70 years old, and a very dignified gentleman, with 40 years of senior legal practice. He doesn’t suffer fools. It’s sort of a Lindauer thing.

And still soldiers at Carswell Air Force Base refused to grant him access to me.

Now Ted was furious. This was his second trip to Carswell in several weeks, and he’d been refused entry to the base both times, for the flimsiest of excuses.[496]

He warned the Commanding Officer that he would return in a few days. And by God, he would bring the U.S. marshals with him. And those U.S. marshals would escort him onto that military base, into that prison, if soldiers tried to deny Ted Lindauer access to me a third time.[497]

While he was at it, he would see that they all got court-martialed for failing in their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. (We know a few Generals, too.)

Unhappily, soldiers guarding Carswell Air Force Base appeared to have a very limited understanding of the Constitution, which is not particularly hopeful, since they’re sworn to protect it. In its most simple maxim, “We, the people of the United States of America” have fundamental protections that define our whole system of government and laws. Those inalienable rights exist to protect us from exactly this sort of arbitrary and tyrannical government abuses like these. For starters, Americans are innocent until proven guilty, with carefully defined rights of due process. And by the way, political prosecutions are expressly frowned upon as tyrannical violations of free speech.

Alas, the U.S. Constitution got fed into the shredder in my case. That illustrates poignantly why prisons should be separate from military establishments. It’s disastrous to allow them to function co-dependently. The military itself does not know how to handle those situations.

Well, Ted Lindauer is a marvelously persevering man. When challenged, he refused to back down.

First thing Monday morning, he called Judge Mukasey and raised all kinds of hell about my Constitutional rights, and how Sam Talkin’s failure to perform had compelled him to intercede, in order to guarantee that I had real, interested legal counsel. He filed a formal protest with the Court, and demanded that U.S. Marshals escort him onto that base.[498]

Judge Mukasey could see the situation was spiraling out of control. The whole agreement sending me to Carswell for 120 days, in exchange for ending the case, had collapsed. Obviously the original deal had been hammered out in the black of night, without my consent, by an attorney who now appeared impotent to protect my rights, and took no action to gain my freedom. And I was trapped in prison 1600 miles away.

This violation of my rights to legal counsel was occurring at a critical moment. As a defendant, I desperately required the guidance of a senior legal adviser. Judge Mukasey’s hands were tied by the thinly disguised collusion between the prosecutor and my attorney. And here was the answer to our prayers— a senior, savvy attorney anxious to play a very helpful role brokering a workable solution.

With great perspicacity and fury over the abrogation of my legal rights, Judge Mukasey agreed to have U.S. Marshals standing by to escort Ted Lindauer onto that military base, when he returned to see me a few days later. Judge Mukasey ordered that this legal visit would be protected by the Court. And he ordered Carswell Prison to open the visitor center just for me.[499]

Ted Lindauer had Judge Mukasey’s private cell phone number to invoke the power of the U.S. Marshals at the first sign of trouble or delay.

Judge Mukasey kicked some Texas ass that week. Junior staff at Carswell told me he boxed the ears of top prison officers, who sent the message down the ranks that guards had better find me when Ted Lindauer arrived. There would be hell to pay if Ted didn’t get to see me.

As they say, third time’s the charm. It took the threat of U.S. marshals standing by, flanking Ted at the front gate, but we finally got to talk.[500]

Mercifully, Ted Lindauer possessed the legal insight to craft a workable compromise to our problem. He arrived carrying a pledge for my signature to submit to Judge Mukasey. Very simply, I would have to agree to attend psychology meetings in Maryland. And I would have to agree to use any drugs prescribed locally—

Experience convinced us that once politics got removed from the equation, there would be no drugs. Nevertheless, I had to consent.[501]

This agreement gave the court a vehicle for addressing the prosecutor’s demands for drugs, while sidestepping my refusal to use drugs prescribed by Carswell for nonexistent conditions that had nothing to do with real life.

It was simple, but it accomplished what my Uncle Ted understood the Judge needed. He’d done his homework, and he got the agreement in precise language that would be acceptable to the Court, in order for me to go home. He forbade me from changing a single word of it. Truly, Ted Lindauer was a blessing, a jewel, given this massive headache for the Court.

Now it’s always risky to extrapolate a Judge’s thinking. Since no defendant can resist doing it however, I confess that we believed Judge Mukasey was alarmed and frustrated by these surprise developments.

We did not believe Judge Mukasey expected O’Callaghan to pull this stunt, demanding forcible drugging after the Court accepted the finding of incompetence. It put the Judge in a bad position, having ordered me to Carswell for 120 days, without a hearing that would have answered questions about my story. I had begged for that hearing.

Arguably, it gave the Court something else to chew over. It proved the strongest defendant could not overcome the hazards of the Patriot Act, whether guided by senior counsel like Ted Lindauer, or junior counsel like Sam Talkin. My attorney relationship was already burdened by “secret evidence” and “secret charges.” Now I was locked up on a military base— without attorney access— facing indefinite detention. Those factors crippled my capacity to prepare for trial. As a defendant, I was totally helpless to overcome these external obstacles, which were flagrantly unconstitutional anyway.

Judge Mukasey possesses an extremely sophisticated legal mind and a profound sense of fairness. Refusing to allow Ted Lindauer onto Carswell Air Force Base for a crucial attorney visit sent a sobering message.

Ted Lindauer particularly believed that Judge Mukasey saw the legal structure impeding my defense. He trusted Judge Mukasey throughout this whole nightmare.

For myself, as a defendant, I didn’t know what to think. It terrified me not to know how the Court would rule. Judge Mukasey appeared inscrutable, exhibiting a fierce and uncanny depth of insight to the law.

Honestly, I was scared to death.

Saved by the Blogs

This was the most evil thing I’ve ever confronted in my life. And I’ve seen evil before.

People ask me all the time how I survived.

I escaped the fate of other inmates, because I fought back as hard as I’ve ever fought anything in my life.

At the outset, the prospect of my success appeared stunningly low. Usually the courts rubberstamp prison requests for drugs, pretty much automatically. There’s no doubt that Carswell expected the same for me.

Carswell didn’t count on my two secret weapons.

The first, of course, was my beloved Uncle Ted, who fought forcefully and strategically, behind the scenes to broker an agreement that would satisfy the Court, and get me home.

The second surprised me, too— my own beloved companion, JB Fields, who desperately appealed for help in the blog community and internet radio.

JB refused to stand by passively, and let the attack on my rights go unchallenged.

“JB” stood for J Burford of all things. That’s just the initial “J” without any other name attached to it. Born in Kansas, raised in Wyoming, JB was a proud Navy guy who spent six years of his life underwater, trawling the ocean floors on naval submarines. In 11 years of active service, he toured on the “Grayback,” the “Barb,” and the “Thomas A. Edison.”

He bragged about surviving a submarine accident, with ocean water spilling into the hold up to his chest. On Hawaii, he ran marathons and swim races alongside friends in the Navy Seals. Afterwards, he worked at the State Department in Washington in computer technology. While living with me, he got his “Top Secret” security clearance, and returned to the State Department as a computer contractor.

So much for my threat to national security.

JB was a generous, warm hearted man, whose greatest passion in life was his motorcycle, nicknamed “Drifty.” Every weekend he blasted off on “Drifty,” exploring the back roads of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Friends joked that JB knew every ice cream stand, every barbecue pit and every diner from Maryland to North Carolina. JB would just smile, and tell you those things mattered most in life.

One Christmas, JB gave me some fancy motorcycle gear for winter riding. With a big grin, he said, “Isn’t this better than an engagement ring?”

Every moment counted with JB. He had the social flair to enjoy black tie affairs with State Department colleagues, ensconced in policy talk. And the next night, he’d eat crab legs and drink beer at the American Legion in Silver Spring, or at some motorcycle bar. He looked sexy as hell in a Tux, and even sexier in blue jeans and a leather jacket.

Different opinions always excited him. That was key to understanding his nature. He was a fierce civil libertarian, and a strong believer that ideas must be respected. Though he was fiercely opinionated himself, and would argue for hours over the most arcane points, he would gleefully defend the rights of others to hold a different philosophy on life and politics. And he believed those differences made conversation interesting.

Above all, he strongly believed the greatest privilege of the U.S. military is to defend the freedoms of our country— which he adored— and to protect the Constitution—which he held sacred.

And woe to the wicked of Carswell!

From my first days at Carswell, JB championed my cause. He was horrified that I got locked up without a trial or hearing He was appalled the national media didn’t care. My case had intense political overtones, involving Iraq and anti-terrorism policy, and a strong human interest angle. Yet corporate media gave short shrift to my nightmare. There was no outcry. My home town newspaper, the Washington Post, showed no curiosity that one of its local gals, a U.S. Asset involved with Pre-War Intelligence, had got locked up on a Texas military base for doing exactly what pundits and Congress swore on the Front Page of the newspaper I should have done.

Journalists wouldn’t touch my story, though JB pleaded for attention. Corporate media watched from the sidelines, abandoning the role of watchdog.

Carswell watched this dynamic, too— closely. Once they saw the media’s indifference, prison staff taunted me that nobody cared. Nobody would help me. They could do anything at all to me, and nobody would stop them.

Sadly, if not for JB Fields, they would have been right.

Terrified by Carswell’s refusal to release me, JB Fields hit the airwaves of alternative radio, with some very cool talk show hosts like Michael Herzog, Greg Szymanski, Derek Gilbert, RJ Hender and Cosmic Penguin — to name a few of the awake and vigilant alternative radio hosts, who broadcast my story from the very beginning.

Republic Broadcasting, Oracle, Orion and Liberty Radio carried my story to their listeners before anybody else! And their scrutiny made all the difference!

JB was so frightened that he started posting my story on blogs all over the internet, with a cry for help to defend my rights to a hearing, so I’d have a chance to prove my story in court.

The hand of Providence moved for me again, and JB was soon joined by a passionate and highly articulate activist named Janet Phelan, who’s got a long tradition defending America’s liberties in her own right. Janet hosted a radio talk show, “One if by Land.” An incredibly talented lady, Janet brought a deeper perspective on the abuse of women by psychology, and the Soviet style of abusing creative thinkers and activists under the guise of “mental health.” She also fiercely condemned the Patriot Act.

Janet Phelan was phenomenal. Together, she and JB smoked the blogs with outrage over the irregularities of my imprisonment on the Patriot Act, and the outrageous threat to forcibly drug me until I could be “cured” of knowing inconvenient truths that the government wished to obliterate.

Corporate media might have been sleeping, but the blogging community woke up, and gave JB and Janet a forum to fight. What I call “awake blogs,” like “Scoop” Independent News, Smirking Chimp, IntelDaily, OpEd News, American Politics Journal, Atlantic Free Press, and The Agonist joined the battle, appalled by what was happening. Cutting edge bloggers like WelcomebacktoPottersville.com, watching the road ahead, championed my cause from day one.

Later, as my legal drama continued, one of the truly outstanding blog journalists today, Michael Collins, picked up my story. Then we were off to the races!

At Carswell, JB Fields fought like a banshee to free me — what he described as the most lonely and frightening experience of his life. JB declared that he could not say if I was innocent—and he did not always agree with my politics, which made for some lively conversations. But he insisted that I had the right to face my accusers in open court. He urged blog readers to support my right to an evidentiary hearing, so I could a fair chance to call my witnesses to prove the authenticity of my claims!

This was about America, and the bad things happening to ordinary people under the Patriot Act. JB and Janet argued fiercely and passionately that the legal traditions of this country must be defended. They kicked up one helluva fight. And they refused to back down.

Blowback from the blogs fired seismic shock waves through Washington. You’d be amazed who told me they heard JB’s radio interviews after I got out.

As long as the corporate media stayed silent, Capitol Hill could pretend this judicial abuse of a U.S. Intelligence Asset was not occurring. Safe behind their ivory tower walls, the Power Elite of Washington imagined they were untouchable, their fortress impenetrable.

Only now, thanks to JB Fields and Janet Phelan, Capitol Hill confronted the emerging force of the blogs and alternative radio, at a crucial moment when the internet community was proving it’s got the muscle to shatter the media silence.

JB and all the other bloggers who picked up my story saved my life and my freedom. Without that outcry, my fate would have been very different.

That’s what separated my victory from the tragedy of so many others. Other women don’t have those resources. Sadly, their stories suffocate and die from lack of exposure, while my ordeal was redeemed by JB’s perseverance.

Finally, JB and I got a break.

On April 24, 2006, the Court made a surprise announcement.

CHAPTER 26:

THE FRIENDLY
SKIES OF CON AIR

JB and I used to joke that I was starring in my own Robert Ludlum spy thriller. Every action invoked a sinister plot twist that got more dangerous as I went along.

Like the lovely April morning I got the news that I was finally transferring out of Carswell.

With a mischievous grin, the guard on duty stuck his head in the doorway to my cell.

“Hey Lindauer, pack up! You’re outta here. You’re leaving tomorrow night.”

I think I screamed with joy, because other inmates in the hallway came running to hear my news. I started to grab the guard for a hug before I caught myself.

It was April 24, 2006. I crowed in jubilation, ecstatically thrilled. Elated with joy!

In all, I had been detained 7 ½ months for a psych evaluation that ordinarily takes six to eight weeks, and only because so many prisoners are getting processed simultaneously. Federal guidelines set a maximum of 120 days for prison evaluations.[502] My detention lasted 210 days— in strict violation of federal law. Not to mention the evaluation lacked purpose. I’d proven myself over and over again. The whole thing amounted to a convoluted scheme so the Justice Department could escape a trial.

But that morning I felt overjoyed.

“I’m going home! I’m going home!” I started dancing around my cell.

“Um, Lindauer. Uh, no. I’m driving a bus-load of prisoners to the inmate transfer center in Oklahoma City tomorrow night. You’re, uh, flying to New York. On Con Air.”

“To New York? On Con-Air? There must be a mistake. I live in Maryland.”

“You’re not going home, Lindauer. They’re sending you to the Metropolitan Correctional Center for Pre-Trial detention in Manhattan.”

The wheel of “extreme prejudice” was turning alright.

They were coming in for the kill.

At that moment I wasn’t nearly paranoid enough to conceive the depth of their malevolence.

“I’m staying in prison? Seriously? I don’t understand. I’m supposed to go home after the evaluation.” (Carswell filed its report on December 22, 2005—four months earlier).

“I talked to my attorney yesterday. Why didn’t he tell me that I’m going to Court? How could my attorney not know I’m getting transferred?”

“I don’t know.” The guard shook his head. “Hey, you’re out of here, Lindauer.”

He leaned closer. “That’s a good thing, right? Your Judge has something he wants to say before he lets you go. That’s all. Be cool.” This guy was a good guard.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s got to be it. My Uncle just sent a settlement offer to the Court. My uncle had to do it, because my stupid ass attorney couldn’t figure it out.”

“That’s probably what the meeting’s for. Hey, Lindauer, it’s all good! You’re packin’ up. You’re leaving Carswell. Stay happy.”

As for divining my future in New York, my fellow prisoners jumped straight into the tea leaves. Their verdict was unanimous.

“If they’re sending you out of here, Susan, you’re not coming back. Why else would they go to the trouble? You’re done! It’s over! Your uncle’s taken care of you.”

I could not count how many of my fellow inmates wished they had an Uncle Ted Lindauer.

“You’re going home. You’ve just got a stop over in New York first.”

JB was ecstatic. He saw it as proof that the blog community had forced Carswell’s abuse and threats into the open. The game was becoming untenable to continue.

I was deliriously happy. There are few moments in life that I have experienced such joy.

My attorney was less enthusiastic.

“The Judge has called a hearing, Susan. You wanted a hearing, right? Well, you’re going to get one,” Talkin told me, glumly. “That’s why they’re sending you to M.C.C.”

I gave a deep sigh, and shook my head.

It was everything Ted and I feared when Judge Mukasey ordered me to surrender to Carswell in September. It put us back to square one. I’d suffered seven months in prison for nothing!

Ted warned that anger would be a waste of energy. I had to focus on getting home.

I growled to myself, but Ted was right. At least Judge Mukasey would learn the truth. There would be no more question marks. He could hear it for himself— just like the FBI, the U.S Attorney’s Office, the prison staff at Carswell, and Uncle Ted. We’d all be on the same page. Nobody could pretend I had invented this story.

I imagined that after the hearing, the Court would restore my bail until trial. I’d already surrendered to prison once, on the court’s whim. I was hardly a flight risk.

But what a waste of 7 months. We could have gone to trial already. I could have been acquitted without spending a single night in a prison cell.

I grit my jaw. That made me so angry.

I could see Ted’s face, and hear his words: “Stay focused. How you got here is less important than what you do next. We’ve got to get you out of the Hoosiegow, kid.” At least I had an excellent source of legal advice, even if it wasn’t my own attorney.

I turned my attention back to Sam Talkin.

“Very well. We’ll call witnesses to prove my story’s true. That’ll put an end to this psychology garbage. Judge Mukasey will hear enough to know it’s all baloney.”

Now I could see Richard Fuisz before me again, solemnly raising his finger, counting like a metronome. “Every situation, every encounter gives you a weapon or a tool. Anything that comes at you, you must use.”

Okay then. A hearing it would be. I would have been overjoyed if the Prosecutor kept his word about dropping the charges. Who could blame me? On the other hand, once witnesses verified my story, we could argue for dismissing the indictment ourselves. It would be up to the Judge. But this gave us a fresh chance to undo the damage of Dr. Drob’s report, which misrepresented the quality of my witnesses. The Justice Department had its pound of flesh. A pre-trial hearing might be the best thing for everybody. It might satisfy the Court of my innocence, and make the case go away.

Not to mention the great satisfaction I would get proving the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office had always known I was telling the truth. They’d been playing games with Judge Mukasey, gratis of the Patriot Act.

I heard another whisper from my mother, Jacqueline Shelly Lindauer. “Save your emotions for revenge.”

Alright then. A hearing it would be!

“I don’t know if we want those witnesses—” Sam Talkin began to whine.

“What are you saying? Of course we want those witnesses!”

Idiot! Sam Talkin was exasperating! As soon as I got home, I intended to fire him. In the meantime, any hearing before Judge Mukasey would be precious.

“We can talk about it when you get here,” Talkin pouted. How do you break the news to a prisoner that she’s getting fucked again? (As delicately as possible.)

“See, the hearing isn’t about your competence,” Talkin started whining. “It’s on forcible drugging.”

“WHAT THE FUCK are you saying? A hearing on forcible drugging? Are they INSANE!!???!!!”

My heart thudded to the floor at this bad news. Now I saw with clarity why Talkin had dreaded telling me before. The mere suggestion staggered with obscenity.

I mean, reality is not a disease. Psychology might be, however.

“No, Sam. No F—G—Damn Way,” I’d buffed up my prison vocabulary at the law library, too.

(JB declared that I “cursed like a pirate” when I got home.)

“The law guarantees my right to a competence hearing, and I refuse to give up that right. I’m entitled to call witnesses and show evidence to address the questions raised in these idiotic psych evaluations.[503] That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“Yeah well, I told them we didn’t need to do that,” Talkin mumbled into the phone. “I didn’t know the Prosecutor was going to ask for this.” He whined, pitifully.

“You did WHAT?!”

This was “extreme prejudice” alright, to the hundredth degree. And my public attorney walked into their trap, every time. Talkin would refuse to listen to me or Ted. He would miscalculate their sincerity, and he would be wrong again and again.

Except he was playing with another person’s freedom.

I suspect Talkin was afraid the Court would hear how Uncle Ted had been forced to interview my witnesses for my Defense, and how effortlessly he succeeded in validating my story.[504] His success contradicted the image of difficulty Talkin was projecting, and exposed his own mediocrity in the case.

“YOU agreed to give up MY rights? Oh no. I’m going to send Judge Mukasey a letter today. I will demand the Court uphold my rights as guaranteed by federal statute. JB will get in touch with everybody, so they know they have to come. We’ll be ready.”

“I’m not playing, Sam.” I swore adamantly. “That’s one good thing about prison. I’ve had lots of time to Read the Law.” I was ferocious.

“We’re having the God damn hearing. I don’t give a f— what you told Judge Mukasey. You are not entitled to violate my rights. I’m going to make sure that Judge Mukasey registers my demand, as the Defendant. Parke Godfrey will be in Court that day, ready to testify that I warned him about 9/11.”

“And he’s going to tell Judge Mukasey that he told the FBI all about my 9/11 warning a FULL YEAR before I got shipped to Carswell. He talked to Shadduck here, too. So the FBI, the US Attorneys Office and the Bureau of Prisons all know that it’s true, and they’ve all been playing games with Judge Mukasey.”

“There’s a name for that in prison, Sam. It’s called perjury.”

“If I were the Judge, I would be madder than hell about it.”

I always saw Judge Mukasey as the second victim of psychiatry in my case.

Again I saw the face of Richard Fuisz, stern and quiet: “Every situation gives you a weapon or a tool.”

That was the best advice I’d heard all day.

Alright then, I was getting out of Carswell. I was going to face my Judge. There’d be no distance between us. I would look him straight in the eye, and I’d bloody well lay out the whole thing.

A weapon or a tool was right.

After 7 months cut off from Court access, we’d all be in the same time zone, the same city! Glory hallelujah!

How could any defendant expect to prepare a legal strategy separated by a distance of 1,600 miles from her attorney? I was stuck in Texas, and my attorney was half way across the country in New York. It struck me as legally absurd to complain about my capacity to assist my defense, then deny me physical access to legal counsel. That’s a killer for any defendant.

OK, so a prison transfer to New York would be like paradise. I swore to God on a stack of Bibles that I would never go back to Texas again! I know lots of proud and wonderful Texans. They can visit me in Maryland.

Driving out of Carswell on the prison bus that night felt surreal. We stayed up all night, excited to leave. The bus pulled out at four in the morning, while it was still dark, for the 200 mile drive to Oklahoma City. It felt like a party, a heart-felt celebration.

Some of my fellow inmates had been trapped inside that razor wire for years. Getting on that bus, you wanted to grab that free earth and give thanks to God!

Surprisingly, the prison transit center is located at the Oklahoma City Airport— It occupies a separate compound, like an island outpost, with its own runway in sight of the main passenger terminals. That intrigued me. It appeared to house 300 women at a time, with a separate shed for male prisoners.

The detention center had the look and feel of a huge hangar for airplanes. There were no windows that I recall, just extra large holding cells big enough for 40 to 50 people, used for inmate processing. Each holding cell had two open toilets with no seat rim or toilet paper. The toilets were mostly broken and couldn’t flush. That’s prison for you. They don’t want anybody coming back.

After processing, we got escorted into a vast open room behind locked doors, with cafeteria tables and a prison laundry. Some of the women inmates folded towels and sheets to stay busy throughout the day. Tiny cells lined the edge of the walls. .

First though, we had to go through inmate screening. One by one, guards called us out of the holding cell, lined us up, and ran through our records.

When they called me, I discovered that Carswell had played dirty. Again.

Carswell had singled me out of all the transfer prisoners, with an urgent recommendation that I should be locked in the SHU, or solitary confinement during transit, citing the Patriot Act.

To their credit, Oklahoma City stopped to ask some questions. The guards said only the most violent and dangerous prisoners go to the SHU in transit. They assured me it would be terribly unpleasant for a woman. Besides that, Carswell’s request made no sense. Looking at my prison record, I had no disciplinary problems. Some of the other women had serious behavior problems at Carswell, and none of them was going to the SHU. The guards finally struck down Carswell’s recommendation.

Oh but I understood Carswell’s motivation immediately. And it had nothing to do with behavioral problems or confrontations with prison guards.

Don’t forget— Just as I contributed to the 9/11 investigation, I also contributed to the Oklahoma City bombing investigation. And I complained the Justice Department was suppressing intelligence from Iraq, proving a broader conspiracy in the Oklahoma attack. Iraq claimed to possess proof of Middle East involvement in Oklahoma, including financial records for early Al Qaeda fighters, formerly known as the “Inter-Arab Group.”

There was circumstantial evidence that Terry Nichols, the lead co-conspirator of the Oklahoma bombing, had meetings with Ramzi Yousef, ringleader of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, while both men visited the same University in the Philippines, known for Islamic radicalism. Both attacks relied on truck bombs loaded with fertilizer.

Carswell didn’t want me talking to prisoners or guards in Oklahoma City. They didn’t want those folks listening to what I had to say. Odds are those detention officers might know some of the Oklahoma families, and the word would get out.

Still, the SHU is a bad place for any prisoner. It’s for heavy duty punishment. I could only imagine what Carswell would concoct once I got to New York.

Try to imagine this brutal irony from where I was standing—in shackles and prison uniform.

I was booked for transport on Con-Air from Oklahoma City— where I contributed to their bombing investigation. My final destination was New York City, where I gave advance warning about 9/11 and the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. New York had been a primary beneficiary of my anti-terrorism work for almost a decade.

If that’s not ironic enough, the federal courthouse in New York sat approximately 1,000 yards from where the World Trade Center once graced the New York skyline.

Pending the outcome of the decision, I would be locked up at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) a couple of blocks from Ground Zero. I would be detained in the same prison where Ramzi Yousef and other defendants waited for trial in the 1993 terrorist conspiracy that launched my career as an Asset.

Like the cycle of a Greek tragedy, the most profound experiences of my life turned on the World Trade Center, from start to finish.

I gave my whole life to this work. It defined me. I sacrificed all of my personal life for it. For all of the excitement of it, I enjoyed no public fame. Very quietly I celebrated my triumphs with a small number of people who understood my contributions. If most of my work was anonymous however, my role as a back channel to Iraq and Libya was no less critical, for the simple fact that almost nobody engaged in direct conversations with those pariah nations in the 1990s. I quietly provided an opening for covert dialogue.

If I must say, my team did a damn fine job.

And this was how America paid me back.

I was not traveling by limousine to a red carpet reception with roses and champagne. I would receive no special plaque with the Keys to the City from the Mayors of New York and Oklahoma City.

There would be no “first class” seating with a wine bar and cocktails on a 757 jumbo jetliner. No five star hotel accommodations at the Trump Plaza in Manhattan.

I would travel in shackles and chains.

I would fly the friendly skies of “Con Air,” with hard core criminals and brokenhearted souls and stripped down creature comforts. I would be gawked at by male prisoners who hadn’t seen a woman in years. Some of the women prisoners flirted mercilessly, teasing them. Odds are they’d be remembered for years.

Since I was handcuffed, when I had to go to the bathroom, a U.S. Marshal would have to pull down my pants, and raise ‘em up again when I was finished.

Oh yeah, it would be a helluva flight.

And for what? I stood accused of engaging in anti-terrorism that politicians on Capitol Hill declared their highest priority for national security. Now those same leaders wanted to exaggerate their success to voters in Oklahoma City and New York.

Is that ironic enough for you?

I choked on the outrage of it.

Shamefully, I suffered ridicule in court proceedings505, 506 for declaring my faith that New Yorkers would appreciate what I had done on behalf of their city.

They say New York has a cold, cold heart. Maybe they would care in Oklahoma City, where a nursery school filled with toddlers and infants got destroyed in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building.[507] Do you think those 19 babies died quickly crushed under all that concrete? Did they scream for their mommies as they suffocated with broken bones?

Do you care?

Well I care. If those parents told me to stop, I would consent out of respect for their grief. But I would be damned to hell before I ever stop hunting men who kill anybody’s children— and certainly not because some creepy politician in Washington winks that it’s okay.

It’s not okay. But hey, that’s just me.

And now I was on my way to argue before Judge Michael B. Mukasey why I should not get forcibly drugged for 10 years in prison— without a trial— for contributing to the 9/11 investigation, and warning Colin Powell and my own cousin, White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, about the catastrophe of invading Iraq.

Or was that 25 years in prison?

That’s just too much irony for me.

It was a miserable flight.

Yeah, you bet it was. Some things really are unforgivable in a democracy.

CHAPTER 27:

EXTREME PREJUDICE

“Everyone strives to reach the Law,” says the man. “So how does it happen that
for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?”
The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end,
and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear:
“No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you.
I am now going to shut it.”
–The Trial by Franz Kafka

Forcible drugging with Haldol— The harshest anti-psychotic available, which blocks bodily functioning and imitates the stone-like effects of Parkinson’s Disease.

This was the stuff of nightmares. And the worst was coming fast.

If O’Callaghan won this fight, my capability to think and function would be utterly wrecked. I would be so doped up that I wouldn’t be capable of exchanging ideas through conversation or the written word pretty much ever again.

That was the whole idea.

I would be chemically lobotomized like those other broken women on the notorious M-1 of Carswell. Women who couldn’t hold a fork to eat, or raise a cup to drink without spilling on themselves. Women who couldn’t shower or dress themselves. Women who slept 15 to 18 hours every day, and often wet their beds at night.

If that wasn’t bad enough, because I was pre-trial, Carswell wanted to lock me up “indefinitely,” which could imply the maximum 10 year sentence. Carswell was testing the waters to see if the Patriot Act could be categorized with violent crimes, which typically hold “incompetent” inmates for the maximum possible detention. If the Court accepted “indefinite detention,” it would be up to Carswell to recommend when to free me, at whatever time the Justice Department decided my Intelligence background no longer threatened Washington’s elite.

Hell would freeze before I got out—and my life would become a living torture until that end.

This was “extreme prejudice,” alright. The goal was much worse than discrediting my reputation as an Asset. They sought to destroy me as a human being— body, mind and soul.

Only “extreme prejudice” could destroy all evidence of Washington’s Crimes Against the American People— and protect Republican leaders, who had staked their reputations on a totally false and revisionist myth about their performance on national security.

In truth, Republicans had blundered badly. They had to go nuclear on me to shield themselves.

And now we had gathered in New York for a hearing to debate this God awful proposal.

They had not counted on one problem, however. Just because somebody wants to kill you doesn’t mean that you have to surrender without a fight.

In which case the FBI should have listened to Paul Hoven more carefully. He used to chuckle, “Susan, if I was taking gun fire in a back alley at midnight, I would want you by my side. Because you would fight to the death.”

Psychiatry had nothing to do with reality in my case. This attack was strictly politically motivated. Having studied the competency law at Carswell’s prison library, however, I understood exactly how to tackle it and defeat it. The competency law itself gave me all the opportunity I needed to bring clarity to the situation. Satisfying the Court was simply a matter of presenting a couple of participatory witnesses, who could assure Judge Mukasey of the authentic details of my life. I was also entitled to supply evidence to prove my functionality. Any hearing would do, so long as I could exercise my right to challenge the questions raised in these absurd psych evaluations.

Once reality came into play, this bogus psychiatry would get thrown out the window. Oh yes, give me due process, and this phony psych debate would be smashed.

At my first face meeting with Talkin at M.C.C, I made perfectly clear that’s the strategy I wanted to pursue. I was furious that I was suffering because he had misread my case so badly. Talkin had gambled with my freedom and lost. Since O’Callaghan was reneging on his promise to drop the charges, I wanted to take a sledge hammer to these ridiculous psych evaluations, and go back to my original defense.

Talkin wasted no time disabusing my expectations.

Only the psychiatrists who’d invented this nonsense story would be allowed to testify. Indeed, the Defense intended to call just one witness, somebody named Dr. Robert L. Goldstein, a psychiatrist on the faculty of Columbia University.

I had never spoken with this man, or laid eyes on him until he showed up in Court to disparage my reputation. Yet Dr. Goldstein was ready to assure Judge Mukasey that he had greater insight to my character, personality and life’s work than anyone outside of psychiatry who’d known me 15 years or longer.

It was a flagrant violation of my rights under the competence law. I knew that, because I had read the law, and I understood what it meant. Yet here again I confronted psychiatry’s unscrupulous finagling of court procedure.

Now I was truly terrified.

Prison guards woke me before dawn on the morning of May 4 for the first of two hearing dates. I showered and ate a small breakfast before getting hustled through the ancient concrete tombs of M.C.C. to the federal courthouse next door.

There I was strip searched, garbed in a special prison uniform for court, and dumped in a holding cage. I waited for hours, it seemed, before I got called to Court.

There I stood —the woman who tried to stop the 9/11 attack— just 1000 yards from the rubble of “ground zero,” where the World Trade Center once graced the New York skyline. The whole thing struck me as preposterous and grotesque.

I was frantic to speak to my Judge. I had prepared a brief written statement so I could stay on point, though my emotions burgeoned on hysteria.

To my dismay, Judge Mukasey refused to allow me to address the court.[508]

JUDGE MUKASEY: “No. She’s got a lawyer. Anything that she has to tell me, she should tell you. You can tell me or not, depending on whether you think it’s in her legal interest to do it.”

TALKIN: “Ms. Lindauer… wishes the Court to know that she is competent to stand trial, and wishes to stand trial, and she denies all of the reports. It’s her position that all of the reports are false and inaccurate.”

JUDGE MUKASEY: “I understand that, and there’s now a record that that’s her position. I think there was a record of it before, and so any effect that might have on subsequent proceedings, the legitimacy or lack of it, in any subsequent proceedings is now clear.”

If that sounds harsh, it was. In fairness, Judge Mukasey was stuck between a rock and a hard place, confronting two wretched options. It must have infuriated him. He could accept an incompetence defense for a faithful U.S. Asset who successfully engaged with pariah Arab nations like Libya and Iraq for almost a decade. He had to know that was legally absurd. Or he could reject the incompetence strategy, and force the Defense to go to trial. In that case, he would be forced to implement the Patriot Act in his courtroom, a law crammed with every imaginable weapon for assaulting the Constitutional rights of due process for all defendants in the U.S. Courts across the country.

My case created a lot of bad law. A great Judge like Mukasey thinks about that.

A sophisticated attorney, like Brian Shaughnessy after Carswell, had a shot at striking down key planks of the Patriot Act. Shaughnessy had the legal knowledge and confidence to attack its constitutionality. Alas, he was not leading my defense at this point of time. My public attorney, Sam Talkin was over his head.

The result could have been catastrophic for everybody else.

“Warrantless searches” on the Patriot Act posed the least of my worries, though they excited the most public outcry, and I endured at least two!

By far the scariest part of the law pertained to “secret evidence.”

“Secret evidence” worked against a defendant in two critical ways, I was finding out.[509] Under the Patriot Act, the Justice Department could deny access to any evidence of its choosing. Neither the defendant, the Judge or the Jury would be allowed to see it. As a token gesture, some classified evidence could be revealed to tease the attorney—depending on his level of security clearance.[510] Even so, whatever limited access the attorney enjoyed, he would have no authorization to discuss with the defendant, or other attorneys associated with the Case. That carried enormous consequences American could never imagine— like the “secret attorney debriefing” on February 10,[511] which preceded Dr. Drob’s declaration of my incompetence on February 28.[512]

The Patriot Act made that possible.

“Secret evidence” laid the ground for two “secret charges” in the indictment.[513] If I had a possible explanation, it would be meaningless to share with my attorney. In all likelihood, he would not know the nature of those “secret charges” either.

That creates unexpected logistical difficulties at Trial. Any alibi would be purely speculative. We’d be shooting in the dark. Indeed, it’s questionable whether the Judge would allow a Defense to argue hypothetical alibis in front of a jury. But what else could you do? Judge Mukasey would have been forced to decide.

For all that, it was dawning on me that “secret evidence” on the Patriot Act carried an even more frightening and onerous burden that I had not previously understood.

“Secret evidence” that established my innocence and might save me from years in prison, called “exculpatory knowledge,” got withheld from the Court, too, including all important confirmations of my work as a U.S. Asset in anti-terrorism for nine years, supervised by U.S. Intelligence! That meant everything. And the Justice Department greedily withheld validation of that truth. They simply declared it “classified evidence,” and refused to acknowledge it.[514]

That’s how we ended up in Court on a fine day in May, fighting over whether I should be forcibly drugged with Haldol, Ativan and Prozac to “cure” me of believing what the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Attorneys Office and the Justice Department all knew to be fully truthful. Ted Lindauer and later Brian Shaughnessy would know it, too—But when confronted, the Feds refused to admit it.

Though I was frightened and confused that day, I’m now convinced that Judge Mukasey could see the horror of it, too.

And so I have tremendous sympathy— and respect— for Judge Mukasey, because I believe he perceived that bigger picture of casualties for the U.S. Court system.

If he could not kill my case, Judge Mukasey might be compelled to instruct a jury that the use of “secret evidence” to substantiate “secret charges” could not be devalued in deciding whether to convict me.[515] He might be required to instruct the jury that the Justice Department considered the “secret evidence” sufficient to prove some unidentified act of wrongdoing occurred on some non-specific day, violating some non-specific law. And that’s all the Jury needed to know.[516]

I could get five years in prison, without knowing why.

A straight arrow Judge and preeminent legal scholar like Mukasey doesn’t like that. He would enforce it, because that’s the law of the land. But a great Judge thinks about the consequence of his decisions for due process and civil liberties. At the highest level of Chief Justice, he considers the precedents throughout the Court system.

From the first days of my indictment, I could see that Judge Mukasey regarded “secret evidence” with strong distaste. He didn’t like what it meant, or where it led, creating bad legal precedents in the Courts that he loves.

There was one more problem facing both of us that morning. Judge Mukasey could only work from whatever defense strategy my attorney gave him. Judge Mukasey could not craft that strategy himself, or apply his greater skill to improve upon it.

This incompetence defense was the only option Talkin presented the Court. Talkin made no effort to strike even the most innocuous charges, that I ate cheeseburgers on days I was not in New York, or that I supported free elections in Iraq.

This was all Mukasey had to work with.

On the face of it, incompetence was grossly insulting. However under the original agreement, I would have served the most minimal prison sentence possible under federal law, just four months. It would have killed the case without a trial, sidestepping the Patriot Act with its treacherous legal precedents for the whole U.S Court system. And I would have walked away with no conviction on my record. A Judge might consider this a very reasonable solution. Most inmates would agree.

Forcible drugging was a different beast,. It made a great big mess out of our legal solution. Face it, I’d been a damn good sport about going to Carswell, and this was a blatant double cross. The mere suggestion of Haldol terrified me no end.

I tell you without shame, I almost broke down and wept, shackled in that courtroom.

Judge Mukasey could see that. He was fiercely attentive to my courtroom demeanor that morning, fully alert, while I sat quaking in obvious fear.

But his choice—and mine—was whether to throw out the whole incompetence finding, and go back to square one. Or go forward into this storm.

For myself, there was no question. I abhor drugs. There’s no way I would consent to ruin my thinking and my consciousness with mind-altering psychotropic drugs.

I would fight forcible drugging all the way to the Supreme Court. I considered it medically unethical and politically motivated. And I would not submit for any reason.

Honestly, I’ve dealt with terrorists who didn’t frighten me as much as these crazy fools who call themselves “psychiatrists.”

That was the backdrop when Judge Mukasey struck his gavel to call the Court to order, as sunshine burst through the tall windows of his chamber.

The first witness that May afternoon was Dr. Collin Vas, throwing down the gauntlet on behalf of Carswell.[517]

Introducing himself, Dr. Vas testified that he’d worked as a staff psychiatrist at Carswell for a year. He attended medical school in Banglo, India. He earned a postgraduate diploma in psychiatry at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, and finished his psychiatric residency at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.[518]

On behalf of Carswell, Dr. Vas requested the Court’s permission to forcibly strap me to a gurney and inject me with Haldol,[519] until I could be “cured” of claiming that I worked as an Asset on 9/11 and Iraq.[520] According to Dr. Vas, my “cure” required the harshest drugs available to the prisons, a drug known to imitate Parkinson’s Disease, causing heavy loss of motor functioning, especially at the high dosages prescribed by Carswell staff.

And why exactly? What disturbing symptoms of “mental illness” had I exhibited?

By this time, Carswell had scrutinized me for seven (7 1/2) months, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Surely there must have been some serious behavior problems to justify forcibly drugging an inmate with the harshest drugs available to prison staff.

Medical ethics would surely demand that symptoms of a “disease” show itself before recommending treatment to a willing participant— Let alone forcing it upon an unwilling prisoner.

You can judge for yourself whether Carswell met that medical criteria:

That afternoon, the Court cut to the chase.

Had I been observed to suffer hallucinations?[521]

O’CALLAGHAN: “If you could turn to page nine, please. Do you see that?”

VAS: “Yes.”

[The Prosecutor was referencing an observation report from Carswell.]

O’CALLAGHAN: “Do you see the cross-outs in that area?”

VAS: “Yes. That’s all my handwriting.”

[On October 3, 2005, the day of my prison surrender, psych staff cited a goal of “decreasing the intensity and frequency of auditory and visual hallucinations in 120 days.”

On October 26, 2005—three weeks after my arrival at Carswell—that objective was struck from the observation report by Dr. Vas himself.

Scrawled across the page was the wording: “Not Applicable.”]

VAS: “The reason why it was crossed out is that during the time that Ms. Lindauer was present at FMC Carswell, she denied ever experiencing hallucinations, and we did not see any external evidence of that.”

On cross examination, the question of hallucinations got raised again:

TALKIN: And you said that you never observed any hallucination behavior, you personally never observed it?”

VAS: “No external evidence, yes.”

TALKIN: “And basically everyone at Carswell that you spoke to, no one else observed any external evidence?”

VAS: “Nobody observed any external evidence, yes.”

TALKIN: “And you say that she denied that she had any hallucinations while she was there?”

VAS: “That is true.”

What? No hallucinations! No hearing voices! Nothing at all?

No, no, no! Reports to the contrary are media propaganda, spun by White House overlords. Oh, that must have been so disappointing!

What’s a poor psychiatrist to do? Why, look for something else, of course!

What about delusions? Any evidence that I suffered those? That would be very helpful indeed!

Let’s not forget: the “internal medication hearing”[522] on December 28, 2005 cited “treatment of delusions” as necessary for the “restoration of (my) competence.” That “summary of evidence” was hardly ambiguous.

It described the nature of my alleged delusions as follows:

“She denied the possibility of mental illness, once again reporting in detail her belief that the government is having her detained because she represents a threat to the administration, due to her differing beliefs about their policies on Iraq. She states she has been a government agent for 9 years working in “anti-terrorism.”

The handwritten document was signed by Dr. Pederson and Dr. Collin Vas. That would be the same Dr. Vas testifying before Judge Mukasey.

O’CALLAGHAN: “Can you please turn to page 11 of Government Exhibit 1. Does it have hand writing on that page?”

VAS: “This is Ms. Lindauer’s handwriting. At the top of the working diagnosis section, she writes “None. Witness proves it’s all true.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “I direct your attention to page 14 of Government Exhibit 1. Is there handwriting on that page?

VAS: It states: “Susan Lindauer reports no episodes of hallucinations and demands that Shadduck interview witnesses. Disagrees entirely. [signed] Susan Lindauer, January 16, 06.” [See Appendix]

O’CALLAGHAN: “And directing your attention to page 17 of that exhibit, is there handwriting on that page?”

VAS: “It’s got Ms. Lindauer’s signature dated March 28, 2006, and “Refused to agree with diagnosis. No symptoms.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “What is your understanding of whose handwriting that is?”

VAS: “That’s Ms. Lindauer’s handwriting.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “Turn to page 18. Is there handwriting on that page?”

VAS: “It says “Never suffered those symptoms.” That’s relating to psychotic symptoms.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “And whose handwriting is that?”

VAS: “That’s hers. Ms. Lindauer’s.”

You can not imagine how my hands shook as I clutched the pen to write those words. I looked around M-1 at the damaged lives of other women inmates. I could see what awaited me if I did not fight back hard. And win.

Low and behold, here was the clincher:

O’CALLAGHAN: “What is the working diagnosis that is recorded on page 11?”

VAS: “Well, it is: “Ruled out delusional disorder.” And that’s entered in the computer.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “And did you rule out “delusional disorder” during the course of Ms. Lindauer’s evaluation at FMC Carswell?”

VAS: “At the end of the diagnostic phase, which was completed in December of 2005, delusional disorder had been ruled out, after the behavioral observations, diagnostic interviews and psychological testing.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “If you could turn to page three, what should the correct date be?”

VAS: “December 21, 2005.”

Wait a minute! What was that?

No delusional disorder?

That’s right. No delusional disorder!

Not what the corporate media told you, eh?

The Justice Department was sh— out of luck. As hard as they tried, Carswell could find no evidence to justify such a politically tantalizing diagnosis. They could provide no examples of delusional episodes to the Court that I couldn’t attack as perjury and medical fraud. Darn!

My story was fully truthful and authentic! Inconvenient, yes. Disappointing, no doubt. Unhappily for Carswell’s psychology department, it all checked out.

That made it awfully difficult to declare that I suffer a “delusional disorder.”

For my own protection, after Carswell’s refusal to release me, I took the battle to Carswell. I warned every single person in the Psych Department that if Dr. Shadduck appeared in Court and denied authenticating my story, I would demand that he face prosecution for felony perjury.

I told staff and fellow prisoners alike that Shadduck could expect to spend some quality time in prison himself, if he lied under oath to Judge Mukasey—like a lot of the women inmates at Carswell.

I suspect that’s why Carswell sent Dr. Vas to testify instead.

The next question should have been—why? Why did Carswell rule out “delusional disorder?”

Did Dr. Vas have the integrity to elucidate for the Court why Carswell had been forced to abandon such a prized diagnosis?

Nobody asked those pertinent questions. And Dr. Vas offered no explanation. There was no mention of my two outstanding witnesses, who bombarded Shadduck with phone calls until the Chief of Psychology finally broke down and verified my story.

The truth was so glaring they could not risk it. They did not dare.

Dr. Vas gave the date the diagnosis got struck— December 21. And he said no more.

Sitting in the defendant’s chair, I was astounded by the timing. The “internal medication hearing” took place on December 28, one week after the “diagnosis” had been struck. (See Appendix).

That’s the meeting when Dr. Vas and Dr. Pederson suggested I should take Haldol, Ativan and Prozac as treatment for my “delusional disorder,” for the “restoration” of my competence.

And now in Court, Vas admitted that “delusional disorder” had been thrown out one week before the “internal medication hearing” took place.

For me, that epitomizes the irrational nature of psychiatry. Would any reputable medical doctor prescribe insulin for a patient not suffering from diabetes? Would a medical doctor recommend chemotherapy after ruling out cancer?

The question answers itself. Any respectable physician would consider it grossly unethical to prescribe treatment for non-existent conditions—much less to impose harsh drugs on unwilling participants, without cause. Low and behold, when Judge Mukasey issued his ruling, he made a straight declaration that he perceived my Defense lacked satisfactory corroboration from independent sources, as evidenced by the psychiatric evaluations.[523]

Clearly Judge Mukasey had no idea, relying on psychiatric evaluations and court testimony, that my story had been fully validated by highly reputable independent sources, who spoke with the FBI, Ted Lindauer, and Carswell’s own Dr. Shadduck, on behalf of the Bureau of Prisons.[524] Psychiatrists could have corrected those misrepresentations of their own volition. But that would have defeated their objective—to maintain a false authority in court proceedings that allowed them to force a finding of incompetence over a Defendant’s loud objections. The evaluation process was driven by ego.

It’s why I named it “delusional psychiatry.”

Wait—This was a court hearing on whether I should be strapped to a gurney and forcibly injected with massive doses of Haldol.

What could justify forcibly administering such heavy drugs, if there was no evidence of hallucinations, depression or a “delusional disorder?”

Was I aggressive towards guards or other inmates?[525]

VAS: “She was initially very cooperative and pleasant with us. She wanted to tell us her story, and we listened, and we actually did not have many problems until we gave her feedback.”

“At the end of the diagnostic phase, we met with Ms. Lindauer and informed her of her psychiatric diagnosis, and recommendations for treatment with psychotropic medications. She became very angry and enraged and has been hostile towards many members of the treatment team since.”

“Until she left Carswell, she was quite hostile and oppositional.”

I freely admit that I revile psychiatry. But was Dr. Vas’ statement truthful? Was my behavior hostile towards prison staff, guards or other inmates, as Dr. Vas insinuated?

Observation notes from prison staff on M-1 paint a different portrait.[526]

On February 22, 2006, M-1 staff wrote: “Ms. Lindauer is functioning well on the unit.”

Other handwritten notes said, “Functional and not a behavior problem,” underlined by staff.

Another staffer wrote, “Not a problem when confronted about anything.”

Another guard wrote, “She is low key and cooperative. Cares for self, good hygiene. Zero behavioral problems. She is focused on getting a trial.”

On March 29, 2006, interaction with staff was called “appropriate.”

On April 3, 2006, interaction with staff. “Appropriate.”

On April 9, 2006, interaction with staff. “Appropriate.”

My attorney raised this point on cross examination.[527]

TALKIN: “Throughout the reports, pretty much the interaction with staff on M-1 was appropriate?”

VAS: “For the large part, yes.”

TALKIN: “And for the large part, her interaction with everyone, except the psychiatrists and psychologists, was appropriate?”

VAS: “Appropriate is kind of a complex word.”

Actually, it’s not. No matter how badly Carswell abused my rights, I kept my cool. I stayed pleasant and cooperative with M-1 staff and guards. I never created problems on the unit. That’s remarkable, if you think about what I was facing.

And it explains why every monthly report declared that I “socialized well,” showed “good intellectual functioning” and “good physical health.” [See Appendix][528]

Throughout those frightening months, staff frequently described me as: “Smiling, pleasant and cooperative. With good eye contact.”[529]

Sounds like I was a model prisoner.

As for my hostility towards the psychiatry staff, try to imagine the shock of my predicament! What would be the normal reaction of a prisoner stonewalled and denied release on the day promised by federal statute? After you’ve surrendered to prison over your strongest objections? While the Court refuses to honor your statutory right to call witnesses to prove you’ve been telling the truth about everything?

Would that upset you to wake up on the morning of your release date, and discover that your prison detention was prolonged “indefinitely”? Up to 10 years!

Carswell speculated that “very likely” my “cure” would require a “lengthy period of detention” and prison “treatment” because my confidence in my Asset work was so deeply embedded in my spirit. Evaluations warned that breaking my sense of identity would take much hard work.

All signs pointed to long years of imprisonment.

Would you be frightened? Would it be irrational to feel scared?

I suspect that would be upsetting for most people.

It’s a heart-stopping moment, for sure.

Most “indefinite” detentions are limited to incompetent inmates who are violent or destructive, and pose a lasting threat to the community. Typically, they get detained for the maximum sentence as part of the incompetence finding. In my case, it would be up to Carswell to recommend the timing of my release. That would stay open-ended for years.

So yes, I freely admit that I was horrified. From that moment on, I feared greatly for my future.

That strikes me as perfectly sane.

The question was why?

How does psychiatry justify any type of forcible “treatment” — if that individual shows no symptoms of any kind? No hallucinations, no delusions, no depression, no aggressive behavior. If they’re cooperative and functional, without behavioral problems?

Dr. Vas and Dr. Shadduck kicked around until they found a solution—a diagnosis of “psychotic disorder not otherwise specified.”[530]

No wonder it took 7 ½ months.

O’CALLAGHAN: “And why was that diagnosis determined to be the most accurate diagnosis?”

VAS: “Well, primarily because she does not clearly meet the criteria for the diagnosis I have just stated. When somebody does not meet a specific diagnosis, and if there is inadequate or conflicting data, we come to a diagnosis of “psychotic disorder not otherwise specified.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “Does psychotic disorder “not otherwise specified” contain a delusional disorder component?”

VAS: “It certainly contains a component of delusion.”

On cross examination, Talkin questioned what that diagnosis actually means?

TALKIN: “Now that’s kind of a catch-all diagnosis. In other words, if someone doesn’t fit in to, say, for example a delusional order– and you can’t find another psychotic disorder, then you put them in “psychotic order not otherwise specified.”

VAS: “Yes.”

TALKIN: “So basically that’s a diagnosis that you’re not able to completely diagnose the individual?”

VAS: “In some situations, yes.”

TALKIN: “As far as you can tell from Susan Lindauer, other than her interactions with you when she became hostile or angry, when you told her she had a disease, as the reports indicated, she basically functioned normally among the other individuals in the facility, correct?”

VAS: “Yes.”

TALKIN: “And Dr. Pederson concluded that Ms. Lindauer wasn’t suicidal?”

VAS: “That’s right.”

TALKIN: “He concluded she wasn’t a risk of injury to herself?”

VAS: “Yes.”

TALKIN: “Or to anybody else?”

VAS: “Yes.”

TALKIN: “Or to property, I believe?”

VAS: “Yes.”

TALKIN: “So that’s the position of the people at Carswell?”

VAS: “Yes.”

TALKIN: “Carswell is a federal medical center, but it’s a jail, correct?”

VAS: “Yes.”

TALKIN: “It’s a prison?”

VAS: “Yes.”

TALKIN: “No one’s free to leave?”

VAS: “That’s correct.”

TALKIN: “The interaction among individuals in that jail is different than it would be on the street, correct?”

VAS: “Quite true.”

TALKIN: “People are guarded in their behavior with others?”

VAS: “Often times.”

TALKIN: “Selective in who they speak to?”

VAS: “That’s right.”

TALKIN: “Everybody in the jail is like that for the most part—Withdrawn. For the most part, people are like that?”

VAS: “Many people are like that.”

TALKIN: “That’s normal behavior in that type of a setting, correct?”

VAS: “Agreed.”

TALKIN: “And throughout the government exhibit that describes her behavior, that’s exactly how Ms. Lindauer’s behavior is described among her peers, correct?”

VAS: “That she was guarded, yes.”

TALKIN: “And selective?”

VAS: “Yes.”

TALKIN: “And there was also times that she was smiling, correct?”

VAS: “Yes.”

TALKIN: “And there was times that she was happy, correct?”

VAS: “Yes.”

TALKIN: “And there was times she was having a good time with other individuals, correct?”

VAS: “Yes.”

TALKIN: “And there was times that she wasn’t having a good time with individuals?”

VAS: “True.”

TALKIN: “Sometimes she had a bad day, correct?”

VAS: “Yes.”

Hello! I would have expected Carswell to give me a clean bill of “mental health,” with that kind of reporting.

And yet, no matter the absence of “symptoms,’ Carswell and the US Attorneys Office didn’t bat an eye when they asked for permission to shoot me up like a street junkie.

At least Dr. Kleinman and Dr. Vas interviewed me. The witness for the Defense, Dr. Robert L. Goldstein, a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University,[531] never bothered to do that.

I laid eyes on him for the first time when he appeared in Court on the second morning of testimony.

On the bright side, at least Dr. Goldstein opposed drugging me. He assured the Court that drugs would not cure my “condition.”

Dr. Goldstein also scoffed that I might suffer schizophrenia, though nobody had suggested it to that point. It’s still worth noting:[532]

GOLDSTEIN: “The criterion for schizophrenia has never been met in this case, because the patient does not have those enumerated criteria, which do include prominent hallucinations; disorganization of thought and delusions— but delusions of a bizarre quality.”

“When I say bizarre, I mean it’s a term of art in psychiatry, which means that such things could never happen in the real world. For example, believing that Martians have implanted electrodes in your brain to control your behavior or something like that. Whereas in delusional disorder, you have non-bizarre delusions, things that possibly could happen, like somebody could be following you, somebody could want to kill you, somebody could have special talents and relationships as I enumerated before.”

That would have been well and good, if he had stopped there.

Instead, Dr. Goldstein put forth a hypothesis that I suffered “delusional disorder, mixed type,” that encompassed two areas. Paranoia. And grandiosity.[533]

Pay attention, folks. Soviet Psychiatry invoked identical terminology and diagnosis to attack political dissidents and intellectuals during the Cold War Age—One third of all Soviet intellectuals, who got arrested for anti-government activities, got locked up in mental asylums, using this “diagnosis.”

“Paranoid delusions,” according to Goldstein, encompassed “individual beliefs that they’re being persecuted, followed, spied on, individuals want to harm them, even kill them, or otherwise cause mischief in their lives. And they spend lots of time trying to protect themselves against these various imaginary enemies.”

Right there, Goldstein exposed his own “grandiosity” by trying to invent a reality to support the diagnosis he wanted to make.

Had I experienced paranoia at all in my life? I confess that I’ve been known to joke with friends that we have our own satellite tracking devices, so the feds can watch over us. That doesn’t mean we believe it, however.(Or that we’re wrong!)

I would call paranoia an occupational hazard. For almost a decade, I was part of a community that relies on surveillance for its livelihood.

Intelligence. Surveillance. I think I see a connection.

So was I paranoid? Probably.

Was that irrational paranoia? Was that surveillance false?

Not on your life. Surveillance would be de rigueur for any Asset engaged in frequent contact with diplomats from Libya and Iraq, Yemen, Syria/Hezbollah, Egypt and Malaysia. In the context of my work, it was quite ordinary.

Once when I protested some particularly heavy surveillance during the Lockerbie negotiations, my handlers laughed derisively. Paul Hoven scolded me, saying the Feds wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t track me. If you’re dealing with Libya and Iraq, you’d be foolish not to expect it. It would be pitiably naïve.

Incidentally, FBI wiretaps captured 28,000 phone calls, 8,000 emails and hundreds of faxes in a two year period before my arrest.

There was surveillance video of me walking my dachshunds in my neighborhood.[534]

I’d been subject to two “warrantless searches” on the Patriot Act. And I was subsequently indicted as an “Iraqi Agent.”

Maybe I thought I was under surveillance, because I was under surveillance!

Admittedly, my beliefs about surveillance might seem irrational to outsiders or colleagues who had no idea that I functioned as an Asset in frequent contact with diplomats all over the Middle East. However I would never discuss surveillance with friends or family not connected to my Intelligence projects. Except in the most extreme circumstances, they would rarely know what was happening.

Was I frightened about this surveillance? Did I “spend lots of time trying to protect myself from imaginary enemies,” as Goldstein implied?

Notoriously not. My brilliant attorney after Carswell, Brian Shaughnessy, used to chuckle that a woman dealing with Iraq and Libya is probably not afraid of anything.

The psychiatry crowd failed to grasp that if surveillance truly frightened me, I would have cut off my dealings with the CIA, and stopped meeting diplomats entirely. I would have become a librarian. I was so “not paranoid” that the Justice Department accused me of meeting with an undercover FBI Agent and “conspiring with Iraqi Intelligence—” which has to require some fairly bold actions.

Most of my close friends would say I wasn’t paranoid enough.

Dr. Goldstein’s second “diagnosis” that I suffered delusions of “grandiosity” struck me as equally ludicrous and uninformed.

“Grandiose delusions,” according to Goldstein, “involve situations where individuals believe they have special talents or outstanding abilities, relationships with successful or prominent people, or that they have special gifts—being clairvoyant or other special gifts.”[535]

That could describe half the populations of Washington, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. The civic leaders of small town America. And practically all of the guests on CNN, the Fox News Channel and Real Time With Bill Maher.

The better half, I would add.

Here psychiatry exposed its true nature, as a defender of Mediocrity and Conventionalism. My experience proves that psychiatry makes a study of gradations of the Ordinary. It’s greatest purpose is to keep Americans in a box, ineffectual and always seeking approval, rather than acting decisively to create their own life.

If Goldstein had spoken with me—instead of making up stories—he’d recognize that I’m a fairly down to earth woman. I perform like a work-horse, not a show horse. I’m not a celebrity seeker. I’m an activist motivated by love for my causes, not a desire for publicity.

I understand how difficult it is to create change. I find it amazingly hard. And also worthwhile. I have made the commitment and sacrifices. I have learned to appreciate the smaller moments when a project advances slowly. I have learned not to feel daunted by what’s left to be done. I give thanks for my small role.

And since when has ambition, hard work, self motivation and pride for one’s achievement become a personal liability? Is that not the refuge of mediocrity to scorn personal striving for excellence?

Grandiose, huh? You don’t like motivation and achievement?

Fine. If I’m grandiose, do you think I care what you say? Just spell my name right. Because I did this work— or I wouldn’t have been under surveillance for 10 years!

To his credit, Judge Mukasey posed an incisive question that swooped right over the heads of these lunatic psychiatrists.

He asked Dr. Goldstein, “What is your understanding of the charges against Ms. Lindauer? Do you understand that she has been accused by the Justice Department of engaging in these activities?”

Right there Judge Mukasey pointed to a serious flaw in the logic of psychiatry. The indictment itself depended on my relationships with Iraqi diplomats at the United Nations. The rationale for prosecution hinged on these activities.

Now these crazy psychiatrists paraded into court, arguing that these events never occurred.

But if the actions did not transpire, how could the US Attorneys Office justify the indictment? (Obviously, they couldn’t!)

My wonderful Judge, brilliant and canny, had found his way out of our box. (I just didn’t know it yet.) People, I love Judge Mukasey. Thank God for his legal savvy!

The question from the Court’s outlook was whether my activities rose to the level of a crime. Was I an Iraqi Agent? Or was I acting under the legitimate assumption that I was performing as an Asset, under the long-time supervision of U.S. Intelligence?

The Justice Department was not conceding that my actions never took place. Nor did I deny participating in them.

Only the crazy psychiatrists got twisted in their thinking, and wanted to cure me of believing those events occurred—which was fairly bizarre, given the backdrop for our Court drama.

That implication flew right over their heads.

Instead Dr. Vas and Dr. Stuart Kleinman swore to Judge Mukasey that with enough Haldol, and enough prison time, I could be cured of believing that those events took place—actions stipulated in the indictment itself.

And how long would this “cure” take?

Psychiatrists frowned. That was a harder question.

How many years of Haldol, Ativan and Prozac would be required to eradicate an individual’s sense of identity and life’s purpose?

How much drugs would it take to destroy my belief that two men named Paul Hoven and Dr. Richard Fuisz had been guiding forces in my life for almost a decade?

Would five years be enough?

How long would it take to destroy my recollections of the terrorism investigations and policy that our team contributed to?

Or to destroy my memories of diplomats at the United Nations? Ambassadors that I’d known socially? To forget conversations from our back channel dialogue?

How much Haldol would it take to destroy my natural sense of privilege and joy that I felt participating in this work?

Would this cure require the maximum sentence?

Could they destroy my dignity any faster than that?

They could certainly try.

For that matter, how much drugs would it take to stop me from claiming I warned about the 9/11 attack? Or insisting that one faction of the Intelligence Community urged Attorney General John Ashcroft’s private staff to coordinate an intra-agency response and pre-empt the 9/11 attack?

What would it take to stop me from knowing the truth about Pre-War Intelligence and the comprehensive peace framework negotiated with Iraqi diplomats that would have solved America’s conflict without War?

How much time? How much drugs?

Psychiatrists told Judge Mukasey that they could not know the answers to those questions. It might be accomplished in several years. Or it might require the maximum 10 year sentence to make sure that I was really and truly “cured.”

Carswell would be sure to let the Court know when I was ready for release.

One point they agreed on. With enough Haldol— eventually— my brain would be so fried that I would forget the whole thing.

My life could be “corrected.”

Erased.

Terminated. With Extreme Prejudice.

CHAPTER 28:

METROPOLITAN
CORRECTIONAL CENTER

“Former CIA Asset and political prisoner,
Susan Lindauer joins us today for a KBOO Radio Special,
How to Succeed in Terror Without Really Trying.
Lindauer not only looked out over the Abyss—
She went camping there.”
– Chris Andreae for Air Cascadia.
KBOO Public Radio, Portland, Oregon 9/14/2011

There’s a great Robert Redford movie that hits a nerve for me —“Three Days of the Condor.” In it, an intelligence operative stumbles on a “black operation” at the height of the Cold War. His entire team gets snuffed while he’s at lunch, all of his associates terminated “extreme prejudice” style. He goes on the run, hunted by an assassin, while he tries to figure out what the hell he’s uncovered that’s got everybody so afraid.

The movie ends with Robert Redford standing proudly in front of the New York Times.

His intelligence chief from CIA warns him to go to ground. “Otherwise someday a car will pull up on the side of the road, and the door will open. They might send a friend.”

Oh no, Robert Redford assures his Langley boss. “Look where we’re standing—” under the sign of the New York Times. If the spooks harass him, the New York Times will publish everything. The CIA’s black operations will be exposed. The murder of his associates will be in the open.

“You don’t know that,” the Intelligence Director shakes his head. “You can’t be sure.”

“I can be sure. They’ll do it,” Redford retorts, with confident naivety. “They’ll publish it.”[536]

My nightmare paralleled “Three Days of the Condor” in so many ways—right down to the fact that the New York Times Magazine had the dirt to blow the whole thing wide open. One of the Magazine’s writers told me that Richard Fuisz and Paul Hoven vouched for everything weeks after my arrest —my 9/11 warning, my role in the Lockerbie negotiations, and how our relationship started after I warned about the first World Trade Center attack. In 1993.

If Dr. Fuisz and Hoven volunteered my bona fides to the New York Times, it’s a good bet they told the FBI. Don’t you think?

As a former journalist myself, I recognized what a huge story the Times was sitting on. It would rock Washington. Not only that, most of my anti-terrorism work involved New York City, the paper’s home town.

Human decency—and journalistic integrity—demanded coverage.

And so I waited, hopeful and desperate, after the May hearings on forcible drugging.

Except Robert Redford was wrong. The loud silence of the corporate media answered my prayers.

If your life depended on the New York Times, you’d be in a helluva lot of trouble.

Now I was frightened out of my wits. Scared like a scalded cat, as the saying goes. My hair turned from dirty blonde to white in a couple of short months, after Carswell refused to release me. I had so much white in my hair that the prison hair salon refused to dye it for me. Prison rules prohibit changing an inmate’s appearance.

I existed in a state of constant anxiety over this horrific chain of events that got worse with every throw.

The Metropolitan Correctional Center is maximum security detention for pre-trial inmates. It houses every sort of crime—from murder, bank robbery and securities fraud, to drug trafficking and terrorism. Yet I would come to dread leaving it.

Ms. Eldridge ran the women’s floor of the prison like a sergeant matron of a military boot camp. She could hunt out contraband nail polish like a bloodhound. She kept discipline tight among the 100 women inmates crammed into 10 by 12 foot cells, often sleeping four to a room on double bunks, with an open toilet in the corner.

My heightened state of fear might have added to my vulnerability, except that Ms. Eldridge refused to tolerate inmates harassing one another. Discipline was for our own protection, and the guards kept a close watch over me. Other inmates might not have understood my status as a political prisoner, but the guards recognized something was up. One guard would call out “Peace!” whenever I walked by. Another guard sang to me once, when she saw me weeping. They made a special effort to keep me safe in my obvious state of fright, while I waited for the Court through that sweltering hot summer.

I will always be grateful for that.

At M.C.C. my sleep was black, and my waking hours stormed with suppressed anxiety. In prison, all of your emotions have to be swallowed down, or blocked out. There’s no privacy for grieving. Everything’s exposed. My status in the law was so degraded by this point that I had to fight doubly hard to overcome my despair. I lived in sheer terror for the day the Judge would issue his ruling. I had no idea if I would win. Carswell definitely expected me to lose.

The consequences of the Judge’s decision could be monstrous. I would not only lose my freedom, but the best parts of my life— my creativity and my intellect.

By my way of thinking, forcible drugging qualified as a threat of torture. It would mutilate the most precious memories of my life and my happiness for those memories. I happen to enjoy the human condition, with its joys and pain and small kindnesses.

I was proud to go to prison for opposing the violence and suffering of the Iraq War. I considered my actions deeply righteous on behalf of the anti-war movement. If I had to pay for that, then I had no regrets or remorse, whatsoever. These are my life-long values, which I cherish with all my heart. I would make any sacrifice for them, because I believe they are important values. And I’m willing to defend them.

Only drugging was abhorrent to me. Prison life could be harsh. It’s terribly unpleasant. But you can survive it. This threat of forcible drugging, however, terrorized me, because it aimed to destroy the best parts of what I am. I regarded it as manifestly evil.

I could not believe that strangers would dare to deny my life’s work as an Asset, and somehow they should have more rights to speak in a court of law than “participatory witnesses”— friends and colleagues who engaged in these activities with me, during the period of the indictment.

If the Court had questions, it struck me that finding answers should be a simple matter of firing off a couple of subpoenas, and calling those participatory witnesses to testify. Judge Mukasey could confront them with questions, in open Court, in full view of the Community. And they would reply with insight from firsthand contact to the events. Primary sources are always superior and more trustworthy. Who else could possess such insight?

By now, I was desperate to provide that comfort to the Court.

My attorney commanded that I should not write my Judge—and I never did until Carswell refused to release me.

Now I appealed to the Court in long, desperate letters, begging for a proper hearing. I regretted that I had not spoken up sooner.

On four occasions, I filed witness lists with phone numbers, addresses and email contacts, urging Judge Mukasey to hear those primary sources before deciding the petition to forcibly drug me.[537] I pleaded to give priority to witnesses connected to the events above those looney tunes with psychiatry degrees parading before his Court. My arguments for the natural priority of participatory witnesses over “speculative psychiatry,” as I called it, would have formed the basis of any appeals to the higher courts, if Judge Mukasey ruled against me.

Indeed, my case provides damnable evidence of how untrustworthy psychiatry is.

The problem, as I understood it, was that Judge Mukasey could not overrule my attorney’s legal strategy. Even if a Judge saw that changes would benefit me, or that my attorney’s performance was sub-par, he could not impose a correction.

Along those lines, if a Defendant requests a hearing over the attorney’s objections, the Judge can not supersede the decision to forego it. That’s how they got me.

It was a legal spy thriller worthy of John Grisham or Robert Ludlum. Talkin, meanwhile, did not want witnesses revealing how easily my story could be verified, or how my Uncle Ted had felt compelled to interview them on my behalf.

Hence, my attorney’s nickname, “No Talkin.’” He was protecting himself from questions of his own incompetence.

That didn’t stop me from writing tearful, frightened letters to Judge Mukasey at 2 a.m in the dark of my cell, listening to Anna Nalick’s beautiful song, “Breathe” on the hand radios we carried with ear plugs. Her lyrics captured all of my agony that summer. When I finished my letters, I would play Free Cell solitaire on my top bunk early into the morning. I hardly slept at all.

I got so desperate that I proposed my old intelligence handler, Paul Hoven, should testify in closed court.[538] I suggested he could provide more forthcoming answers without fear of media exposure. By this stage, nothing else mattered.

I promised that Hoven could vouch for:

1. My warning to the Tunisian Embassy two days before the first attack on the World Trade Center in February, 1993, and how that act triggered our relationship.

2. How Hoven introduced me to Dr. Fuisz in September, 1994 for the purpose of starting talks with Libya’s diplomats for the Lockerbie Trial.

It was Hoven who recruited me. There’s no blame in that. These were all extraordinary events in my life, and I’m deeply proud of our work together. But I was very young when I met Paul Hoven. Approaching the Libya House at the United Nations would never have occurred to me, if Paul had not coached me.

Our relationship was easily corroborated by the crowd of top Republican Congressional staffers who got together for drinks every Thursday night at a watering hole known as “the Hunan,” close to the Senate, where Hoven and I met. At trial, some of those individuals could expect subpoenas— which probably did not endear me to their former Republican bosses who lead the Senate to this day— Those would be the same Republican leaders who aggressively deceived the public about 9/11 and Iraq.

4. How Dr. Fuisz’s CIA bona fides covered Syria and Lebanon in the 1980s. Those included:

•    The hostage rescue of Terry Anderson et al. in Beirut. It was Dr. Fuisz’s team that infiltrated the terrorist network hiding the hostages, and located the coven of cells in the back alleys of Beirut, where they were chained. Dr. Fuisz called out the Delta Force to make the rescue only to be stopped by top officials in Washington, who postponed the rescue until right before the 1988 election of President George H. Bush. Dr. Fuisz never forgave them.

•    Dr. Fuisz and Raisa Gorbachev, wife of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, launched the very first Russian modeling agency in the West—which incidentally imported computers to the Soviet Union at the height of Glasnost.

•    Dr. Fuisz’s first-hand knowledge of Lockerbie, and ability to map out the conspiracy and masterminds behind the bombing of Pan Am 103.

•    How Dr. Fuisz got outed as CIA after he stole the blueprints for Syria’s brand new telecommunications network from a locked crypt. Syrian agents tried to congratulate him by kidnapping him in London for a private interrogation. Scotland Yard had other plans— a first class spy thriller involving a decoy.

5. Finally, Hoven could confirm our team’s advance warning of a precise 9/11 scenario, involving airplane hijackings and a strike on the World Trade Center, throughout the spring and summer of 2001. Prosecution psychiatrist, Dr. Stuart Kleinman, acknowledged that Hoven told the FBI he spoke with me 40 to 50 times after 9/11.[539] Ergo, by Hoven’s own admission, we were in close contact during the 9/11 investigation.

It was a critical acknowledgement, and I seized on those implications.

The key was to ask Hoven direct questions: Did Susan and Richard do this? Yes or no?

Give me a chance and I could prove everything.

More witnesses were coming forth every day, (including old friends from the Hunan) appalled by news leaking out on the blogs of this horrific threat to forcibly drug me. They abhorred the judicial abuse I was suffering under the Patriot Act. They had the integrity to want to make things right—for which I am eternally grateful.

If Hoven committed perjury under oath, he would be exposed. After what I suffered, I would not hesitate to prosecute today, if he or Dr. Fuisz lied about supervising my work. That’s obstruction of justice. I would demand they face maximum penalties in sentencing.

In which case, they’d get front row seats to life at M.C.C.

M.C.C. is a maximum security pre-trial detention center, subject to lock downs for every inmate count. Lock downs confine inmates to our cells a good 15 hours a day. Morning lockdowns lasted until 10 am. After lunch, we got locked down again from about 3 pm until 5 pm. Then after dinner from 8 pm to 9 pm—or in that ballpark.

At times I was the only English speaker in my cell, which made conversation an interesting challenge. Mostly we tried to be friendly, with lots of pantomimes and smiles. But whenever four people get crammed into a tiny space, there’s inevitable tension. All of us were pushed to our breaking points, waiting for Judges to decide our fates.

Lock downs give prisoners lots of time to think. Indeed, prison life swamps inmates with old memories. Dr. Fuisz and Hoven certainly occupied a lot of mine.

I remember sitting in Hoven’s truck in October or November of 1993, and Paul chuckling to himself, in his dark way.

Hoven: “Do you think it’s an accident that I found you, and I just happen to know that you warned about the World Trade Center bombing (in 1993)? I know things your closest friends and family don’t know about you.”

“What do we have in common? Nothing at all. I’m a conservative Republican, and you’re a goofy Democrat. I’m a soldier, and you’re a peace activist. There’s no way that we would have any social contact except for your warning about the World Trade Center. They sent me to find you. They think someone needs to keep an eye on you. They don’t want you wandering around Washington getting into any more trouble.”

Or before my job interview with former Rep. Ron Wyden, now Senator for Oregon:

Hoven: “Don’t go complaining to Wyden about surveillance. Nobody’s violating your rights by watching you. The CIA’s not allowed to target American citizens, or conduct operations inside the United States. That responsibility falls to the Defense Intelligence Agency. And they’ve got a legitimate reason to keep track of you. Nobody’s doing anything wrong here.”

One conversation particularly echoed back in tragic chords. It was during the Lockerbie Trial in 2000.

Hoven: “I’ve been thinking about what I’d say if I ever have to testify about you in Court. You’d better know something. If anybody asks if I’m a Defense Intelligence Agent, I’m going to tell them “no.”

“Agents are foreigners. And I could never be a foreigner, since I was born in the United States. Americans who work at the Defense Intelligence Agency are called “officers.” To be correct, I’m your “case officer.”

“You’d better remember that. Because spooks can be very particular about the use of language. That’s how we can deny things without actually lying. If you ever get in trouble, you’d better tell your attorney to ask if I’m your “case officer.” Or your “handler.” If anybody asks if I’m a Defense Intelligence Agent, I’ll look them straight in the eye and say “no.” And that would be the truth.”

Any way you cut it, it would be crazy to deny that Hoven was deeply entrenched in the murky world of intelligence, whatever technical capacity he chose to admit. It’s a shadow world of double blinds, certainly. But this was the guy who bragged about exposing Oliver North and Iran-Contra. His circle of spook friends included legendary CIA figures like Bill Weisenberger, closely tied to Edwin Wilson, that dark angel of the covert crowd, who served 27 years in prison for a black operation involving Libya.

Among friends, Hoven presented himself as a dedicated intelligence-passer, a straight line to the Intelligence community. He called himself my “handler” and my “case officer.” And he gave me protection when some of the less friendly Arabs stuck their heads up to say hello. Heck, his sources would tell us when they were coming.

As Hoven used to tease me, about identifying spooks who might approach me at the United Nations: “Susan, if it walks like a duck. And it quacks like a duck. It’s a duck!”

Hunkered on my top bunk on lock down at M.C.C, I used to ask myself: After so many years together, how could these men stay silent while this happened to me? Knowing that I faced “indefinite detention” for up to 10 years and forced injections of Haldol to erase my knowledge of our field operations, how could they take no action to help me?

I never expected such cowardice.

We know Hoven and Dr. Fuisz told the truth at first. They told the truth to the New York Times Magazine, which botched the story. Hoven spoke with Ted Lindauer, and acknowledged everything. Yet throughout my indictment, Dr. Fuisz refused to speak with my attorneys. He would hang up when they called, often shouting expletives.

I got a glimpse into Dr. Fuisz’s fear one afternoon, at the close of a court meeting.

FBI Agent Chmiel leaned back and whispered that Dr. Fuisz denied knowing of my trip to Baghdad.

That astonished me. I recalled painfully those 30 to 40 phone calls in the two weeks before my trip, pleading with Richard for payment of my debts that had accumulated from our work together. I bombarded him with requests to arrange payment for my years of service—In those days, Assets got paid at the end of a project, in order to make sure objectives got finished, not dropped mid-way.

On Capitol Hill, Congress made glorious pronouncements, in grand speeches and press conferences, that I would receive spectacular rewards for my work on Lockerbie, arranging the hand over of the two Libyans for the Lockerbie Trial— Indeed, I qualified for a number of rewards— for 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole, the 1993 World Trade Center Attack, and my contributions to anti-terrorism overall.

Only the TV cameras had packed up. What did promises matter? Didn’t I understand those speeches on Capitol Hill were only to glorify themselves?

Promise of leadership support for anti-terrorism had nothing to do with me, after all.

Hearing the FBI agent’s whisper as I got shackled to go back to my cell, I saw with clarity that Dr. Fuisz was afraid of a Trial, too. He probably told his spymasters at CIA that I never requested payment for my work—so he could keep all that operations money for himself. Which is what he did. After 9/11, Congress appropriated a special “black budget” for the 9/11 investigation. Dr. Fuisz got to draw $13 million. And rightfully so, if he had applied the federal monies to our field work.

Only he didn’t. He built a mansion, instead.

Richard Fuisz was a creature of the Black Budgets alright, and he kept the whole pot of gold for himself. He hoarded American tax dollars like a miser.

I saw none of it.

My Iraqi source in Baghdad, ready to identify terrorists playing hide and seek in Iraq—worth a King’s ransom for what he could do for us— got none of that money, either—though let’s face it, the success of the 9/11 investigation depended on us—not our money managers in Washington.

In all other ways, Dr. Fuisz functioned as an outstanding handler.

Alas, that one black mark on our relationship brought us to a tragic crossroads. Dr. Fuisz’s unwillingness to hand over any of that money forced me to improvise in Baghdad to arrange payment for my friend.

And I got thrown in jail for it—though my crime turned out to be practicing extreme resourcefulness in the face of extreme deprivation. It breaks my heart even now.

That’s what I thought about on lock downs at M.C.C.

At the beginning, Hoven and Dr. Fuisz tried to claim me.

Within weeks of my arrest, a freelance journalist for the New York Times Magazine, David Samuels, interviewed both men for a profile about me.

Samuels called me all excited. Both men freely volunteered my bona fides, including my team’s 9/11 warnings—

Think what that meant.

The New York Times had confirmation from CIA and Defense Intelligences sources about our team’s 9/11 warnings six (6) months before the 9/11 Commission published its findings.

It was David Samuels again, who told me that Hoven and Fuisz denied receiving advance warning of my arrest. Samuels said both men got very angry at me. But the strike surprised them.

Finally, according to Samuels, Hoven and Fuisz quickly rushed to grab me back, so the intelligence community could correct the mistake made by the Justice Department.

The New York Times had an exclusive alright.

But they declined to print the story. They fudged the details for reasons that nobody outside that newsroom could understand.

If the New York Times had acted as a watch dog, on behalf of its readers, the spooks could have moved swiftly to kill the whole indictment. Very likely, they would have forced me to accept a hefty non-disclosure agreement as part of the deal. The CIA would have come out on top, no question.

Instead, the New York Times Magazine published an amateurish profile on my life and legal tribulations, on par with high school journalism. Strangest of all, the article sidestepped any explanation of my work as a long-time Intelligence Asset!

The only conclusion was that David Samuels was too young and inexperienced to handle such a sensitive assignment. Unhappily for me, it exceeded his reach. Friends griped at me for choosing an ingénue journalist, who botched it. I would have to agree.

By example, Samuels telephoned a few days before publication to say Dr. Fuisz got quite distressed after talking to fact-checkers at the Magazine. Dr. Fuisz wanted to change his quote —which surprised me. Immediately after the interview, Samuels told me that Fuisz described me as “one of the top Assets in the 1990s.”

According to Samuels, Fuisz said I was “uncanny in my level of perception and accuracy in my forecasting.” I was quote, “the smartest, smartest, smartest woman he’d ever met.” Fuisz called me a “genius dealing with the Arabs.”

Heavens I loved those quotes! How marvelous! Before publication, I imagined any quote by Dr. Fuisz and Hoven would be stellar.

I was shocked when I read the article!

Other friends told me Samuels cobbled together obscure statements from their interviews, and twisted them out of context, drawing conclusions that were not discussed.

So much for the New York Times throwing sunlight onto the situation.

This was sort of an intelligence war, and they played right into it. But I wasn’t the only casualty. The Intelligence Community got smashed pretty hard by Republican leaders. Ironically, the bloodbath to punish opposition to its War Policy gutted the intelligence community to the lasting detriment of national security and terrorism policy.

Vice President Cheney wasn’t the only wrecking ball, either. The Republican leadership as a whole demanded that intelligence reporting must reflect the GOP message. Congress wanted to pick and choose truth, and hide unhappy intelligence, so as to make their leadership appear more successful in the public’s eye.

In the Republican mindset, intelligence exists to protect politicians from criticism for their mistakes. It must shield them from responsibility to the people.

That’s anathema to intelligence field work, which exists to protect the people and the community of the nation before all else. And it’s grievously offensive to the principles of democracy, which we serve. Nobody reputable does intelligence work to protect political figureheads, or shield leaders from accountability. That’s genuinely despised.

By attacking me so viciously, these Republicans—like John McCain and Trent Lott, and their cohorts on Capitol Hill— exposed something very ugly about their position.

Despite all the tough talk at election time, Congress really doesn’t understand how anti-terrorism gets done in the field. They don’t recognize it when they see it. And they don’t appreciate the men and women who do it.

Quite the contrary, they blame and bully us. They arrest us when our knowledge threatens the story they want to invent for the people.

Any politician in Washington claiming otherwise would be lying.

CONCEALING A DEFENDANT’S INNOCENCE ON THE PATRIOT ACT

Many times I have been asked why, if my Asset work was authentic, the FBI did not discover as much during its investigation.

Ah but who says they didn’t?

Chalk it up to the Patriot Act.

My indictment was loaded up with all the bells and whistles of that atrocious law. I tripped all the wires. For openers, I’d been subjected to at least two “warrantless searches” before my arrest. The first time federal agents ransacked my home office, they broke a filing cabinet. The second time, the Feds broke my front door.

They got zilch. Nothing to show the grand jury. The Prosecution was left with three lunch receipts totaling $92.92, suggesting I ate a cheeseburger with an Iraqi diplomat after 9/11.[540] Plus video from a hidden camera at the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad a year before the Invasion,[541] on the last day of my trip to Iraq. The video captured my meeting with a senior Iraqi official— and, most critically, my friend in the Mukhabarat who was going to help the FBI Task Force identify terrorists playing hide and seek with Iraqi intelligence.

The video was red hot alright—just not the way my Prosecutor wished to claim. I could hardly wink at the camera: (It was their camera, after all.) However the tape provided startling evidence of the success of our peace framework, including Iraq’s cooperation with anti-terrorism efforts, and the ability of U.S. corporations to return to Baghdad in key sectors, post-sanctions.[542] It was awesome!

I recognized at once the CIA could never play that tape to a jury. The House of Cards to justify this dreadful war would fall in a day.

And so a conspiracy was born to throw the brakes on my demand for a trial.

Under the Patriot Act, the US Attorneys Office, the FBI and the Bureau of Prisons made a decision, individually and collectively, to deny my status as an Asset. They simply declared the facts of my life “classified” information, when challenged by Ted Lindauer and Shaughnessy, who were highly aggressive on my behalf.

In regular court proceedings, that’s called “withholding exculpatory knowledge.” A prosecutor could face disciplinary action, even disbarment from the legal profession, because it’s so grossly unethical and dishonest.

That’s the Patriot Act for you.

Welcome to the New America. Franz Kafka would be appalled

Oh yes, I was fighting for my life.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL MOMENT:

They might have succeeded, if not for the unflagging perseverance of JB Fields and civil rights activist and radio journalist, Janet Phelan, now living in Toronto.

One morning at M.C.C, a few weeks after the hearing on forcible drugging, I was unexpectedly roused by guards at 5:30 a.m. for an unscheduled court appearance. Inmates going to Court have extra time for a shower and breakfast. It took my by surprise. I had no idea why Judge Mukasey had called us, and I feared the worst.

In my cell, I wept inconsolably, believing the Judge was about to issue his decision on forcible drugging.. I’d been forewarned that I would get seized by U.S. Marshals and forced back to Carswell right away. A few days before, my cellmate caught a six year sentence for heroin trafficking from Brazil. That morning she was left to comfort me. I was in worst shape than she was.

When I got to the holding cage outside the courtroom, my attorney rushed in.

I was prepared for anything except what he came to say!

“Somebody has started a blog on your case, Susan! They’re running your story on internet radio. People are writing the Judge!”

In a single beat, my heart bounded from abject terror and despair to sheer elation and joy! In short, redemption!

“They’ve sent him papers from that psychologist you were seeing in Maryland. Judge Mukasey’s so angry that he’s called a court meeting to discuss it.”[543]

“You better tell your friends to stop! They better not post on the blogs anymore.”

Well, this was truly an Amnesty International moment of the internet age! In my heart, I cried thank you, God! Thank you, God! Thank you!

In a powerful rollercoaster of emotion, I seized the bars, overwrought with relief.

I cried back: “MY FRIENDS WILL NEVER STOP! YOU ARE GOING TO STOP! THIS IS AMERICA! WE ARE FIGHTING TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF ALL DEFENDANTS UNDER THE CONSTITUTION!”

“YOU WILL NEVER GET AWAY WITH THIS! DO YOU HEAR ME?”

“TELL THAT DIRTY, CROOKED PROSECUTOR, O’CALLAGHAN, WE WILL NEVER STOP!”

“YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW!”

That’s what I shouted at him: “You are breaking the law.”

It was a watershed moment! A turning point in the dynamic of my case. I understood immediately who was responsible for that blogging, and what it meant that the Court had been forced to confront blowback from these unconscionable actions.

I could not wait to thank JB Fields and Janet Phelan! The blogs saved my life that morning!

When the mainstream media blacked out my story, the Justice Department banked that I would be forcibly silenced while they did their worst.

They didn’t count on JB and Janet!

My precious friends refused to give up. They took my story to the “New Media” on the internet. The blogs were just starting to flex their muscle, and discover their power to break through the barrier of media silence. Nowadays everybody takes that for granted. But my story broke at a critical moment when the corporate media had fallen behind the curve, and the blog media emerged to fill that void of knowledge for the public.

The blogs are the best hope to save our democracy!

In desperation, JB posted all of the session notes from my court-ordered meetings with Dr. Taddesseh at Family Health Services in Maryland. The session notes explicitly declared that I suffered “no depression,” “no mood disturbances,” and “no symptoms of psychosis.”

Then JB and Janet Phelan made the rounds on alternative radio—Michael Herzog, Cosmic Penguin, Greg Szymanski, the Genesis radio network, Derek Gilbert. Republic Broadcasting. Liberty. Oracle. They’re awake and vigilant in defending our liberties. JB and Janet Phelan urged their listeners to contact the Court.

Janet Phelan is particularly eloquent on the abuse of women by psychiatry, and the treachery of the Patriot Act as it seeks to deprive Americans of our natural rights under the Constitution.

Well, some wise and independent thinker decided the Judge really ought to see those psych notes from Maryland. That wonderful person— nameless to me today— pointed out to the Court that no symptoms of “mental illness” showed up in real life? Only when politics got introduced to the psych equation!

Judge Mukasey was livid! To his credit, he demanded to know why those papers were available on the internet—but not in his courtroom? Why had my attorney not brought those favorable psych observations to the Court’s attention, given that I was fighting for my life against forcible drugging, for what I called “non-existent conditions?”[544] Here was a credible source in psychology, who observed me for a full year and agreed.

And what could explain the stark contrast between the session notes from Maryland and the sworn testimony by Dr. Vas, Dr. Kleinman and Dr. Drob?

Judge Mukasey demanded a formal explanation. Of course there was none. It made no sense, except to prove psychiatry invents a rationalization for itself in the courtroom.

As the guards shackled me to leave the Court, I turned to the U.S. Attorney, Edward O’Callaghan, and declared loudly:

“This is a crooked prosecution. My witnesses prove everything is true. You can’t let them into Court because all of your lies would be exposed. You’re a dirty prosecutor, Mr. O’Callaghan. You’re nothing but a God damn crook!”

Hearing that, Judge Mukasey bowed down, and winced, and shook his head.

But he knew it was true, and he knew that truth would not stop coming.

LIFE AT M.C.C.

I wish I could say that I stayed calm and brave through that hot, humid summer in New York City. But fear washed over me again.

On the women’s floor of MCC, the hypocrisy of the Justice Department’s demand for forcible drugging did not go unremarked. Other inmates considered it grossly unfair that they should be sentenced to many years in prison for trafficking in narcotics. But the Justice Department could lock up me for refusing to take drugs that had much worse side effects than anything they were caught holding. As far as inmates are concerned, there’s no difference in prescription drugs and contraband narcotics. It’s just another pill.

Inmates recognized that prison populations provide a captive market for the pharmacology business. Prisons are big profit centers for these drug companies, with only limited benefits for inmates. (Junkies love that stuff, mind you; it keeps them supplied with drugs in prison. They also trade pills for commissary.) But those drugs would destroy my quality of life back home. My functioning would be wrecked worse than if I was shooting up heroin or smoking crack. Marijuana’s recreational— not like these drugs. There would be no hope of functioning at all. Heroin has a withdrawal. This stuff gets in your body, and doesn’t stop messing you up.

I doubt that hypocrisy was lost on Judge Mukasey, either—But I didn’t know it yet. All I could see was that everybody was lying to him. The bolder the lie, it seemed, the better its chance of success.

On that note, I adjusted to the routine of prison life at M.C.C. What else could I do?

Prison food was ghastly. Cells were over-crowded. Pages of the law books were torn out or crumpled—and urgently needed to be replaced, since all the inmates were either pre-trial or awaiting sentences.

Outdoor recreation was limited to the roof-top for one hour every other day. There were volley ball nets, basketball hoops, and a hand ball court— very much appreciated. But mostly we walked laps around the rooftop. Male prisoners might have enjoyed more recreation time and library access, because of the criteria for gender segregation. It’s impossible to put male and female prisoners together. Really though, women inmates need to go outside every day, too. It makes a huge difference to emotional strength, coping with the pressures of trials and sentencing.

And yet, to be honest, MCC was a paradise compared to where I’d come from. Oh yeah, the food was much better at Carswell. Recreational opportunities and the outdoor track made Carswell a vastly more “comfortable” prison. On the other hand, the poor quality of medical care for chronically ill prisoners—and the frightening abuses of women on M-1— made Carswell a much more dangerous and sinister lock up.

Good staff at MCC made a big difference, too. Ms. Eldridge balanced furious control over our daily life with an equally ferocious determination to make sure women prisoners got mammograms, and lived safely amidst our fellow inmates.

Hey, I played pool with a bank robber, who kicked my butt with every set.

But I tell you proudly that the women’s floor at M.C.C. had to be the cleanest in America. Women scrubbed their cells all day long. They tacked wash cloths to the end of mop sticks, and scrubbed down the walls and ceilings, something that astonished me at first. But hey, it kept everybody busy through the day. Me, too. And our walls sparkled bright.

Happily again, New York was close enough to home that my wonderful friend, JB Fields, could visit me on weekends and holidays. Now we could meet on visiting days and talk together, a huge relief.

To my last day, I will cherish the beauty care/ hair salon set up by women prisoners, so that we could look attractive for visitors and court dates. Prison hair salons teach job skills, so inmates can find work after prison. Several times those ladies pulled me out of my cell, and styled my hair. They tried so hard to cheer me up. Those women might have done some stupid things, probably some criminal things. They would have to pay for their bad judgment, but mostly they were not bad to the core. A lot of them would not repeat those mistakes again—if they got jobs after their release.

An absolutely wonderful prison chaplain from Rykers Island appeared faithfully every Saturday, urging women inmates to give God a chance to support us through our personal crises. He was inspired. And he revitalized our strength. He brought the faith of God right into that hell, and I saw women prisoners studying the bible together in little groups through the rest of the week. He was a source of redemption that all of us ached for. A number of inmates changed totally because of the spiritual wisdom he brought into that prison hell.

As impossible as it sounds, I felt a serious presence of God inside those prison walls, which truly surprised me.

It felt like a few seriously determined angels had staked out the corners. And they weren’t going anywhere. If prisons are a battleground for the soul, in the spiritual fight between good and evil, I will share my testament that the promise of redemption shall be kept. I get criticized for talking about my faith. But some intense spiritual work goes on at MCC and Carswell. It’s surprising to behold in such a place. It does not imply that prisoners are innocent of their crimes. On the contrary, it involves a process of responsibility and deep transformation.

A lot of prisoners carry the bible. And they study it. And it changes them. You can feel an extra presence actively pulling them. And it comes from outside of our lives and beyond the harsh physical world of the prison, which is so ugly and claustrophobic.

All of that proves that even in the worst situations, it’s possible to discover something extraordinary and beneficial that you would never experience otherwise.

Strikingly, in all of the confusion created by psychiatry, it got lost that I was perfectly happy with my thoughts, my choices and priorities. I chose my life actively. I accepted responsibility for all parts of it. I had not suffered from my lifestyle. Even in prison, I never considered that I lost the better parts of myself. I was never paralyzed. I worked every day, in some way, to win my freedom.

That’s how I coped. It’s what stopped me from becoming bitter.

Locked up with these women, I saw more evil outside that prison than in it. Which brought us full circle, to the corruption of psychiatry.

Under federal law, I was entitled to a hearing on my competence as a matter of procedure.

Unhappily, psychiatrists have made themselves experts in loopholes of the law, and sought to defy the most basic legal protections for defendants at every turn.

These psychiatrists understood they had lied to the Court. Now they banded together to protect their group against exposure.

They exhibited a form of “group psychosis—” manifesting from a state of extreme narcissism and grandiosity. They fought to eradicate all external factors of reality, and create a non-reality that accentuated their power. I pictured them constructing this “consensus” in some dark closet, without a light bulb.

It’s evident they understood the illusion of psychiatry requires the suspension of truth. External factors of reality threatened them terribly. In my situation, their construct of “non-reality” would have been smashed in the first minutes of participatory testimony. Their power would be gone. Their authority would collapse in the space of a moment.

And so, coming full circle, they grouped together to fight any presentation of facts by participatory witnesses, in order to shield their group in its isolation.

If any ballistics or DNA expert falsified testimony on the results of gun testing or blood forensics, they would be shunned forever. They would never be permitted to testify in a court of law again. Professionally, they would be disgraced.

Psychiatry carries no such ethical burdens. They can falsify and fabricate to their hearts’ content. They freely embellish. They require no behavioral evidence to support their “conclusions.” In my case, they freely acknowledged that in 7 1/2 months of observation at Carswell, they saw no symptoms of any kind.

That didn’t matter. They face no burden of culpability if they get caught in a major court deception. They go forth to the next defendant, without sanctions or penalties.

These sorts of fraudulent actions demonstrate why psychiatry should be restricted in the Courts. It’s strictly pop culture, the fad of the moment. There’s nothing scientific about it. It’s a matter of legal convenience.

Change the attorney, and you change the psychiatric “diagnosis.”

Even now, when I remember this nightmare, I am horrified by it.

I am appalled because, in its zealous quest for authority, psychiatry allowed itself to be exploited to promote a political agenda, as a weapon to punish independent thinking by Americans. My values support non-violence and non-aggression in foreign policy. For that, I was locked in prison without a trial. That contradicts everything our democracy stands for, as far as encouraging a pluralism of voices in the public debate.

Psychiatry prostituted itself for politicians. And worthless politicians at that.

This attack was straight out of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, from the gulag age, when psychiatry punished intellectual dissidents, using shock treatments and drugs to correct political thinking.

It was a miserable and selfish game plan. It relied on the amorality of its practitioners, and their willingness to sell out their credentials for financial profit.

It should never have been possible.

To my horror, this was not Moscow or Leningrad in 1953.

It was New York City in 2006.

And I was petrified.

CHAPTER 29:

THE LAST MAN

“One man with Courage makes a majority.”
–Thomas Jefferson

Throughout those steamy summer days on lock down at M.C.C. I pondered the insanity of my predicament. Indeed, it perplexed me.

I was the nation’s scapegoat.

Pundits shrieked. Comics scorned. I watched it all on prison television— helpless and disgraced— as the American people and the global community blistered the intelligence community with criticism for my work in Pre-War Intelligence and my failure to discover the 9/11 conspiracy.

It was a real dog and pony show of false outrage. True political theater, Washington style.

Meanwhile, I sat in prison— declared “incompetent to stand trial”— for “believing I had a 95 percent chance of acquittal,” based on the inadequacy of evidence against me.[545] On that basis, two psychiatrists—who confessed to observing no actual symptoms of mental illness in my behavior— agreed that I “lacked sufficient appreciation for the gravity of the charges, which would be necessary to contribute to my defense.”

Not surprisingly, I had a very different perspective.

If anybody suffered from a “psychotic disorder,” it was Washington itself, fighting violently to disavow the reality of their choices before the War, and their responsibility for those choices. In angrier moments, I questioned prison guards if perhaps Congressional leaders should be forcibly injected with Haldol until they developed some integrity in their decision making.

Alas, they had power. And I did not. At MCC, I was right where Republican leaders wanted me—locked down, in shackles and chains, so they could huff and puff without challenge.

It got crazier as Republicans recognized that with Iraq out of the way, they could distract angry voters with boasts of their leadership performance against terrorism. Except once again, the Republican record of achievement was much less grandiose than they bragged.

What did that matter? If I could be forcibly drugged, the GOP endgame would be perfected. Republicans on Capitol Hill could feed the country’s fever for national security unabated—and flog me with voter wrath for mistakes in their War policy.

And I could never get out of prison and expose them— which, let’s face it, would have to happen eventually.

How did Republicans rationalize such savage dishonesty?

Through simple, corrupt illogic: Intelligence exists to protect the leadership first and foremost. Assets are supposed to make leaders look good— whether they deserve it or not. Truth is what we sacrifice for our country. Politicians matter—Not the people!

So much for your national security, folks.

Anti-terrorism has deteriorated into showmanship and spectacle—color coded threats. It makes for triumphant grand standing. Congress gets to be circus performers, acting out a thrilling illusion. But as far as results on the ground, anti-terrorism policy proved awfully empty, scattered with lost opportunities —like the failure to shut down the financial pipeline for Al Qaeda, what I call “happy cash,” since the bulk of revenues comes from heroin trafficking.

Why not kill two birds with one powerful blow?

Actions speak louder than words—except in Washington, where it’s all hot air.

Unhappily for me, this was about majority control of Congress and the White House. How the balance of power would fall— in favor of the GOP or the Democrats? Any action that protected the Republican marketing “brand” on national security was considered legitimate, though it violated the Constitution. Locking an Intelligence Asset in prison and threatening to forcibly drug me was an expedient strategy for holding onto power. That was the critical objective.

I would be sacrificed on the altar of political ambition.

Let’s face it. Their lie was much more helpful than my truth. That was the constant problem for my case.

In our drama, Judge Mukasey was the X Factor. The inscrutable. The unknown. All of my fate rested on his shoulders. To him fell the responsibility for making sense of this mess of conflicting reports. Ordinarily, the defendant lost in these fights. I knew that. And it frightened the hell out of me.

We expected the decision to take a few weeks.

Instead, we waited four months.

Chief Justice Mukasey was retiring. Mine would be the final decision of his illustrious career as one of this nation’s pre-eminent federal Judges.[546]

Mercifully, my old handlers had not left me in the lurch. Years before Dr. Fuisz and Hoven told me what to do if I ever got arrested (always a possibility given my close proximity to terrorism investigations). They commanded me to tell the Judge everything. From their perspective, I should have spoken up sooner. (Except that I did. I expected my attorney to talk for me. I expected these idiot psychiatrists to portray my story with a degree of accuracy.)

By this time, Dr. Fuisz and Hoven must have thought I had truly lost my wits. But when I moved to action, it was an avalanche. Judge Mukasey received a vast amount of debriefing in those midnight letters, while I was locked up at Carswell and M.C.C. By now the Court had a clear picture of my side of the story.[547]

Judge Mukasey could see the powerful forces arrayed against me. He could see the ugliness of their fear, and the powerful motivation to destroy me, so as to tighten their grip on power.

But none of us could figure out how he would end this game— or if he would feel compelled to go along with the government. The path of least resistance was what I feared most.

A great Judge like Mukasey thinks about legal precedents, and how his decisions will set the pace for future cases. But not all Judges do.

A lesser Judge could not have figured a way out of this steel trap.

A lesser Judge could not have developed a strategy for stopping the drugging—and getting me out from the Patriot Act—all at the same time.

Thank God for Judge Mukasey.

That summer in New York was hot and humid. While I waited, I paced the roof top recreation yard, my anxiety off the charts, praying with all of my heart for his decision to go my way.

I was terrified with panic. I could never have kept fighting without the support of the other women inmates. My best friend at M.C.C, Sarah Yamasaki from Japan, had rained as an opera singer. Throughout the summer, Sarah blessed us with roof-top performances. She was an ebullient woman, keeping our spirits up, helping all of us transcend the brutal conditions of our imprisonment.

The rooftop yard was eleven stories above the side walks of Manhattan. All of the women prisoners longed for grass and trees and freedom. One afternoon, one of the really spiritual women announced that she was praying hard for God to send us flowers!

“God can do it!” she laughed. “Just watch now, I tell you, God can do it!” She was so joyful that we all laughed with her.

And wouldn’t you know, the wind whipped up, blowing strong. From somewhere far off, a cloud of soft pink and white petals from a dogwood tree, wafted high up in the sky, fluttering over the prison yard and landed on the roof. Hundreds of soft petals swirled at our feet, blowing back and forth across the rooftop.

All of us shrieked in joy. We laughed uproariously. I remember that afternoon as one of the rare moments when all of us were truly happy. And the woman turned to us, and said, “I told you God would send us flowers!”

And she looked at me, and I remember what she said: “Susan, God’s standing with you. God won’t let these people hurt you. Try not to be afraid.”

That was easier said than done.

When you’re locked up in prison, four months feels like eternity, especially waiting for such a critical decision that impacts the rest of your life. It’s hyper stressful.

By now, all of the women and guards understood that I expected them to hunt me down any time, anywhere, interrupting any activity, when that decision came.

Early that afternoon, my psychic radar exploded off the charts. I was at the MCC library, returning a spy thriller from the 1970s, about a spook who gets carted off to a nut house and heavily drugged by CIA psychiatrists to stop him from talking about some operation at the Soviet Embassy, during the Cold War. The plot felt awfully familiar. I tell you, Robert Ludlum and I would have enjoyed a good tea party together, scones and crumpets all round.

In the library that afternoon, a vibrant energy engulfed me, like a powerful electrical current. I felt a rush of excitement, like I hadn’t experienced in months.

I rushed to the guards to ask if my attorney had sent for me.

The guard shook his head, with a tired, knowing smile. Not yet.

They’d heard me ask many times before. Always they’d calm me down. And they’d promise to come get me as soon as anything happened. They handled it well.

Later that evening, I jumped into the shower after dinner, escaping the hordes of prisoners for a moment of privacy.

That’s when the message came— at the most unexpected moment. Suddenly there was a pounding on the shower door, and one of my cellmates stuck her head in the shower room. My attorney was waiting downstairs. A guard had come to take me.

That kind of news travels lightning fast, and several inmates hovered outside the shower room.

I was soaking wet, with a towel over my shoulders. I didn’t stop to comb my hair. I just ran for the guard. The visiting office wouldn’t stay open much longer. I wasn’t taking any chances. I had to know the answer that night.

When I got to Sam Talkin, both of us stood in shock, staring at each other. And he said, very quietly, “Judge Mukasey ruled in our favor. You’re going home.”

Talkin looked as stunned as I was.

With one stroke of a Judge’s pen, my nightmare was over.

Victory was mine. After 11 agonizing months at Carswell and M.C.C, I was saved, mind, body and soul.

I collapsed on my knees, thanking God for it. Yes, I did! Truthfully, I could not stand on my legs.

Oh my reputation was destroyed, as Republican leaders intended. But my intellect and creativity, my daily functioning and spirituality—what mattered most to my life—that was saved. What was most precious to me was preserved.

I was deliriously happy. Ecstatic. Elated. Bounding in joy.

It was night-time. There was one guard left to share my happiness. I would be off to Court in the morning before Ms. Eldridge arrived to hear my exquisite news. But in my heart I knew she would be happy for me. All the staff understood what this meant to me. They’d been anxious, too. These were good people.

Prisoners are always happy—and somewhat jealous—when a fellow inmate goes home. It doesn’t happen often. Mostly prisoners get transferred to other prisons after sentencing. But those are your friends for life. They’re the ones who have helped you survive a living hell. You don’t forget them.

That night, my closest friend on the women’s floor, Sarah Yamasaki, my opera singer friend, made a farewell card for me, with a gorgeous Madama butterfly. I have saved it on my bookcase.

“Now, however, there remain faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love,” she wrote, citing 1st Corinthinians 13: 4-13. My favorite Bible verse.

Sam Talkin had already phoned JB Fields, who swore that he would drive to New York in the morning to fetch me home!

The next morning at 11 a.m. we appeared in Court to make it official.

On September 8, 2006, his very last day as a federal Judge, Chief Justice Mukasey rejected the Prosecution request to forcibly drug me and released me on $500,000 bail.[548]

I waved my arms wildly in thanks to Judge Mukasey, who had a great big grin on his face, as bailiffs ushered me out of the courtroom.

Without question, Judge Mukasey saved my life.

People are always surprised when I describe Judge Mukasey as my hero. He’s a man of fierce integrity and devotion to the law. In my case, he was surrounded by scoundrels, who brazenly lied to his Court at every turn. Forever I will give thanks for my life to his eagle-sharp acumen. If not for his shrewd aptitude, I would have been physically and intellectually destroyed. He became my secret champion in this twisted legal scheme.

The degree of corruption confronting him on all sides was terrifying to behold. Carswell expected to catch him in this trap. Except for his brilliance in the law, and his ferocious determination to protect due process in the courts, they would have succeeded.

Justice is cast in bronze as a blindfolded lady holding a scale of weights, signifying how truth hangs in the balance of the Court. That blindfold over the lady’s face took on sinister implications in my case, with the Prosecutor and these looney psychiatrists boldly violating legal requirements to acknowledge the truthfulness of my background.

Psychiatry shocks me to this day for the contempt it showed our judicial system. Something has gone terribly wrong when psychiatry could lie so recklessly, without suffering consequences for its dishonesty. Psychiatry betrayed a total lack of integrity in the courtroom. I believed it should be disqualified as “expert” testimony, on par with DNA, ballistics or forensics. They can’t meet standards of reliability.

It’s worthy of John Grisham or Robert Ludlum alright.

Here was the crux of the problem: Throughout my imprisonment, I had no effective legal representation that cared for the outcome. Psychiatry recognized Talkin’s inadequacy, and played to it, unforgivably. The second problem was that Judge Mukasey could not re-craft my attorney’s defense strategy. He could not compel Talkin to accept a hearing to check the accuracy of my story. Afterwards, he was caught by surprise when the Prosecutor pushed into the vacuum of court knowledge, with this request for forcible drugging and indefinite detention.

Ah but this was “extreme prejudice.” It was a bloodless execution.

Despite all of that cunning amassed against him, Judge Mukasey accomplished something more clever than I would have dared to hope. He outfoxed the psychiatrists, and crafted an outstanding decision against forcible drugging, which should help protect other Americans in the Justice system. If it protects more Americans from this sort of abuse, then it’s worth what I had to sacrifice. It was absolutely worth four extra months in prison. I have no regrets that Judge Mukasey took longer to craft it right.

As a critical prologue to his decision, Judge Mukasey expressed frustration that he was asked to rule on the question of my authenticity without access to rebuttal witnesses, who participated in the events, and could answer those questions with authority.

In this, he saw the legitimacy of my grievance. He complained that he was forced to rely on the subjective opinions of individuals who were strictly guessing, and could not possibly enlighten the Court with the truth.[549]

Then, very cleverly, Judge Mukasey used the U.S. Attorney’s own arguments in favor of forcible drugging to shoot down the continued prosecution of my case. Looking at the available, non-classified evidence, Judge Mukasey questioned whether my actions rose to the level of criminal activity at all. If the Prosecutor was correct about my mental status, he said, it was impossible.[550]

That’s the only way he could protect me.

Judge Mukasey’s outstanding decision against forcible drugging hinged on three points—that I was not threatening to myself or others in my daily life. Secondly, drugs would not improve the quality or functioning of my life. Achieving some improvement to the quality of life would be necessary to justify forcibly drugging a defendant—something I support wholeheartedly. And thirdly, Judge Mukasey doubted the prosecution was serious about trying the case. Restoring my competency would not lead to a trial, because it appeared doubtful the Prosecution intended to go forward.[551]

It was a brilliant decision. It’s especially subtle if you understand the day by day blows of our legal fight.

He took all of the Prosecution arguments, and turned them back on the Justice Department, in a hard push to kill my case.

I wanted to stand up and cheer. I recognized immediately that he’d executed a brilliant move, like a chess expert who studies the board for a long time, then executes a blitzkrieg to win.

There was a downside. Judge Mukasey upheld the finding of incompetence against me—which was necessary to squash the case, unfortunately. And his decision relied on some of my spiritual viewpoints, my belief in God and angels and prophecy, and my exploration of religious mysticism, which I enjoy very much.

Candidly, in one of my summer letters at 2 a.m, I told Judge Mukasey that I would not be offended one iota, if his decision cited my religious viewpoints. He would not prick my faith, or undermine my spirituality. By that time, the only thing I cared about was avoiding forcible drugging. Incompetence insulted me, but I refused to allow psychiatry to define me. That took the sting out of it.

In fact, Judge Mukasey acted consistently with what I told him I could accept. I understand he’s a religious man himself.

In my heart, I believe that Judge Mukasey thought liberating me from prison and a bad indictment would be worth accepting the finding of incompetence. From a legal standpoint, other attorneys after Carswell have told me he made a generous ruling in favor of my defense— though outside the Courts, incompetence still raises eyebrows. I am convinced Judge Mukasey upheld the finding as a vehicle to kill the case.

That’s what the Patriot Act has brought us to. A choice between incompetence of a loyal and devoted Asset, or shredding the Constitution and due process of law, tearing down the most cherished rights of all defendants in the legal system.

Given that I was in prison, without hope of a trial, many hot summer nights on lock down, I and most defendants would probably agree with his choice, even if it’s appallingly unfair. Psychiatry should have had more integrity than to meddle in my case, in the first place.

Bottom line: Judge Mukasey stopped the Prosecutor from physically torturing me with Haldol. And he guaranteed the Justice Department would have to stop persecuting me for knowing the truth about our advance predictions about 9/11 and our Iraqi Peace Framework. At the same time his decision acknowledged the Government’s fear of my intelligence background.

He split the baby down the middle. He struck a legal balance that was partially unpleasant to me. More importantly, in this perverse game of the Patriot Act, using what tools a Judge has, Judge Mukasey saved my life and my freedom.

Like I said, the man’s my hero.

CHAPTER 30:

ILLEGTIMUS NON
CARBORUNDUM EST

Don’t let the Bastards Get You down!

Staggering out of the lock up at MCC felt like a surreal experience, putting it mildly. One moment I was getting strip searched, shackled for court and thrown into a holding cell by tough bailiffs. The next, I was waving good bye to Judge Mukasey.

After fighting like the devil to escape “indefinite detention,” the process of releasing me took less than 10 minutes at the inmate center. They pointed to a door. And I crossed over into freedom land. When that steel door clanged shut, I left behind sterile linoleum and shabby prison chic for modern Manhattan.

In all, I had been imprisoned 11 months without a trial or hearing to check the authenticity of my story. That’s seven (7) months in excess of the 120 day maximum allowed by federal law for competence detentions that involve no violent actions or threats.[552]

JB Fields gave me a bear hug, as I reeled from the shock of it.

Then another gentleman stepped forward. Without giving his name, he identified himself as the former legal counsel for Panamanian dictator, Manuel Noriega and Edwin Wilson, that other black angel of the covert CIA crowd, who got nailed for running a black op involving Libya in the 1970s. Ed Wilson spent 27 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, until he got released on appeal, his attorney reminded me, shaking his head sadly. And the whole time the CIA disavowed knowledge that he’d got sent up for running a covert intelligence operation.

Sort of like me.

I got lucky. Wilson’s attorney winked at me sharply. Thought I had it rough? I didn’t know how rough the boys could play when the CIA really wanted to rumble. They gave me a break.

When I asked for a business card, the gentleman shook his head with a grin. He swore he just happened to be in Judge Mukasey’s court that morning, tying up loose ends for another client on the Judge’s last day on the bench. He wanted me to understand that Judge Mukasey had dealt with me quite generously. He shared a great story about interrogating General Noriega, playing the strong man himself in a dark room, with a single lamp on the table. He was the real thing, alright.

Call me paranoid if you like, but it’s a truth universally acknowledged that there are no coincidences in the intelligence business. If you choose to believe that a high level spook attorney for General Noriega and Ed Wilson just happened to visit Judge Mukasey’s courtroom that morning of my release, without some sort of design, I won’t argue with you. But you don’t have a functional grasp of how intelligence works.

On the intelligence side, I’m sure everybody hoped this attack would stop now.

Trouble was, my legal drama wasn’t finished. Despite a year in prison, and two and a half years under indictment, I was still pre-trial. Little did anyone guess that I was only at the halfway mark of my ordeal. My attorney made (another) fateful mistake, by failing to seize the opening provided by Judge Mukasey’s outstanding decision to move for dismissal. That decision gave us everything we needed to demolish the indictment, but Talkin took no action to push it through.

Meanwhile, a few fiercely independent thinkers on the blogs came out for a look-see to find out what the heck the GOP was hiding behind my indictment.

A surprising number of “awake” Americans had the smarts to question why the government refused to grant my requests for a trial. Roping me on the Patriot Act set off alarms on the blogs.

They kept my story alive.

And me? Well, I don’t know how to quit.

Before I could resume my fight, however, I had to draw back my strength. And my little family in Maryland had to recuperate. My beloved 19 year old cat, Midnight was waiting by the gate when JB Fields and I drove up to my house in Takoma Park. At Carswell, I was heart-sick to hear that Midnight waited by that front gate every afternoon since I left, a year earlier. Midnight looked stunned, but recognized me immediately. With profound relief, my little family was reunited. My precious dachshunds, Raqi Bear and Mahji Bear performed dachsie races around the yard in honor of the occasion.

Outside of Carswell, reality swept over my life again. Friends phoned to cheer my courage for standing strong in the Courts. They couldn’t believe the government questioned my competence, much less tried to forcibly “cure” my confidence as a woman Asset. Again and again, friends and colleagues swore they had never seen signs of mental illness or instability in my life.

Everyone agreed it was awfully convenient for the pro-war camp that I got shipped off to a Texas military base for a bogus psychiatric evaluation. Their verdict was unanimous. I must know something that politicians didn’t want my fellow Americans to hear. (Boy was that an understatement!)

Within days of my homecoming, some of my old gang from the Hunan rang up to assure me they had contacted Talkin, while the debate on forcible drugging raged on, vouching for my close relationship with Paul Hoven and his murky ties to U.S. Intelligence. That wasn’t “in my head,” either. Talkin had known it all along.

Some of those friends invited me to speak before the Sarah McLendon Society at the National Press Club in Washington, dedicated to the former first lady of Washington journalism.

That speech, two weeks after my release from prison, turned the wheels of fate again.

In the small audience of sophisticated Washington insiders, there sat an illustrious silver-haired gentleman, with a deep Rhode Island accent, among the smattering of Congressional staffers, Washington journalists, think tank executives and the like, including reps for Naval Intelligence and the State Department.

His name was Mr. Brian Shaughnessy, and he looked mighty perplexed.

As it happens, Shaughnessy was former Chief of the Fraud and Public Corruption Division at the federal court in Washington. The founding partner of an exclusive law practice,[553] Shaughnessy, Volzer & Gagner, in his former career at the Justice Department, he was the senior federal prosecutor assigned to the Court of Chief Judge John J. Sirica. Nicknamed “Maximum John” for his tough sentencing, Judge Sirica catapulted to fame handling the Watergate cases against G. Gordon Liddy and members of the Nixon Administration. In Judge Sirica’s court, Shaughnessy convicted two Congress members, among a stellar load of major corruption cases. Today he specializes in complex domestic and international security cases.

Behind his congenial and gentlemanly demeanor, Shaughnessy boasts a formidable and incisive legal mind. Listening to my address at the National Press Club that evening, Shaughnessy posed a question from the audience that cut to the crux of the problem:

If the Prosecutor had any sort of real evidence against me, why for heavens sake, would he not force the case to trial? Why would any prosecutor allow my attorney to use an “incompetence defense,” without protest? Why not attack it?

As Shaughnessy put it bluntly, “When I worked as a prosecutor, I wanted people competent, so I could convict them and send them to prison! I would never allow a defense attorney to make those claims without a serious challenge. I would fight it. That’s what a Prosecutor does in this situation. We don’t like it! If it was me, I’d be madder than heck that you got declared incompetent.”

If there was real evidence that I broke the law.

Shaughnessy smelled a rat.

A senior law practitioner, who frequently takes the most complicated domestic and international cases for sport and personal challenge—and wins, Shaughnessy requested very politely if he might review the evidence in my case.

We struck up quite a conversation after my talk. Later that evening, I returned to Shaughnessy’s office for a longer discourse on my ordeal. We were joined by another man who would become extremely important in resurrecting my legal reputation from the ashes, Mr. Thomas J. Mattingly.

Mattingly proved to be an esoteric genius, a philosopher activist in his own right, with an amazing wealth of knowledge on a vast array of domestic and international issues. A veritable encyclopedia of knowledge, he could debate every issue with finesse and thoughtful detail.

With a twinkle in his eyes, Mattingly turned to Shaughnessy. “You really should take over this case, Brian. You could knock down the Patriot Act— At least punch a few good holes in it. Would that be enough of a challenge for you?”

It was as if the fates clicked everything into place at last. And so it came to pass that two weeks after my release from prison, my Defense took on a new attorney, as a back stop to Talkin. It marked a critical transition for my struggle. Because shockingly, my ordeal was not over yet.

Happily at last, in Brian Shaughnessy, I found legal counsel who understood how all the pieces of the intelligence world and Washington policymaking fit together. It was a pivotal moment. In a single evening, his involvement, with a helpful push from Mattingly, reconfigured the dynamic of my battle at all levels.

The night had greater significance that I was yet to discover.

The Sarah McClendon Society had a comfortable feel to it, which might be explained by the cross over from our old Thursday night crowd at the Hunan.

The chief organizer of the Sarah McClendon Society is John Edward Hurley, a Civil War historian on the Confederate side. A southern gentleman from Virginia and an absolute delight in conversation, Hurley was an original member of our old Hunan crowd. Most famously, he took on Oliver North and his cabal years before, ousting him from the Confederate Hall, where North was holding meetings as a front, according to Hurley. And Hurley had personally observed my close relationship with Hoven, throughout our many years of clandestine conversations.

Hurley delighted in reminding me that spooks frequently dropped by our Thursday night gatherings, because we made up such an interesting crowd. And they were often invited by Paul Hoven. He offered to testify to that in Court.

Kelly O’Meara was another member of the Sarah McClendon society, who crossed over from our Thursday nights at the Hunan. A former investigative journalist and congressional Chief of Staff for Rep. Andrew Forbes (GOP-Long Island, NY), O’Meara had just published a cutting edge book, “Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill.”[554]

O’Meara protested that she’d known Hoven for 20 years.[555] She declared that Hoven “talked about (me) all the time.” She described Paul as an “intelligence passer,” and reminded me that some of Hoven’s closest friends are legendary in the intelligence community.

Hoven used to take O’Meara shooting at the farm of Bill Weisenberger, a famous spook with longstanding ties to Middle East operations involving Libya and Edwin Wilson. And Hoven bragged about outing Oliver North on Iran-Contra, along with Gene Wheaton, and his work for the Project on Military Procurement. Those sorts of bona fides say a lot.

O’Meara offered to testify to that in Court. If Hoven told the FBI a different story, then he lied and obstructed the FBI investigation. In which case, Hoven broke the law.

That night it was evident the force of truth would not crawl away, disgraced, for the comfort and convenience of Washington’s elite.

I recall it as an extraordinary moment.

In prison, the Justice Department had isolated me—and my public attorney, Sam Talkin, whined that nobody wanted to help me. Yet here at the National Press Club, I sat with supremely credible individuals who freely vouched for me.

So where did psychiatry find the gall to attack me?

A highly respected author and former journalist herself, O’Meara showed how my case marks a frightening trend in psychiatry today. Apparently, it’s becoming the norm to attack healthy, functioning Americans, while fighting to limit the rights of individuals to repudiate psychiatric opinions in Court.

Her book, “Psyched Out” exposes the dangers of mind-altering psychotropic drugs, and the links of prescription drug use to school shootings by teenagers and killing rampages by adults.[556] O’Meara documents that a startling number of killers, who snap suddenly, share one commonality. They started taking anti-depressants, particularly Prozac, days or weeks before their murder spree.

According to O’Meara’s research, Prozac leads the industry in serious adverse effects— like killing family members or school classmates. But drug companies like Eli Lilly are powerful enough to suppress media reports of the extreme social consequences of these adverse drug effects. As a result, ordinary Americans are largely ignorant of the links between anti-depressants and sudden violent behavior, including murders. Suicides also rise dramatically after starting anti-depressants.

“Psyched Out” goes on to examine how psychiatry contrives to create “diseases of the brain.” Citing medical sources, O’Meara argues that there’s no scientific proof that imbalances in brain chemicals occur at all, something psychiatry doesn’t like to admit.[557]

Leading medical experts agree.

“Although a physician may tell a patient that a chemical imbalance causes their depression, the physician would be hard pressed to provide any evidence to support this claim. There is no test available that would demonstrate that any patient has a ‘biological depression’ as opposed to any other type, or even that such biological depressions exist.” Dr. Antonuccio. Psychiatric Times.[558]

“At present, there are no known bio-chemical imbalances in the brain of typical psychiatric patients—until they are given psychiatric drugs.” Dr. Peter Breggen, M.D “Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry.”[559]

“There are no external validating criteria for psychiatric diagnoses. There is neither blood test nor specific anatomic lesions for any major psychiatric disorder.”[560] Dr. Loren Mosher, M.D former chief of the National Institute of Mental Health Center for the Study of Schizophrenia.

“There are no tests available for assessing the chemical status of a living person’s brain.”[561] Elliot S. Valenstein, PhD, “Blaming the Brain.”

“Psyched Out” was illuminating to say the least, a wonderful breath of fresh air after my ordeal at Carswell.

Of course psychiatry predicates its medical authority on the treatment of these so-called “chemical imbalances.” Despite a very poor track record interacting with external measures of “reality,” psychiatry has learned to maneuver cleverly through the Courts, denying individuals the right to question the “medical” basis for a “diagnosis.” According to O’Meara, efforts to block court testimony by family and friends, who would throw cold water on psych opinions, has become an increasingly common method for defending the illusion of their medical authority.

It’s a frightening trend, and all because psychiatry cannot withstand exposure to external measures and events. What’s more, ordinary behaviors and reactions to life—like adolescent angst, grief for a death, anxiety over job loss or divorce—are typed as “mentally defective responses,” indicating the presence of long term mental “disease.” That’s become an excuse for forcing drug interventions on individuals. Adolescents and young adults, for example, face tremendous school pressure to comply with drug “treatment” plans, only to suffer adverse reactions to the drugs. When that happens, psychiatry prescribes additional drugs to cope with problems created by the first set of drugs. As a result, Americans are all doped up, affecting behavior and coping mechanisms—and not for the better.

And don’t forget– the number one way Carswell restores competence is to take pre-trial defendants off these drugs. After a short detox, I saw first-hand myself how 9 times out of 10, they’d be just fine, and ready for trial. Somewhere along the way, the women got mis-diagnosed for non-existent conditions. But there was nothing wrong with these women. They suffered no diminished capacity of any kind. I listened to women thank Carswell for showing they were mentally okay.

Finally, “Psyched Out” raises serious questions as to whether women are getting targeted by psychiatry, particularly.

By example, Eli Lilly has been marketing Prozac under the name, Sarafem, for women suffering pre-menstrual tension. The two drugs are identical in composition, except that Prozac is a green pill, while Sarafem has a pink and purple color. The color choice affects “how women react to the drug,” according to Eli Lilly.[562] Women taking Sarafem have no idea that they’re actually ingesting Prozac, the most powerful anti-depressant on the market.

Would women still want the drug if they had the facts? And since when has menstruation become a mental illness anyway?

Psychiatry’s attacks on women are hardly subtle.

In my case, confidence, motivation and pride for my achievements got stigmatized as “grandiosity” and a “mental defect.”[563] That’s the new language used by psychiatry to attack a woman’s strength, though the same qualities in a male colleague would be praised as ambition and perseverance. That’s how they attacked me.

Citing its “medical authority,” psychiatry argued that a lowly woman like myself could not possibly have engaged in anti-terrorism work. I must be suffering a “mental disease” for believing that I had done so (for nine years). Naturally then, I must suffer myself to be “cured,” in order to unlearn my confidence in my life.[564]

It was blatant sexism, with no “clinical” link to reality—since I could prove I did these things. It should be a red flag that psychiatry exalts women who are submissive and dependent—and coincidentally, more needy for approval. Docile, insecure women are ideal, since they are more easily persuaded to accept instruction as part of the “doctor-patient” relationship. The abuse I suffered exemplifies how psychiatry punishes women who deviate from social weakness, and challenge their authority.

In their way of thinking, we are disobedient little girls who need to be punished with drugs and “treatment.”

Those attitudes did not change after my release from Carswell, unfortunately. Now psychiatry demanded that I must submit to a process of re-education to eradicate my strength, independence, and decision-making skills. I would be “healthy” when I no longer exhibited “symptoms” of confidence and self motivation, and when I stopped believing that I have led a meaningful and productive life.

When I stopped feeling empowered and goal-oriented, when I learned self-doubt, insecurity and weakness, then at last I would be a “real woman.” I would be cured.

If that sounds seriously disturbed, it is.

If I had not fought back, those arguments would be continuing against me today.

Bottom line: psychiatry is big business with big profits. And the courts are a marketplace for clients. Psychiatry and pharmacology are looking to build market share together, in a quest for revenues. That’s what it all comes back to. Making money.

And so my nightmare was not over, though I had defeated psychiatry on the critical issue of forcible drugging.

On that basis, Pre-Trial Services demanded that I report to Counseling Plus in Silver Spring, Maryland for yet another psychological evaluation, followed by counseling.

Thankfully, at the community level, politics was removed from the “diagnosis,” as Ted Lindauer and I had expected.

And what did the Maryland evaluation find? That I suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)— caused by my experiences at Carswell. And nothing else.[565]

Counseling Plus reported that I was “fully grounded in reality in all my sensory faculties times four.” Other than anxiety and tension caused by my false imprisonment, I showed no signs of mood disturbances. There was no other source for my PTSD symptoms.[566]

In other words, according to this “diagnosis,” if I had not got shipped off to prison without a trial or hearing, and threatened with forcible drugging, I would not suffer symptoms of any kind at all. I showed no signs of other “mental defects.”

Like Dr. Taddesseh before Carswell, for the next year, Counseling Plus reported that I suffered “no depression or bipolar disorder, and no signs of psychosis or psychiatric symptoms of any kind. (Lindauer) is fully oriented to her surroundings times four.”[567]

Nevertheless, I was forced to undergo nine months of “counseling” until I refused to go back.

So what did we talk about? Why, the corruption of psychology, of course, and how much I despised it. How it deprived me of my legal rights and reputation. I had nothing else to say to these people. Every Saturday got ruined by forced recitations of the awful conditions at Carswell, and the horrific abuses of prisoners, or how psychiatrists knowingly and deliberately lied in my case. It explains why my awful memories are so vivid to this day.

Beyond that, Dr. Tressa Burton, the court psychologist, surfed the internet for clothes and weekend entertainment for her daughter, while I was forced to sit in her office, bored out of my mind. She surfed the internet constantly during our meetings. A couple of times she handed me women’s magazines, like Good Housekeeping and Cosmopolitan, and asked if I saw any articles I’d like to discuss. Or if I caught Oprah’s show that week. We had nothing to chat about together.

I saw with blinding clarity that psychology is about pop culture. It’s the fad of the moment. Pretty much you have to turn off your brain, and blather from your mouth. I’d look at the clock, and ten minutes would have gone by. And I’d think to myself, oh God, how dull! How much more of this can I take?

It was a huge waste of my time and your tax dollars. But I had to stay the full hour, so Counseling Plus could make money off the feds. I learned quickly that even the subsection of psychology that recognized the corruption in my case, lacked the integrity to turn down federal tax dollars. They used defendants as an ATM machine to make cash withdrawals off the state and federal budgets.

Counseling Plus could have cut back the number of meetings I was forced to attend, since it had no value to my life. But Burton could not make money if she did. And it was always about the money. Psychology doesn’t want clients to be strong or independent. They can’t keep those clients. That’s why they try to focus all of your energies on bad things. It doesn’t surprise me that people who participate in long-term counseling have incredibly unhappy lives.

Psychology did teach me one very important thing: Focusing all of your energies on bad experiences is a stupid and wasteful activity. There’s no benefit to reliving your worst nightmares over and over again. On the contrary, it’s a fairly destructive pass-time.

As proof, my meetings with Burton started in October, and got interrupted mid-December, when she suffered a series of seizures that forced her to cancel meetings for the next two months until late February.

Well, I was deliriously happy. I hated those meetings. I was delighted that she had to cancel them for so long. I regarded it as two full months of freedom, sans fascist efforts to control my thinking and lifestyle choices.

And what happened to my life without her “guidance” and “instruction?” How did I “cope” with my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder without her presence for two whole months?

Immediately my quality of life improved.

My moods on Saturday afternoons picked up dramatically, carrying over throughout the week. I was much happier. I stopped raging at my friends, who were exhausted by my stress, by this time. Flashbacks to my suffering at Carswell—and my fury—decreased a hundred fold. Immediately I was more productive in my life, and the quality of my thinking and confidence started to rebound. My natural resilience kicked in.

Without her presence, I refinanced my house, paid off my credit card debts, and redesigned my kitchen. Without psychology pulling me down, I stopped feeling like an infantilized victim of my circumstances. I became empowered and functioned as a fulfilled woman again. I started taking control of my life, and acting as a goal oriented individual.

Getting away from her was the best thing for my state of mind—and my Saturday afternoons!

By the end of February— regrettably— Burton got her seizure disorder under control, and started her practice again. Immediately, I crashed back into unhappiness. I was forced to suffer through Carswell all over again. Our conversations became a tape replaying all of my anger for how the corruption of psychology had robbed my reputation for my life’s work. How psychology was so selfish as to interfere with my Constitutional rights to prove my innocence in a court of law. How psychology was terrified of reality, which beat them every time.

Every conversation fed my rage. Every weekend that Burton cancelled a meeting, my happiness skyrocketed throughout the following week. When I would go back to her office, it would pull me down like the undertow of a tidal wave.

On that basis I would seriously question why anybody should attend counseling meetings at all. Certainly when it comes to Post Traumatic Stress, fixating on the harsh experience that caused the trauma intensifies spiritual pain, instead of healing it. That’s probably the worst thing you could do.

Having said that, PTSD is a real condition. It’s not linked to some imaginary imbalance in brain chemicals. It’s caused by real traumatic events, and it shows itself through rage and anxiety, which grows worse by reliving the moments of original distress.

Based on my own experiences, anybody who suffers PTSD would be helped by practicing how to refocus their thoughts onto something entirely different than the original stress. PTSD builds fast like an ocean tide. First it laps at your feet, then it crashes at your waist. Psychology might be valuable if it helped kick your mind to a different zone. You’ve got to invest energy into new experience, so the intensity of the new activity pulls your concentration away from the problem zone. The energy must be all consuming, so that you’re totally focused on the new moment— not wallowing in the past.

Physical exercise provides more relief than psychology meetings alone, even if you’ve got a tread mill tucked in a corner of your office. Outward Bound for returning soldiers would be a healthy investment by the military. Therapy in a physical setting would make a huge difference, with blocks of time on a stair master or treadmill, punctuated with counseling. That’s how to beat PTSD. Some kind of community service, in a totally different area than the stress source, makes a difference. In my own life, I turned to animal rescue work. Playing soccer or basketball makes a difference. Taking up musical instruments—the guitar, the saxophone, the piano. Biking or hiking on the weekends.

Any of those activities make a greater impact on PTSD than attending psychology meetings alone. Build that activity into your schedule, and you will get better. Essentially, your mind will create a fresh, positive area to focus its energies on, and your body will burn off excess tension through physical exercise. That’s how you move past PTSD. Any traumatic experience stays part of your life. The critical thing is to learn not to focus energy on it.

Unfortunately, that’s not what psychology allowed me to do.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Prosecutor, O’Callaghan, was not happy with the non-political findings of Burton’s “diagnosis” of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by the effects of Carswell. It failed to impugn my competence, especially because her evaluation freely acknowledged that there was no reason for prescribing drugs to “cure” me of anything.

So a few weeks later, O’Callaghan demanded that I submit to a second psych evaluation in Maryland, on the grounds that Burton was a psychologist—like Shadduck at Carswell, not a certified psychiatrist. Burton was astonished by the prosecutor’s request. Pre-Trial Services, which had to pay for it, protested that it was a waste of their budget. And you could be damn sure I wasn’t paying for this. All of this was taxpayer financed.

Hearing my story, the second evaluator, a psychiatrist, demonstrated a modicum of wisdom. His report assured the court in New York that Dr. Burton was reliable and trustworthy in the state of Maryland, and he would not second guess her findings.[568] Pre-Trial Services denied Shaughnessy’s request for a copy of that report, but Burton told me what it said.

Post Traumatic Stress was consistent with what the Maryland psychiatrist saw. And so the second court evaluation in Maryland successfully sidestepped the whole business. He didn’t want any part of this.

That’s not what O’Callaghan wanted to hear a second time, either. At the rate I was racking up non-political psych evaluations in Maryland, there would be nothing left of the bogus finding of incompetence.

So, once again, a few weeks later, O’Callaghan demanded that I submit to a Third Psychiatric Evaluation after Carswell— this time with the original psychiatrist, Dr. Kleinman, who declared me incompetent for the Justice Department. O’Callaghan argued that the Maryland psych community didn’t understand my history. It would take too much time to educate them.—Ergo, they weren’t sufficiently corruptible.

Amazingly, Judge Loretta Preska (who took over from Judge Mukasey) granted O’Callaghan’s request. That’s how it came to pass that six months after Carswell, I was forced to undergo no fewer than three additional evaluations.[569]

The Prosecutor was shopping for what he wanted to hear. And he couldn’t get it outside of politicized psychiatry. Only now, through hard experience, I’d learned a few things about how to protect myself from corrupt psychiatric practices. Too many “doctors” had laughed in my face when I said my story was truthful, and voiced my desire to prove myself in court.

After Carswell, I found a way to protect myself. I strongly urge any individual who’s forced to undergo a court ordered evaluation for any reason, even a custody dispute, to follow this method for self protection. I could have saved myself so much pain—and a year in prison—if I’d done it sooner.

Other Americans can learn from my ordeal. It’s simple.

Bring a tape recorder.

Get a recording. Save the record. You will protect yourself from serious threats of psychiatric fraud if you can prove what you said, versus what they want to pretend that you said.

You must not presume that because you have engaged in a rational conversation that these people are likewise rational. Quite the opposite. Their role is to twist everything you say into a convoluted schematic that showcases themselves. There’s nothing medical or rational about psychiatry. You must protect yourself.

Which explains why I showed up for my third psych evaluation post-Carswell with a tape recorder.[570] And from that moment, I started kicking some ass![571]

And let me show you why. This is part of the transcript from that meeting with Dr. Kleinman on June 8, 2007.[572] It’s nothing like what you’d expect.

LINDAUER: “This is Susan Lindauer in the office of Sam Talkin. I am formally requesting that he attend this meeting. I have been summoned here at the request of the court. It is with Mr. Kleinman who is guilty of perjury in my case. The FBI has already verified my story. Mr. Kleinman is on record lying to a federal judge. This tape is being taken for legal purposes in a potential lawsuit against Mr. Kleinman.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Good morning. Uh I must say that first of all, I am Dr. Kleinman. And I have been retained by the United States Attorneys Office to do a psychiatric examination on your mental state. Particularly as it relates to the charges that are pending against you and your understanding and appreciation of them.”

LINDAUER: “Yes. I have already declared that I am innocent of those charges, and I have asked for trial. The Prosecutor who’s so convinced that he’s got a strong case has, for three years, refused to give me a trial.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “OK. We’ll talk about that all for a moment. First, do you know who this person is to my right and your left.”

LINDAUER: “My attorney.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “What is his name?”

LINDAUER: “I just announced it on the tape. His name is Sam Talkin. We are in his offices at 40 Exchange Place close to the Wall Street metro in downtown Manhattan.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Do I have your permission to speak with you?”

LINDAUER: “I am here at the order of the court.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “If at any point you decide that you don’t want to speak with me, please communicate it.”

LINDAUER: “I am here at the order of the Court. So I expect you to ask your questions. I left my house this morning at 6:40 in the morning, and I have arrived in New York at a prompt hour. I expect this meeting will ask questions rapidly, so this can be concluded. And I refuse to answer questions about legal strategy. Except to say that I will not be using a headfucker defense at my trial. I will be using a government defense.”

“And I know very well that the Prosecution has no right to dictate that defense. I shall be calling witnesses, some of whom have already been interviewed by the FBI, who will easily confirm that they have already verified the authenticity of my work, which has been questioned by Mr. Kleinman here, who pretended it was delusional. That was the word you used.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “How do you think anybody listening to you right now would respond to how you—”

LINDAUER: “I don’t care.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “What’s your opinion?”

LINDAUER: “I don’t care.”

And shortly after that exchange:

LINDAUER: “I will be delighted to provide a copy of this tape to you. That’s not a problem.

DR. KLEINMAN: Well, I’m going to ask actually is when you’re done, you’ll give the tape to Mr. Talkin.”

LINDAUER: “No, no, no, no.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Let me finish. And that Mr. Talkin make a copy for the following reasons.

LINDAUER: “No. No. I have an attorney in Washington [Mr. Brian Shaughnessy] who is preparing a lawsuit against you. You are guilty of perjury in a courtroom. I spent a year in prison because you lied to a federal judge, mister. You want to say you’re a doctor? Well, real doctors have malpractice insurance. You have wrongly pretended that I am incompetent. You have wrongly pretended that I am delusional. You have actually advocated forcibly drugging me to cure me of the history of my life, which is true. I think you are Despicable.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Well, here are the conditions. I’m going to ask that the original of the tape be given by you to Mr. Talkin before you leave today.”

LINDAUER: “No.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “That’s OK.”

LINDAUER: “I will not do it. I will, however, guarantee that you have a copy of the tape. I have no trouble doing that.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “That’s fine, but since I want to make sure that there is only one version of the tape.”

LINDAUER: “I don’t trust Mr. Talkin. Mr. Talkin has repeatedly refused to interview witnesses. Mr. Talkin has repeatedly refused to get subpoenas that I asked for. Unfortunately, Mr. Talkin has proven that he is not reliable.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “You don’t trust him.”

LINDAUER: “Absolutely not.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “What do you think he would do with the tape?”

LINDAUER: “Lose it.”

An arrangement was made to copy the tape at Talkin’s law offices that afternoon. I took the original tapes home with me, and Kleinman got his copy. It would have been simpler to buy a second tape recorder for $20 at WalMart or Target. They’re not expensive. No defendant can afford not to have a recording device at this sort of meeting. My case provides ample evidence why.

My decision to hold onto those tapes proved vital to my next court battle. One year later, Shaughnessy forced the Court to grant my statutory right to a competency hearing—after producing a Third Favorable evaluation from a non-political psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Rattner of Washington, DC. At the hearing, Dr. Kleinman based his entire testimony on this meeting.573, 574

Apparently Dr. Kleinman did not realize I kept those tapes, instead of handing them over to Talkin, as instructed. (I’m such a naughty female!) Or else he imagined that I lost them. Whatever his thinking, when Dr. Kleinman falsely described our conversation to Judge Preska, Shaughnessy surprised everyone with a Motion for Reconsideration that shattered several major inaccuracies in Dr. Kleinman’s testimony.[575] And Shaughnessy submitted transcripts of the interview as proof.

The moral of the story is for each individual to hold onto your own tapes. Get them transcribed immediately. And always save the tapes. That’s critical. Psychiatry has the ability to twist and pervert even the most innocuous conversation. That’s their “contribution” to the court proceedings. They will not hesitate to make mischief.

Here’s another example:[576]

DR. KLEINMAN: “So let me go back. You said when we met previously, the purpose was to cover up Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence. Do you believe that I have any role in that?”

LINDAUER: “Yes.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “And did I knowingly have that role?”

LINDAUER: “Yes.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “OK. So tell me what role I had in knowingly covering it up?”

LINDAUER: “You deliberately lied to a federal judge. I told you in very clear terms that I was an Asset working in Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence. You lied and pretended that I was delusional for thinking that I had done this work. Which I did for NINE YEARS.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Okay.”

LINDAUER: “You got me declared incompetent, which is a joke. I mean, it’s so the politicians don’t have to take responsibility for what they did. And their decision-making in Baghdad. They can blame the Assets and pretend that we failed to bring them good quality intelligence. And by the way, the Senate already has investigated the January, 2003 intelligence.” [The date cited in my indictment for my approach to Andy Card and Colin Powell.] “And they found it ‘chilling and prophetic.’ That’s what they called it.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “So? Let’s go back. See my understanding is that I was asked by the government to evaluate you regarding your competency to stand trial. That’s my understanding.”

LINDAUER: “That’s right. But in the course of doing that, I very clearly and carefully explained to you that I was an Asset. That I had been doing this for years. And you went to the Court, and you said, Oh, your honor. Nobody can verify her story.”

“Nobody except everybody who’s talked to the FBI, my friend.”

LINDAUER: “This is easy to prove. Very easy to prove.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Very easy to prove. Have you given that information to your attorney?”

LINDAUER: “Absolutely. And my attorney did nothing to interview these people. So my Uncle Thayer Lindauer, who is an attorney with 40 or more years of experience, he interviewed these witnesses. He located them.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “So this is your uncle who interviewed them?”

LINDAUER: “My uncle, who is an attorney, has interviewed them. They responded to his phone calls immediately.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “So have you provided this information to Mr. Talkin?”

LINDAUER: “Of course.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “You have?”

LINDAUER: “Of course. Of course.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “So then he has—”

LINDAUER: “The whole thing has been bullshit.”

And later on:

DR. KLEINMAN: “Let me speak about trial for a moment. Let’s take a step back. What are the charges pending against you? What are they?”

LINDAUER: “You already know the charges. I’ve been accused of acting as an Iraqi Agent in conspiracy with the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Which is just the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I want to hear this Prosecutor tell the people of New York that working on an anti-terrorism investigation is against the law.”

“And by the way, I’m one of the people who warned about 9/11. I do not appreciate what you did in the slightest!”

DR. KLEINMAN: “How did you know about 9/11?”

LINDAUER: “We had been watching for an attack for months.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Who’s we?”

LINDAUER: “Richard Fuisz had been instructing me for several months. From after the Lockerbie Trial. OK, the Lockerbie Trial ends in January. In approximately March and April, Richard Fuisz is beginning to aggressively ask me, over and over again, if there is any intelligence that I’m hearing about any attack. Specifically I am to pump my sources for information on airplane hijackings and airplane bombings. I am to tell Iraq and Libya – Iraq PARTICULARLY—that if anybody bombs the United States, and we find out that they knew about it, we will blow them fucking back to the stone age.”

[Note: The correct months were April and May.]

DR. KLEINMAN: “Did you tell Iraq and Libya that?”

LINDAUER: “Yes. And by God, Richard Fuisz did his job. Richard Fuisz did exactly what he is supposed to do. He is proactive. He is strong. He is thinking. He is working to protect this country. And he has nothing to be ashamed of. And I don’t either. This is how we do it.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Let’s talk about Iraq for a moment. I believe that you told me that you were once, in fact, in Iraq.”

LINDAUER: “Yes. I’m not going to discuss answers to any charges against me.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “I’m just asking—Do you understand that there is a charge against you?”

LINDAUER: “Oh, I understand, and I’m going to kick their fucking ass in court about it.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “But what’s your knowledge of the charge? The charge exists. I’m just checking to see if you know what the charge is?”

LINDAUER: “The charge is that I took a trip to Baghdad.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “And?”

LINDAUER: “My answer is that they knew I was going to Baghdad. And I can prove that in a court of law. I can prove I asked for permission to go. I was doing exactly what I thought I was supposed to do. It was totally in good faith. That’s my answer. I did not go off to Baghdad without anybody knowing about it. If they didn’t want me to go, they just had to say so.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Fine.”

LINDAUER: “Anything they wanted me to do. I’d jump up and down five times, and turn in circles for them. Seriously.”

In “reality,” I filed a written request for permission to travel to Baghdad in March, 2001. The letter to Andy Card recounted the invitation from Iraq’s Foreign Ministry. I promised to meet any U.S. official before or after the trip. I also agreed to delay the trip, at their request. The U.S. Attorney had a copy of this paper. So did Talkin.[577]

Following that exchange, Dr. Kleinman inquired about a videotape made by the Iraqis at our final meeting in Baghdad. Critically, the tape involved my Iraqi friend who had agreed to act as a liaison to an FBI Task Force on Anti-Terrorism. This required extraordinary courage on his part, as it could easily get him killed.

LINDAUER: “There is a videotape, which I’m not even remotely moved by.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “So what’s your interpretation of it?”

LINDAUER: “I expected [the Iraqis] to tape the meeting. I’m an Asset. You don’t wink at the camera. I’m an Asset. I’m working my ass off to persuade the Iraqis to give us information about terrorism. I am expecting them to tape that meeting.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Okay.”

LINDAUER: “I expect that there is a tape recorder somewhere. Whether it’s video or audio, that’s the difference that I didn’t know. But I expected them to tape it.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Because you’re an Asset?”

LINDAUER: “They know. This is a game. This is how the game works.”

This sort of exchange was typical:

LINDAUER: “Applying present situations to yesterday—If you tell me today that I should have done something yesterday doesn’t work for me. Because I asked for instructions. And I promised to obey the instructions. And I specifically sought instructions. And I said that “I will obey you to the letter. Just tell me what you want me to do. I can prove that in any court of law.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “That’s fine.”

LINDAUER: “None of this mattered until the Presidential Commission on Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence was formed. I was their chief asset working with Iraq on anti-terrorism. It would have been obscene. I mean, my God, you should take me out and hang me from the Stock Exchange or the Empire State Building, if I didn’t help after 9/11. The whole reason my contacts existed was so that there would be somebody with deep contacts inside the Iraqi government, so whenever there was a terrorist attack of any kind, there would be a back channel source to get it.”

“If I had refused to get that information after 9/11, THAT would have been traitorous. That would have been treason. That would have been ugly. That would have gone against every single thing I believe in, and everything everybody else I know believes in.”

Most of the conversation with Dr. Kleinman focused on the possibility of a plea bargain floated by the prosecutor. This is where we caught him lying to the Court.

Over and over, Dr. Kleinman badgered me to plead guilty on tax charges. Steadfastly I refused, while he tried a number of approaches to persuade me that I should accept the deal..[578] We caught it all on tape.

Observe that I was not indicted for tax charges.[579] I did not owe back taxes, and would not have owed additional taxes if I accepted a guilty plea. It merely provided a vehicle for ending the case, if I chose to do the Justice Department another favor— not likely after Carswell. Floating a guilty plea for something not on my indictment reinforced Shaughnessy’s opinion that the Prosecutor recognized he could not get a conviction on the original charges. There really was no case against me. They had to find something else.

Shockingly, under oath, Dr. Kleinman testified that I was the one who suggested the Prosecutor had floated a plea bargain. In court testimony, Dr. Kleinman told Judge Preska that he had no personal knowledge such an offer existed.[580] Upon checking with O’Callaghan, Dr. Kleinman said he discovered I was wrong. He declared that my “mistake” about the plea bargain proved I continued to be “incompetent to stand trial.”

My eyeballs bulged to hear it!

Shaughnessy pulverized Kleinman. And I mean, Shaughnessy beat him silly. Thanks to the tapes of this meeting, we could prove that Kleinman himself interjected questions about a plea bargain over and over again,[581] which I repeatedly shot down. He pushed the plea bargain for a good two hours of this interview—all caught on tape.

Then Kleinman falsified testimony under oath in front of Judge Preska.

Another interesting point is that almost none of Dr. Kleinman’s questions related to my emotional state of mind or psychology. For example, Dr. Kleinman devoted a good half hour to exploring my finances.[582]

DR. KLEINMAN: “So, do you still own a house?”

LINDAUER: “Yes.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Do you have a mortgage on the house?”

LINDAUER: “Yes.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Do you pay the mortgage on the house?”

LINDAUER: “Yes.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “How often do you make the mortgage payments?”

LINDAUER: “Every month. Like everybody else.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “What is your monthly mortgage payment?”

LINDAUER: “About $2500 a month approximately. I just refinanced. That includes taxes.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Did you use any kind of mortgage broker to refinance?”

LINDAUER: “Well, yeah. Of course.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “I’m not an expert, but one could do it directly with a bank. Or you can use a mortgage broker who helps?”

LINDAUER: “Yeah, yeah.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “So did you do it with the bank or with the broker?”

LINDAUER: “A broker. YES.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “What was the purpose of refinancing?”

LINDAUER: “Uggh! My God! To get a better interest rate. To pay off my debts. And to make some improvements to my house.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “So you got a loan in other words? What did your interest rate go to? From what to what?”

LINDAUER: “That’s none of your business.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “It’s OK if you don’t tell me. I’m just asking your reasoning.”

LINDAUER: “It has nothing to do with you.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Does that seem intrusive?”

LINDAUER: “Yes.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “What’s intrusive about it?”

LINDAUER: “It’s none of your damn business.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Do you have a checking account?”

LINDAUER: “I’m not going to answer any of these questions. You’re full of shit.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “Am I?”

LINDAUER: “Yeah, I think you’re desperate. I just refinanced my house, got a better interest rate, paid off all my debts, remodeled my kitchen and put in new windows.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “What am I full of shit about?”

LINDAUER: “You’re looking for some excuse to harass me.”

DR. KLEINMAN: “I’m not looking for anything. It’s more relevant to your mental state.”

LINDAUER: “Oh yeah, right. Tell them that I’m SOOO DEPRESSED that I paid off all my debts!! I’m SOO worried because all my debts are gone. What garbage. Make sure that you say that’s garbage. (Sarcastic laughter).”

DR. KLEINMAN: “What’s garbage? But it relates to your competence?”

LINDAUER: “You’re desperate—”

See what a difference a tape recording makes? Not what anybody expected, I’ll bet. Probably you expected some emotional floss about childhood trauma, or some deep secret feelings about life. Some deeply sensitive emotional concerns that poignantly depict a wounded “inner child.”

I defy anyone to explain how that conversation reflects on my “emotional well being” at all. Or how that would substantially demonstrate my inability to contribute to my defense at trial?

And yet, following this conversation, Dr. Kleinman reported to Judge Preska that I continued to be “unfit for trial.” He declared that I “could not assist in my defense.”

Only now Brian Shaughnessy waited for me in the wings.

From that first auspicious evening at the National Press Club, Shaughnessy became fully engaged in my defense. Without further delay, he began interviewing witnesses and examining evidence and alibis.[583] He wanted to be fully prepped for any conversation with O’Callaghan to move forward out of this stalemate. By now it was obvious Talkin couldn’t handle that sort of discussion on my behalf. Shaughnessy took over the role filled by Ted Lindauer at Carswell. Talkin continued to appear with me, and sit at the table. But Shaughnessy began traveling to New York for all of my status meetings with Judge Preska.[584]

Dr. Kleinman’s obvious dishonesty whet Shaughnessy’s appetite. Because of these forced psych interviews, the Justice Department had my defense strategy—and Shaughnessy recognized they were most desperate that I should not use it. The fraud of the indictment would be exposed, and the government would suffer deep embarrassment for the lies they told about Pre-War Intelligence and 9/11.

I would win. The public would win. And Washington politicians would lose big time.

Shaughnessy recognized this was a truth Americans needed to hear.

By May 2007, I told Sam Talkin that I would not attend meetings at Counseling Plus for much longer. Shaughnessy guided me skillfully. He urged me to give the Court a reasonable opportunity to achieve closure, before we reopened the question of my competence. Over that summer, he had several conversations with O’Callaghan. Above all, we reminded Judge Preska that psychiatry had forced this finding of incompetence on me without a hearing, in strict violation of my rights under the law. If this case didn’t go away, Shaughnessy would formally take over my defense and move for Trial.

From that point on, psychology would get tossed in the dust bin where it belonged.

In August, Shaughnessy, who’s a congenial and shrewd fellow, gave O’Callaghan one final chance to drop my case. Shaughnessy reminded him of the promise to Sam Talkin before I left for Carswell that the Justice Department would drop the charges if I cooperated with the incompetence defense.

It was now a year after my release from prison.

O’Callaghan said he’d changed his mind. He intended to hold the charges against me for another year, and possibly two years.

Shaughnessy thanked him politely, and retreated to our corner of the boxing ring to prepare for another fight round.

Clearly O’Callaghan had not learned the lesson of an intelligence war: He had power over his actions. He did not have power over mine.

And so, consistent with my pledge, in August, 2007 I refused to go back to Counseling Plus after 10 months of worthless psychology meetings, financed by hard working American taxpayers.[585]

I told the Court that I refused to play this game any longer. My days as a campaign contribution to Republicans on Capitol Hill was over.

But it wasn’t over for O’Callaghan. His backer on Capitol Hill was now campaigning for the highest office in the land. John McCain wanted to be President. In a short time, O’Callaghan would land a plum campaign job in McCain’s inner circle. O’Callaghan’s internet bio boasts that he “advised McCain’s campaign on terrorism and national security policy.”[586]

Now that was an interesting twist. I’d been arrested after phoning McCain’s Senate office, requesting to testify before the Presidential Commission on Pre-War Intelligence, which McCain spearheaded for Republican leaders. The refusal to grant my demand for a trial protected McCain’s wrongful claims about 9/11 and Iraq. Indeed, any sort of public hearing threatened to expose McCain’s deceptions on a host of national security issues.

For years I believed that the intelligence faction attacking me had ties to John McCain. Now I got my proof.

Only now there was a sea-change O’Callaghan had not expected.

Now a top Washington attorney was championing my defense. Brian Shaughnessy had my back. And he fully agreed that my case should go to trial.

CHAPTER 31:

AMERICAN CASSANDRA

“Apologies must be made, O Athenian men!”
—Plato, on the death of Socrates

I wasn’t supposed to rise from the dead. I was supposed to know that I was beaten and disgraced.

Obviously they didn’t understand me very well. The Justice Department profiling couldn’t have been more off the mark. I dare say it lacked any insight to my character whatsoever. Unhappily for Republican leaders, I am nothing if not resilient.

Oh they’d smashed me up pretty good. They beat my heart with two by fours, and trashed my reputation. I would carry some ugly eggplant bruises on my soul for a very long time.

Despite all of that hurting, I began to rally. I played a lot of Miranda Lambert songs. The lyrics for “Gunpowder and Lead” got blasted all over the CIA in my own counter-protest psy-op. “He wants a fight, well, now he’s got one. He ain’t seen me crazy yet. I’m going to show him what little girl’s are made of. Gunpowder and Lead.”

Really I’d fought so hard to defend myself as an Asset that I forgot I’m an activist first and foremost! I’m a fighter to the end.

Now a life-time of experience kicked in. Just as Assets know how to run a blockade, so activists know how to nurture a cause from the position of an underdog. So in a sense, after recuperating from Carswell, I returned to my natural starting position. I got up off the floor and checked for broken bones. Then I got ready to rumble.

Only now I was fighting mad. And thanks to JB Fields and Janet Phelan rallying for my cause while I was locked up, I was no longer standing alone. Word of my ugly nightmare on the Patriot Act had reached the blogs and alternative radio audiences, piquing the curiosity of independent thinking Americans.

Alternative radio hosts like Greg Syzmanski and Derek Gilbert made the winning difference to my freedom. While I was locked up, JB Fields talked about Republic, Liberty and Oracle Broadcasting like life-lines. What they lack in size, they make up with heart. They have passion for America’s traditions of freedom, and the urgency to protect those values. Their rallying has pricked the walls of silence on many issues. During my fight, they stirred enough of a gale-force to incite blowback on the Justice Department, so that my grievances could not be ignored. When I got out, I was astonished by who had heard of the abuse I was suffering, thanks to these cutting edge blogs and internet radio networks.

Whoever says one person’s voice can’t make a difference should turn on the radio.

My all time favorite radio host, Michael Herzog, championed my cause on Oracle Broadcasting and Republic, when I renewed my fight for a trial.

He asked the best opening question on-air of all time: “So tell us, Susan Lindauer, why are you still alive?”

To which I replied: “I refuse to die until I get my trial. At this rate I will probably live forever!”

Every show with Herzog was lively and fun, just a delight for guests. Mike’s an extremely sharp and versatile host on a wide front of issues, and he brings all of that perspective to each show. He’s incredibly dynamic. During my legal drama, he proved that he’s got rapid timing, I mean, lightning speed. If Pre-Trial Services threatened to revoke my bail in the morning, Mike would rework his radio schedule and get me on air that afternoon. That’s what it took to save me, and Herzog and Phelan made it happen. They refused to back down.

Up to that point, I must confess that America was looking kind of shabby to me. By now, I was pretty disgusted with the corporate media. I had to question if the American people were getting exactly what they deserve.

Herzog and Phelan and Dr. Shirley Moore—and all the other blogs and alternative radio shows— got me feeling empowered again, like a revolution was starting to take back our country. And their audiences had front row seats.

Those radio hosts have amazing tentacles of knowledge, reaching deep below the surface on many different issues. They have the depth that I’d been aching for, and missing so much in the mainstream media. I’d pretty much given up hope of finding it. And all of a sudden, there it was— Vigilant, awake and free.

Most importantly, JB Fields and the “New Media,” as everybody called it, gave me the confidence, and the hope, to tell my story again. They championed my cause with such enthusiasm that I felt like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

Like a lot of Americans, I started looking for America in some different places.

That’s when I found a blog journalist who proves that the New Media possesses every bit as much “class” and journalistic quality as the old media. And a darn sight more curiosity and devotion to investigative reporting.

It was Michael Collins, one of the truly cutting edge blog journalists today.[587] I call him the Johnny Depp of blog journalism, because of his amazing versatility.

Michael Collins changed the whole dynamic of my fight.

Judge Mukasey retired from the bench the day of my release. Now he got nominated to become U.S. Attorney General, taking over from Alberto Gonzales, author of the infamous torture memos and the Guantanamo prison concept. Michael Collins published a round up of Judge Mukasey’s formidable career on the bench. Pointing to Mukasey’s final decision saving me from forcible drugging, Collins argued that Mukasey appeared to have a soft spot for the underdog in a fight. He might turn out to be a strong defender of individual liberties, a breath of integrity after the corruption of Alberto Gonzales’ cabal of anti-Constitutionalists.

Well, the subtlety of Collins’ understanding impressed me. I read his article on SmirkingChimp.com, and decided to approach him through Jeff Tiedrich, publisher of the blog.

Michael Collins did me the favor of responding immediately. He wanted to know what the hell was going on. Like Brian Shaughnessy, he smelled a rat.

He took the time to find out. We sat down for three lengthy interviews at a Lebanese bistro near my home in Maryland. Collins took special care to analyze my history as an Asset overall, starting with Lockerbie. And he was the first journalist who asked to see my 11 letters to White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, resulting in my indictment. He was aghast at the evidence that was supposed to convict me.

Collins nicknamed me “American Cassandra” for my tragic prophecies about the outcome of this War.[588] The lack of illegal weapons in Iraq. The rise of Iran. The rise of Islamic fundamentalists through democracy. The $1.6 trillion war budget that would rob domestic programs and throw Wall Street and the Middle Classes into a downward tailspin. The emergence of charismatic terrorist cells inside Iraq to fight the Infidel Occupation. The Iraqi people’s bitter hatred of the U.S. for the misery of sanctions.

Like Cassandra, I foretold it all with clarity.

And like Cassandra, I suffered the contempt of our leaders, who did not wish to hear the truths that I forecast—

When Michael Collins got hold of my story— finally—a critically thinking journalist connected the dots, linking my indictment to events on Capitol Hill. He recognized the aspects of a major cover up immediately.[589]

Collins cried foul on the Justice Department for protecting Republicans from the hellacious fall out of poor decision making before the War. He was doubly appalled when he read the Andy Card letters, and saw what I’d actually done.

Collins had the integrity to be outraged.

By now, I’d lived under the storm of indictment for three and a half bitter years. I’d spent a year in prison. And all of a sudden, there was sunshine on my story. Where the New York Times had botched it so badly, the “New Media” now excelled. Truly it felt like a changing of the guard. It was exciting to be part of that.

Michael Collins took my story to “Scoop” Independent News, Op-Ed News, Atlantic Free Press, American Politics Journal, Intelligence Daily, Smirking Chimp, and the Agonist, to name a few of the provocative, cutting edge blogs that have established themselves as a vital source of information for the public.

His articles reach 400 blogs in a typical week, and my story posted on all of them.

With a single key stroke, Michael Collins obliterated the corporate media black out. And he proved the pen is still mightier than the sword when it comes to championing the rights of democracy and freedom.

For my own esteem, it was God-sent.

As the months rolled on, Phelan and Herzog’s radio shows and Michael Collins’ blog articles flagged all the breaking developments in my case, blow by blow.[590] It would be a battle to the last day. Only now, thanks to the New Media, blog readers and radio audiences started to get some facts. And wouldn’t you know, those facts contradicted everything they’d been sold— not only about my life, but also about Iraq and 9/11 and the weakness of U.S. anti-terrorism policy. As the Presidential election fight heated up, Americans started asking some tough questions.

There was still confusion, as people had to absorb the vast differences of how the Justice Department portrayed me versus new revelations about the horrific abuses that I suffered on the Patriot Act. But I was no longer standing alone in the dock. Michael Collins, Michael Herzog and Janet Phelan showed me that America cared.

Thinking people cared. “Awake” people cared. That strengthened my confidence to face down the insults from my opponents, as I pushed forward with Brian Shaughnessy and Tom Mattingly towards a trial.

Those insults— and threats on my freedom— got much worse, not better. Republicans had me in a box. And they did not want me coming out of that box. My enemies camped out on Wikipedia, a useful tool for COINTEL propaganda that bastardized me every chance they got. Some of the mistakes were comical and stupid. Despite multiple corrections, for a couple of years Wikipedia insisted on giving me the wrong name, the wrong age and birthday. And they wrongly identified the allegations against me, upping my crimes to espionage. It went downhill from there.

Happily, notoriety does not scare me. I’ve got incredibly tough skin. I’m a big believer that you can tell a lot about a person by the strength of (her) enemies. Mine included Dick Cheney, John McCain, Andy Card, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell and Alberto Gonzales. So maybe I’m not so bad after all!

Hey, they’re big and I’m small. That doesn’t make them right.

Above all, the White House was in play. And my prime arch enemy, John McCain was running for President. His staff desperately wanted to keep me silent.

Unfortunately, as McCain’s poll numbers got tighter in the race with Barak Obama, there were constant threats to take me into custody. Several times Pre-Trial Services in New York threatened to revoke my bail, because, on my attorney’s advice, I phoned after hours to avoid ugly confrontations between us.[591] I taped every phone call to Pre-Trial Services for my own protection.[592]

It was incredibly dirty. I was not some ex-convict, violating my probation. Three and a half years had passed, and I was still demanding my rights to a trial. By now, I had another year’s worth of psych observations from Counseling Plus, documenting that nothing was wrong with me.[593] I hardly qualified as a flight risk, since I’d already surrendered to prison once. I’m not a drug user, who indulged in substance abuse. In five years I never committed any crime, which could justified bail revocation.

This was more like high stakes poker. Shaughnessy and I kept agitating for a trial, so we could shoot down the allegations. My very mediocre public attorney was gone. The Prosecutor squirmed with dread that he would have to play his cards, and show his lack of evidence to the Court. O’Callaghan would be forced to admit that he had knowingly concealed the facts of my identity. He would get busted for prosecutorial misconduct that resulted in the false imprisonment of a known Asset, with threats of forcible drugging to shut me up. Clearly O’Callaghan did not relish that confession.

I used to joke that the Judge should post a $500,000 bond on O’Callaghan’s house—identical to mine—so that the Defense could require him to come to Court.[594] He was the one avoiding the Judge, not me. I used to taunt Pre-Trial Services that I was ready. Just name the day, and I’d be happy to kick the Justice Department’s ass.

Ominously for me, polls showed voter support for Republicans was sinking fast. Fighting to keep a death grip on power, the GOP’s worst nightmare was now coming true: I was talking on the radio about the real facts of Iraq, 9/11 and the weakness of GOP performance against -terrorism.

And some independent minded Americans were starting to listen. The Justice Department let me know they would not stand for it.

In September, October, November and December 2007, Pre-Trial Services mounted an aggressive effort to revoke my bail and ship me back to Carswell, with a series of false complaints.[595]

In one court deception, I was astonished when Pre-Trial Services accused me of “bursting in on another individual’s session at Counseling Plus.”[596]

It was a flagrant, audacious lie. Aggravating the ridiculousness of the accusation, I despise psychology so much that I would never dream of interrupting anybody else’s session. I was always happy to sit in the lobby, if Burton was running late. I had nothing to say to the woman. The longer I waited, the less time I would have to waste in her office, while she surfed the internet scheduling entertainments with her daughter, or shopping for clothes.

The upshot was that somebody else wearing a blue coat, similar to mine, “burst” into her office, while she finished up with another client. Heavens, I was probably entering a stage of brain death at that very moment, tucked in a corner of the lobby. Astonishingly, Pre-Trial Services never bothered to check with Burton before reporting this incident to Judge Preska. They hauled me to New York for an emergency appearance, and argued vigorously that I should get shipped back to Carswell that very night. When I scorned the suggestion, given my contempt for psychology, Pre-Trial Services had to back down. Even the Judge had to acknowledge it sounded preposterous.[597]

Unhappily for O’Callaghan, this was a new game book! Shaughnessy didn’t play. He confronted my Pre-Trial Supervisor in Greenbelt, and demanded a retraction.

When they got caught, do you think Pre-Trial Services had the integrity to admit to Judge Preska they made a false report? Hardly. They pulled something else from their bag of dirty tricks. Something really dirty, even for these guys.

It got so bad that in December, 2007, Pre-Trial Services forced me to appear in Court without Shaughnessy— in the company of my former attorney, Sam Talkin, while the Feds fought to revoke my bail.[598] This occurred after I paid Shaughnessy’s legal fees, and the Court was fully informed that he had taken my case. The court meeting was scheduled on the only day that entire week that Shaughnessy could not travel to New York. It was particularly outrageous, since the court meeting was scheduled for 5 o’clock in the afternoon, and Shaughnessy offered to appear by 8 o’clock the next morning. He offered to travel overnight for the appearance.

Talkin—who’d been replaced by this point—seized the opportunity to make one final pitch disputing my competence. He swore that he would agree to whatever O’Callaghan wanted to do with me. He declared in open court that if he had his way, I would never be declared competent until O’Callaghan said so![599]

Much worse, Talkin argued that I should be forced to undergo a 3 day in-patient psych evaluation, in lieu of going back to Carswell, as a requirement for challenging the competency finding.[600] Never mind that a year’s worth of session notes from Counseling Plus recorded that nothing was wrong with me,[601] and I suffered no personal crises in Maryland—something a faithful attorney would have underscored in Court to preserve my freedom.

Not Talkin! Knowing Shaughnessy was proceeding in a totally different direction, Talkin tried to inflict as much damage as possible on his way, even to the point of costing me my freedom.[602]

Thankfully, Brian Shaughnessy got Talkin’s request overturned. He went the extra mile, soliciting opinions from the chief psychiatrists at Georgetown University, George Washington University and the Washington Psychiatric Institute, the last whom he tracked down on vacation in Israel. All swore my competency evaluation could be handled on an out-patient basis, and that hospitalization should be strictly limited to individuals in crisis. To their credit, every one of those Psychiatry Departments refused to admit me, or submit to being pawns of political leaders. They flat out refused.[603]

Instead, Shaughnessy arranged for a leading Washington psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Ratner to do the evaluation for our competency challenge at his private office.

But Talkin’s behavior struck us as shocking misconduct. I was compelled to declare for the court record that I had no attorney present, insisting to his shame that Talkin no longer represented me, and my real attorney, Shaughnessy had to be absent, because of other Court commitments in Washington. I scoffed that anything in my life justified a 3 day in-patient evaluation for a competency review, insisting there was a huge disconnect between Pre-Trial Services’ fanciful inventions and the real facts of my life in Maryland— which was going very well, thank you.[604]

Looking back, it’s difficult to believe anybody could have tried to do this. But the threat was quite real. Every time we headed to New York, Shaughnessy would tell me honestly that he had no idea if I would make it home that night, or if the Judge would take me into custody.

One thing probably saved me. Shaughnessy warned that if the Court took me into custody, we would file an emergency appeal to the 2nd Circuit Appellate Court challenging the procedures by which my incompetence had been accepted. Then we would push for trial.[605]

The fear that Shaughnessy would use any bail revocation to force a trial probably saved me, especially since Shaughnessy freely declared my capacity to assist him.

An emergency appeal was ready to go if U.S. Marshals ever grabbed me. And we expected to win.

Does that sound like I don’t know the law? That I’m stumped in court? Hardly.

My case was non-stop legal fraud—a reflection on Washington’s desperation to silence me. They succeeded for so long because of the Patriot Act, and because I had no attorney willing to fight for me—except for my marvelous uncle, Ted Lindauer and the brilliant Brian Shaughnessy, after Carswell.

Alas, the Patriot Act handicapped even the most senior attorneys.

The Patriot Act changed the equation of power in the courtroom, such that all transparency in the proceedings got erased. It emboldened the Prosecutor to misrepresent the caliber of evidence against me, when the charges should have been dropped as frivolous. As time went on, protecting the lies invented on Capitol Hill required yet more abuse of my rights, and more deceptions to safeguard Republican officials from exposure.

It’s why I call the Patriot Act the foundation for all future dictatorship in the United States. It’s a very dangerous law. My case demonstrates several critical reasons why the Patriot Act should be repealed immediately. Every leader who supported the Patriot Act should be removed from power, Democrat or Republican, without exception. The Patriot Act should be a litmus test for judging who’s qualified to protect the best traditions of democracy in our country, and who’s unfit for leadership. It’s that bad.

Through every blow, Collins, Herzog and Phelan stayed right by my side. Many times, we’d end a radio show with a reminder that I might get carted back to prison in the next few days. That’s no exaggeration, unfortunately. For several months, I prepared myself mentally and emotionally to get seized and shipped back to Carswell at any moment.

It got so bad that U.S. Marshals phoned Shaughnessy two to three weeks before the November elections, warning of my impending seizure, as the battle hardened between Barak Obama and John McCain. Those sorts of phone calls almost always pre-indicate a defendant is about to get grabbed. Sure enough, that warning coincided with a heavy round of radio interviews, telling listeners the truth about our 9/11 warning and Pre-War Intelligence.

To his great credit, Shaughnessy backed me a hundred percent, and never cautioned me or Michael Collins to back down. He told us to keep fighting, and fight harder!

That’s where my opponents hit a wall.

Republican loyalists inside the Justice Department could deny me a trial on the most frivolous and absurd grounds. But they could not stop me from demanding my day in court to prove my innocence.

They could scorn my “incompetence.” But for all their speechifying, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill could not reinvent my contributions to Pre-War Intelligence, or the reality of my team’s 9/11 warning throughout the summer of 2001.

They faced a serious quandary that John McCain played a leadership role in both the 9/11 investigation and the Iraq Investigation—and both reports contained outrageous inaccuracies that McCain spoon fed to the American people, as key spokesperson for both Commissions.

If McCain had won the Presidency, I would have fought for his impeachment from his first day in office. He would have deserved it, too.

Some Americans have taken hard blows for questioning the official version of events about 9/11. They have possibly speculated in some wrong directions. But they are quite correct that a substantial body of facts has been concealed from the public, like the essential truth that the U.S. Intelligence Community urgently anticipated a 9/11 style of attack, with uncanny accuracy as to the method, target and timing of the attack, described as “imminent” in August, 2001. Or that urgent requests for intra-agency cooperation to pre-empt the strike were made in August, 2001 to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s private staff and— at their suggestion— the Office of Counter-Terrorism.

I made some of those calls myself. And I was not the only alarmist.

Finally, the 9/11 Truth community is absolutely correct that the 9/11 Commission was a white-wash. Can anybody blame them for being angry and frustrated? I don’t.

Some things really are unforgivable in a democracy. Allowing thousands of your own citizens to suffer horrible deaths, in order to rationalize an unnecessary War against an innocent country should be judged the most terrible crime of all.

Most Americans still can’t believe that Republican leaders did that to all of us. But it’s true.

The people around John McCain understood exactly what it would mean if my story exposed those deceptions at election time. McCain’s entire campaign platform on national security would have crashed to the ground.

All of that explains why, after Carswell, the louder I spoke out, the more furiously the Justice Department tried to send me back to prison.

The attacks never stopped until Barak Obama’s historic triumph over McCain at the voting booth.

When McCain lost the White House, the attacks ended overnight.

If that doesn’t demonstrate the power of democracy and the voting booth to thwart tyranny, I don’t know what could. Vote, people!

My fight was definitely not for light hearts or weak stomachs.

Only now I had a powerful and effective attorney who cared what happened to me. Shaughnessy stayed ahead of the curve at all times, so that my defense would be ready whatever happened next. Tom Mattingly assumed the role of paralegal, and together they developed a strategy for managing all avenues of the case.

Fellow activist, Karin Anderson of Takoma Park, agreed to pony up my legal fees from her savings. This grandmotherly animal rescue activist finds a penny on every street corner, and always stops to pick it up because it reads: “In God we trust.”

It was many thanks to Karin that my home and beloved pets had been safe, while I was locked up at Carswell. Now, thanks again to Karin, I could carry on my legal battle.

Alas, my beloved friend, JB Fields was suffering a mysterious illness that would prove to be lymphoma cancer. Shortly after my release from M.C.C, he started experiencing bouts of extreme exhaustion. Many months would go by before doctors discovered that his body had stopped producing blood platelets of any type.

JB Fields died in April, 2008—two days after the Court granted our demand for the hearing he fought so passionately for. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, a worthy resting place for a proud Navy man, who trawled the ocean floor on naval submarines, a man who dedicated his life to protecting the rights of Americans under the Constitution.

Without the devotion of JB Fields, and his efforts to expose my travesty at Carswell, my legal resurrection would have been unthinkable. JB’s commitment to protecting the freedoms of ordinary Americans is one military tradition that the United States cannot afford to lose.

Sadly, though he never lived to see my vindication or the dismissal of the charges, But JB understood what was coming. Thanks to the planning skills of Shaughnessy and Mattingly, everything was in place when we launched our counter-attack on the Justice Department.

Now the battle resumed in earnest. Only a whole new dynamic was in play.

Thanks to blog journalist Michael Collins, the “New Media” on the internet tracked my case intensely. Front page coverage in “Scoop,” American Politics Journal, Op-Ed News and Intelligence Daily, guaranteed the Justice Department could no longer foist its defamation of my competence on unquestioning Americans.

Shaughnessy was like a new Sheriff in town, a congenial fellow with a South County Rhode Island drawl, and the confidence and ease of a life-time practicing law at extremely high altitudes. He swore that he had never heard of any case during his career, in which a defendant had been declared “incompetent” over the objections of her own attorney.

Shaughnessy took the fight straight to the Prosecutor. If Judge Preska wanted proof of my story, Shaughnessy promised that we would have no difficulty delivering it.

The Court hemmed and hawed for months. Clearly they wanted to avoid a positive finding that would force a trial before the presidential election. They wanted to keep McCain and the Republicans safe through November.

No matter! The stage was set. My supporters had an under-dog mentality for this fight.

The way I saw it, they were big, but we were small. They were bulky, trapped by their deceptions. We were nimble, protected by our honesty.

And woe to the wicked!

Like Assets, we peace activists never surrender!

CHAPTER 32:

VINDICATION

Veritas vos Liberabit.

Trust in truth, for truth will set you free.— Or maybe not.

On a lovely day in June 2008, the Court could delay no longer. Judge Preska was forced to grant our demand for a hearing to challenge the bogus finding of incompetence.

This would be my first and only evidentiary hearing in the four years since my arrest. Ostensibly it would determine my “fitness” to stand trial— almost two years after my release from prison.

My Defense would be allowed to present just two witnesses, who could authenticate key parts of my story during one morning of testimony. At trial, there would be a dozen witnesses. But for this pre-trial hearing, the Court forced us to strip it down. The Prosecutor fought to block these participatory witnesses as well.

For all those constraints, Shaughnessy and I believed that we chose wisely.

Our first witness, Kelly O’Meara spent 17 years on Capitol Hill, rising to become Chief of Staff for Rep. Andrew Forbes of Long Island, New York. She played a lead role in the congressional investigation of the mysterious crash of TWA 800 over Long Island Sound. It was O’Meara who cranked up the heat until the Pentagon finally admitted that three submarines, performing a training exercise off the coast of Long Island that night, might have fired upon the airplane accidentally.[606]

After Capitol Hill, O’Meara turned to investigative journalism, and published a book on psychiatry, “Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Invents Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill.” Her book examines the correlation between the use of anti-depressants, like Prozac, and shooting rampages by teenagers and adults.[607]

Finally, O’Meara had known my intelligence handler, Paul Hoven, for more than 20 years. Like me, she was introduced to Hoven by Pat Wait, chief of staff for Rep. Helen Bentley, (GOP- Maryland). She was also a regular at the Hunan for several years.[608]

O’MEARA: “I met Paul when I was investigating the death of Irana San Salvador, who was a U.S. embassy guard in San Salvador. Anyway he was killed, and I was investigating. I was telling this friend of mine, this chief of staff about it, and she said, oh, you need to meet Paul Hoven. He can probably help you with that. So I met Paul.”

“He’s a likeable fellow. We became friends. Paul’s the one that first took me to the Hunan, or told me I should come over to the Hunan on Thursday nights, because it is a group of Capitol Hill staffers. Some Pentagon people showed up every now and then. Some lobbyists. Basically it was just you know, after work, have a drink and talk shop.”

Shaughnessy was determined to prove that Hoven had longstanding relationships within the intelligence community, whether he chose to acknowledge formal ties to the Defense Intelligence Agency or not. He had an iron grip on the shadow nature of intelligence work. And so, very astutely, Shaughnessy guided O’Meara to describe the quirky habits of the intelligence community. As conversation, O’Meara’s insights would have been fascinating. In this context, it was frightening.

SHAUGHNESSY: “Did you learn, as the years went along, what sorts of things he did for a living?”

O’MEARA: “I didn’t know what Paul did as far as a living. I never knew Paul to have a job like everybody else. I mean, I never saw him get up and go to work, nine to five, at least when I knew him. I know beforehand, apparently, he was involved in military things on the Hill. But when I knew him, I didn’t know him to have a job.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Now, did there come a time when you met a fellow named Joe Harvey?”

O’MEARA: “Yes.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “How did you meet him, and what did your relationship become with Harvey?”

O’MEARA: “I was the lead investigator for TWA 800, the crash off of Long Island [in July, 1996] for Congressman Forbes. Anyway, Paul Hoven knew I was investigating that crash. And he said, “Oh, you need to talk to Joe Harvey.” So he introduced me to Joe Harvey because Joe was a former Navy SEAL. That was what I was told. I met Joe. He’s a very nice guy, and we had about a four-year friendship, you know.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Was there a particular term that Mr. Hoven used with respect to your relationship with Joe Harvey?”

O’MEARA: “Well, that came at the end of the relationship. During the whole time I knew Joe, even when I left the Hill and became an investigative reporter [at the Washington Times], Paul never said anything to me. It was after I was working on a story on the Oklahoma City bombing. And I remember Joe gave me some information, and I wasn’t clear on it, so I e-mailed him and asked him to clarify something.”

O’MEARA: “Joe Harvey wrote back, and said, “I don’t ever want to talk to you again.”

THE COURT: “Never?”

O’MEARA: “I never want to talk to you again.” I didn’t know why. I was kind of shocked because I always thought we were just really good friends. And I didn’t understand what had happened.”

“So anyway, when I saw Paul, I told him, and I showed Paul the e-mail. And Paul looked at me, and he goes, “Well, he’s not your handler anymore, Kelly.” Which kind of upset me, because Paul was the one that introduced me to Joe. And I had no idea that I had a handler.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “What did you take the term “handler” to be?”

O’MEARA: “Well, what do you take it to be?”

SHAUGHNESSY: “You have to say.”

O’MEARA: “OK. Somebody who kept an eye on me, passed information that I might have given to him, you know.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “To whom?”

O’MEARA: “Intelligence. That’s what I thought. I could be wrong, but that’s what I thought.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “With respect to Mr. Hoven, did you understand in any way that he was involved in intelligence work?”

O’MEARA: “This is just an opinion, OK.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Yes. Did you believe Mr. Hoven to be a member, or involved with intelligence?”

O’MEARA: “Yes.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Why?”

O’MEARA: “Because I always thought from the time I met Paul, that Paul was an information passer. For people who don’t live in Washington, or aren’t involved in investigations and stuff, maybe you don’t understand that. But Paul always had interesting information. He was always asking you about what you knew. I know that I told him something once on TWA 800 that actually ended up in a newspaper the very next day.”

“I always just felt Paul passed information. Add that with all of the people he introduced me to, the fact that he never had a job that I knew of, I thought that’s what he did.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Do you know a gentleman named Dr. Richard Fuisz?”

O’MEARA: “I have met Dr. Fuisz.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “How did you meet Dr. Fuisz?”

O’MEARA: “Through Paul Hoven.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Would you please explain what happened?”

O’MEARA: “Paul wanted me to meet his good friend, Dr. Fuisz, and we drove out to Dr. Fuisz’s office. I was sick the day that we drove out there, so Paul ended up driving my car. I thought it was in Vienna, Virginia, but I understand now it’s actually in Chantilly. Anyway, we went to his office and kind of just chitchatted for a while. I wasn’t impressed.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Did you later find out whether or not Dr. Fuisz had any relationship to the intelligence community?”

O’MEARA: “I was told by Paul Hoven. And this is what actually got me hooked up with Susan after all these years. I read her Lockerbie deposition.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “What does that mean, Lockerbie deposition?”

O’MEARA: “She wrote a deposition for the Pan Am 103 Lockerbie trial.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “What was the nub of the deposition that caught your attention?”

O’MEARA: “Her deposition was actually almost to the letter what Paul Hoven told me about Lockerbie.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “What was that?”

O’MEARA: “That it wasn’t the Libyans that shot it down. It was the Syrians. And Dr. Fuisz was there. He knew. There was supposed to be some secret meeting that was set up between a member of Congress in Switzerland, but something happened where it didn’t work out. So the Syrians were going to take the – I mean the Libyans were going to take the fall for this.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “All right.”

O’MEARA: “When I saw Susan’s deposition on Google– I didn’t even know she did a deposition until just recently. That’s when I called her. I said, Susan, I had no idea that Paul had told you the same thing that he told me.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “How was Dr. Fuisz related to this?”

O’MEARA: “Paul said that Dr. Fuisz was there. He knew.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “There? Where?”

O’MEARA: “I assumed it was in Syria. He was in Syria.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “He knew what?”

O’MEARA: “That it was the Syrians, and not the Libyans.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “That is essentially what the –”

O’MEARA: “That’s what Susan wrote in her deposition, and I was very, very shocked to see it, because I didn’t know she had wrote a deposition, and I had no idea that anybody had told her the same thing that Paul had told me.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “When did this come in relation to your meeting Dr. Fuisz?”

O’MEARA: “I don’t remember the dates. I have been away from the Hill since ‘97.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Was it after or before your meeting with Dr. Fuisz?”

O’MEARA: “It was after my meeting with Dr. Fuisz.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “And have you met Dr. Fuisz again?”

O’MEARA: “Yes. Paul contacted me, asking me to do an article (when I was a reporter) for Dr. Fuisz, about some contractor trouble he was having with a house he was building. I didn’t do the article, because they never gave me the documentation that I needed.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Getting back to the deposition concerning Lockerbie and Libya, were you present, or did you observe conversations between Hoven and Susan?”

O’MEARA: “All the time.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “All right.”

O’MEARA: “At least every Thursday at Hunan, when I was at Hunan. I mean, sometimes you know, you have hearings or whatever, and you are not able to make it. When Susan was there and Paul was there, they were talking.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Did they talk about Lockerbie with some frequency?”

O’MEARA: “I don’t know. I have no idea. I didn’t go and listen to their conversations. I just know that when they were there together, they were talking to each other. And I heard about Susan all the time from Paul.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “What did you hear?”

O’MEARA: “You name it. I mean, I’m sorry to say I’m embarrassed. I used to get tired of hearing about Susan frankly.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Did he speak well of her?”

O’MEARA: “Yes. Sure. I mean, I think this has already been in the press, but Paul nicknamed Susan “Snowflake,” and he used do say she was dingy.”

THE COURT: “She was what?”

O’MEARA: “Dingy. I never thought much of it, but Paul spoke about Susan a lot to me. I met with Paul I would say three or four times a month, you know, for years, dinners—”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Did he explain sometimes what she was doing, and –”

O’MEARA: “Sometimes.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “And what was that?”

O’MEARA: “I just listened to Paul tell me the stuff.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “All right. Did you talk with Paul Hoven at about the time he was interviewed by the FBI?”

O’MEARA: “I got a call from Paul after the FBI interviewed him. Yes.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Did he talk with you about the substance of the interview?”

O’MEARA: “Yes.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “What was the substance according to Paul?”

O’MEARA: “It was a strange phone call. I hadn’t talked to Paul for awhile. Paul left town – again, I’m guessing – I think it was right after Susan was arrested. It was very quickly. Paul left town and went back to Minnesota.”

“Anyway, so I was angry at Paul for not saying goodbye to me, because I knew him for so long. So then, when I got this call, that he had been interviewed by the FBI, that was kind of interesting that he took the time to call me.”

“Basically he was saying to me in Paul’s fashion—Oh, Susan said I am defense intelligence and she’s f’ing crazy and she doesn’t f’ing know what she’s talking about. I mean, that’s the way Paul talks.”

“I said, Paul, I said, you know, Susan was always kind of ditzy, but I never thought she was crazy. It was just this really intense phone call. I have to say that I had a feeling Paul wanted me to agree with him that she was crazy, and I couldn’t. I said, Paul, I don’t think she’s crazy.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Well, did Paul say that Susan was incorrect or inaccurate when she described him as being intelligence, or did he say she’s crazy for having said it? What was your impression?”

O’MEARA: “Paul never denied during the telephone call that he was defense intelligence, or whatever she was claiming. But he just kept saying, oh, she’s crazy.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “All right. Had he ever expressed the notion that Susan was crazy before this?”

O’MEARA: “No. Not to me.”

On cross examination, O’Callaghan, my prosecutor, sprung a huge surprise on O’Meara.

According to O’Callaghan, Paul Hoven told the FBI he hardly knows O’Meara at all. Hoven claimed that he only met her “a couple of times.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “Thank you. Now, you talked about the meetings that you had at this Hunan restaurant in Washington, D.C., correct?”

O’MEARA: “Right.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “How long did these dinner meetings or dinner get-togethers take place? How many years?”

O’MEARA: “Years. I did it for years. Ten – I won’t say ten. Five. Five years.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “Five to ten years?”

O’MEARA: “I think I did. I mean, it was a long time that we were there. I think I was involved in it maybe five years, and I was like late to the group, I think. All I know is I went to them for a long time.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “Was Paul Hoven at some of these dinner get-togethers that you described?”

O’MEARA: “Yes.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “Do you think you met Mr. Hoven at these dinners quite frequently?”

O’MEARA: “Yes.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “Would it surprise you if Mr. Hoven told the FBI that he only met you once or twice at these dinner get-togethers?”

O’MEARA: “I would be insulted to hear that.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “So it would surprise you?”

O’MEARA: “Very surprising.”

It was a stunning moment, a whopper of a lie that caused O’Meara to shake visibly in front of the Judge.

O’CALLAGHAN: “Now, you testified that you came to know Paul Hoven through these dinner get-togethers and conversations with him fairly well, correct?”

O’MEARA: “I knew Paul before those dinners, years before those dinners.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “So, years before the dinners and then through the dinners, you got to know him through the beginning of the 1990s?”

O’MEARA: “Yes.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “You never came to know what Paul Hoven did for a living, however?”

O’MEARA: “No. As I said, I never knew Paul to have a nine-to-five job or – I knew that he tinkered with voice recognition. But I didn’t ever really – I was never told that he was getting paid for that, or it was a job. It was something he kind of tinkered with.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “So you never came to find out that Mr. Hoven acted as a press agent for ABC News, is that right?”

O’MEARA: “While I knew Paul? Never.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “And that he did freelance press work for 60 Minutes?”

O’MEARA: “That was before I met Paul. That was years before. He did a Panama story and got sick [with a heart virus]. He told me about that. I never knew Paul to do any press work while I knew him.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “OK. Now, Paul Hoven never told you, did he? That he ever worked for the CIA?”

O’MEARA: “No.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “He never told you that he worked for the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, correct?”

O’MEARA: “That’s correct. I mean nobody comes out and says they’re a spook.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “If I could set your time frame from 1999 to 2003, OK? Are you with me?”

O’MEARA: “Yes.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “Do you know where you were working at about approximately during those years?”

O’MEARA: “1999 to 2003, I was at the Washington Times.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “How often during ‘99 and 2003 would you speak with Paul Hoven?”

O’MEARA: “All the time. I mean, Paul and I were friends. I considered Paul a friend.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “As a friend, approximately how many times a month do you think you would talk to him?”

O’MEARA: “At least once a week.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “This was generally telephone conversations?”

O’MEARA: “Sometimes we went out to dinner.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “Now, during those years, 1999 to 2003, did Paul Hoven ever discuss with you Susan Lindauer?”

O’MEARA: “I’m sure he did.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “Do you recall any specific times that Paul Hoven discussed Susan Lindauer?”

O’MEARA: “Paul talked about Susan all the time.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “I’m specifically asking you from 1999 to 2003. Did Paul Hoven’s discussion about Susan Lindauer diminish in comparison to the early to mid 1990s?”

O’MEARA: “No. I would say it was more.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “During the times that you did speak with Susan Lindauer, did you ever get the impression that she was exaggerating her base of information, with respect to what she was talking about? In the 1990s. Whenever you spoke to Susan, did you have a sense that she was exaggerating her role?”

O’MEARA: “No.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “Have you ever had concerns about Ms. Lindauer’s mental health?”

O’MEARA: “No.”

O’CALLAGHAN: “Do you think you’re qualified to express any opinion about her mental health?”

THE COURT: “Are you able to answer the question, as it’s phrased, ma’am?”

O’MEARA: I think I’m qualified insomuch as I can, you know, read the DSM [diagnostic symptoms manual] just like any psychiatrist, and look at a list of behaviors.”

O’MEARA: “As somebody who knows Susan for many, many years, not as a good friend, but as an acquaintance at meetings, at the Hunan, and from hearing about her from Paul, I never got a sense in all that time that Susan was mentally unstable.”

On redirect with Shaughnessy, for the Defense:

SHAUGHNESSY: “With respect to Mr. Hoven, this fellow who maybe met you “a couple of times,” approximately how many times did you meet with him from, let’s say the mid ‘90s to the present?”

O’MEARA: “I haven’t seen him in a couple of years since he went back to Minnesota, but Paul was a regular fixture in my life. I considered him a close friend. He had dinner at my family’s homes many, many times. I mean, I met with Paul a lot.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Just a moment. Where does your family live?”

O’MEARA: “In northern Virginia.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Would he come over to dinner at your family’s house?”

O’MEARA: “Yes.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “About how many times?”

O’MEARA: “Well, he was very welcome at my sister’s home. He used to love – he thought it was from Better Homes and Gardens. He went swimming in the pool there. He was you know, he was part of my life. He was a good friend. I considered him a very good friend. And we met often for dinner, talked on the phone all the time.”

“In fact, Paul threatened a reporter one day for being rude to me when I was on the Hill. He called me, and told me. I told him I would kill him if he ever did that again. I mean Paul. We were very close friends.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “So when he says he maybe met you a couple of times –”

O’MEARA: “He’s lying.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Have you recently had brought to your attention, writings or matters that relate Paul to the intelligence community?”

O’MEARA: “Yes. I started doing some research on Google, and Paul is very evident in a blog. I actually printed out his responses. They are on my chair over there. He’s responding to other people asking questions about other spooks, or other intelligence-type people like Gene Wheaton [one of the key figures who exposed Oliver North and the Iran-Contra Scandal] and Ed Wilson [a covert CIA operative who served 27 years in prison for running a black operation in Libya].”

“Paul is going into some explanation about some of these people. How Paul knew them, and so forth and so on.”

“Paul also introduced me to Bill Weisenberger and Alice Weisenberger. And Bill is former CIA [heavily engaged with Ed Wilson in former CIA operations involving Libya]. I used to go shooting with Paul at Bill’s farm. Paul would take me there, shooting guns.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Paul Hoven?”

O’MEARA: “Paul Hoven took me there. We used to call them Big Bill and Alice. And we would go to dinner a lot with Big Bill and his wife, Alice.”

“So, I mean, is it in the realm that Paul knew people in intelligence? Yes. Certainly Bill Weisenberger was in the CIA, and it’s written about all over Google. You can read it. I mean, he doesn’t deny that he was in the CIA.”

From the defendant’s chair, I let out a long sigh. A deep breath that I’d been holding inside me for four years, anticipating this moment.

Did Paul Hoven have deep affiliations inside the murky world of intelligence?

Gracious, yes!

And did he have strong ties with me? For many years?

Indisputably.

Imagine that moment for me, as the “accused Iraqi agent.” For four years, I had begged and pleaded for this one simple pre-trial evidentiary hearing, so that independent sources like Kelly O’Meara could authenticate these relationships. All of my requests got denied.

Instead, I had been incarcerated for one year in prison on a Texas military base. Scorned as “incompetent.” Threatened with needle injections of Haldol to “cure me” of believing the truth of my own life. I had to listen to crazy psychiatrists argue as to whether my relationship with Hoven and Dr. Fuisz existed at all.

At one point at Carswell, the psych crowd speculated that these men might not be real people! Maybe I invented them!

It got that crazy!

The difference was that now I had a superior attorney who wanted to defend me. That’s what changed the dynamic of my legal battle. One attorney’s determination to advocate for the rights of his client.

The outcome was a stunning reversal. From the opening moments of Kelly O’Meara’s testimony, all that speculative conjecture of the psychological evaluations crashed down in the Courtroom. Like a demolition, it collapsed in minutes flat.

Psychiatry failed the reality test.

Consider the irony— Psychiatry had sworn that Courts have no need for participatory witnesses. The “medical insight” of psychiatry was sufficient to know the “truth” about my activities and relationships. Participatory witnesses would be superfluous and confusing.

Except the lunatic psychiatrists got it all wrong.

That single morning of testimony proved psychiatry had been vainglorious and empty of insight exactly as I told Judge Mukasey two years earlier, when I pleaded against forcible drugging. The “diagnosis” had been fraudulent and devoid of reality contact.

Sadly, for the first time, Shaughnessy and I confronted hard evidence that some of Hoven’s statements to the FBI must have been dishonest— like telling the FBI that Hoven only met Kelly O’Meara “a couple of times,” when they were incredibly close friends for 20 years. Hoven was a close friend of mine for 9 years.

One has to wonder if Hoven scrubbed O’Meara from his life just like he scrubbed me. He no longer needed us anymore. So he obliterated us both, erasing all the warm memories and exciting adventures that we shared together.

O’Meara and I are baffled by it.

But those who watch the intelligence community should recognize familiar patterns in his behavior. Just like Joe Harvey dumped O’Meara after four years of close contact, once his responsibility as her handler finished, so Hoven cut me off, too. We were used up as sources. He moved on.

Intelligence watchers would also recognize the familiarity of the lifestyle. Intelligence folk frequently appear to have no formal occupation. Dr. Fuisz used to joke that there would be “no business cards” at his meetings. Another joke around Washington is that neighbors can identify the spooks next door, according to who’s mowing the lawn or heading to the beach on a glorious Tuesday afternoon, when everybody else is tied down at an office.

My neighbors gossiped about me, too. It’s part and parcel of the culture.

Hoven would often hide behind his heart disease and disability retirement to avoid questions about his employment. In truth, his heart ailment never interfered with supervising my contacts with Libya and Iraq. He was my handler, and both of us stayed active and busy.

And I could never forget that Hoven showed up at my door knowing I warned the Tunisian Embassy about the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

My closest friends and family were completely ignorant of that extraordinary event. Yet Hoven had been fully debriefed in all particulars. At the beginning of our relationship, he frequently berated me that we would have no contact at all, on account of the wild differences in our political perspectives, except for the government’s desire to keep an eye on me after that attack.

Yes, he called me “goofy.” Hoven was a hard right conservative, who attended “Soldier of Fortune” soirees in Washington. I was a progressive democrat and peace activist. We were an odd couple, for sure. We had very different motivations for doing this work. And yet Hoven was one of my closest friends for a decade. I called him my “big brother.” I described Richard Fuisz as “my uncle.” I loved these men, and I considered it a privilege to share adventures with them. I had the best life I could have hoped for.

Sometimes I have wondered if perhaps Hoven and Dr. Fuisz wrongly imagined that I complained to these crazy psychiatrists about our past. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I spoke very highly about our relationships.

And what about his link to the Defense Intelligence Agency, as a double blind? Hoven was adamant that our projects in New York broke no laws against CIA operations or surveillance inside the United States. He always stipulated that Defense Intelligence had authorization from Congress to run domestic counter-terrorism operations. Hoven portrayed his ability to liaison with Defense Intelligence as critical for the legitimacy of our work in New York. Though officially retired on disability, Hoven always insisted that our team’s actions were entirely legal, because he kept Defense Intelligence in the loop. That was a big deal.

At trial, other witnesses like Ian Ferguson, a Scottish journalist and investigator for the Lockerbie Appeals, would testify that other Intelligence officers identified Hoven as the Defense Intelligence liaison for Lockerbie. And it was true.

When it came to identifying fellow travelers and spooks that I might encounter on my path, Hoven said it best.

“Susan, if it waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

“But Paul!” I’d say. “How can I be sure?”

“Susan,” he’d say, laughing. “It’s a duck.”

After four years waiting for my day in Court, I heard O’Meara’s testimony with a satisfied heart. We had one shot before trial at proving the authenticity of my relationship with Hoven and his wide intelligence contacts.

O’Meara knocked it out of the ball park.

But my defense wasn’t finished yet. Shaughnessy was determined to validate our team’s 9/11 warning, as well. We intended to prove the FBI, the U.S Attorneys Office and the Bureau of Prisons had always known the truth throughout the debate on forcible drugging, while I was locked up at Carswell and M.C.C.

That would force the question of prosecutorial misconduct out in the open. It would also keep open the question of whether Hoven lied, as O’Callaghan argued most adamantly to Judge Preska. We could not be sure if O’Callaghan was relying on Hoven’s absence from the courtroom to mislead the proceedings again. That remained a distinct possibility, given all that had come before.

Either way, validating my 9/11 warning would prove O’Callaghan told a terrible lie to Judge Mukasey, when he denied the independent confirmation of my team’s warnings during the awful debate on forcible drugging. That deception officially made my story one of the most savage government cover ups in the last decade—

Again, my Defense chose wisely.

Parke Godfrey is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at York University in Toronto, Canada’s third largest university. A scientist and mathematician, who does calculus algorithms for fun, like a game, Godfrey presents a calm, studied demeanor. He’s a precise and methodical thinker who chooses his words carefully. During difficult court questioning, he would pause to give an accurate, thoughtful response.

The two of us had become close friends in 1990, while Godfrey worked on his PhD in artificial intelligence and deductive databases at the University of Maryland in College Park. He has taught at York University since 1999, with a two year sabbatical at William and Mary College in Virginia.[609]

Godfrey and I met through an old friend from Smith College, my alma mater in Northampton, Massachusetts, shortly after I arrived in Washington.

SHAUGHNESSY: “With what frequency did you see Susan?”

GODFREY: “Until I moved to Toronto in ‘99, I probably saw Susan on an average of twice a week. I probably spoke with her on an average of two to three times a week.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “So you came to know her pretty well, is that correct?

GODFREY: “Yes.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Now, were you aware that she was concerned with, perhaps, antiwar activity and peace-type activity?”

GODFREY: “Yes. I was.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Did she speak with you about certain activities that she had become aware of, that is, certain dangers that she believed were facing us?”

GODFREY: “She did, yes.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Would you please describe them?”

GODFREY: “The first way I found that she was quite an antiwar activist is probably early on. We and other friends went to a number of the demonstrations that were happening in the early ‘90s downtown. The marches and such.”

“One, if I’m remembering correctly, was an antiwar rally during the Gulf War, and a couple of others were rallies for abortion rights.”

“Then, in the mid 90s, I was aware that she was involved in a number of things that she described as peace activism. She also did quite a bit of extracurricular activity and traveling to New York to talk with different groups, in particular, always, with a very keen interest in Middle Eastern problems.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Did there come a time when she was concerned about a possible attack on the United States?”

GODFREY: “She had described that.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “What did she describe?”

GODFREY: “In particular, she warned me when I was job hunting and considering potential work in New York, because I liked New York City, that New York City was dangerous, and in particular she was predicting that there was going to be a massive attack here. In particular in southern Manhattan. This was before 9/11.”

“So when I was looking for the job at William and Mary, which was late 2000 – I was at York University, but was looking at other universities – she warned [me] not to consider New York because she thought an attack was imminent here.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Continue, please.”

GODFREY: “I asked her about the nature of it. She said that she thought it would be something very, very big. I asked her, “Well, what do you mean?” She said that it would involve airplanes and possibly a nuclear weapon. She said that what was started in ‘93, she thought was going to come back.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “What was that she referenced as having started in ‘93?”

GODFREY: “Well, the attempt on the World Trade Centers at the time.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Did she believe, or was she telling you that very shortly there was likely to be another attack of that nature?”

GODFREY: “She did. She said that it would complete the cycle of that attack. And she said that there would be an attack in late summer, early fall.”

“In August, she told me that she thought it was some time imminent.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Now, did you know any of the things that she was doing that might have given her access to information, that might lead to a prediction of that nature?”

GODFREY: “Well, I had known that she was active in trying to prevent escalation with what turned out to be the war in Iraq. She had been making trips to New York to talk to people there. But nothing in my mind ever connected that she would have any access to information or intelligence that would give any indication of an attack.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “You said she was visiting New York periodically. Do you know who, not necessarily the names, but the nature of the people she visited in New York City?”

GODFREY: “I don’t know directly, no. Only afterwards have I found out – well, I have learned that she supposedly was talking with people at the Iraqi consulate, although she had always described that she was meeting with consulate folks with different Middle Eastern countries.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Did she mention any of those countries?”

GODFREY: “Not directly, no. Not to me.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Now, sir, did she ever mention a person named Paul Hoven?”

GODFREY: “Yes.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “In what respect?”

GODFREY: “Our socializing was with a group of friends. We all lived in Maryland. And in particular, it’s hard to live in the Washington, D.C. area and not be somewhat political. And we were quite a tight group of Democrats. Very often a lot of our socializing revolved around some political issue or another.”

“I remember a party we had at our place, the time of the [Democratic] convention, where Bill Clinton was nominated. When I talked to Susan about other things that she did, and other socializing she did, she described a group that she got together with on a weekly basis, down on Capitol Hill, and other times down on the Virginia side.”

“And she used to laugh and say it was about as opposite from our social group as possible. A lot of these people were very, very much Republican. And also that these people that she knew, and talked with quite a bit, were involved in policy, and in particular in the Intelligence Communities.”

“One of the persons that she described as being a member of that group, who was a good friend of hers, was Paul Hoven.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Did she explain anything that she may have done with Paul Hoven, or was it simply as part of the group there?”

GODFREY: “Not anything, to my knowledge, as to her political activism or peace activism. I think he was one of the first people she met in that group. As best I knew, that group was primarily a social group. They invited her in, because she had become friends with Paul Hoven, and also because of the connections with her father, who is a Republican, who had run at one point for governor of Alaska.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “Did there seem to be any hostility, acrimony, hard feelings or anything of that nature between her and Paul Hoven?”

GODFREY: “Not that I am aware of, no.”

SHAUGHNESSY: “You talked about Susan going up to meet with Middle Eastern, people from the Middle East, in the embassies, or whatever. Did she mention any particular countries that stand out in your mind that she went to see?”

GODFREY: “Actually, no. Whenever she did speak of such things, she always spoke of those activities in a vague way, and told me on purpose. These were activities that she was doing, to my understanding and I fully believe, as part of her peace activism. But it wasn’t something that I was involved with. And she said, a lot of these talks that I am having and all, well, she just felt it was better not to go into the details.”

Godfrey’s exchange with the Prosecutor on 9/11 amused me. The Prosecutor tried to dismiss my 9/11 warning as “a premonition.”

Godfrey adamantly corrected him that it was “a prediction— not a premonition.” And he stuck by it, never deviating from the word.

For the sake of further clarity, he submitted an affidavit on the 9/11 warning,[610] which cuts through the Prosecutor’s attempts to deflect the impact of my warning. (See Appendix)

GODFREY: “Ms. Lindauer’s original warning to me in 2000 was somewhat vague, describing her opinion that a terrorist attack would occur in New York City. I recall that by the spring and summer of 2001, her warning became much more emphatic and explicit. She got much more agitated about the likelihood of the attack.”

“Ms. Lindauer confided in me on several occasions her concern that the next terrorist attack would involve airplane hijackings and/or airplane bombings.”

“In the spring and summer of 2001, on several occasions, Lindauer expressed heightened concern that a terrorist attack was in the works that would strike the southern part of Manhattan. She claimed it would reprise the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. She described the attack as completing the cycle started in that first attack.”

“She definitely tied the threat of airplane hijackings to, what she said, would be some sort of strike on the World Trade Center. That’s what she was predicting.”

“In August, 2001, Ms. Lindauer told me the attack was “imminent. She warned me to stay out of New York City. She told me the situation was very dangerous, and that a lot of people would get killed in this attack. She expected heavy casualties.”

GODFREY: “In September, 2004— I was interviewed by the FBI in Mississauga (adjacent to Toronto), in the presence of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The RCMP insisted on this, as the interview was in Canada, and I was a Canadian resident. I spoke with FBI special agent Suzan LeTourneau.”

[That was four years before the hearing in New York and 12 months before I got incarcerated at Carswell]

“While the interview focused on mundane details of Ms. Lindauer’s life and acquaintances, the conversation did touch on her indictment and her predictions. I told [FBI Special Agent] LeTourneau that Ms. Lindauer had predicted the 9/11 attack throughout the spring and summer of 2001, and that her prediction was very specific. It involved airplane hijackings and a strike on the World Trade Center.”

At the defendant’s table, I experienced a grim satisfaction of triumph. My mind flashed back to those terrified nights at M.C.C, writing desperate letters to Judge Mukasey, frantic and tearful at 2 in the morning, begging for the right to call witnesses, so I could prove myself.

Everything I said was truthful always. Within a few months of my arrest, the FBI, the US Attorneys Office—and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police— were fully aware that a private citizen outside the Intelligence Community stood ready to authenticate my 9/11 warning in a Court of Law.

Notably, Godfrey’s testimony could not be suppressed by secrecy laws. His revelations would have created serious blowback for Congress, which in September 2004, was getting ready to publish the 9/11 Commission Report. The 9/11 Commission strongly denounced “conspiracy theorists” who believed action should have been possible to prevent the strike, or substantially cripple its impact.

The 9/11 Commission Report would have been exposed as an egregious public fraud. And the truth would be out in the open.

That provided a strong motivation for the Justice Department to fight my demands for a trial.

The FBI was not the only agency at the Justice Department to speak with Godfrey, either. In his affidavit, Godfrey discussed how he spoke with Dr. Shadduck at Carswell about my 9/11 warning, too.[611]

GODFREY: “In early December 2005, I believe, a few months after Ms. Lindauer had been sent to Carswell Prison, I spoke with the psychologist handling her competence evaluation for the Court. During our conversation, I attempted to confirm with him that Ms. Lindauer had made predictions of a terrorist attack in Manhattan to me and others prior to the 9/11 attack. He seemed to have no interest in hearing this. Our conversation was brief.”

“While she was still detained in prison, I offered to travel from Toronto and testify at any competency hearing, as a character witness, on her mental competence, on what I knew of her political activities before her indictment, about warnings of terrorist attacks, and any other aspects for which the Court might be interested.”

“I attended the hearing on forcible drugging in May, 2006. I offered to testify on that day. In fact, I arrived at the Court, assuming that I was to testify. However, her attorney, Mr. Sam Talkin, did not call me. In conversation that day, I told him that she had made warnings of a terrorist attack to me and others, in advance of 9/11. I told him that I was mortified by what the Court seemed to be doing.”

No one can doubt that Godfrey made tremendous efforts to authenticate my 9/11 warning— in interviews with the FBI and the Bureau of Prisons, my Uncle Ted Lindauer and other Defense attorneys. Nevertheless, I continued to suffer taunts in Court for years that I was “delusional” for suggesting I gave advance warning about 9/11.

If not for Judge Mukasey’s superior vigilance, the deception would have succeeded. I would have been “detained indefinitely” under the Patriot Act, and shot full of Haldol—until whatever time I could be reformed and persuaded to recant the facts of my life, which intersect so tragically with the truth about 9/11 and Iraq.

It was grotesquely corrupt. And legally fraudulent.

Godfrey discussed it further in his affidavit.[612]

GODFREY: “I consider Ms. Lindauer fully competent in all ways, and devoid of any mental illness or instability.”

“Ms. Lindauer has an artistic and mercurial temperament. She is passionate as an activist supporting her causes. She is a creative writer and former journalist. I have never observed mental instability or mental illness in her behavior.”

He expressed concern for the legal competence of my attorney, Mr. Talkin as well.

GODFREY: “I made myself available to speak with the investigator working for her defense attorney. I was prepared for a lengthy conversation, including a discussion of Ms. Lindauer’s 9/11 warning. I was surprised when the defense investigator cut short the conversation after only five to ten minutes. His questions seemed far inadequate for the scope of the indictment against Ms. Lindauer, and for what I felt I had to share with her Defense Attorney.”

GODFREY: “Several months later, I contacted Ms. Lindauer’s uncle, Ted Lindauer, and spoke with him at greater length about several issues in her case. I can verify that Ms. Lindauer felt compelled to seek her uncle’s assistance interviewing witnesses for her case, before she got sent to Carswell.”

In conclusion, Godfrey disputed the notion of my incompetence whole heartedly, and roundly castigated the Justice Department.

GODFREY: “In my opinion, contrary to the Justice Department lawyers, Ms. Lindauer is now, and always was, competent to stand trial. The decision to accuse her of incompetence was baffling to myself and many others. I was forced to conclude that it was likely politically motivated to block her request for a trial.”

“Throughout this entire ordeal, Susan Lindauer has suffered harassment. She faced inexcusable delays in setting a trial date, (or in dropping the charges). She was repeatedly questioned in court over the reliability of her terrorist warnings, despite that they had been corroborated by me and by many others in affidavits, and under oath in spoken testimony. She was incarcerated in a mental facility, within a federal prison for 7 months, 1,300 miles from her home for supposed observation. And then held in confinement for months afterwards.”

“The FBI and the US Attorneys Office’s behavior in Ms. Lindauer’s case were abhorrent. It is quite clear that much more was going on.”

The Old Gray Haired Lady Suffers Dementia

Well, I was elated by our success. I thought we’d won the day.

Until I read the New York Times.

The article by Alan Feuer,[613] buried in the Metropolitan Section, made no mention of Godfrey’s explosive revelations of my 9/11 warning, nor any mention of Kelly O’Meara’s confirmation of my lengthy relationship with Hoven or his noted intelligence ties. It offered nothing about my claims to have worked as a U.S. Intelligence Asset, covering Iraq at the United Nations before the War.

Ground Zero stood 1,000 yards from the Federal Courthouse on Pearl Street where my hearing took place. But the New York Times apparently saw no reason to enlighten readers in New York City that the Justice Department was fighting to block an American citizen’s Constitutional Right to a Trial, in order to withhold critical information about 9/11 from the American people.

Instead, in his opening lead, New York Times journalist, Alan Feuer, falsely declared that I “stuck my tongue out at the Prosecutor.”[614]

I had to read it several times. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was an outrageous lie, not even close to the mark. I practically wept.

I never stuck my tongue at children in the 3rd grade. That’s not my style. I might have flipped the guy a finger! Oh yes, with great satisfaction! But I had a broken molar tooth that day, which scraped my tongue painfully. Sticking out my tongue at O’Callaghan was simply not possible.

Feuer could not see my face anyway. I was seated directly in front of him, facing the Judge. The invention was disgraceful, a gross lack of journalistic integrity. Real tabloid trash. Yet because the New York Times printed it, ordinary people would believe it.

Why did Feuer do it? I felt so betrayed. Here I had waited four years for a chance to tell my story to the people of New York. All I got was one morning and the chance to present two outstanding witnesses. The gravitas of the occasion was most evident. I could not smile at my witnesses, because the consequence of the occasion was so severe.

And this was how the New York Times reported my story?

Ah, but America has come a long way since the days when the New York Times served up the only source of hard news for the people.

Robert Redford would have shared my disappointment in this bitter sequel to “Three Days of the Condor.” But like me, Redford would have saluted his champions in the New Media on the internet.

Because in fact, the blogs carried the day! They were on the ball, ready to expose the corruption that the New York Times tried to bury from the public, for whatever reasons.

Thank heavens for the blogs!

One of the best investigative journalists today, Michael Collins had traveled to New York for my hearing that morning. He was in the courtroom, and caught it all for posterity, with careful attention to details and nuance. He reported it all. My 9/11 warning. The validation of my relationship to Hoven and his murky ties to U.S. Intelligence.

That truth was not lost, though the “gray haired lady” of journalism clearly suffered dementia not to print it.

It was blog journalist, Michael Collins who sat up and paid attention. Collins who alerted the blogging community. Collins who told America: “9/11 Prediction Revealed at Susan Lindauer Hearing on Competence.”[615]

That felt so sweet and so good. Collins posted my 9/11 warning dead center for the changing of the media guard, the rise of a new watch dog for the people.

And what about Feuer, that New York Times’ hack? He got flamed on the blogs.

Damning headlines all over the internet taunted: “From the People Who Brought Us Judith Miller: The NYT “Covers” Susan Lindauer hearing.”[616] A friendly reminder of the dishonesty of the New York Times’ reporting on Pre-War Intelligence and its unchecked “facts.”

It was a good lesson for the Times’ editors in New York. They can’t pull this sort of crap on the people and get away with it. Not anymore. It won’t be tolerated.

Like everything else, it was bittersweet validation, after so many years of harassment.

There was another surprise coming that would blow us away.

A few short weeks after Godfrey’s and O’Meara’s testimony, O’Callaghan left the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.

O’Callaghan joined the upper echelon of John McCain’s Presidential Campaign,[617] as part of the top circle of advisers. He was assigned to Sarah Palin’s campaign in Alaska, handling “Troopergate.” That’s right. The man who despised spirituality as evidence of “mental defect” took over the reins of Sarah Palin’s Vice Presidential Campaign!

It was enough to know that O’Callaghan was on McCain’s payroll.

This was a political hit, like I’d always sworn it was. All the players were politically motivated. And the outcome was fixed.

I rest my case.

CHAPTER 33:

“OFF WITH HER HEAD,”
THE RED QUEEN SAID

I won the battle and carried the day with flying colors. It was a tremendous victory by any standard. I had one morning in court. But in that small window, I proved my declarations had been truthful from the first days of my indictment.

Ah, but did I win the decision? Did the Court accept my competency?

On September 9, 2008, lame duck President George Bush nominated Judge Loretta Preska to serve on the 2nd Circuit Appellate Court, a major promotion in her career.[618]

Apparently Judge Preska had other ties to the Bush family, as well. Her husband’s law firm handled Daddy Bush’s legal affairs.

And so, on September 15, 2008, Judge Preska declared me incompetent to stand trial for the second time—six days after receiving her appointment to the higher court.[619]

Neither my 9/11 warnings nor the accuracy of my Pre-War Intelligence mattered a single iota. Assurances from O’Meara that my relationship with Hoven and his intelligence background were fully authentic made no difference. Godfrey’s testimony that he observed no signs of mental instability in almost 20 years proved irrelevant.

Judge Preska declared that my belief that (I) had “a 95 percent chance of acquittal indicated (I) could not appreciate the gravity of the charges.” Therefore, she declared that I “could not adequately assist in (my) defense,” though my own attorney swore otherwise. My advanced understanding of judicial proceedings and high level of social functioning in daily life were also irrelevant, according to Judge Preska.[620]

Judge Preska announced her decision moments after Dr. Kleinman concluded his testimony against me. Notably, Dr. Kleinman declared that I wrongly informed him the Prosecution had floated a plea bargain. Dr. Kleinman cited that “mistake” as proof that I could not understand the proceedings, or participate effectively in my own defense—even though my own attorney protested otherwise.[621]

Thanks to my foresight, my Defense had tape recordings of my interviews with Dr. Kleinman.[622]

We had hard proof that Kleinman devoted two hours trying to cajole and manipulate me into pleading guilty to tax charges, something I was not indicted for.[623] Dr. Kleinman pushed hard for a deal, while I steadfastly refused and urged him to move on to different topics. He would come right back to the plea deal. My reply, captured on tape, was that I didn’t owe any taxes, and if there had been a mistake in my filing to the IRS, I would have amended my tax return—and still not owed a dime to the IRS.

When I rejected the plea bargain, Dr. Kleinman denied the conversation took place.

Ah, what a difference a tape recorder makes!

Shaughnessy was appalled. We filed a Motion for Reconsideration, but Judge Preska ignored our appeal.[624]

By this time, no fewer than five independent psychologists and psychiatrists in Maryland had filed evaluations that nothing was wrong with me. They included Dr. Taddesseh and his partner, Dr. Kennedy at Family Health Services; Dr. Tressa Burton at Counseling Plus, who observed me on a weekly basis in Maryland; a second psychiatrist hired by Pre-Trial Services to evaluate me after Carswell, who’s name Pre-Trial Services refused to reveal, after he issued a favorable evaluation. And Dr. Richard Ratner, retained by Shaughnessy for the competence hearing.

That was an unusually high number of psychiatrists for any case—and they all reported that they saw no evidence of “psychiatric symptoms” in my behavior.

Even Carswell admitted that I showed no signs of depression, delusions or hallucinations. In observation logs, prison staff on M-1 called me “cooperative and pleasant,” and noted I had “zero behavioral problems” and “functioned well on the unit.”

Once, when confronted about the fraud of psychiatry in the courtroom, Tressa Burton at Counseling Plus tried to wheedle an excuse. “Maybe they like your politics. If they’re lying, maybe they’re lying to save you. Don’t you want them to save you?”

“That’s the jury job,” I told her.

The Jury’s job, indeed. And no others.

CHAPTER 34:

DIALOGUE! DIALOGUE!
AND DEMOCRACY!

A friend asked what defines me more—my achievements, even if I carry them alone — or my tragedy, which has been very public and excoriating.

There’s a story that I like very much, about a woman who arrives in Heaven, exhausted and dispirited, after a long journey on the earth marked by many challenges and disappointments.

The Lord takes her to a stained glass window. “Look,” he says. “These are the fragments of your life that broke off on your journey. You thought that your soul was fragile like glass. You thought these broken pieces of you were lost forever.”

“But here, you see, I have saved them all for you. I have taken these broken parts, and made a picture of your life in the colors of the glass. Look how the colors form a mosaic that illustrates the story of who you are. All of those dark fragments come from the hard times. But look how those dark colors create shadows around the bright reds, the greens, and the blues from your happier days. And so the darkness accentuates the joyful moments of your life. The darkness calls attention to your light.”

“And together, all of it is beautiful.”

My friend, John Edward Hurley told me that story, and I think it’s lovely.

I tell that story, because I believe that whatever price I paid for my journey, it was fully worth the cost. It was a hellacious fight, however. The men and women who did this tried to destroy my confidence and spirituality, my sense of identity and pride in my achievements.

Most days I think they failed. I take satisfaction that I have never regretted my actions or choices. I never recanted my political or spiritual beliefs, no matter how badly I felt threatened.

I do believe, however, that my experience sends a warning shot across the bow that our democracy and precious liberties are not so strongly protected as Americans want to believe.

The attack on my activism was irredeemably corrupt from start to finish. Yet nothing stopped it. None of the civil rights enshrined in our Constitution had any impact slowing its momentum. Except for one shrewd and perceptive Judge, I would have been destroyed.

That’s the Patriot Act for you.

Franz Kafka would have been appalled by the deja vu.

Why go to so much trouble? What were Republican leaders hiding that they had to silence me under false indictment for five years without a trial?

I believe that answer is important—and surprisingly hopeful for our future.

Republican leaders wanted to hide the success of dialogue before the Iraqi war in winning Baghdad’s support for anti-terrorism and the 9/11 investigation. My efforts proved diplomacy could achieve results that would have defrayed the conflict, whereas leaders in Washington wanted the world to think War was the only solution.

They were wrong. Dialogue and engagement created a strong opportunity for peace.

I believe it’s important for all of us to know that, perhaps more important today than ever before. With conflicts and wildfires burning throughout the Middle East, there’s a sense of foreboding, as if our global community is racing to the edge of a cliff. Or getting pushed.

And what of us then?

For myself, I believe that we are ignoring a powerful tool that offers the possibility of ratcheting down those conflicts. It is simple. It is communication.

Dialogue and engagement offer a way forward. That is not idealistic or ineffectual. It can be vigorous and demanding, as Libya and Iraq have shown already.

In fact, it’s fairly simple. Changing the dynamic in Libya and Iraq started with one woman walking calmly into one embassy, and sitting down with diplomats, and sharing a cup of tea and friendly conversation. From that simple action, we created a back channel for discussion of the major issues interrupting our relationships.

That’s how the Lockerbie Trial happened. That’s how Libya stopped acting as a sanctuary for terrorists and embraced the concept of nuclear disarmament. Breaking through the isolation of sanctions, we found common ground. And we discovered that our two sides could adopt some measures of friendship. We identified a few common areas of agreement, and we built out from there.

Libya was totally transformed. And it’s because of dialogue.

It was the same with Iraq. Most critically, the success of back-channel dialogue achieved all U.S. objectives two years before the invasion.[625] Once international loathing of Iraq’s humanitarian crisis pointed to the collapse of sanctions, U.S. Intelligence adopted an ambitious agenda for securing the maximum interests of the United States in any post-sanctions period. And we succeeded to a degree that would have astonished Russia, France and China on the Security Council.

The results of our dialogue were outstanding, if I say so myself.

Through a period of intense back channel talks from November 2000 to March 2002, the CIA forced Iraq to accept the return of U.N. weapons inspectors, “with no conditions,” such that Iraq agreed to the most rigorous standards of compliance and maximum transparency ever imposed in history.

Baghdad put up no fight. Quite the opposite, in December, 2000, Iraq’s Ambassador Dr. Saeed Hasan vowed “it would be a short conversation, because Iraq was ready to prove its sincerity on all known U.S. demands.”

Indeed, Iraq encouraged Washington to consider its vast market potential across all sectors in weighing the value of a future alliance. Senior diplomats voiced Baghdad’s hope that the United States would become a major trading partner after sanctions. Diplomats frequently reminded me that before the 1990 Gulf War, Iraq had been a strong ally of the United States, as a buttress against Iran. That friendship could be renewed, they said. Iraq would show its appreciation.

The CIA put Baghdad to the test— demanding a lion’s share of reconstruction contracts— a “peace bonanza” for U.S. Corporations. Back channel dialogue won guarantees that U.S. corporations would have the right to return to Baghdad at the same level of market share they enjoyed before the 1990 Gulf War, barring military sales or dual-use production. Most importantly, U.S. corporations would receive priority contracts in telecommunications; health care, hospital equipment, and pharmaceuticals; factory construction and transportation.

Baghdad offered to buy one million American manufactured automobiles every year for 10 years.

U.S. Oil access was safe and secure, too. As of November 2000, Iraq promised the U.S. would enjoy full rights to participate in all future oil concessions at the first tier level. Iraq also guaranteed that U.S. oil would have rights to hold second and third tier concessions on contracts granted to France and Russia, as a way to guarantee U.S participation. There was no danger of the U.S. getting cut out of Iraqi oil exploration and production. And no other country lost oil contracts, under this arrangement, either.

From my own vantage point, some of the greatest success in back-channel talks involved Iraq’s cooperation with global anti-terrorism policy. Baghdad agreed that the FBI or Interpol or Scotland Yard could send a Task Force inside Iraq, with authorization to conduct terrorism investigations, interview witnesses, and arrest suspects. The FBI could have interviewed Al Anai, the Iraqi diplomat who allegedly met Mohammad Atta in Prague, Czechoslavakia, per the demands of Senator John McCain and Vice President Richard Cheney.

Moreover, Iraq offered to hand over a treasure trove of banking documents identifying the financial pipeline used by terrorists. And Baghdad freely offered to provide evidence of a Middle Eastern link to the 1993 World Trade Center attack and the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Finally, on my trip to Baghdad in March 2002, I developed an Iraqi source inside the Mukhabarat willing to act as a covert liaison to the FBI or Interpol. At great personal risk, he agreed to identify who entered the country, when, where they lived, who they met, and their activities. So the FBI Task Force could have tapped a local source for assistance, as well.

It was a phenomenal achievement—and the Justice Department prosecuted me for it. As they say, no good deed goes unpunished in Washington.

The help of my Iraqi Intelligence source was icing on the cake, really. If the United States and Britain cared about shutting down terrorist networks and sanctuaries after 9/11, Iraq’s cooperation would have produced the most substantial windfall of any nation.

These were practical actions—not propaganda.

Through my back channel, our team took the policy speeches in Washington and London, and turned them into something alive and meaningful. Our team understood the practical elements of successful terrorism containment. We’d done this work for a decade, and we understood the necessary structure required to implement it. Our blueprint was outstanding.

The opportunity for advancing key democratic reforms in Iraq—suggested by Iraqi officials themselves—surprised even me. It was tremendously exciting. Baghdad devised a highly creative platform for integrating Iraqi exiles into the political system. Iraq suggested that foreign embassies—which qualify as sovereign territory—could house returning Iraqi exiles, backed by embassy security, to guarantee their safety, while they re-absorbed into Baghdad society. Returning exiles would have enjoyed the rights to organize political parties with party headquarters, in competition with the Baathist Party, and full access to media, including the rights to create free opposition newspapers and apparatchik.

That was Iraq’s proposal in March, 2002—one year prior to the invasion. I think it’s an idea worth exploring in other conflict zones, where there’s a large exile population seeking to re-establish itself in the home country.

Weapons disarmament. Cooperation with global anti- terrorism. Economic reconstruction contracts. Oil contracts for the United States. Major democratic reforms.

It’s hard to imagine what more the U.S. and Europe could have required. At the risk of sounding crass to an international audience, if the CIA had thought of it, my team would have demanded it from Baghdad, shamelessly.

As a result, I can say confidently that Washington and London could have achieved every single objective that our leaders demanded from Iraq, without deploying a single soldier to occupy Baghdad, or firing a single missile to damage the country’s infrastructure. Not a single Iraqi mother or child had to die. Nor a single U.S. soldier.

I agreed to help as a back channel, because I hated the misery of sanctions for the Iraqi people. The pre-eminence of the United States was unchallenged at that time. I believed it would be necessary to satisfy U.S. demands in order to resolve the conflict. And so I accepted this role—gladly. And yes, I believe the world would have been better for it. The Middle East, too. And the Iraqi people most of all, for whom I have grieved.

War has cost us all so much. Iraq has imploded in a sectarian nightmare. The brutality of Occupation made a lie of liberation. Generations of Iraqi children will hate the West. The U.S. has lost a major regional ally in the Middle East for the future, while Iran has gained a powerful partner and neighbor, certain to check U.N. efforts at nuclear containment.

Our team kept our activities below radar, and out of media range. Yet our approach was results oriented and effective. We accomplished each part of our objectives, which promoted U.S. interests on a broad spectrum. Those were tough standards, too.

That’s why I was held under indictment for five years—through two Presidential elections in 2004 and 2008. Pro-War leaders in Washington would stop at nothing to hide those opportunities from daylight and public scrutiny. Republican leaders particularly enjoyed strutting about in the circus glitz of their national security policy, though it was purely spectacle and showmanship, without hard achievements to support the glamour. It suited Washington to pretend that Saddam’s government had been a stalwart supporter of terrorists in the Middle East, instead of a covetous western ally who despised—and in fact, persecuted— Islamic fundamentalists.

Why Truth Matters Today

Given the cynicism of our day—and the thundering rage and desperation the world now faces—I believe it’s critical for Americans and the international community to understand the truth of what dialogue accomplished in Iraq.

No matter that the conflict loomed large and appeared intractable, hope for peace remained undaunted right to the very end.

The greatest obstacle to peace in Iraq was the ambition of War itself, and the common belief that diplomacy could not achieve results, and therefore would not be worth the time to pursue aggressively.

That mentality handicapped us. It was wrong. And it needs to change.

Because contrary to what people think, dialogue did not fail. Our resolve for crisis resolution failed.

In my personal experience engaging directly with Libya and Iraq—two “pariah” nations in the 1990s— there is never a point at which dialogue cannot achieve results. No matter how difficult it appears, all things are possible through communication.

There are four necessary ingredients for success, I believe.

First, dialogue requires the courage of leadership to face problems head on, and to work beyond the level of propaganda.

Secondly, it requires a commitment to see solutions through to the end, without giving up at the first stumble. I have conservatively estimated that Libyan and Iraqi diplomats met with me 150 times each. In both cases, the work took longer than expected, but accomplished much more than we started out to achieve. By the time the United Nations jumped in, the scope of discussions was much broader and higher grade—and the scale of opportunities was much more dynamic than the public might have imagined.

Thirdly, I believe that crisis dialogue must be handled covertly at the start, as the most effective method of exploring creative options, and building possible scenarios that have not been considered before. Public debate in the media creates a demand for change, which is necessary and good. But media grandstanding does not advance the development of complex and intricate solutions. Premature media exposure can kill ideas. And that’s self-defeating. The goal should be to nurture an atmosphere of the possible, with a priority for exploring the most innovative strategies for achieving those goals.

Finally—and this is critical, though somewhat obvious—it’s vital to communicate respect for cultural and religious differences, even for those nations who qualify as our opponents. These individuals must be treated with dignity. They must become partners in bringing about a policy shift. As Iraq’s package of democracy reforms show, they too have ideas and strategies to contribute, which might surprise the most hardened cynic.

They, too, have a stake in the project’s success. Their cooperation is vital for the end game.

That was the essence of the approach that I used. And I assure you that we achieved much more than we started off to win, by applying that approach.

For that matter, consider what my team accomplished with Libya:

Ongoing conversations with Libyan diplomats, starting in 1995, broke the impasse on the Lockerbie Trial. By 1998, Libya had stopped functioning as a sanctuary for terrorists, and by 2004, Tripoli had renounced the development of Weapons of Mass Destruction, (both causes I championed). Tripoli also moved to develop economic ties with Europe. As of today, Libya has filled a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Many attribute Libya’s change to the United Nations sanctions. They would be wrong. Dialogue and engagement changed the dynamic with Tripoli, thanks to my team’s efforts, joined by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who moved things forward in a highly effective and covert way. Our process of engagement made a deliberate point of showing respect for Libya’s identity and Islamic heritage, and appreciation for the value of Libya’s potential contributions to North Africa.

It was dialogue that accomplished those results.

Dialogue! Dialogue! Dialogue!

Finally, in the future, for the sake of world peace, the United Nations must embrace its fullest potential as a forum for engagement. The U.N. must take responsibility for attempting crisis resolution. When it came to Iraq and Libya, the United Nations stayed out of discussions until a structural framework for conflict resolution had been reached. In other words, U.N. diplomats only got involved once Libya had agreed to the Lockerbie Trial, and after Iraq agreed to resume weapons inspections, according to the maximum standards dictated by the United States.

Until an agreement was reached, the United Nations stayed out of crisis talks.

The United Nations expended no political capital to achieve those results. In fairness, with regards to Iraq, U.S. intelligence wanted to avoid U.N. input, so Washington could control the agenda. However, it’s also true that the U.N. showed no inclination to engage in conflict resolution with Iraq. They were quite happy to stay out of it. The United Nations was never at the front of leadership.

There was a critical exception. Malaysia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Hasmy Agam and his senior diplomatic staff on the Security Council got involved on the sidelines, from the very beginning of talks in November, 2000.

Malaysia’s Embassy provided invaluable technical guidance vital to success. Because of their input, we guaranteed that Iraq’s commitment to weapons inspections would comport with U.N. standards for disarmament verification, as necessary to fulfill its obligations for ending the sanctions.

Likewise, Syria deserves praise for its urgent actions to avert war, as a member of the Security Council. Syria’s Ambassador offered to act as a crisis mediator with Washington in the run up to the Invasion.

In that success lies hope for future conflicts. The American people and the world community urgently need to know that engagement can be trusted to produce results that are highly effective and reliable.

Dialogue can accomplish the world’s goals—with a little help from democracy.

I am a huge believer in democracy. It’s a precious thing for ordinary people to contribute to public debates. Democracy empowers the people to offer our own ideas for problem solving. The practice of those freedoms and the process of seeking public input are messy, argumentative and contentious. Yet it’s vital for the public good. We must take special care to safeguard those civil rights, and not tolerate them to be degraded by the “lip service” of Washington politicians.

Throughout my nightmare on the Patriot Act, it struck me as unforgivable that American soldiers were sent to die and kill for democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, while the practice of democracy at home was under siege. My crime was actively practicing freedom of speech and criticizing government policy. My team’s warnings about Iraq and 9/11 hit the mark with such a high degree of accuracy that the possibility of exposure frightened leaders in Washington and London.

But perhaps that misses the point. Even if I had been wrong, I should have the right to speak.

Alas, they had power. And they wanted me to understand that I had none.

I was nothing. Just another American.

Well, that’s fine with me. I happen to enjoy being “just another American.”

There’s a ubiquitous saying that actions speak louder than words. In which case, all of us should sit up and take notice. The actions of Washington’s leaders betrayed a conviction that Americans should stay out of governance and policy making. If we interject ourselves into the public debate, trusting our rights to contribute, believing this country belongs to us, and our leaders should be accountable to us, then politicians in Washington have decided we should be removed and punished until we accept our disenfranchisement.

Our participation is no longer welcomed.

Worst of all, in the Patriot Act, Congress has created a weapon for punishment, if Americans don’t get the message. We can be silenced through secret accusations. The government has no burden to show evidence to a Judge or jury that a crime has been committed. The FBI and Prosecutors have no obligation to acknowledge alibis for the alleged wrongdoing. American citizens can be detained indefinitely without trial. They can lock us up on military bases, abusing the integrity of our soldiers, and deny us access to our attorneys.

All constitutional protections are formally revoked.

Wake up people! Americans are not nearly as frightened as they should be. The Patriot Act endangers our way of life as a country, and our purpose as a people.

Many Americans would like to presume that George Bush did this. And he’s gone. So we’re safe now.

No mistake could be greater. Republican and Democrats on Capitol Hill orchestrated this attack together. Yes, it was primarily carried out by supporters of Senator John McCain, who reigns over the Senate to this day. But my attackers were petty bureaucrats and party officials of the sort memorialized by Franz Kafka.

They have not gone away. On the contrary, they have burrowed more deeply into the power structure. They remain entrenched in Washington society at all levels.

Only now I fear they have learned to use the Patriot Act more effectively as a weapon against their fellow Americans. Their actions demonstrate that they will not be dissuaded by American traditions of liberty and justice that they swore to uphold

That means this kind of thing is going to happen more and more frequently. They’re going to become bolder and more vicious—until Americans demand that the Patriot Act must be repealed.

Free thinking Americans face the greatest risk of all—regardless of political stripe.

I was the second American-born citizen targeted by the Patriot Act. I won’t be the last. If you don’t believe me, while I was under indictment, in Maryland where I live, State Police decided that local environmentalists campaigning to stop global warming qualified as potential “terrorists,” and should be subjected to surveillance allowed by the Patriot Act.

Applying the ruthless power of the Patriot Act that equates civil disobedience with sedition, Maryland State Police targeted the Chesapeake Climate Action Network—though its members are dedicated to solar energy, wind power and recycling.

In the twisted schematics of the new surveillance culture, the DC Anti-War Network got designated as a “white supremacist group.” Amnesty International got investigated for “civil rights violations.” Animal rights activists working with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) were labeled “a security threat.” Groups opposed to the death penalty were declared “potentially violent.”

Invoking the Patriot Act, Maryland State Police tapped their phones and monitored the physical movements of group leaders, in broad surveillance operations. At least one State Trooper infiltrated several peace groups to monitor upcoming events.

I ask myself often. How did America lose its heart? When did we lose faith in the values of liberty in our country?

Because that’s what happening today. We are afraid of freedom.

Unless we take action to repeal the Patriot Act, many more independent thinking Americans will get hurt. We should force our leaders to prove their loyalty to our democracy by disavowing its terrible precepts. It is a law of treachery. There’s nothing “patriotic” about tearing down our beloved Constitution. That’s traitorous.

For myself, I have no regrets for what I paid to support my values. I stood up for what I love. My work gave me the greatest sense of personal satisfaction and adventures that I could have hoped for.

Knowing the consequences, I would change nothing, even if I could.

These days I am a “free agent” for peace and non-violence. I still live in Takoma Park doing animal rescue work, with my little family of dachshunds and kitty cats.

My Japanese weeping cherry tree, planted the week of my arrest, still grows in my front yard, serene and undisturbed by the tumultuous times of our world.

Each spring, my peace tree blossoms in white petals again. And though all of us working together failed to stop this tragic War in Iraq, in my heart I am content to know that all of us tried so hard together.

As Odysseus Elytis wrote about the fight against fascism in Greece: “Let them stone us. Let them say that we walk with our heads in the clouds. Those who have never felt, my friend, with what rock, what blood, what iron and fire we build, dream and sing.”[626]

Five days before the inauguration of President Barak Obama, the Justice Department formally dismissed all charges against Susan Lindauer.[627] In five years of indictment as an alleged “Iraqi Agent,” she was never convicted of any crime. And she never stopped demanding her rights to a trial.

AFFIDAVIT OF
PARKE GODFREY

I am Dr. Parke Godfrey, a tenured associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at York University in Toronto, Canada. At the request of Ms. Lindauer, I am providing this brief affidavit describing parts of my testimony at a hearing before Judge Loretta Preska in June, 2008.

9.    I have known Ms. Lindauer since 1991, while I was working on my doctoral degree at the University of Maryland, College Park. We were close friends until I moved to Toronto to accept a faculty post at York University in August of 1999.

a.        During that time, I spoke with Ms. Lindauer two or three times weekly, and we met once weekly, on average.

b.        Ms. Lindauer has an artistic and mercurial temperament. She is passionate as an activist supporting her causes. She is a creative writer and former journalist. I never observed mental instability or mental illness in her behavior.

10.  Ms. Lindauer had various concerns and predictions of terrorist attacks, which she confided in me and others.

a.        In the year 2000, coinciding with the Lockerbie Trial, Ms. Lindauer confided in me on several occasions her concern that the next terrorist attack on the United States would involve airplane hijackings and/or airplane bombings. She warned me to stay out of New York City.

b.        In the spring and summer of 2001, on several occasions Ms. Lindauer expressed heightened concern that a terrorist attack was in the works that would strike the southern part of Manhattan. She claimed it would reprise the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. She described the attack as completing the cycle started in that first attack.

c.        I have read articles by Michael Collins describing Ms. Lindauer’s 9/11 warning, and I am satisfied that he has accurately described my testimony before Judge Preska in June, 2008.

11.  I was involved in Ms. Lindauer’s case in various ways after her arrest.

a.        In September, 2004, I was interviewed by the FBI in Mississauga (adjacent to Toronto) in the presence of a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman. (The RCMP insisted upon this as the interview was in Canada, and I was a Canadian resident). I spoke with FBI Special Agent Suzan LeTourneau. While the interview focused on mundane details of Ms. Lindauer’s life and her acquaintances, the conversation did touch briefly upon the indictment on Ms. Lindauer, and her predictions.

b.        I made myself available to speak with the investigator working for her defense attorney. I was prepared for a lengthy conversation, including a discussion of Ms. Lindauer’s 9/11 warning. I was surprised when the defense investigator cut short the conversation after only five to ten minutes. His questions seemed far inadequate for the scope of the indictment against Ms. Lindauer, and for what I felt I had to share with her Defense Attorney.

c.        Several months later, I contacted Ms. Lindauer’s uncle, Ted Lindauer, who spoke with me at greater length about several issues in her case. I can verify that Ms. Lindauer felt compelled to seek her uncle’s assistance interviewing witnesses for her case, before she got sent to Carswell.

d.        In early December 2005, I believe, a few months after Ms. Lindauer had been sent to Carswell Prison, I spoke with the psychologist handling her competence evaluation for the Court. During our conversation, I attempted to confirm with him that Ms. Lindauer had made predictions about a terrorist attack in Manhattan to me and others prior to the 9/11 attack. He seemed to have no interest in hearing this. Our conversation was brief.

12.  I continued to be involved in Ms. Lindauer’s case, in hearings leading up to her trial, which never transpired.

a.        In my opinion, contrary with the Justice Department’s lawyers, Ms. Lindauer is now, and always was, competent to stand trial. The decision to accuse her of incompetence was baffling to me and many others. I was forced to conclude that it was politically motivated to block her request for a trial.

b.        While she was still detained in prison, I offered to travel from Toronto and testify at any competency hearing, as a character witness, on her mental competence, on what I knew of her political activities before her indictment, about her warnings of terrorist attacks, and any other aspects for which the Court might be interested.

c.        I attended the hearing on forcible drugging in May, 2006. I offered to testify on that day. In fact, I arrived at the Court, assuming I was to testify. However, her attorney, Mr. Sam Talkin did not call me to testify that day. In conversation that day, I told him that she had made warnings of a terrorist attack to me and to others in advance of 9/11. I told him that I was mortified by what the Court seemed to be doing.

d.        In June 2008, two years later, Ms. Lindauer was finally allowed to have a hearing on her competence to stand trial. I testified before Judge Preska, who had replaced Judge Mukasey after his retirement, that I considered Ms. Lindauer fully competent in all ways, and devoid of mental illness or instability. I testified about the terrorist warnings, and how I had spoken with the FBI in September, 2004.

Despite my friendship with Ms. Lindauer, and my dislike and distrust of activities of the Federal Administration at the time, I tried to keep an open mind and to cooperate with the prosecution. I could only hope that the government had just cause in pursuing such a case, given the vigor and energy they put in it, despite what that would mean for Susan. Otherwise, it is a poor indictment for justice.

On the other hand, I have never had any direct reasons to believe the points of the indictment against Ms. Lindauer, or evidence myself of them. I have confidence and trust in Ms. Lindauer. Furthermore, I have been completely appalled over the way the Justice Department proceeded in its dealings with Ms. Lindauer, as I hope most anyone familiar with her case would be.

Throughout this entire ordeal, Ms. Lindauer has suffered harassment. She faced inexcusable delays in setting a trial date (or in dropping the charges). She was repeatedly questioned in Court over the reliability of her terrorist warnings, despite that they had been corroborated by me and by many others in affidavits and under oath, in spoken testimony. She was incarcerated in a mental facility within a federal prison for seven months, 1,300 miles from her home for supposed observation. And then held in confinement for months afterwards. The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s behavior in Ms. Lindauer case were abhorrent. It’s quite clear that much more was going on.

Susan Lindauer’s story should be told.

Dr. Parke Godfrey July 1, 2010

AFFIDAVIT OF
THAYER LINDAUER

I have practiced corporate law for 40 years in the U.S. and international arenas. Though my expertise lies outside criminal law, I took my degree at the University of Chicago and I have extensive legal experience. I am quite satisfied that my niece, Susan Lindauer, has accurately described my involvement in her legal fight, and the events related to her incarceration at Carswell Prison.

As she relates, six months prior to her imprisonment, I interviewed several important witnesses in her case, who forthrightly authenticated her claims. Those witnesses included Edward MacKechnie, Scottish Solicitor for the Lockerbie Trial, who validated Susan’s long-time work relationship with Dr. Richard Fuisz and his known affiliation to the Central Intelligence Agency. I spoke with Paul Hoven, who admitted his role as one of Susan’s handlers, and further identified Dr. Fuisz as her second, CIA handler, overseeing her activities at the United Nations. I spoke with Parke Godfrey about Susan’s 9/11 warning, and other assundry issues in her case. During her imprisonment, I spoke with a number of other witnesses and friends of Susan’s, including, I believe, Ian Ferguson, the Scottish journalist and expert on Lockerbie.

There is no question but that Susan’s history as an Asset, supervised by members of U.S. Intelligence, would have been easily proven to the satisfaction of the Court.

For those of us who trust in the legal traditions of this country, her case marked a stunning reversal of expectations. Susan correctly relates that I have tremendous respect for Judge Michael Mukasey and the predicament that he faced. There were serious questions of prosecutorial misconduct and withholding exculpatory knowledge from the Court, since it was quite clear the Justice Department did not want to admit Susan’s role in Pre-War Intelligence or the 9/11 investigation, including her 9/11 warning. To incarcerate an American citizen without a trial or due process, however, opposes all of the values that the U.S. Courts seek to uphold.

Though it might seem unlikely, Susan has accurately described the Court proceedings leading up to her prison surrender. That September day, we had no idea why the court had ordered her to appear. Her public attorney insisted the Psychiatric Report by Dr. Stuart Kleinman was still unavailable to him. Until we got to Court, we had no idea they intended to send her to prison, or deny her rights to a competence hearing, which is routine procedure.

I did instruct her to fire Sam Talkin, and name me as co-counsel of her defense, so that I could demand a hearing on her behalf. It is true that the Court clerk instructed us that if Susan tried such a thing, she would be seized immediately by U.S. Marshals, and would forfeit her bail for the remainder of the proceedings. She was advised that if she consented to delay the hearing until after the Prison Evaluation, she would have three days to get her affairs in order. Judge Mukasey amended that to 10 days.

There was no doubt that Susan wanted the hearing.

It is possible that Judge Mukasey expected Carswell’s evaluation to be very brief. Normally, these sorts of evaluations take 6 to 8 weeks, for other non-political defendants. Indeed, after the court meeting, Judge Mukasey’s clerk suggested to me that Susan would probably come home before Christmas.

Unfortunately, the politics of her contributions to Pre-War Intelligence and the 9/11 investigation swamped the proceedings. She has not exaggerated the threat of “indefinite” detention that she faced, or the aggressive push to forcibly drug her with Haldol.

It is absolutely correct that Carswell’s psychology staff, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York, the FBI and the main Justice Department had direct knowledge that Susan had told the truth about her Asset work. I have spoken to witnesses myself, who told me that they assured the FBI and/or psychologists at Carswell that Susan was telling the truth. I must conclude the request for forcible drugging was politically motivated.

Finally, Susan has stated correctly that I made three attempts to visit her at Carswell, driving 700 miles each way. On the first two tries, guards refused to admit me to the military base, telling me no prison was there. The second time, guards insisted the prison was closed on weekends. Only when Judge Mukasey ordered U.S. Marshals to stand by as an escort was I admitted. This occurred at a critical moment, when I was trying to broker a solution that would satisfy the Court and secure her freedom. At that point, we just wanted her home. The decision on competence was secondary to protecting her from forcible drugging and winning her release.

“Extreme prejudice” strikes me as an appropriate title, given what the government tried to do.

Ted Lindauer

APPENDIX

OFFICIAL IRAQI RESPONSE TO 9/11

5843

1.  If the request had been made in different circumstances it would have been possible for us to agree or go a long with it.

2.  With continuation of U.S and U.K aggression and the tense atmospher in The United State of America against Iraq any step to be taken by Iraq might be intepretated in a harmful manner to Iraqi reputation and to the keeness of Iraq to maintain its dignity.

3.  Despite of that all the points proposed by you reflect the real Iraqi position.

4.  If U.S declared that it intends to halt (stop) the air raid against Iraq (or such thing like this) in order to concentrate on other Matters the stuation would be different (better).

5.  However we are prepared to meet any American official in a covert or incovert manner to discuss the common issues.

6.  In any case Iraq has suffered from terrorism and its leaders including his excellency Mr. President has been a target to many assassination attempts in addition to the attepmt to assassinate Mr. Tariq Aziz in first of April 1980, in fact he was injured, as well as some Iraqi leadership members who sufferd from such terrorist acts.

7.  Iraq demostrated a good faith towards U.S.A in 1993 after Oklahoma trade center previous accident, and informed American government through Iraqi interest section in Washigton That it (Iraq) was prepared to provide U.S.A With Some Information about the prepetrators of 1993 accident if American would send a delegate to Baghdad, but the American side dealt with our offer improperly and they said to Us (Iraq) to deliver thes information, that means evetually They rejected to meet us.

8.  This is the Iraq officiall position.

1. Intending to be legally bound. I hereby accept the obligations contained in this Agreement in consideration of my being granted access to classified information. As used in this Agreement, classified information is marked or unmarked classified information, including oral communications, that is classified under the standards of Executive Order 12356, or under any other Executive order or statute that prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of information in the interest of national security; and unclassified information that meets the standards for classification and is in the process of a classification determination as provided in Sections 1.1 and 1.2(e) of Executive Order 12356, or under any other Executive order or statute that requires protection for such information in the interest of national security. I understand and accept that by being granted access to classified information, special confidence and trust shall be placed in me by the United States Government.

2. I hereby acknowledge that I have received a security indoctrination concerning the nature and protection of classified information, including the procedures to be followed in ascertaining whether other persons to whom I contemplate disclosing this information have been approved for access to it, and that I understand these procedures.

3. I have been advised that the unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention, or negligent handling of classified information by me could cause damage or irreparable injury to the United States or could be used to advantage by a foreign nation. I hereby agree that I will never divulge classified information to anyone unless: (a) I have officially verified that the recipient has been properly authorized by the United States Government to receive it; or (b) I have been given prior written notice of authorization from the United States Government Department or Agency (hereinafter Department or Agency) responsible for the classification of the information or last granting me a security clearance that such disclosure is permitted. I understand that if I am uncertain about the classification status of information, I am required to confirm from an authorized official that the information is unclassified before I may disclose it, except to a person as provided in (a) or (b), above. I further understand that I am obligated to comply with laws and regulations that prohibit the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

4. I have been advised that any breach of this Agreement may result in the termination of any security clearances I hold; removal from any position of special confidence and trust requiring such clearances; or the termination of my employment or other relationships with the Departments or Agencies that granted my security clearance or clearances. In addition, I have been advised that any unauthorized disclosure of classified information by me may constitute a violation, or violations, of United States criminal laws, including the provisions of Sections 641, 793, 794, 798, and *952, Title 18, United States Code, *the provisions of Section 783(b), Title 50, United States Code, and the provisions of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. I recognize that nothing in this Agreement constitutes a waiver by the United States of the right to prosecute me for any statutory violation.

5. I hereby assign to the United States Government all royalties, remunerations, and emoluments that have resulted, will result or may result from any disclosure, publication, or revelation of classified information not consistent with the terms of this Agreement.

6. I understand that the United States Government may seek any remedy available to it to enforce this Agreement including, but not limited to, application for a court order prohibiting disclosure of information in breach of this Agreement.

7. I understand that all classified information to which I have access or may obtain access by signing this Agreement is now and will remain the property of, or under the control of the United States Government unless and until otherwise determined by an authorized official or final ruling of a court of law. I agree that I shall return all classified materials which have, or may come into my possession or for which I am responsible because of such access: (a) upon demand by an authorized representative of the United States Government; (b) upon the conclusion of my employment or other relationship with the Department or Agency that last granted me a security clearance or that provided me access to classified information; or (c) upon the conclusion of my employment or other relationship that requires access to classified information. If I do not return such materials upon request, I understand that this may be a violation of Section 793, Title 18, United States Code, a United States criminal law.

8. Unless and until I am released in writing by an authorized representative of the United States Government, I understand that all conditions and obligations imposed upon me by this Agreement apply during the time I am granted access to classified, information, and at all times thereafter.

9. Each provision of this Agreement is severable. If a court should find any provision of this Agreement to be unenforceable, all other provisions of this Agreement shall remain in full force and effect.

10. These restrictions are consistent with and do not supersede, conflict with or otherwise alter the employee obligations, rights or liabilities created by Executive Order 12356; Section 7211 of Title 5, United States Code (governing disclosures to Congress); Section 1034 of Title 10, United States Code, as amended by the Military Whistleblower Protection Act (governing disclosure to Congress by members of the military); Section 2302(b)(8) of Title 5, United States Code, as amended by the Whistleblower Protection Act (governing disclosures of illegality, waste, fraud, abuse or public health or safety threats); the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (50 U.S.C 421 et seq.) (governing disclosures that could expose confidential Government agents), and the statutes which protect against disclosure that may compromise the national security, including Sections 641, 793, 794, 798, and 952 of Title 18, United States Code, and Section 4(b) of the Subversive Activities Act of 1950 (50 U.S.C. Section 783(b)). The definitions, requirements, obligations, rights, sanctions and liabilities created by said Executive Order and listed statutes are incorporated into this Agreement and are controlling.

ENDNOTES FOR
EXTREME PREJUDICE

CHAPTER 1

[1]       FBI photograph of front door barricaded by plywood

[2]       FBI arrest record, March 11, 2004

[3]       Federal Indictment for Susan Lindauer, Southern District of New York, co-defendants Al Anbuke brothers.

[4]       Supreme Court Overturns Sentencing guidelines, Washington Post A-1, Dec 2004

[5]       Ibid. Federal Indictment, Southern District of New York

[6]       FBI transcript. Meeting with Bassem Youssef, June 26, 2003

[7]       Television transcripts NBC News, ABC News, March 11, 2004

[8]       Ibid. Federal Indictment

[9]       Ibid. Federal Indictment

[10]     Andy Card Letters from December 2000 to January, 2003.

[11]     Iraq’s response to 9/11, September 21, 2001

[12]     FBI charges under Federal Sentencing Guidelines

[13]     Ibid. Federal Indictment.

[14]     Ibid. Federal Indictment

[15]     Ibid. Federal Indictment

[16]     Susan Lindauer Letters to Andrew Card dated March 1, 2001 and December 2, 2001

[17]     Ibid. Andrew Card Letters

[18]     Ibid. Federal Indictment

[19]     Ibid. Federal Indictment

[20]     Susan Lindauer letter to Andrew Card, December 2, 2001

[21]     Susan Lindauer Letters to Vice President Richard Cheney and Andrew Card, December 20, 2000 through December 2, 2001

[22]     Susan Lindauer Letter to Andrew Card, January 8, 2001.

[23]     FBI Wire Transcripts, phone calls to Senator Lott’s staff, February 2, 2004.

[24]     Ibid. FBI Wire Transcripts, February 2, 2004

[25]     Susan Lindauer Letter to Vice President Richard Cheney, December 20, 2000.

[26]     Ibid. FBI Arrest Report

CHAPTER 2

[27]     Mueller Nomination to head FBI. Washington Post August 3, 2001

[28]     “Syria dropped on Lockerbie,” New York Times.

[29]     Official biography of Robert Mueller

[30]     Oklahoma City Bombing Revelations, Patrick B. Briley, 2007 Third Terrorist: The Middle Eastern Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing, Jayna Davis, 2004.

[31]     FBI Orders Review of Oklahoma City Bombing Case, March 2005, FBI Archives

[32]     “Was Nidal Behind Lockerbie Bombing?” Daily Mail, UK July, 2002

[33]     Intelligence Resource Program

[34]     Ibid. Daily Mail, UK July 2002

[35]     Dr. Richard Fuisz. Curriculum Vitae

[36]     Ibid, Fuisz, C.V.

[37]     Ibid, Fuisz, C.V.

[38]     Susan Lindauer ‘s Lockerbie Statement to Kofi Annan, December 4, 1998

[39]     Richard Fuisz Deposition, U.S. District Court of Alexandria, Virginia, January, 2000. Law firm of Butera and Andrews.

[40]     Ibid, Dr. Fuisz Deposition, January 2000, Scottish Solicitor Edward MacKechnie

[41]     [Richard C. Fuisz Civil Action: 92-0941]

[42]     [Richard C. Fuisz Civil Action: 92-0941

[43]     Letter to Edward MacKechnie, Scottish Solicitor, Lockerbie Trial, July, 2000.

[44]     “Lockerbie: CIA Witness Gagged by U.S. Government, by Neil Mackay and Ian Ferguson. Sunday Herald, Glasgow, Scotland, May 28, 2000

[45]     U.S. Congress, Oct. 18, 2002

[46]     History Commons

[47]     Washington Post, Oct. 1, 2006, History Commons

[48]     History Commons

[49]     Le Figaro, 31 October 2001

[50]     BayArea.Com, June 6, 2002

[51]     ABC News, September 11, 2001

[52]     Dr. Parke Godfrey, Court Testimony, Southern District of New York. June, 2008

[53]     Ibid. Godfrey Testimony. U.S. vs. Lindauer, June 2008

[54]     Ibid. Godfrey Testimony, U.S. vs. Lindauer, June 2008

[55]     Ibid. Godfrey Testimony, U.S. vs. Lindauer, June 2008

[56]     Ibid. FBI Wiretaps, Susan Lindauer’s home telephone, February 2, 2004

CHAPTER 3

[57]     BBC News, February 26, 1993

[58]     Wikipedia, Sheikh Abdul Rahmon and Ramzi Youssef

[59]     Susan Lindauer Journals. Evidence in U.S. vs. Lindauer

[60]     Ibid. U.S. vs. Lindauer

[61]     Jacqueline Shelly Lindauer Obituary, Alaska Commercial Fisherman, April, 1992

[62]     Congressional Testimony by Andrew Zimbalist, Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics, Smith College, House Ways and Means Committee on Economic Effects of U.S. Policy Towards Cuba, March, 1994

[63]     Baseball and Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime, Harper Collins. Listed by Business Week in 1992’s top eight business books

[64]     Operation El Dorado Canyon, Global Security

[65]     Paul Hoven bio, Spartacus Education Forums

[66]     Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control: Reagan’s Secret War in Nicaragua, 1987.

[67]     Daniel Sheehan bio, Spartacus Education Forum

[68]     Ibid, Sheehan bio, Spartacus

[69]     Ibid, Hoven bio, Spartacus Education Forum

[70]     Spartacus “Education forum” Sept 13, 2007

[71]     Ibid, “Education forum” Sept 13, 2007

[72]     David Corn, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA’s Crusades 1994

[73]     Ibid, Spartacus Education Forum

[74]     Ibid, Spartacus Forum

[75]     Ibid, Spartacus Education Forum, September 13, 2007

[76]     Susan Lindauer Lockerbie Statement to Kofi Annan, December 4, 1998

[77]     Ibid. Lindauer Lockerbie Statement, 1998

[78]     Ibid. Lindauer Lockerbie Statement, 1998

[79]     Ibid. Letter to Edward MacKechnie, Scottish Solicitor, Lockerbie Trial. July 2000

[80]     Susan Lindauer Letters to Andrew Card and Vice President Cheney, Dec 20, 2000 through January 2008

CHAPTER 4

[81]     CIA could count on one hand number of agents in Iraq, Washington Post

[82]     Ibid. Washington Post, Federal indictment U.S. vs. Lindauer and Al Anbukes.

[83]     Testimony of Patricia Kelly O’Meara. U.S. vs. Lindauer, June 2008

[84]     Susan Lindauer Letter to Andy Card, March 1, 2001

[85]     Susan Lindauer Letters to Andy Card and Vice President Cheney, Dec 20, 2000 to January, 2003.

[86]     Ibid, Lindauer Letters to Andy Card, December 20, 2000 to January, 2003.

[87]     Ibid. Federal Indictment U.S. vs. Lindauer and Al Anbukes

[88]     Ibid. Washington Post

[89]     US Delegation Says Sanctions Draining Iraqi People, Associated Press

[90]     Iraqis Struggle Under Sanctions.” Leon Barkho, February 16, 2000

[91]     United Nations Accounts of Contracts on Sanctions Hold by Sector

[92]     Iraqis Struggle Under Sanctions.” Leon Barkho, February 16, 2000

[93]     Ibid. Barkho February 16, 2000

[94]     Ibid. Barkho, February 16, 2000

[95]     World Health Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund; Iraq Health Ministry tracking statistics

[96]     Ibid. U.N. Children’s Fund, World Health Organization; Iraq Health Ministry

[97]     Ibid. World Health Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund. December, 1996

[98]     Ibid. Iraqis Struggle under Sanctions. Barkho

[99]     Ex UN Official Says Sanctions Destroying Iraq, Reuters

[100]   Iraqis Say Sanctions Killed Over 11,000 last month, Reuters, 2/23/00)

[101]   Ibid. Iraqis Say Sanctions Killed over 11,000 last month

[102]   “Foreign Affairs” Journal, John Mueller and Karl Mueller, May/June 1999

[103]   Ibid.Ex UN Official says Sanctions Destroying Iraq, Reuters

[104]   Top UN official s urges end to trade sanctions,” Feb. 8, 2000

[105]   Ibid. Top UN official urges end to trade sanctions.

[106]   107 Dennis Halliday online biography

[107]   Congressman: Ease Iraq Sanctions, Associated Press

[108]   German plane lands in Baghdad to evacuate patient. Aug 20, 2000

[109]   UN Rights Body calls for lifting Iraq Embargo.”

[110]   Ibid. UN Rights Body calls for lifting Iraq Embargo.

[111]   TIME Magazine. Jan. 1, 1999 Vol. 153 No. 1

[112]   Ibid. TIME Magazine. Jan. 1, 1999 Vol. 153 No. 1

CHAPTER 5

[113]   “US Refiners Buying Most of Iraq’s Oil”

[114]   Middle East Economic Survey, July 16 issue

[115]   St Petersburg Times, LUKoil’s Iraq Plans Hit by ‘Politics’

[116]   Letter to Andy Card and Vice President –Elect Richard Cheney, December 20, 2000.

[117]   Ibid Letter to Vice President –Elect Cheney, December 20, 2000

[118]   Susan Lindauer Letter to Andy Card, December 2, 2001

[119]   Ibid. Letter to Andy Card and Vice President-elect Cheney, December 20, 2000

[120]   Ibid. Letter to Andy Card and Vice President-elect Cheney, December 20, 2000

[121]   Ibid. Letter to Andy Card and Vice President-elect Cheney, December 20, 2000

[122]   Ongoing correspondence, UN reports, emails and phone transcripts of communications with Malaysian diplomat Rani Ali from 2000 through December, 2002

[123]   Country Fact Sheet for Malaysia, Central Intelligence Agency

[124]   Ibid. Multiple correspondence, phone calls, emails. Rani Ali, Malaysian Embassy

[125]   Ibid. Letters to Andy Card from December 20, 2000 through January, 2003

[126]   Ibid. Letters to Andy Card from December 20, 2000 through January, 2003

CHAPTER 6 and 7

[127]   Clark, Wesley, Keynote Speech, Texas Democratic Party Convention June 9, 2006.

[128]   DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (JP 1-02). as amended through April 2010.

[129]   NORAD had drills of jets as weapons. USA Today, Steven Komarow and Tom Squitieri April 18, 2004.

[130]   Vince Canistraro, CNN, May 13, 2006

[131]   Scott, William Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks. Aviation Week, June 4, 2002.

[132]   i. NORAD News Maintains Northern Vigilance Sept. 9, 2001

ii.      Ibid. Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks. Aviation Week, June 4, 2002.

iii.     Complete 911 Timeline, (6:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001: NORAD on Alert for Emergency Exercises, Peter Jennings 911 Interviews, ABC News. History Commons, 2010.

133.  Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002; Bergen Record, 12/5/2003

134.  ABC News, 9/11/2002

[135]   From History Commons. Complete 911 Timeline.8:38 a.m.-8:43 a.m. Sept 11, 2001)

[136]   John Arquilla, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey Herald, Jul. 18, 2002

[137]   Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Congressional Reports: Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. Government Printing Office, December 20, 2002.

138.  Ibid. Joint House-Senate Investigation

[139]   Ibid. Joint House-Senate Investigation

[140]   Ibid. Joint House-Senate Investigation

141.  Ibid. Joint House-Senate Investigation

142.  Ibid. Joint House-Senate Investigation

[143]   President George W. Bush, Florida Town Hall Meeting, Sept 12, 2001. Bush, George W., Headline Remarks, White House, December 4, 2001.

144.  CNN.com/Inside Politics, Bush asks Daschle to limit Sept. 11 probes. CNN.com, January 29, 2002.

145.  Washington Post, Nov. 16, 2005, “Document Says Oil Chiefs Met with Cheney Task Force”

CHAPTER 8

[146]   Ibid. “CIA could count Iraqi Agents on one hand,” Washington Post

147.  Ibid. “CIA could count Iraqi Agents on one hand,” Washington Post

148.  FBI Report, U.S. vs. Lindauer and Anbukes

149.  FBI Evidence, photos and video, U.S. vs. Lindauer and Anbukes

150.  FBI Evidence, Anbuke brothers’ pay stubs and IRS tax filings

151.  John McCain, ABC News NIGHTLINE, November 28, 2001

152.  Vice President Richard Cheney, “Meet the Press,” December 9, 2001

153.  Susan Lindauer Letter to Andy Card, July 2001, Committee for Global Preservation of Trade

154.  Ibid. Lindauer Letters to Andy Card December 20, 2000 through January, 2003

155.  Ibid. Lindauer Letters to Andy Card.

156.  Osama Bin Ladin, Jihad Fatwa, April, 1998

157.  FBI Evidence, letters, U.S. vs. Lindauer and Anbukes, May 1998

158.  FBI Evidence, Interview with Paul Hoven. U.S. vs. Lindauer

159.  James Risen and Tim Weiner, the New York Times, October 30, 2001, “Three New Allies Help CIA in its Fight Against Terror.” Subheading: “Since Sept 11, CIA officials have opened lines with intelligence officials from several nations that Washington has accused of supporting terrorism.”

160.  Federal Indictment, U.S. vs. Lindauer

161.  FBI Evidence, visa receipts from Viand Restaurant in New York, September, 2001

162.  Court testimony and Affidavit, Dr. Parke Godfrey, June 2008

163.  FBI Evidence, record of file creation on computer hard drive, U.S. vs. Lindauer

164.  Andy Card Letter, September 24, 2001. (ii) Federal indictment U.S. vs. Lindauer

165.  Ibid. Andy Card Letter, September 24, 2001

166.  Ibid. FBI evidence, restaurant receipt September 22, 2001

167.  Official Response from the Government of Iraq to 9/11. September 21, 2001.

168.  Ibid. Official Iraqi Response to 9/11 attack.(ii) Lindauer letter to Card, Sept 24, 2001.

169.  Ibid. Andy Card Letter, September 24, 2001

170.  Ibid. Andy Card Letter, September 24, 2001

171.  Ibid. Federal Indictment U.S. vs. Lindauer

172.  Ibid. Lindauer Letters to Andy Card.

173.  Lindauer Letters to Andy Card, September 24, 2001 and December 2, 2001

CHAPTERS 9 and 10

174.  Ibid. Letter to Andy Card and Vice President-elect Cheney, December 2000

175.  Ibid. Lindauer Letters to Andy Card, Dec. 2000 through January, 2003.

176.  Ibid. Official Iraqi Response to 9/11.

177.  Ibid. Letter to Andy Card, December 2, 2001

178.  Documentary Video: “Conspiracy? The Oklahoma City Bombing.” History Channel, A & E Productions, 2001.

179.  Oklahoma City Bombing Revelations, Patrick B. Briley, 2007

180.  Oklahoma City Bombing Revelations, Patrick B. Briley, 2007

181.  (i)   “Conspiracy? The Oklahoma City Bombing”
(ii)  Oklahoma City Bombing Revelations, Patrick B. Briley, 2007
(iii) Third Terrorist: The Middle Eastern Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing, Jayna Davis, 2004.

181.  Ibid. Conspiracy? The Oklahoma City Bombing” 2001

182.  Ibid. Conspiracy? The Oklahoma City Bombing” 2001

183.  Ibid. (i) “Conspiracy? The Oklahoma City Bombing”

184.  Ibid. Official Iraqi Response to 9/11.

185.  Susan Lindauer Letter to Andy Card, December 2, 2001.

186.  Ibid. Letter to Andy Card, December 2, 2001

187.  Ibid. Letter to Andy Card, December 2, 2001

188.  Ibid. Letter to Andy Card, December 2, 2001

189.  Ibid. Letter to Andy Card, December 2, 2001

190.  Ibid. John McCain, ABC News NIGHTLINE, November 28, 2001

191.  Ibid. Vice President Richard Cheney, “Meet the Press,” December 9, 2001

192.  Ibid. Letter to Andy Card, December 2, 2001

193.  Ibid. Letter to Andy Card, December 2, 2001.

194.  Congressional Testimony of Dr. Fuisz on U.S. Corporation that supplied Iraq with SCUD mobile missile launcher. 1992. (ii) Correspondence of Rep. Charlie Rose.

195.  Ibid. Letters to Andy Card, Dec. 2000 through Jan. 2003

196.  Ibid. Letter to Andy Card, December 2, 2001

197.  Federal Indictment, U.S. vs. Lindauer

198.  FBI Evidence, Surveillance photos possible NSA Source, February, 2002

199.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Surveillance photos, February 2002. U.S. vs. Lindauer

200.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Fax sheets to U.N. Security Council announcing peace framework and Iraq’s consent to weapon inspections ‘with no conditions.”

201.  FBI Evidence. Collection of phone transcripts, emails, letters from Rani Ali, diplomatic adviser to Ambassador Hasmy Agam from May, 2000 through December, 2002, concluding with introduction to his successor, Mr. Norzuhdy.

202.  Washington Post. March 7, 2002.

203.  Ibid. Federal Indictment, U.S. vs. Lindauer

204.  Susan Lindauer Letter to Kofi Annan, March 17, 2002.

205.  Ibid. Washington Post.

206.  Global Security, Bio of Musab Al Zarqawi

207.  Ibid. “Was Nidal Behind Lockerbie Bombing?” Daily Mail, UK

[208]   (i) Susan Lindauer Letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, January 27, 2003
(ii) Susan Lindauer Letter to Syria’s U.N. Ambassador Wehbe, February 2, 2003.

[209]   (i) Susan Lindauer Letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, January 27, 2003
(ii) Susan Lindauer Letter to Syria’s U.N. Ambassador Wehbe, February 2, 2003.

CHAPTER 11 and 12

210.  Education for Peace in Iraq Center, meeting schedule with Congressional staff

211.  FBI Evidence report to Defense Counsel. U.S. vs. Lindauer

212.  Ibid. FBI Evidence report. U.S. vs. Lindauer

213.  FBI Evidence. Phone Taps July 2002 to Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

214.  FBI Evidence. Phone Taps. Calls to Congressional offices, July 2002 onwards.

215.  Congress votes on Iraq War Resolution. SourceWatch.

[216]   Film Documentary, Body of War, directed by Ellen Spiro and Donahue, inter cuts the 2002 war debate with the postwar life of Tomas Young, a soldier who was paralyzed with a shattered spine within a week of arriving in Iraq. Captures his personal meeting with Sen. Robert Byrd—and his snubbing by Sen. Feinstein’s staff.

217.  Sen Kennedy Floor Speech, Debate on War Authorization. Oct, 10, 2002.

218.  Barak Obama Speech against Iraq War Authorization, Federal Plaza in Chicago, October 2, 2002.

219.  FBI Evidence. Wire taps of phone calls to Congressional offices from July, 2002 until March, 2003.

220.  FBI Evidence. Wire taps of phone calls to Senate Foreign Relations Committee

221.  Letter to President Bush, Rep. Ron Kind and Rep. Sherrod Brown. January, 2003.

222.  Anti War Protests Largest Since 60s. Washington Post. October 27, 2002

223.  Ibid. Washington Post. October 27, 2002.

224.  FBI Evidence. Citizens for Public Integrity. Blast fax and email data base listing of Congressional staffers in all House and Senate offices. U.S. vs. Lindauer.

225.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Citizens for Public Integrity. Email Data base of Congressional staffers

226.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Citizens for Public Integrity. Blast fax of Congressional offices and U.N. Ambassadors. U.S. vs. Lindauer

227.  FBI Evidence. Citizens for Public Integrity Papers. U.S. vs. Lindauer Sept. 2002 through March 2003.

228.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Citizens for Public Integrity Papers. U.S. vs. Lindauer

229.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Citizens for Public Integrity Papers. U.S. vs. Lindauer

230.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Citizens for Public Integrity Papers. U.S. vs. Lindauer

231.  Ibid. FBI Evidence summary for Defense. U.S. vs. Lindauer

232.  “Huge Protests for Peace,” San Francisco Chronicle. January 19, 2003

233.  GREEN LEFT WEEKLY: “Largest Coordinated anti-war protest in history.” Feb. 19, 2003

234.  Ibid. Green Left Weekly. Feb. 19, 2003

235.  Ibid. Green Left Weekly. Feb. 19, 2003

236.  Ibid. Green Left Weekly. Feb. 19, 2003

237.  Ibid. Green Left Weekly. Feb. 19, 2003

238.  Wikipedia. Biography of Andrew Card

CHAPTER 13 and 14

239.  Ibid. Statistics on UN sanctions deaths cross reference (i) the World Health Organization (ii) United Nations Children’s Fund (iii) Iraq Health Ministry.

240.  Ibid. (i) World Health Organization and (ii) United Nations Children’s Fund

241.  Ibid. United Nations Children’s Fund

242.  Ibid. Iraqi Health Ministry

243.  FBI Evidence. Email exchanged by Lindauer and Rani Ali in December, 2002.

244.  FBI Evidence. Email, phone correspondence from Rani Ali, Malaysian Embassy.

245.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Correspondence with Rani Ali, Malaysian Embassy

246.  Russian Contracts in Iraq: Forgive or Forget, June 4, 2003, Daniel Kimmage

247.  Susan Lindauer Letter to Andy Card, White House Chief of Staff, January 8, 2003

248.  Letter to Andy Card, January 8, 2003

249.  Ibid. Andy Card Letter, January 8, 2003.

250.  FBI Evidence. Manila envelope with Colin Powell’s address (next door to Dr. Fuisz)

251.  Ibid. Keynote: Texas Democratic Party Convention General Clark. June 9, 2006.

252.  FBI Evidence. Correspondence to Secretary Colin Powell, manila envelope plus hand written notes on Andy Card letters dated Sept 24, 2001; Dec 2, 2001; and Jan 8, 2003

253.  FBI Evidence. Letter to Secretary Powell. January 27, 2003, manila envelope plus signature & handwritten notes

254.  U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. Inquiry of Pre-War Intelligence from January, 2003. Released in May, 2007.

255.  Barbara Walters Interview with Secretary Colin Powell, ABC’s 20/20. September 8, 2005

256.  FBI Evidence. Correspondence with Rani Ali, Malaysian Embassy.

257.  Letter to U.N. Ambassador Wehbe of Syria. February 3, 2003.

258.  Ibid. Letter to U.N. Ambassador Wehbe of Syria. February 3, 2003.

259.  FBI Evidence. Email correspondence with Rani Ali, Malaysian Embassy, Feb 2003.

260.  FBI Evidence. Wire taps of phone conversation with Syria’s Ambassador Wehbe at the United Nations, February 4, 2003.

261.  “U.S. Rejected 2003 Iraqi Peace Offer: Saddam Hussein Proposed Elections, Disarmament, Help with War on Terror.” Joseph Farah, G2 Bulletin, March 10, 2009. WorldNet Daily.

262.  Ibid. “U.S. Rejected 2003 Iraqi Peace Offer:” G2 Bulletin, March 10, 2009.

263.  FBI Evidence. Wire tap. Fax transmission of Peace Framework to Syrian Embassy, Office of Ambassador Wehbe at the United Nations. February 3.

264.  Richard Harris, “MacArthur Park.” Lyrics by Jimmy Webb. Recorded by Dunhill on “A Tramp Shining.”

265.  Ibid. “MacArthur Park.” Lyrics by Jimmy Webb.

266.  Ibid. “MacArthur Park.” Lyrics by Jimmy Webb.

CHAPTER 15

267.  British Soldiers Torture, Rape Iraqi POWS, The SUN, UK, John Scott and Michael Lea, June 3, 2003

268.  Soldier Accused of Assault. European Intelligence Wire.. January 26, 2005

269.  Lynndie England, Life After Abu Ghraib, January 3, 2009.

270.  FBI Evidence. Susan Lindauer Letter to British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock at the United Nations on June 4, 2003, including proof of fax transmission,

271.  UK Troops in Iraq Torture Probe. May 1, 2004. BBC, UK.

272.  FBI Evidence. Legal Project in Iraq and The Hague. U.S. vs. Lindauer

273.  Ibd. FBI Evidence. Legal Project in Iraq and The Hague. U.S. vs. Lindauer

274.  (i) “Meeting Resistance,” Documentary film directed by Richard Horowitz. 2006
(ii) “Iraq in Fragments,” Documentary film by James Longley and Mohammed Haithem. 2006.

275.  Ibd. “Meeting Resistance” and “Iraq in Fragments.” 2006

276.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Legal Project in Iraq and The Hague. U.S. vs. Lindauer

277.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Legal Project in Iraq and The Hague. U.S. vs. Lindauer

278.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Compilation of faxes to Congress and U.N. post-invasion.

279.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Phone tap with FBI Under Cover Agent, Bassem Yousef.

280.  FBI Evidence. Surveillance and audio record. FBI Meeting with Bassem Yousef. U.S. vs. Lindauer. June 23, 2003.

281.  FBI Evidence. FBI Meeting with Bassem Youseff. U.S. vs. Lindauer. June 23, 2003.

282.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Audio record. FBI Meeting with Bassem Youseff. June 23, 2003.

283.  Ibid. Federal Indictment U.S. vs. Lindauer. Charge of “Organizing Resistance to the United States.”

284.  FBI Evidence. Surveillance and audio record, FBI meeting with Bassem Youseff, U.S. vs. Lindauer July 17, 2003.

285.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Surveillance and audio record, Meeting with Bassem Youseff, July 17, 2003.

286.  Court testimony of Dr. Parke Godfrey, Southern District of New York, June, 2008.

287.  FBI Evidence. Phone tap conversation with Bassem Youseff. July, 2003.

288.  FBI Evidence. Phone tap. Conversation with Bassem Youseff. July 2003.

289.  FBI Evidence. Phone tap. Conversation with Bassem Youseff. July 2003.

290.  FBI Evidence. French Ambassador Jean Marc de la Sabliere on July 23, 2003. Wire tap captured transmission record.

291.  Ibid. Federal Indictment. U.S. vs. Lindauer

292.  Ibid. Federal Indictment. U.S. vs. Lindauer

293.  Coalition Provisional Authority. Paul Bremer. Announcement on caucuses in Iraq, Nov. 15, 2003

294.  Ayatollah Sistani, Religious fatwa demanding rights to elections. December, 2003.

295.  Federal Indictment. U.S. vs. Muthanna al Hanooti. March, 2008.

296.  FBI Evidence. Phone taps. Conversations between Lindauer and al Hanooti, July 2002 through March, 2004. U.S. vs. Lindauer.

CHAPTER 16

297.  Ibid. Washington Post. “CIA could count Agents in Iraq on One Hand.”

[298]   Presidential Commission on Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence. Findings. New York Times. 2005.

299.  A Woman of Intelligence. Smith Alumnae Quarterly. Summer 2005.

300.  IBID. A Woman of Intelligence. Smith Alumnae Quarterly. Summer 2005.

301.  FBI Evidence. U.S. vs. Lindauer

302.  FBI Evidence. U.S. vs. Lindauer

303.  FBI Evidence. Education for Peace in Iraq Center Lobby Days. June 17, 2002. Schedule for meeting staff for Senator Nickles of Oklahoma and Rep. JC Watts, Oklahoma

304.  FBI Evidence. Captured fax transmissions to Congressional offices, 2003-2004.

305.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Wire Taps with Senator Lott’s staff. February 2, 2004

306.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Fax Wire Taps. Congressional letter. February, 2004.

307.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Citizens for Public Integrity papers, fax and email lists.

308.  Ibid. Letters to Andy Card December, 2000 through January, 2003 (ii) Dec. 2, 2001; (iii) Letter to Colin Powell Jan. 27, 2003.

CHAPTER 17

309.  Washington Post, New York Times, March 12, 2004. “Susan Lindauer Arrested as Iraqi Agent.”

310.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Lindauer Letters to Andy Card, Dec. 2000 through Jan, 2003.

311.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Lindauer Letters to Andy Card, Dec. 2000 through Jan, 2003.

312.  Court Transcripts from March 11, 2004 through January 15, 2009. U.S. vs. Lindauer

313.  9/11 Commission Report. Released October, 2004.

314.  FBI Interview of Parke Godfrey, September, 2004. (ii) affidavit of Parke Godfrey, (iii) Court testimony of Parke Godfrey, Southern District of New York, June 2008.

315.  Ibid. FBI Arrest Report, Susan Lindauer, March 11, 2004. U.S. vs. Lindauer

316.  Ibid. Federal Indictment U.S. vs. Lindauer

317.  Ibid. Susan Lindauer letter to Andy Card, January 8, 2003.

318.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Manila envelope and hand written notes to Secretary Colin Powell on copy of Andy Card letter dated Jan 8, 2003. Also letter to Secretary Powell dated January 27, 2003.

319.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Manila envelope and hand written notes to Secretary Colin Powell on copy of Andy Card letter dated Jan 8, 2003. Also letter to Secretary Powell dated January 27, 2003.

320.  Ibid. FBI Evidence Summary presented to legal defense. U.S. vs. Lindauer

321.  “Lester Coleman: From Agent to Outcast.” Plane-Truth.com. Ongoing blog.

322.  Ibid. Lester Coleman: From Agent to Outcast.

323.  Vince Cannistraro, Wikipedia bio.

324.  U..S. vs. Lindauer. Court transcripts from March 11, 2004 through January 15, 2009.

324.  Ibid. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Court transcripts from March 11, 2004 through Jan 15, 2009.

325.  U.S. vs. Lindauer. Court transcripts from September 2005 through August, 2008.

326.  Ibid. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Court transcripts from September 2005 through Aug, 2008.

327.  Ibid. U.S. vs. Lindauer Court transcripts from September 2005 through Aug, 2008.

328.  WelcomebacktoPottersville.com: “Susan Lindauer, Meet Franz Kafka.”

329.  Ibid. Federal Indictment. U.S. vs. Lindauer

330.  U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute.

331.  FBI Evidence. Classified Phone Calls. United for Peace and Justice. San Francisco

332.  Ibid. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute.

332.  Ibid. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute.

333.  Ibid. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute.

334.  Ibid. U.S. vs. Lindauer Court transcripts from March 11, 2004 through Jan. 15, 2009.

335.  Ibid. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute.

336.  Ibid. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute.

337.  Ibid. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute.

338.  Ibid. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute.

339.  Lindauer Letters to Andy Card, dated March 1, 2001 and December 2, 2001.

340.  Ibid. Federal Indictment. U.S. vs. Lindauer

341.  Judge Mukasey raised the question of whether my actions rose to a level of criminal activity in his decision against forcible drugging, Sept. 8, 2006.

CHAPTER 18

342.  Ibid. “Lockerbie: CIA witness gagged by U.S. Government, by Ian Ferguson. May 28, 2000.

343.  Email Correspondence with Edward MacKechnie, 2004- 2005.

344.  Affidavit of Ted Lindauer that he functioned as attorney to interview witnesses, including MacKechnie in May, 2005

345.  Deposition of Dr. Richard Fuisz, U.S. District Court, Alexandria, Virginia. Dec. 2000 and Jan, 2001. Conducted by Washington Law Firm of Butera and Andrews for Scottish Solicitors in the Lockerbie Trial at Camp Zeist

346.  A large number of my witnesses were connected to Lockerbie, for the simple fact that it would be the most expeditious manner of proving Dr. Fuisz’s CIA credentials. It was therefore entirely relevant. Also on our list was Dennis Hart from Butera and Andrews, who took the deposition in Judge White’s Court.

347.  U.S. Linked to Iraqi Scud Launchers, Seymour M. Hersh, New York Times, Jan 25, 1992

348.  Letter from Rep. Charlie Rose to Charles Murdter, Fraud Division of U.S Department of Justice, requesting criminal investigation of a U.S. Corporation accused of supplying SCUD mobile missile launchers to Iraq, citing obstruction of justice in a congressional investigation.

349.  Ibid. Court testimony by Parke Godfrey, Southern District of New York, June 2008.

350.  Court record. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Bail and extradition hearing. Susan Gauvey, Magistrate, Baltimore, Maryland. March 11, 2004.

351.  Psychiatric Evaluation Report by Dr. John S. Kennedy for Family Health Services, Hyattsville, Maryland, March 13, 2004.

352.  Ibid. Psychiatric Evaluation Report by Dr. Kennedy. March, 2004.

353.  Ibid. Psychiatric Evaluation Report by Dr. Kennedy. March, 2004.

354.  Federal Court Transcripts, U.S. vs. Lindauer. June, 2004.

355.  Monthly psychological observations Dr. Bruke Taddesseh, Family Health Services in Maryland, filed to Pre-Trial Services in Greenbelt and New York. March 2004 to March 2005.

356.  Release waiver for observation notes by Family Health Services, March 2005.

CHAPTER 19

357.  Classified Non-Disclosure Agreement, signed by Sam Talkin, February 10, 2005. Department of Justice, Compliance Review and Litigation Security Group, Security and Emergency Planning Staff.

358.  Federal Express Receipt. Law offices of Talkin & Muggruccio. Jan 23, 2009.

359.  Ibid. Classified Non-Disclosure Agreement. February 10, 2005.

360.  Personal checks from Dr. Richard Fuisz to Susan Lindauer, May, 2001 and Oct, 2001

361.  Documents pertaining to Committee Chairman Charlie Rose’s investigation of a U.S. Corporation accused of supplying SCUD mobile missile launchers to Iraq.

362.  Psychiatric Evaluation by Dr. Sanford Drob in New York City reports interview dates of January 18, 2005 and February 8, 2005.

363.  Professional biography of Dr. Sanford Drob, Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, California.

364.  Ibid. Psychiatric Evaluation by Dr. Drob for Defense in U.S. vs. Lindauer

365.  Release waiver for observation notes by Family Health Services, March 2005 to be sent to Dr. Drob and attorney, Sam Talkin.

366.  Dr. Taddesseh’s observation reports for February, March and April, 2005.

367.  Ibid. Classified Non-Disclosure Agreement. February 10, 2005.

368.  Ibid. Psychiatric Evaluation for Defense, Dr. Drob, U.S. vs. Lindauer. Feb 28, 2005.

369.  Ibid. Conclusion of Psychiatric Evaluation by Dr. Drob. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Feb. 28, 2005

370.  Ibid. Conclusion of Psychiatric Evaluation by Dr. Drob. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Feb. 28, 2005

371.  Court transcripts. Statement of Judge Mukasey demanding explanation for discrepancy in psych reporting. June 2006.

372.  Ibid. Psychiatric Evaluation for Defense, Dr. Drob, U.S. vs Lindauer Feb 28, 2005.

373.  Record of Subpoenas filed by Defense Counsel, Sam Talkin. U.S. vs. Lindauer

374.  Ibid. Record of Subpoenas filed by Defense Counsel, Sam Talkin. U.S. vs. Lindauer

375.  Response to Subpoena by Defense Intelligence Agency. U.S. vs. Lindauer, Feb 4, 2005.

376.  Email correspondence from Eddie MacKechnie and Ian Ferguson from Jan. 2005 to June 2005.

377.  Email correspondence from Eddie MacKechnie from Jan. 2005 to June 2005.

378.  Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer, U.S. vs. Lindauer.

379.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix.

380.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix.

381.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix.

CHAPTER 20

382.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix.

383.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix

384.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix

385.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix

385.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix

386.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix

387.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix

388.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix

389.  Psychiatric Evaluation by Dr. Stuart Kleinman for the Prosecution. U.S. vs. Lindauer Sept. 23, 2005.

390.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix

391.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix

392.  Ibid. Affidavit from Dr. Parke Godfrey in Appendix

393.  Ibid. CIA Director Could Count Agents in Iraq on One Hand. Washington Post.

394.  Ibid. Federal Indictment U.S. vs. Lindauer and Al Anbukes.

395.  Letters to Andy Card, March 1, 2001, September 24, 2001 and December 2, 2001

396.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Restaurant receipts for 3 lunches after Sept 11, 2001

397.  Ibid. Psychiatric Evaluation by Dr. Sanford Drob for the Defense.

398.  Ibid. (i) Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer, (ii) emails from Edward MacKechnie

399.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer

400.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer

401.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer

402.  Federal Statute On Procedures for Deciding Competence of a Defendant. (ii) Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer.

403.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix

404.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix

405.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix

406.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer.

407.  Federal Court Order for Surrender to Carswell Prison, Judge Mukasey, September 23, 2005.

408.  Ibid. Affidavit from Thayer Lindauer in Appendix

CHAPTER 21 and 22

409.  Biography of Edward O’Callaghan, Law Firm of Peabody, Nixon.

410.  Barbara Walters Exclusive Interview with Secretary of State Colin Powell, “20/20,” September 8, 2005.

411.  Psychiatric Evaluation by Dr. Stuart Kleinman for the Prosecution. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Court documents submitted Sept 17, 2005, with decision to incarcerate at Carswell. Appearance in Judge Mukasey’s Chambers occurred on September 23, 2005.

412.  Ibid. Barbara Walters Interview with Secretary Powell, “20/20,” Sept 8, 2005.

[413]   Ibid. Barbara Walters Interview with Secretary Powell, “20/20,” Sept 8, 2005.

414.  FBI Evidence. Lindauer Letter to Secretary Colin Powell, January 27, 2003. Manila envelope with handwritten notes to Powell and signature.

415.  Federal Indictment, U.S. vs. Lindauer, manila envelopes to Powell and correspondence therein, with handwritten messages to the Secretary.

416.  Ibid. Psychiatric Evaluation by Dr. Stuart Kleinman for the Prosecution. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Court documents submitted Sept 17, 2005, with decision to incarcerate at Carswell. Appearance in Judge Mukasey’s Chambers occurred Sept 23, 2005.

417.  “U.S. Prison Rate remains new one in 100 Americans: Study” AFP. March 17, 2010

418.  Bureau of Prisons website, Federal Medical Center-Carswell. 2008

419.  A Crack in the Carswell Wall, by Betty Brink, Fort Worth Weekly. Jan. 31, 2007

420.  CNN Television News. Nov, 2005. Interviews with Rep. Murtha, Senator Carl Levin.

421.  Ibid. Federal Indictment. U.S. vs. Lindauer and Anbukes.

422.  FBI Evidence. Legal Discovery of Anbuke brothers.

423.  FBI Evidence. Tax forms and pay stubs for Anbuke brothers.

424.  FBI Evidence. Prison phone calls by Anbuke brothers from Metropolitan Correctional Center.

425.  Ibid. CNN Television. Nov, 2005. Interviews with Rep. Murtha, Sen Carl Levin.

426.  Ibid. Affidavit by Thayer Lindauer (see appendix).

427.  Carswell Prison Blues, by Betty Brink, Ms. Magazine, Summer 2008

428.  Ibid. Carswell Prison Blues, by Betty Brink, Ms. Magazine, Summer 2008

429.  Ibid. Psychiatric Evaluation by Dr. Drob for Defense in U.S. vs. Lindauer. February 28, 2005.

430.  Ibid. Affidavit by Thayer Lindauer (see appendix).

431.  Staff notes on M-1, Carswell Prison, Oct, 2005 through April, 2006.

432.  “Cover Up of Convenience: The Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie,” Ian Ferguson and John Ashton. 2001.

433.  Ian Ferguson biography.

434.  Ibid. Godfrey testimony. Southern District of New York. June, 2008.

435.  Ibid. Godfrey testimony. Southern District of New York. June, 2008.

[436]   Ibid. Godfrey testimony. Southern District of New York. June, 2008.

437.  Carswell Monthly Reports

438.  Court order for prison surrender cited a release date no later than February 3, 2006, in accordance with the maximum 120 day detention allowed by federal law. Signed by Judge Mukasey

CHAPTER 23

439.  Notice of Internal Medication Hearing. Carswell Prison. Signed December 23, 2005.

440.  Biography of Edward O’Callaghan. Law Firm of Peabody and Nixon. 2010.

441.  Ibid. Notice of Internal Medication Hearing. Carswell Prison. Signed Dec 23, 2005.

442.  Ibid. Testimony of Parke Godfrey, Southern District of New York. June, 2008.

443.  Ibid. Monthly reports of observation filed by Dr. Bruke Taddesseh, Family Health Services. March, 2004 through March, 2005.

444.  Participants listed as Dr. William Pederson and Dr. Colin Vas. Internal Medication Hearing. Carswell Prison. December 28, 2005.

445.  Internal Medication Hearing. Carswell Prison. December 28, 2005.

446.  Ibid. Internal Medication Hearing. Carswell Prison. December 28, 2005.

447.  Ibid. Internal Medication Hearing. Carswell Prison. December 28, 2005.

448.  Ibid. Internal Medication Hearing. Carswell Prison. December 28, 2005.

449.  Court filings by Carswell Prison Staff on behalf of the Bureau of Prisons. U.S. vs. Lindauer

450.  (i) Ibid. staff notes on M-1 acquired by Subpoena, Carswell Prison, October, 2005 through April, 2006. Documents repeated demands for Shadduck to interview witnesses. (ii) Ibid. Court testimony by Parke Godfrey. Southern District of New York, June 2008.

451.  Decision on Internal Medication Hearing. Carswell Prison. December 28, 2005.

452.  Ibid. Decision on Internal Medication Hearing. Carswell Prison. December 28, 2005. See Appendix.

453.  Ibid. Decision on Internal Medication Hearing. Carswell Prison. December 28, 2005.

454.  Ibid. staff notes on M-1 acquired by Subpoena show repeated demands to interview witnesses and confirm story., Carswell Prison, October, 2005 through April, 2006.

455.  Ibid. Decision on Internal Medication Hearing. Carswell Prison. December 28, 2005.

CHAPTER 24

456.  No Mercy at Federal Prisons,” by Betty Brink, the Progressive Populist

457.  Ibid. No Mercy at Federal Prisons,” by Betty Brink, the Progressive Populist

458.  Ibid. No Mercy at Federal Prisons,” by Betty Brink, the Progressive Populist

459.  Ibid. No Mercy at Federal Prisons,” by Betty Brink, the Progressive Populist

460.  Three Arrested in Conspiracy to Smuggle Alient into the United States. Department of Justice. September 8, 2004.

461.  Michigan Woman Sentenced for her Role in Smuggling Scores of Iraqis and Jordanians into the United States. Department of Justice. November 19, 2007.

462.  Ibid. Michigan Woman Sentenced. Department of Justice. November 19, 2007.

463.  FBI Evidence. Citizens for Public Integrity Email Data Base.

464.  Ibid. FBI Evidence Citizens for Public Integrity Issue Papers.

465.  Ibid. U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. Inquiry of Pre-War Intelligence from January, 2003. Released in May, 2007.

466.  Ibid. Letters to Andy Card January 8, 2003 and Colin Powell, January 27, 2003.

467.  Ibid. Monthly reports of observation filed by Dr. Bruke Taddesseh, Family Health Services. March, 2004 through March, 2005.

468.  Carswell Prison. Monthly Observation Reports on M-1. Oct, 2005 through April, 2006.

469.  Carswell Prison. Monthly Observation Reports on M-1, notes by Dr. Colin Vas. October 23, 2005.

470.  Carswell Prison. Staff notes on M-1 on Susan Lindauer, daily and continuous from October, 2005 through April, 2006.

471.  Ibid. Carswell Prison. Monthly Observation Reports on M-1. Oct, 2005 through April, 2006.

472.  Ibid. Carswell Prison. Monthly Observation Reports on M-1. October, 2005 through April, 2006.

473.  Ibid. Carswell Prison. Monthly Observation Reports on M-1. October, 2005 through April, 2006.

474.  Ibid. Decision on Internal Medication Hearing. Carswell Prison. December 28, 2005.

475.  Ibid. Federal Statute on Findings of Competence. U.S. Laws.

476.  Affidavit by Thayer Lindauer, see Appendix.

477.  Psychiatric Diagnosis. Carswell Prison. By Dr. Shadduck, Dr. Vas, Psychotic Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified” Dec. 28, 2005.

478.  Psychiatric Diagnosis by Dr. Tressa Burton, Counseling Plus, Silver Spring, Maryland, October, 2006. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by incarceration.

479.  Ibid. Federal Statute on Findings of Competence, Process of Evaluations.

480.  Bureau of Prison Website. Inmate Locator citing release date, status of release.

CHAPTER 25

481.  (i) Court papers. Carswell filing. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Request for Indefinite Detention. February 3, 2006. (ii) Ibid. Bureau of Prison Inmate Locator. Online.

482.  Court papers. Carswell filing Request for Involuntary Drugging with Haldol. Feb 3, 2006 (ii) Carswell Federal Medical Center. Internal Memo marked “Sensitive Limited Official Use,” to Bureau of Prisons, Government Exhibit 2. Drug Recommendations by Dr. Collin J. Vas, Staff Psychiatrist, December 19, 2005

483.  Carswell Opinion on Competency. By Dr. Shadduck U.S. vs Lindauer Dec 22, 2005.

484.  Ibid. Decision on Internal Medication Hearing. Carswell Prison. Dec 28, 2005. Appendix.

485.  Ibid. Congressional Investigation by Rep. Charlie Rose (North Carolina) into U.S. Corporation that supplied Iraq with SCUD Mobile Missile Launchers before the first Gulf War.

486.  Ibid. U.S. Linked to Iraqi Scud Launchers, Seymour M. Hersh, New York Times, January 25, 1992

487.  Ibid. Letter from Rep. Charlie Rose to Mr. Charles Murdter, Fraud Division of U.S. Department of Justice requesting criminal investigation of a U.S. Corporation accused of supplying SCUD mobile missile launchers to Iraq, citing obstruction of justice in a congressional investigation.

488.  (i) Ibid. Court testimony. Parke Godfrey, Southern District of New York, June, 2008 (ii) Affidavit of Parke Godfrey (See Appendix)

489.  Ibid. Carswell Opinion on Competency. U.S. vs Lindauer Dec 22, 2005. Omits any and all reference to witness confirmations.

490.  Ibid. Decision on Internal Medication Hearing. Carswell Prison. Dec 28, 2005.

491.  Carswell Request for Indefinite Detention. U.S. vs. Lindauer. February 3, 2006

492.  Biography of Edward O’Callaghan, Law Firm of Peabody, Nixon. 2010

493.  Affidavit of Thayer Lindauer, See Appendix. 2010

494.  Affidavit of Thayer Lindauer, See Appendix. 2010

495.  Affidavit of Thayer Lindauer, See Appendix. 2010

496.  Affidavit of Thayer Lindauer, See Appendix. 2010

497.  Affidavit of Thayer Lindauer, See Appendix. 2010

498.  Affidavit of Thayer Lindauer, See Appendix. 2010

499.  Affidavit of Thayer Lindauer, See Appendix. 2010

500.  Affidavit of Thayer Lindauer, See Appendix. 2010

501.  Affidavit of Thayer Lindauer, See Appendix. 2010

CHAPTER 26 and 27

502.  Federal Statute on Competence

503.  Ibid. Federal Statute on Competence.

504.  Affidavit of Thayer Lindauer, See Appendix. 2010

505.  Psychiatric Report. Dr. Stuart Kleinman. September 17, 2005.

506.  Court Transcript. Ruling on Competence. Judge Loretta Preska. September 15, 2008.

507.  Oklahoma City Bombing Revelations. Patrick B. Briley. 2007

508.  Court Transcript. Hearing on Forcible Drugging. Judge Mukasey, May 4, 2006.

509.  Federal Statute. U.S. Patriot Act.

510.  Ibid. Federal Statute. U.S. Patriot Act.

511.  Ibid. Classified Non Disclosure Agreement. Signed by Sam Talkin. Feb 10, 2005

512.  Ibid. Psychiatric Report. Dr. Stuart Kleinman. February 28, 2005.

513.  Ibid. Federal Indictment U.S. vs. Lindauer

514.  Ibid. Patriot Act. The whole premise of the Prosecution argument hinged on that denial. With admission, the charges would have been dismissed, and the Justice Department could never have argued for forcible drugging to cure me of what the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Bureau of Prisons all recognized was truthful.

515.  Ibid. Statutory Requirements under U.S. Patriot Act.

516.  Ibid. Statutory Requirements under U.S. Patriot Act.

517.  Courtroom Testimony of Dr. Collin Vas, Staff Psychiatrist. Carswell Federal Medical Center. Before Judge Michael B. Mukasey. U.S. vs. Lindauer. May 4, 2006.

518.  Ibid. Courtroom Testimony of Dr. Vas. Carswell U.S. vs. Lindauer, May 4, 2006.

519.  Ibid. Courtroom Testimony of Dr. Vas. Carswell U.S. vs. Lindauer, May 4, 2006.

520.  Ibid. Decision on Internal Medication Hearing. December 28, 2005.

521.  Ibid. Courtroom Testimony of Dr. Vas. Carswell U.S. vs. Lindauer, May 4, 2006.

522.  Ibid. Decision on Internal Medication Hearing. December 28, 2005.

523.  Court Decision on Forcible Drugging by Judge Mukasey. Ruling for the Defense, U.S. vs. Lindauer, September 8, 2006.

524.  Ibid. Decision on Forcible Drugging by Judge Mukasey. U.S. vs. Lindauer Sept 8, 2006.

525.  Ibid. Courtroom Testimony of Dr. Vas. Carswell U.S. vs. Lindauer, May 4, 2006.

526.  Ibid. Compilation of Observation Notes by M-1 Staff. Submitted as Court evidence, Hearing on Forcible Drugging. U.S. vs. Lindauer. May 4, 2006.

527.  Ibid. Courtroom Testimony of Dr. Vas. Carswell U.S. vs. Lindauer, May 4, 2006.

528.  Ibid. Monthly Observation Reports. Carswell Prison. Oct, 2005 through April, 2006

529.  Ibid. Compilation of M-1 staff notes, Carswell Prison. Oct 2005 through April, 2006

530.  Ibid. Courtroom Testimony of Dr. Vas, Carswell, U.S. vs. Lindauer. May 4, 2006

531.  Courtroom Testimony of Dr. Robert L. Goldstein, a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University. U.S. vs. Lindauer, May 9, 2006

532.  Ibid. Courtroom Testimony of Dr. Robert L. Goldstein. May 9, 2006.

533.  Ibid. Courtroom Testimony. Psychiatric Opinion of Dr. Goldstein. May 9, 2006.

534.  FBI Evidence Summary for Defense. U.S. vs. Lindauer

535.  Ibid. Courtroom Testimony. Psychiatric Opinion of Dr. Goldstein. U.S. vs. Lindauer May 9, 2006

CHAPTER 28

536.  Three Days of the Condor., Directed by Sydney Pollack, 1975.

537.  Court Papers. Copies of my letters to Judge Mukasey requesting a competency hearing got forwarded to my attorney. February, 2006 through June, 2006.

538.  Ibid. Court Papers. Copies of my letters to Judge Mukasey asking to call Paul Hoven for closed testimony. May, 2006.

539.  Ibid. Psychiatry Report by Dr. Stuart Kleinman. Sept 17, 2005. U.S. vs. Lindauer

540.  FBI Evidence. Restaurant Receipts from Viand in New York City. September, 2001.

541.  FBI Evidence. Video by Iraqi Intelligence Service. Al Rashid Hotel. March 7, 2002. U.S. vs. Lindauer

542.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Video by Iraqi Intelligence Service. Al Rashid Hotel. March 7, 2002.

543.  Court Transcript. Judge Mukasey demand for explanation on Discrepancies in Psych June, 2006

544.  Ibid. Court Transcript. Judge Mukasey demand for explanation on Discrepancies in Psych Reports. June, 2006.

CHAPTER 29

545.  Court Decision by Judge Loretta Preska Upholding finding of Incompetence. Sept 15, 2008.

546.  Court Decision by Judge Michael B. Mukasey on Forcible Drugging, in favor of Defendant. U.S. vs. Lindauer. September 7, 2006. Date of retirement Sept 8, 2006.

547.  Court papers. Prison Correspondence from Lindauer to Judge Mukasey. Copies supplied to defense attorney, Sam Talkin.

548.  Ibid. Court Decision by Judge Michael B. Mukasey on Forcible Drugging, in favor of Defendant. U.S. vs. Lindauer. September 7, 2006. Date of retirement Sept 8, 2006.

549.  Ibid. Court Decision by Judge Michael B. Mukasey on Forcible Drugging, in favor of Defendant. U.S. vs. Lindauer. September 7, 2006. Date of retirement Sept 8, 2006.

550.  Ibid. Court Decision by Judge Michael B. Mukasey on Forcible Drugging, in favor of Defendant. U.S. vs. Lindauer. September 7, 2006. Date of retirement Sept 8, 2006.

551.  Ibid. Court Decision by Judge Michael B. Mukasey on Forcible Drugging, in favor of Defendant. U.S. vs. Lindauer. September 7, 2006. Date of retirement Sept 8, 2006.

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552.  Ibid. Federal Statute. Competence Detentions. 2006.

553.  Biography of Brian Shaughnessy. Law Firm of Shaughnessy, Volzer & Gagner. 2010

554.  Patricia Kelly O’Meara. “Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill.” Author House. 2001.

555.  Court Testimony by Patricia Kelly O’Meara at Competency Hearing of Susan Lindauer. Judge Loretta Preska, presiding. Southern District of New York.. June, 2008.

556.  Ibid. O’Meara. “Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill.” Author House. 2001.

557.  Ibid. O’Meara. “Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill.” Author House. 2001.

558.  Antonuccio et al. Psychiatric Times, 12:8, August 2000. Cited in O’Meara. “Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness.” Author House. 2001.

559.  Dr. Peter Breggen, MD “Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry.” Springer Publishing Co. New York, 1997 p. 5. Cited in O’Meara. “Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill.” Author House. 2001.

560.  Loren Mosher, MD, former chief of the National Institute of Mental Health Center for the Study of Schizophrenia. Cited in O’Meara. “Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill.” Author House. 2001.

561.  Elliot S. Valenstein, PhD, “Blaming the Brain” (The Free Press, New York, 1998) p.4. Cited in O’Meara. “Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill.” Author House. 2001.

562.  Ibid. O’Meara. “Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill.” Author House. 2001.

563.  (i) Court Testimony on Forcible Drugging, Judge Mukasey presiding. Dr. Goldstein. May 9, 2006.
(ii) Ibid. Psychiatry Report by Dr. Stuart Kleinman. Sept 17, 2005. U.S. vs. Lindauer
(iii) Ibid. Psychiatry Report by Dr. Sanford Drob, Jan 18, 2005. U.S. vs. Lindauer

564.  (i) Court Testimony on Forcible Drugging, Judge Mukasey presiding. Dr. Goldstein. May 9, 2006.
(ii) Ibid. Psychiatry Report by Dr. Stuart Kleinman. Sept 17, 2005. U.S. vs. Lindauer
(iii) Ibid. Psychiatry Report by Dr. Sanford Drob, Jan 18, 2005. U.S. vs. Lindauer

565.  Psychology Evaluation by Dr. Burton, Counseling Plus. Oct, 2006. U.S. vs. Lindauer.

566.  Psychology Evaluation by Dr. Burton, Counseling Plus. Oct, 2006. U.S. vs. Lindauer.

567.  U.S. Pre-Trial Services. Session Notes filed by Dr. Burton, Counseling Plus. October 2006 through August, 2007. U.S. vs. Lindauer.

568.  U.S. Pre-Trial Services. No copy of the 2nd Psych Evaluation in Maryland, post-Carswell, has survived. My Pre-Trial Supervisor refused my request for a copy. Shaughnessy and I suspect the Justice Department feared what my Defense might do if we got hold of two positive psych evaluations, back to back, that contradicted the Court proceedings. For whatever reason, they refused to hand it over.

569.  Psychiatric Evaluation for Prosecution by Dr. Stuart Kleinman, U.S. vs. Lindauer. Judge Loretta Preska presiding. June, 2007.

570.  Motion for Reconsideration of Decision on Defendant’s Competence and Her Right to a Speedy Trial. Filed by Brian Shaughnessy, October 1, 2008. U.S. vs. Lindauer, Judge Preska Presiding.

571.  Affidavit by Susan Lindauer filed with Motion for Reconsideration, citing tracts from taped interview on June 8, 2007. Judge Preska presiding.

572.  Transcript of Interview for Psych Evaluation with Dr. Stuart Kleinman, witnessed by Sam Talkin at Law Offices of Talkin & Muggruccio. June 8, 2007

573.  Court Transcript. Testimony of Dr. Kleinman, Judge Loretta Preska. Sept 15, 2007.

574.  Ibid. Transcript of Interview for Psych Evaluation with Dr. Stuart Kleinman, witnessed by Sam Talkin at Law Offices of Talkin & Muggruccio. June 8, 2007

575.  Ibid. Motion for Reconsideration of Decision on Defendant’s Competence. Brian Shaughnessy, attorney. October 1, 2008. (ii) Ibid. Affidavit by Susan Lindauer filed with Motion for Reconsideration

576.  Ibid. Transcript of Interview for Psych Evaluation with Dr. Stuart Kleinman, witnessed by Sam Talkin at Law Offices of Talkin & Muggruccio. June 8, 2007

577.  Ibid. FBI Evidence. Letter to Andy Card dated March 1, 2001.

578.  Ibid. Transcript of Interview for Psych Evaluation with Dr. Stuart Kleinman, witnessed by Sam Talkin at Law Offices of Talkin & Muggruccio. June 8, 2007

579.  Ibid. Federal Indictment. U.S. vs. Lindauer shows no tax charges.

580.  Ibid. Transcript of Court Testimony. Dr. Kleinman, Judge Preska. Sept 15, 2007.

581.  Ibid. Transcript of Interview for Psych Evaluation with Dr. Kleinman, witnessed by Sam Talkin at Law Offices of Talkin & Muggruccio. June 8, 2007

582.  Ibid. Transcript of Interview for Psych Evaluation with Dr. Kleinman, witnessed by Sam Talkin at Law Offices of Talkin & Muggruccio. June 8, 2007

583.  Ibid. Brian Shaughnessy. Prologue.

584.  Court transcripts. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Presence of Brian Shaughnessy at proceedings. June 2007 onwards.

585.  Letter to Judge Preska from Susan Lindauer, June 10, 2007 notifying Court of Brian Shaughnessy’s interest in the Case. (ii) Session notes from Counseling Plus in August, 2007. End of Meetings with Burton.

586.  Ibid. Biography of Edward O’Callaghan. Law Firm of Peabody Nixon

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587.  Michael Collins hosts ElectionFraudNews.com. His articles run on 400 blogs.

588.  American Cassandra: Susan Lindauer’s Story. Michael Collins. “Scoop” Independent News, Oct. 17, 2007. Republished by permission of the author.

589:   “American Cassandra Series:” Michael Collins. “Scoop” Independent News.

590.  Ibid. “American Cassandra Series:” Michael Collins. “Scoop” Independent News.

591.  Court Transcripts. September, October, November and December 2007. Major fight to force me back to Carswell. Judge Preska, presiding, after I refused to continue psych meetings at Counseling Plus. Thomas Marino, Jr. Pre-Trial Services, New York. Randy Canal, Pre-Trial Services, Greenbelt.

592.  Tape Recordings of phone calls to Pre-Trial Services, documenting reporting.

593.  Session notes from Counseling Plus. Burton. U.S. vs. Lindauer October, 2006 through August, 2007.

594.  Bail Bond U.S. vs. Lindauer set at $500,000. March 11, 2004 through Jan 15, 2009.

595.  Ibid. Court Transcripts. September, October, November and December 2007. Major fight to force me back to Carswell. Judge Preska, presiding, after I refused to continue psych meetings at Counseling Plus. Thomas Marino, Jr. Pre-Trial Services, New York. Randy Canal, Pre-Trial Services, Greenbelt.

596.  Ibid. Court Transcripts. September through December, 2007. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Judge Preska, presiding

597.  Ibid. Court Transcripts. September through December, 2007. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Judge Preska, presiding

598.  Court Transcripts. Pre-Trial Services’ attempt to revoke bail. U.S. vs. Lindauer. December, 2007

599.  Ibid. Court Transcripts. Pre-Trial Services’ attempt to revoke bail. U.S. vs. Lindauer. December, 2007

600.  Ibid. Court Transcripts. Pre-Trial Services’ attempt to revoke bail. U.S. vs. Lindauer. December, 2007

601.  Ibid. Session notes from Counseling Plus. Burton–Lindauer Oct, 2006 through Aug, 2007.

602.  Ibid. Court Transcripts. Pre-Trial Services’ attempt to revoke bail. U.S. vs. Lindauer. December, 2007

603.  Court filing. Brian Shaughnessy. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Judge Preska, Jan, 2008.

604.  Ibid. Court Transcripts. Pre-Trial Services’ attempt to revoke bail. U.S. vs. Lindauer. December, 2007

605.  Ibid. Court Transcripts. Pre-Trial Services’ attempt to revoke bail. September through December, 2007. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Judge Preska, presiding

CHAPTER 32

606.  Court Testimony by Patricia Kelly O’Meara. Hearing on Competence, Judge Loretta Preska presiding.. U.S. vs. Lindauer, June 2008.

607.  Ibid. Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Invents Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill,” by Patricia Kelly O’Meara. Author House. 2006.

608.  Ibid. Court Testimony by Patricia Kelly O’Meara. Hearing on Competence, Judge Preska presiding.. U.S. vs. Lindauer, June 2008.

609.  Court Testimony by Dr. Parke Godfrey, Hearing on Competence, Judge Preska presiding.. U.S. vs. Lindauer, June 2008.

610.  Ibid. Affidavit by Parke Godfrey on 9/11 warning and the question of Lindauer’s Competence.

611.  Ibid. Affidavit by Dr. Parke Godfrey on 9/11 warning and the question of Lindauer’s Competence.

612.  Ibid. Affidavit by Dr. Parke Godfrey on 9/11 warning and the question of Lindauer’s Competence.

613.  Anti War Activist Returns to Court for Iraq Spy Case, by Alan Feuer, New York Times. June 18, 2008

614.  Ibid. Anti War Activist Returns to Court, by Alan Feuer, New York Times. June 18, 2008

615.  9/11 Prediction Revealed at Susan Lindauer Hearing on Competence. By Michael Collins. “Scoop” Independent News. June 18, 2008

616.  New York Times Covers Susan Lindauer Hearing, By Michael Collins “Scoop” Independent News,” June 25, 2008.

617.  Biography of Edward O’Callaghan. Law Firm of Peabody, Nixon. 2010

CHAPTER 33 and 34

618.  Biography of Judge Loretta Preska, Wikipedia

619.  Woman Accused of Iraq Ties is Ruled Unfit for Trial Again, New York Times, Sept 16, 2008

620.  Court Decision on Competence by Judge Preska, U.S. vs. Lindauer, Sept 15, 2008

621.  Court Testimony. Dr. Stuart Kleinman, Judge Preska presiding. U.S. vs. Lindauer. September 15, 2008.

622.  Ibid. Transcript of Interview for Psych Evaluation with Dr. Kleinman, witnessed by Sam Talkin at Law Offices of Talkin & Muggruccio. June 8, 2007

623.  Ibid. Transcript of Interview for Psych Evaluation with Dr. Kleinman, witnessed by Sam Talkin at Law Offices of Talkin & Muggruccio. June 8, 2007

624.  Ibid. Motion for Reconsideration of Decision on Defendant’s Competence. Brian Shaughnessy, attorney. October 1, 2008. (ii) Ibid. Affidavit by Susan Lindauer filed with Motion for Reconsideration

625.  Ibid. Andy Card Letters. December, 2000 through January, 2003.

626.  Odysseus Elytis. Nobel Poet Laureate. On the Greek Resistance to Fascism. I have carried this poem with me for 20 years. With my thanks for a cup of tea in Athens, Susan Lindauer

627.  Feds Drop Case Against Accused Iraqi Agent. Associated Press. January 15, 2009.