A former journalist and Capitol Hill press aide to four lawmakers Thursday became the first American to be charged with serving as an Iraqi agent and scheming to help insurgent groups now battling U.S. forces there.
Susan Lindauer, 40, was arrested at her $250,000 suburban Washington condominium and appeared in federal court in Baltimore on suspicion of being involved as early as 1999 with members of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, whom she met on visits to Iraq's U.N. diplomatic mission in New York City.
A federal grand jury indictment alleges that Lindauer, a 1985 Smith College graduate and former student at the London School of Economics, also met twice last summer with an undercover FBI agent who was posing as a Libyan spy bent on backing groups fighting American troops in Iraq.
As she was led to a car outside the Baltimore FBI office Thursday, Lindauer told WBAL-TV, a Scripps Howard television station in Baltimore, that she "did more to stop terrorism in this country than anybody else," and had worked to get weapons inspectors back into Iraq.
"I'm an anti-war activist and I'm innocent," Lindauer told WBAL.
Lindauer - who was charged with conspiracy, acting as an unregistered Iraqi agent and engaging in financial dealings with a terrorist-supporting nation - does not stand accused of being a spy.
But the 14-page indictment describes how she covertly dropped documents at a pre-arranged "dead drop" spot in Maryland for the fake Libyan spy. Lindauer gave away the names and locations of Iraqi exiles living in the United States, including that of the son of a former Iraqi diplomat, the indictment said.
The daughter of a wealthy Alaska newspaper publisher with Texas oil holdings, Lindauer also traveled to Baghdad in 2002 to meet with Iraqi intelligence officials, and received a total of $10,000 for her services over five years, according to the indictment.
Lindauer is also a distant cousin of White House chief of staff Andrew Card, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Thursday.
Her alleged Iraq entanglements were not her first foray into the world of Middle East terrorism and spy intrigue.
While employed as press secretary to then-Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Lindauer gave a sworn deposition in 1994 to a commission studying the 1988 terrorist airliner bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Lindauer said she had met with a man named Richard Fuisz, who she described as a major CIA operative in Syria, who believed it was not Libya but Syria that was behind the Lockerbie attack. She said Fuisz complained that the Clinton administration had slapped a gag order on him because it did not want to implicate Syria in such wrongdoing. (Libyan leader Muammar Khadafy has since acknowledged it was his country that was guilty.)
In her deposition, which the pro-Israel Middle East Intelligence Bulletin recounted in July 2000, Lindauer contended she had come under "intense surveillance, threats and attacks" since she made her charges public.
"Someone put acid on the steering wheel of my car on a day I was supposed to drive to NYC for a meeting at the Libya House. I scrubbed my hands with a toilet brush, but my face was burned so badly that 3 weeks later friends worried I might be badly scarred," Lindauer told the monthly online publication. MEIB. "Also, my house was bugged with listening devices and cameras _ little red laser lights in the shower vent. And I survived several assassination attempts."
According to online databases, news reports and old congressional directories, Lindauer lived on and off in Alaska from July 1994 to June 2001. Her father, John Lindauer, was a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Alaska's 1998 elections whose disastrous political campaign led to a criminal investigation. Before the election, the state GOP withdrew its support for him, and Democratic incumbent Tony Knowles won in a landslide.
John Lindauer pleaded no contest in 2000 to misdemeanor charges that he hid the source of some of the $1.7 million he used during his unsuccessful campaign. The money had come from his second wife.
In the past 15 years, Susan Lindauer hopped from job to job. She was a reporter and editorial writer for two Washington state newspapers between 1987 and 1989. Later she worked as a researcher for the U.S. News & World Report news magazine.
Richard Folkers, director of media relations at the magazine, said she was employed there from September 1990 to August 1991, but said few at the magazine now remember her.
"In this business, that is a lifetime ago, and although I was around at that time, that name meant nothing to me,'' Folkers said.
Later, Lindauer turned her sights to Capitol Hill.
According to congressional directories, Lindauer worked in the press office of Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., in 1993. In January 1994, she began work as press secretary for then-Rep. Wyden, a liberal lawmaker who now is a U.S. senator from that state.
She did a stint in the press operation of then-Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, D-Ill., in 1996 and later landed in the office of Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., in April 2002 - about the time the indictment alleges Lindauer traveled to Baghdad.
Lindauer now works as a freelance media consultant, according to court papers.
If convicted, she could face up to 25 years in prison.
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