PART 2: EXTREME PREJUDICE:THE TERRIFYING STORY OF THE PATRIOT ACT & THE COVER UPS OF 911 AND IRAQ

EXTREME PREJUDICE:

THE TERRIFYING STORY  OF 

THE PATRIOT ACT & THE 

COVER UPS OF 911 AND IRAQ

BY SUSAN LINDAUER

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 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 1960's. 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 1960's 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 1960's, 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 1960's, 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 antiwar 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 1980's. Politically, I championed the Sandinista's against the Contra's 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 marshaled 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 g l o b a l diversity of policy making, 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 policy making, 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 Gadhafi’s camps in Tripoli. The story goes that when fighter planes crossed Maltese airspace without permission, Malta’s Prime Minister called to warn Gadhafi, 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 red lined: 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 t h e 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 IranContra 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-1970's 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 Contra's 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 Contra's 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 anti-racketeering 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 IranContra. 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 IranContra 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 coming 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 1980's. 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 1980's. 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 1990's, 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 the actual 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 1980's. 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 mass 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 1990's, 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 What’s the 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 1990's 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 nonviolence 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 b a c k 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 occurred. 84 In it, I offered to delay or reject the invitation outright, if so instructed. Th a t 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 warrant less 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 nonviolence 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 mis-perceptions about “Double Agents” come from?

Those mis-perceptions 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? [Because they could not let the 20+ years of Saddam being a U.S Asset become any more well known then what was flying around by the late 90's already in alternative news.Saddam breathing became a bigger liability to the Bushes each day,so I do not think 911 had anything to do with Iraq,what it did,is it gave us access to the Middle East,that otherwise we would not be granted to.Iraq came first simply because Saddam had to die. DC]

“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 Ambassadors 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 Dares 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.

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.

next....s527
Iraq's peace overtures
to Europe and the U.S.

Notes
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 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 

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