PART 8: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 16: 

THE CRYING GAME 

“I am bound to say what seems right to me, ” responded the Senator. “But if you say it, I will kill you, ” the Emperor warned. 

–Senator Robert Byrd 

Floor Statement Opposing 

Homeland Security Act of 2002 

Congressional Record, 11/19/2002 

Those few rose petals died quickly in the Iraq summer sun. 

Simple things in modern life, like shortages of electricity and food, turned Iraqi frustrations to hatred and rage. The hunt for WMDs bagged nothing, disgracing a key justification for the war. And Americans soon realized the only Al Qaeda forces in Iraq arrived shortly after the fall of Saddam, mocking another rationalization for our misadventure. In no time at all, American soldiers hunkered down behind razor wire and concrete barricades, without adequate body armor, while the War of Ramadan launched a full scale insurgency using suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices made of absolutely anything. Violent resistance swept from the mosques to Sunni strongholds in Fallujah and Mosul, and Shi’ite dominated Najaf and Nasiriyah. 

The stagecraft of victory collapsed within months. Liberation doctrine lay battered beneath the rubble, smashed beyond recognition, alongside charred claims of triumph. 

It happened so fast. 

Americans woke up one morning to find themselves a losing army, a conquered Occupier. 

“Vietnam” was on everyone’s lips. Soldiers who expected to serve one tour in Iraq got sent back four times, more badly scarred by post traumatic stress with every deployment. 

The country demanded to know why. Americans resent getting tagged as “bad guys” in any conflict. Our soldiers want to be the “good guys.” 

In Washington, Congressional leaders got scared. They had shut their ears to hundreds of thousands of voter pleas, in letters and faxes and phone calls and demonstrations that begged Congress to stay out of Iraq, and let U.N. weapons inspectors finish their job. Americans never wanted to sacrifice for this war. Now we had to mortgage our future to sustain the failure of it. 

Congress faced bitter recriminations and vicious election fights against a backdrop of the most passionate anti-incumbent sentiments in years. 

Iraq and 9/11 were ubiquitous killjoys in the debate. Were Republicans really more qualified to lead the War on Terror? Had they accomplished what they promised? People started to ask some important questions: When did the CIA get its first itch that a terrorist attack could be imminent? There started to be low rumblings that we expected the 9/11 strike. It would take more time, but whisperings of truth would break out, as ever it does. 

The Presidential sweepstakes towered frightfully large. If the Democrats could beat the GOP machine, they would take down a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill. 

Congress fretted. They whined. And they looked for a scapegoat—anything to avoid taking responsibility for their own mistakes in rushing to War. Iraq cost America all of her prestige abroad, and the critical ability to foist a U.S. agenda on trusting international allies. Not to mention boatloads of cash needed for schools and public works projects and police departments. 

It was a great deal to lose, exactly as the Intelligence community warned it would be. 

Their own congressional seats would be a great deal to lose, too. 

Now that would be truly disastrous! If they had to take responsibility for this war, their political careers would be over! They’d be ruined! Oh my! 

But what if someone else could take responsibility for them? 

Intelligence Assets, perhaps. Someone like me. 

Come again? 

That’s right. Assets who put together Pre-War Intelligence reports for the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency. What if we could take the blame instead? 

There were very few of us—maybe a dozen, at most. 297 If blame could be shifted to our “faulty intelligence” that guided their decisions before the War, they would be saved! 

Say now, that was a plan. Congress and the White House could channel public fury onto the Intelligence community, arguing for the failure of Assets and our handlers. Over and over Congress could rip us apart for lacking aggressive risk taking and strategic thinking skills—“imaginative risk taking, ” a Presidential Commission would accuse later on. 298 

Officially, the White House and Republican attack machine would declare that Assets had performed “incompetently.” 

That would have frightening and ominous implications for my future. 

It took a Washington heartbeat—which is slow, like a snake— for Republicans and Democrats alike to see that Assets would be the perfect fall guys. 

The stakes were so high. I’m sure they expected us to understand. 

There’s a time honored tradition on Capitol Hill. When Congress makes a mistake, blame always falls on congressional staff. 

As a former staffer myself, I was expected to know this. It’s never a Senator’s or Congress member’s fault that an important speech or constituent meeting got missed. It’s the scheduler or press secretary who screwed up. Republicans are every bit as guilty as the Democrats in this regard. There’s nothing partisan about this trend. It’s the unhappy norm on Capitol Hill.

Unfortunately, playing hooky from responsibility becomes habitual, without consequence. 

Cowardice ruled over Capitol Hill 

That selfishness, and to a large degree cowardice, explains a lot about why Republicans and Democrats united so quickly to heap scornful epithets on the so called “incompetence” of the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency before the war. 

It was the ultimate Crying Game. Democrats and Republicans both played the role of victims to what they called a massive “intelligence failure.” 

In the months ahead, former Rep. Jane Harman, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, swore that Assets bore the blame for failing to develop options to War, or speak up to correct assumptions if our work got misrepresented in the public debate. Why didn’t any of us try to set the record straight? 299 

Rep. Harman concluded that the failure of Assets to take a proactive role in correcting “misinformation” compelled Congress to acquiesce to the White House, instead of resisting the debacle of this war policy. Congress had no options, because Assets created no options. 300 

There was just one serious flaw in that strategy of denial: I had done all of those things. I had even debriefed Congresswoman Harman’s own Chief of Staff about the CIA’s alternative framework for ending the conflict with Iraq. Her senior legislative staff got copies of the Andy Card letters, too. 

Therein lay the problem for Congress. 

I wasn’t “feeling” their pain quite the way they hoped. 

When I established “Citizens for Public Integrity” after 9/11, I chose the relatively conservative moniker because I despised this lack of accountability. I wanted truth with teeth, not a whitewash. I wanted to take this fight to their door, and I would not stop until I knocked it down. Frankly, I was sick to death of Washington doing business this way. 

After the Invasion of Iraq, in my watch dog role, I continued to distribute papers on Capitol Hill, decrying human rights abuses in the “New Iraq.” I championed the rights of detainees to have legal counsel to protest their arrests by U.S. soldiers in the dead of night. I insisted on their rights not to be attacked by dogs or sexually degraded. 301 I’d already heard horrors about Abu Ghraib by August or September, 2003—months before the scandal broke. It was right below the surface. 

Finally, I campaigned hard for Iraq’s right to form political parties and map a political future without relying on Iraqi exiles, who violently squashed political opposition. 302 The “New Iraq” had to be borne from inside, not imposed from outside. 

At home, I made no secret that I despised Republicans particularly for lying about our advance knowledge of 9/11, and boasting of their “outstanding leadership performance” on matters of counter-terrorism and national security. That was political fraud, from where I sat. 

I scorned suggestions that 9/11 resulted from a lack of mid-level intra-agency cooperation. I whispered through the Washington gossip mill that Republican appointees at the top of the Justice Department had refused requests for multi-agency planning to block the 9/11 attack. Cabinet-level authorization was required for cooperation to occur. Lower level people— read that, non political appointees, like me— recognized that cooperation was vital. Unhappily, we lacked authority to require it to happen. But we certainly raised the alarms. That’s why my CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz, urged me to approach Andy Card at his home in Arlington, Virginia in mid August, 2001. We wanted to bypass that political constipation at the Justice Department. 

Based on threats I delivered to Iraqi diplomats myself from April and May, 2001 onwards, there’s no question that top White House officials had analyzed the 9/11 scenario and seized on it as a rationalization for war with Baghdad. The intelligence community correctly anticipated the strike in all specific details. My own handlers urgently tried to stop it. But that secret agenda to create a war with Iraq was already in motion. Instead of heeding our urgent and proactive warnings, the top echelon of White House policymakers ignored simple countermeasures that would have blocked the terrorists, like alerting NORAD or hoisting a single anti-aircraft gun on top of just one of the Twin Towers. Knowing what was coming, Cabinet officials stood down from their obligations to protect the sovereign territory of the United States, an act of deliberate command negligence. And that’s unforgivable. 

There were also serious questions of what happened to all that “black budget” money designated for fieldwork after 9/11. Almost $75 billion got appropriated by Congress— Yet somehow it got siphoned off from active projects “on the ground” like mine, and diverted to Washington bureaucracy and high-tech gadgetry. There are strong indications that substantial sums of Black Budget money vanished into the private bank accounts and fancy houses of the Beltway Bandits in the CIA’s own back yard. 

Where federal dollars for anti-terrorism did not get invested was on Assets like me— who perform the daily work of anti-terrorism — or the recruitment of Agents in the Middle East, like my high ranking friend in Iraq’s Intelligence Service, called the Mukhabarat. That’s the motherlode of counterterrorism. It would have allowed the U.S. to track who entered Iraq, when, where they stayed, who they met, and their activities. 

Our team’s $13 million allotment from the 9/11 investigation should have employed 20 senior FBI Agents in Baghdad, plus a cadre of CIA analysts at Langley Headquarters dedicated to overseeing this Iraqi Agent’s packages. He was that significant. Instead all that taxpayer money got spent on architectural designs for A Single MegaMansion in Virginia. 

If anti-terrorism policy mattered to Washington beyond the level of propaganda, those problems would fire off alarms all over Capitol Hill. Such a major debacle should demand a Congressional investigation, and an immediate overhaul of “black budget” rules for the oversight of funds. It would demand very serious scrutiny. 

And yet Congress has steadfastly refused to examine “black budgets, ” or hold federal agencies responsible for financial mis-management. Beltway Bandits are faithful campaign contributors— which sort of implies that “black budget” money gets funneled back to Congress at election time. Those are American tax dollars, friends. That tax money comes from a teacher in North Carolina, a plumber in Ohio, a realtor in Scottsdale, Arizona and a techie geek in Silicon Valley. American taxpayers work hard for that money. There should be accountability. 

Who was to blame for all of this? 

Indisputably, the Republican Party controlled these federal agencies, for the simple fact that whoever controls the White House controls executive policy and top appointments throughout the executive branch. 

This happened on the Republican’s watch. If Democrats had done such a mediocre job managing funds for national security after 9/11, Americans would scream bloody murder against them, too. These are seriously flawed decisions that undercut national security, and continue to threaten us now. 

Instead, Republican leaders demagogue 9/11, whipping up the nation’s emotional pain for their own vainglorious ambitions. Senator John McCain and Vice President Cheney —not the Democrats—played the 9/11 card to incite irrational fears about Saddam’s alleged ties to terrorists. Again and again, top-shelf Republicans paraded on FOX News, making phony demands on Baghdad to ignite public hysteria and ramp up support for War. 

On Capitol Hill, I hit back hard—with facts— about our success securing Iraq’s cooperation with U.S. anti-terrorism policy. I called foul. 

If Republicans truly believed terrorists were using Iraq as a sanctuary, as they proclaimed on FOX News, an FBI Task force on the ground in Baghdad would have provided a strong force of deterrence. In fact, the FBI could have been operating inside Iraq from February, 2001 onwards—nine months before 9/11. Baghdad agreed to this proposal after the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October, 2000. 

Yet after inventing a phony problem, Senator McCain rejected a valuable tool to address the challenge at a core level. 

Likewise, Senator McCain demanded that the FBI must have access to Mr. Al Anai, the Iraqi diplomat who allegedly met 9/11 mastermind, Mohammad Atta in Prague. Once more officials in Baghdad consented to the interview a few hours after McCain issued his demand. I received confirmations myself from an Iraqi delegation visiting the U.N, and communicated Baghdad’s response to the White House on December 2, 2001. 

Ignoring the facts, Senator McCain continued to posture for the media. McCain declared the interview with Al Anai to be of paramount importance to the 9/11 investigation. Then he failed to exert his leadership to guarantee the interview would take place, as agreed. That’s more hard evidence of Republican grandstanding after 9/11. It exposes a gross lack of sincerity on national security. And that’s unforgivable. 

Worst by far, the Republican Leadership took no action, indeed refused, to close down the financial pipeline feeding Al Qaeda— which I consider the most dangerous and idiotic government decision of this century. Republicans refused to accept banking and financial transactions, because that treasure came from Iraq— which arguably possessed the most valuable intelligence cache on Al Qaeda cells in the whole world. Nobody on the planet tracked jihadi groups as aggressively as Saddam Hussein. Saddam was obsessive in his paranoia. He made it his business to know all of radical Islam’s secrets and hiding places. And Republican leaders refused to take it from him. 

Those finances continue to fund global terrorist activities to this very day. Even worse, they finance Taliban operations against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That $3 billion a year from opium sales is used to attack our own soldiers, and undercut a U.S. victory. It’s the single reason why a rag tag army of Afghan mountain fighters has beaten a coalition of 42 NATO nations in a brutal 10 year War, despite the West’s superior weapons and military training. 

With its financial empire intact, Afghanistan’s mountain fighters have the wherewithal to fight indefinitely. 

And yes, I do fear terrorists will deploy those finances in the next attack on the United States— probably moving to advanced planning stages today. 

That next strike on U.S. soil will be bigger and badder than anything before, probably a dirty nuclear device targeting the financial district of New York City. On that day, former White House leaders should be “court-martialed, ” and stripped of any honoraria and pensions in retirement. They should be forced to bear responsibility for the harm that negligence causes.[I like the story she relates as far as cover up,and the part Washington played in it,but She strikes Me as naive,or misdirecting as to who the real terrorists are and who is behind them DC] 

No matter what Republicans in Washington promise, it’s too late to change that outcome. 

And let me tell you why. 

                   Saddam’s Curse 

From the first threats of War, Iraqi diplomats warned that Washington would be gravely disappointed if the U.S expected to invade Baghdad and capture those financial documents through warfare and occupation. 

Diplomats stressed that Washington faced a trade off. If the United States embraced Iraq as a global partner against terrorism, Baghdad would hand over those financial records, and we could achieve all of our greatest objectives in the fight against Al Qaeda together. But the converse was also true. In a War with Iraq, America would lose everything that Baghdad could contribute to the War on Terror. All of those financial documents would be destroyed, the intelligence lost forever. 

Baghdad had no intention of allowing the United States to profit from both wars. 

That threat posed a serious problem when Republicans raced to claim triumph in the War on Terrorism, clinging to national security to placate voters enraged about U.S. failures in Iraq. Republicans projected their own wishful fantasy of success onto a suspiciously unquestioning media. 

In fact, they had failed. 

The one thing that could have guaranteed absolute victory in the War on Terrorism— the chance to cut off the financial pipeline for Al Qaeda —no longer existed. 

Saddam made a bonfire of those documents once bombs started falling on Baghdad. As of February, 2003, diplomats in New York assured me the documents still existed— but not for much longer. At the very end, Iraqi Ministries worked over time shredding documents. It was an irrevocable setback. Those financial documents had been collected covetously over a decade of U.S. embargo, and held as a valuable chit for ending the sanctions. It would be impossible to amass such a historical record ever again. 

Oh yes, Saddam played that card strategically. He swore that America could not receive that intelligence outside of a comprehensive resolution of the overall tensions with his country. And I have no doubt that Saddam kept his word. 

And so miraculously, that cash pipeline linking global terrorists from the Middle East and Egypt to the Philippines and Indonesia and Afghanistan survived the 9/11 attack, which should have obliterated it. Documents that would have pinpointed early hiding places, so that supply lines could be cut off —and hundreds of millions of dollars seized—all were sacrificed for the vanity of taking down Saddam. 

And so it has gone. Any politician in Washington who claims otherwise would be a liar. He would be committing gross leadership fraud against the people. 

For those reasons, I believe that effective immediately the House and Senate Intelligence Committees should be purged of all members, Republicans and Democrats alike, on the grounds that Congress has failed abysmally to provide effective oversight of White House activities. Failed oversight has enabled Republican officials to make claims about their performance that went unfulfilled, to the severe detriment of U.S. and global security. 

Ironically, oversight is about the only contribution Congress actually makes to anti-terrorism. They give money, and they watch. That’s it. And for all the grand speeches, they could not exert what little authority they have. It was a fiasco. 

Finally, I am dismayed that Republican leaders so callously refused to investigate Iraq’s claims about a Middle Eastern connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing, which destroyed a nursery school, among others, in the Alfred P. Murrah building. I guess toddlers don’t vote. But until their parents assure me it’s OK to stop hunting Timothy McVeigh’s co conspirators, I don’t think the Justice Department has a right to ignore this sort of intelligence. It would have spotlighted the Inter-Arab origins of Al Qaeda, which coalesced from several different groups. Inaction was stupid and wasteful. It cost us something precious. 

Frankly though, it surprises me. On June 17, 2002, I met with senior staff for Senator Nickles of Oklahoma and Rep. JC Watts of Oklahoma to debrief them on Iraq’s claims. 303 Both Nickles and Watts served on the Republican Senate and House Majority Leadership, respectively. Their offices could have launched this investigation on behalf of their own Oklahoma constituents with a single phone call. In fact, I left both offices convinced appropriate actions would be taken immediately. 

Low and behold, there was no follow through. That hurts me on behalf of those Oklahoma families. Their own elected leaders gave them lip service, then took no action to advance their cause. 

It wasn’t my failure as an Asset that anybody had to worry about. It was the mediocrity of leadership on Capitol Hill. Their fraud. Their grandstanding to exaggerate their performance. Their self promotion that was empty like a Hollywood movie script once the TV cameras rolled back on the soundstage of FOX News. 304 

In all of this, Republicans carried the most guilt, by an order of magnitude. They created political theater from the War on Terror, playing stridently to the emotions of the people, and turning 9/11 into a spectacle for election campaigning. Unhappily, there was nothing substantial backing up the hoopla. Once you got past the front gates of Guantanamo and the opening title of the Patriot Act, Republican terrorism policy was awfully empty on performance. 

It was all trash talk and campaign propaganda. A lot of noise. A lot of bells and whistles. But the actions that would have accomplished something real to shut down terrorism at the field level, much of that was never done. 

After a decade of field work, I saw it as a con job to attract voters. I was bitterly astounded by the waste of it. 

I’m still angry about that. 

Therein lay the problem for Congress. 

I was not going along with the program. As a long-time Asset, I wanted Americans to have the facts. I wanted to talk. And any truth telling at all would have made it impossible for Congress to sell its deceptions to the voting public. 

That put me on a collision course with Capitol Hill. 

Two actions finally tipped the balance against me. In February, 2004, to appease public unhappiness, President Bush was forced to appoint a blue ribbon commission to examine failures in Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence. 

Within days, I approached the senior staff of Senators Trent Lott and John McCain, and formally requested to testify in front of the new Commission. 305 

FBI phone taps captured several conversations with Senator Lott’s staff, proving that I identified myself as a U.S Intelligence Asset. I told Senator Lott’s staff that I possessed by far the most extensive knowledge of PreWar Intelligence as a primary source. I told staff I wanted the new Presidential Commission to hear my story for the public record. 

One of those conversations with Senator’s Lott’s staff is documented in the first chapter of this book. 

From a work phone, I also called the office of Senator McCain on my lunch hour. On my mother’s side, my great grandmother pioneered Arizona at the turn of the century. I assured McCain’s staff that I’ve got ties from Tucson to Tempe and Chandler, across to Scottsdale and Phoenix and Glendale, all the way up to Flagstaff and Payson and Pinetop in the White Mountain Apache Reservation. My grandfather taught me to fish on Lake Roosevelt. 

I had my address book. I read through every zip code to prove that my father, cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles are McCain constituents in Arizona to this day. Above all, I insisted that my own flesh and blood had a right to hear details about my activities as an Asset before the War. 

Just to make sure I got my point across, I took a second critical action. I sent a fax to every Congressional office in the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans alike. I admit this was like waving a red flag in front of an unhappy bull. But frankly, they deserved it. 

My friends at the FBI captured my flash bulletin, gratis of the Patriot Act: 306 

“There’s a lot of bad information circulating in government circles about Iraq’s pre-war activities. For the sake of historical clarity, I am releasing the following letters that were signed and delivered to Andy Card, Secretary of State Colin Powell and the U.N. Security Council. The letters detail Iraq’s efforts to resume weapons inspections, beginning the month before President Bush’s inauguration and Iraq’s attempts to cooperate with the International War on Terrorism after September 11.” 

“Contrary to reports coming out of the White House, they knew very well that Iraq tried for two years to prove it had no Weapons of Mass Destruction. Iraq always behaved like a nation anxious to prove its compliance.” 

“The White House also knew that Iraq had invited the FBI to interview human assets in Baghdad for the War on Terrorism, including Mr. Al-Anai and others holding information about Al Qaeda, as well as the Oklahoma City Bombing. Baghdad was convinced this information would be prized by the Intelligence Community. Yet the U.S. refused to conduct those interviews.” 

“Unhappily, the Leadership of the United States was more excited by the grandiose disinformation circulated by the Iraqi Exiles than by warnings of the Intelligence Community or Anti-War Protests by American voters.” 

“Many of us are gravely concerned that those Iraqi Exiles have so easily manipulated America’s Leadership.” 

“But this is NOT, repeat NOT the failure of U.S. Intelligence. It is most definitely the failure of a Leadership that refused to consider any information that did not fit into its agenda—an agenda created wholly to benefit an Exile Community famous for its lies and deceptions. Most tragically, this policy is igniting more attacks on the U.S. and thus damaging U.S. security.” 

Now Congress had a serious problem. 

The blue ribbon commission on Iraq was supposed to spotlight the failure of the intelligence community. If my information got in front of the public, Americans would discover that some parts of the intelligence community had done a pretty damn good job. We aggressively sought to warn Congress off this War. 307 Not only that, a substantial peace option had been available throughout the public debate, which would have achieved every U.S objective in the conflict without firing a shot, or costing one young American his arm or leg. 308 

Any way you cut the cards, though only a small handful of us qualified as active Assets engaged with Iraq, my team’s actions would have deflected from mistakes by any other source—if politicians on Capitol Hill had been willing to consider peaceful diplomacy as an alternative to military conflict. We’d laid a path out of their troubles. 

That truth especially scared the hell out of leaders on Capitol Hill. The existence of a credible peace option couldn’t be allowed into the public debate. Not with the Presidential and Congressional election sweepstakes running neck and neck, amidst skyrocketing anti incumbent sentiments. I would have to be stopped. 

Both Democrats and Republicans alike hoped to double-talk their way out of trouble with voters. 

But only one party was dirty enough to point the cross-hairs of its attack guns at Assets involved in anti- terrorism and Pre-War Intelligence. 

When I phoned the offices of Senator John McCain and Senator Trent Lott, Republican leaders pinned their sights on me. My own cousin, Andy Card, Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush gave Republicans the green light to do their worst. 

No question about it. This decision came from the very top.

CHAPTER 17: 

THE PATRIOT ACT 

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. 

–George Orwell 

In the parlance of the intelligence community, it’s known as “termination with extreme prejudice.” 

“Extreme prejudice” involves the assassination of an intelligence operative, or such physical destruction to body and soul that speech would be rendered impossible or meaningless. It goes far beyond the destruction of an Asset’s credibility or reputation. That’s secondary, a side dish for sadists. The central purpose of “extreme prejudice” is annihilation, purposefully killing an Asset’s physical and spiritual being. 

It’s the most severe degree of punishment that gets meted out to those whose actions would irrevocably damage the intelligence community, or otherwise threaten to expose its dirty laundry. Ah, and what’s classified “top secret” if not something the government urgently does not want people to know? Like our advance warning about 9/11. Or Iraq’s cooperation with antiterrorism. Or the Iraq peace option. And so, finally, “extreme prejudice” gets invoked as a policy of last resort, when Assets pose a significant threat to crooked politicians desperate to escape exposure and blowback for their own schemes gone awry. 

When truth becomes treason, when something’s so dirty that somebody powerful will stop at nothing to hide it, that’s when “extreme prejudice” comes into play. 

It explains why there’s a sort of urban legend in the intelligence community— that an Asset has no future. Only a gunshot to the head when what you know becomes too inconvenient. 

Foreign assets captured by the other side typically get tortured before dying, so as to squeeze out every bit of intelligence they’ve handed over to the Americans. Or so I’ve been told. The bullet at the end becomes almost a symbolic act of mercy. For old times sake. In remembrance of whatever comradeship existed before the betrayal. 

Until that moment, the Asset faces maximum pain for payback. 

Surely they couldn’t do that to me? I “had people” watching my back all those years. They could vouch for my past— even if my antiwar activities infuriated them in the present. (Otherwise they would be guilty of perjury.) I’d done exactly what I told Hoven and Dr. Fuisz from the very start of our adventure. I opposed any second War with Iraq. I never imagined that my faith in my handlers was naïve— though I’d been warned you can’t trust your friends in the intelligence community any more than you can trust your friends’ enemies. 

My CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz, used to say it’s nothing personal. Assets are simply expendable. One side will trade you to the other in a heartbeat. 

I just never imagined it would be my heartbeat. 

And what code of honor had I violated? I wanted to proudly represent the voice of dissension on War policy, which got a lot of things right, thank you! In Congressional testimony, I would explain that I’d done exactly what Assets should, building a message platform to sound the alarms about mistakes in assumptions on Capitol Hill. We practiced healthy and vigorous debate in the best tradition of our democracy, which embraces a wrangling over ideas. Oh yes, and I would testify that back-channel diplomacy produced substantial opportunities for conflict resolution. The foresight of this faction had guaranteed Washington controlled the agenda in Baghdad, and maximized advantages for the U.S. in any post sanctions period. Only pro war Republicans in Congress and the White House had opted for different policy scenarios. 

Those would be the same pro-war Republicans who now sat on the blue ribbon Presidential Commission charged with investigating Pre-War Intelligence, who desperately sought to shift blame for their own judgment failures onto my shoulders, as the Asset. They looked at Assets as easy scapegoats. If there were fewer of us in number, so much the better. There would be fewer of our voices to shout down. 

I was a paradox certainly, on a number of levels. But if they hoped to shout me down, I had no intention of obliging. I believe the people have a right to accountability from our leaders. We have the right to confront them over decisions they make as our representatives. So there might be fewer voices, but mine would be loud. 

Mine would roar. 

For sure I would see them in Hell before I, a lifelong peace activist, would take the blame for this catastrophic war that I worked so hard to prevent. 

Can you imagine the absurdity of blaming an Asset like me for faulty prewar intelligence? After all of my urgent (and correct) forecasting about the horrific consequences of this mistake? All those issue papers sent by blast fax and staff emails throughout Capitol Hill and the U.N? Distributed to every Chief of Staff, every Legislative Director, every Press Secretary and Foreign policy assistant in the House and Senate? Democrat and Republican alike? 

I shouted from the rooftops!

And now they imagined that I would take the blame? 

I’d see them damned first. 

Hell and damnation were exactly what Dick Cheney and John McCain had in mind. 

As an Asset for many years, I had counted as an investment. However, by this time, I’d paid all my dividends. Now I was a distinct liability. 

I had kicked up a hornet’s nest with my request to testify about my activities. 

While I waited, Congressional staff were busy getting subpoenas alright. They were racing to issue subpoenas before a grand jury in New York City, seeking my indictment as an “unregistered Iraqi agent.” 

It’s almost funny. 

The White House and Justice Department frantically crafted a plan to knock me out of the loop and silence me forever. 

Whatever it took, they would stop at nothing to bury the truth. 

Later, Andy Card would receive high marks for his cooperation with the grand jury in Manhattan, preparing my indictment. 309 There’s just a small problem that somehow he forgot to explain I had worked as a long-time Asset supervised by the CIA and Defense Intelligence. He could hardly plead ignorance. My special history had been explained in progress reports on our back channel talks to resume the weapons inspections. Andy Card was fully knowledgeable that my work in anti-terrorism lasted nine years, starting with my advance warning about the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and encompassed Libya, Lockerbie, Iraq, Egypt, Syria/Hezbollah, Yemen and Malaysia. 

Apparently he forgot all that when he addressed the grand jury. 310 

Perhaps it was “stage fright.” The indictment was political theater, after all. 

In truth, there had been 11 progress reports on Iraq before the War. 311 Andy Card forgot to mention any of those papers to the grand jury, either. He deliberately concealed his knowledge of my identity and the purpose of our long-term communications, which was entirely legitimate. 

In which case, it appears that Andy Card was guilty of perjury before the grand jury, and definitely obstruction of justice. 

Ordinary Americans would face prosecution for such a thing. By contrast, Andy Card’s grand jury statement got sealed from view. Despite numerous challenges over the next five years, my attorneys and I were never allowed to examine it —or any of the other grand jury statements. All the while, my federal prosecutor Edward O’Callaghan repeatedly denied in Court before Judge Michael B. Mukasey, and then Judge Loretta Preska, that grand jury testimony had authenticated my role as a U.S. Intelligence Asset. 312 The prosecution claimed total ignorance throughout the proceedings. 

If that’s true, it can only mean Andy Card lied. 

It was a breathtaking lie, of course. And there’s a big question mark next to O’Callaghan’s reliability. However FBI Special Agent Chmiel, in charge of the investigation, sat silently in court next to O’Callaghan, when he said it. 

O’Callaghan’s own statements validate my grievance. Worst of all, knowing that White House officials lied to the grand jury, the U.S. Attorneys Office in the Southern District of New York protected them by blocking access to evidence of their crimes. 

In which case, the Justice Department knowingly shielded White House officials in the commission of criminal acts against private citizens.

It wasn’t just Iraq, either. 

Notoriously, senior officials at the Justice Department benefited directly from the U.S. Attorney’s deceptions, as well. At that moment, the 9/11 Commission was finishing its report, 313 which would bewail the incompetence of the intelligence community for failing to anticipate the attack. The 9/11 Commission would strongly condemn the lack of cooperation at the mid-levels between law enforcement and the intelligence community to stop the hijackings. 

Imagine, if at that moment, I went to trial and highly reputable witnesses testified under oath in a federal court of law—1,000 yards from Ground Zero— about my 9/11 warnings and my team’s aggressive requests for inter-agency cooperation at the Justice Department to thwart the attack. The entire premise of the 9/11 Commission report would collapse in embarrassment. 314 

My warnings in August, 2001 smashed ‘plausible deniability’ for Attorney General Ashcroft’s private staff and the Office of Counter-Terrorism. The 9/11 Commission would have been forced to acknowledge its findings were politically constructed to deflect responsibility from the top levels of government. 

That would have been a train wreck for Republican leaders. 

In all probability, revelations of that nature would have impacted the outcome of elections for President Bush, in his tight race with John Kerry— not to mention House and Senate races all over Capitol Hill. Educated voters would have demanded hard answers to tough questions about the GOP’s performance on national security overall. Attorney General Ashcroft would have faced criticism, too, for misleading Congress about the command failure before 9/11, feeding the popular frenzy to oust incumbents flourishing across the country. 

And so a Cover Up was born. 

Oh yes, a lot of powerful Republican leaders and lobbyists on Capitol Hill benefited from keeping me silent. Their strategy for damage control was so Machiavellian, however, that it would have done the old Soviet Union proud in the grand old days of Joseph Stalin and the Gulags. 

In my wildest imaginings, I could not have conceived what the Feds were cooking up. I guess I wasn’t paranoid enough. 

It started early on the morning of March 11, 2004, about a month after my phone calls to Senator McCain’s and Senator Lott’s offices. I awoke to the shock of FBI agents banging on the front door of my house in Takoma Park, Maryland. 315 

I was even more astounded to discover that the FBI had come with handcuffs and a warrant for my arrest. They’d come to take me! 

Low and behold, I gained a new distinction in my career as an Asset. And it was every bit as dramatic as my advance warnings about the 1993 World Trade Center attack, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, the 9/11 attack; starting negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial with Libya; and holding preliminary talks to resume weapons inspections with Iraq’s Ambassador to the United Nations. 

After Jose Padilla, I was now distinguished as the second non-Arab American to discover the slippery and treacherous legal terrain of the U.S. Patriot Act. 

With supreme irony, the indictment categorized me as an “unregistered agent of Iraq, ” in “conspiracy with Iraq’s Intelligence Service” for purposes undisclosed. 316 That gave me a legal status pretty close to an Enemy Non-Combatant. You’ve got to admit, that’s pretty amazing for a life-long peace activist! The Patriot Act, which Congress rushed to approve in hysteria after 9/11, was first used to punish an American citizen who spent a life-time opposing all violence in terrorism or war, and who gave advance warning about the 9/11 attack in precision detail, and sought Arab cooperation with the 9/11 investigation. 

At first blush, invoking the Patriot Act contradicted its objectives. However, on closer examination, prosecuting political defendants like me leverages the law to its most logical purpose. The act creates a legal framework to interrupt individual questioning of the government in power. The Patriot Act equates terrorism with any civil disobedience that challenges government policy. Both are cast in the category of Sedition. Using that line of reasoning, the Patriot Act applies the same tools to smash political dissention that Congress intended to interrupt the workings of terrorist cells. 

That’s the logical end, though, isn’t it? 

Free thinking leads to criticism of government policy. Criticism must be treated as a threat to the functioning of the State, and crushed when necessary to protect the elite. 

In short, the Patriot Act lays a road to the Gulags. Most Americans don’t understand— yet— that it creates a judicial framework for fascism, and the beginning of all dictatorship in America. 

My case demonstrates how “benevolent” such dictatorship can be. 

Like Alice falling through the Looking Glass, I had stumbled into a “Brave New World” at the Justice Department, with frightening similarity to the visions of Aldous Huxley and Franz Kafka. 

Before it ended, I would discover the Patriot Act has crafted the ideal arsenal for silencing whistleblowers, making it the premiere tool for government cover ups. My legal nightmare would spotlight a number of critical reasons why the Patriot Act should be repealed immediately, in order to safeguard our country and our freedom. 

On the morning of my arrest, I did not know that yet. 

Inside a tiny holding cage at the federal courthouse in Baltimore, I studied the indictment against me. The cage was approximately 3 ½ X 3 1/2 feet—big enough for a bolted metal desk and stool. My first reading so enraged me that I could have ripped the bars out, like some kind of Super Woman. 

I was formally accused me of “acting as an unregistered Iraqi Agent, ” on the flimsy grounds that I delivered a letter opposing the war to my second cousin, Andy Card, practicing freedom of speech in my own family circle. 

What was in that letter that made Andy’s blood boil? A prescient warning, it turns out. I gave Andy Card a simple history lesson. For thirteen years the U.S. had dropped bombs on Iraq at a constant pace. That bloodshed, plus the extraordinary suffering caused by U.N. sanctions, had stirred a deep abiding hatred for America. In wartime, ordinary Iraqis could lay hands on the source of their misery, and their vengeance would be overwhelming. Thousands upon thousands of jihadis would rise up in Iraq to fight U.S. troops. 317 

My crimes against the State turned out to be simple accuracy: Forecasting the failure of the Occupation with tragic clarity to the Chief of Staff for President George W. Bush. There was nothing hostile or threatening in the letter. I closed with the promise that I “would pray for Andy” to support peace. 

That did not matter under the Patriot Act. 

Opposition to Republican war policy qualified as treason to the end degree. It rendered me an “Enemy of the State.” End of discussion. 

Machiavelli would have been proud. My indictment allowed Republicans to play it both ways. In grand Washington style, I got indicted for telling Republicans the truth about Iraq and 9/11. Then, once I was “legally indisposed—” and safely removed from the debate, members of Congress marched out to complain on CNN and Fox News that Assets like me never spoke up to correct mistakes in the Congressional debate before the War. Our silence duped Congress into racing off the cliff. 

Pretty clever, huh? 

Something more sinister was obfuscated in the indictment. The treasonous letter in question was actually delivered to two individuals—Andy Card, and also Secretary of State Colin Powell, who lived next door to my CIA handler. 318 

In the shadowy world of the Patriot Act, I was never allowed to know which man — Andy Card or Colin Powell— filed the original complaint against me. Under the Patriot Act, the superior power and social standing of both men afforded them additional rights over mine, such as protection from being exposed as my accusers. They could lie and hide, and I still faced punishment, though I demanded my right to confront them in open Court. That sort of consideration, based on the greater political access of one’s accusers, rings ominously similar to the legal system of China or the former Soviet Union. It’s the prerogative of dictators and their collaborators. It is decidedly prohibited by the Constitution of the United States. 

One critical safeguard in our judicial system proves that Secretary Powell definitely gave his copies of the Andy Card letters to the FBI. In legal discovery, my attorneys received photocopies of the manila envelope with Powell’s address and my handwritten notes. 319 So we know that Secretary Powell participated in the FBI witch hunt leading up to my indictment, though my Defense team was never allowed to view his statements to the FBI or grand jury. 

Shockingly enough, in five years of indictment, my legal team was never allowed to read a single one of the FBI witness interviews or grand jury statements. 

Under the Patriot Act, we had to take the Justice Department’s word for everything. 

The grand jury essentially functioned as a “Star Chamber.” That turned out to be the greatest obscenity of all. 

Access to legal discovery supporting my Defense was restricted to documents pulled off my computer; transcripts of phone taps; and captured faxes. Ironically, that in itself was a bonanza for my Defense, since the FBI captured 28,000 phone calls; 8,000 emails, and hundreds of faxes, date and time stamped to prove transmission. 320 

We had plenty of evidence to slaughter Republican deceptions on Capitol Hill— but not a single grand jury statement or FBI interview of potential witnesses, who might support my defense. 

Ironically, my defense was hardly a burden, despite those handicaps. My identity was easy to verify, thanks to my work on the Lockerbie Trial with Dr. Fuisz. That was the caveat to Andy Card’s alleged perjury before the grand jury. Even if the Prosecutor was correct that Andy Card gave false testimony and created temporary confusion over my role as an Asset— and if the FBI failed to grasp the scope of my relationships to the intelligence community before my arrest— they would have figured it out rapidly afterwards. Once the FBI interviewed Dr. Fuisz and Hoven, they would have quickly recognized their mistake. Within the first two weeks after my arrest, the facts surrounding my identity should have emerged with crystal clarity. 

If Dr. Fuisz or Hoven made false statements to the FBI, I would demand that they face prosecution for obstruction of justice today. Ordinary Americans have the right to enjoy protection from false indictment and false imprisonment just like powerful and elite Americans. 

Interestingly, Dr. Fuisz and Hoven denied participating in the strike against me, or knowing about it in advance. I’m told they learned about my arrest on CNN and Fox News. Both were allegedly floored the FBI would come after me like this. I’m told they considered it a stupid thing to have done. 

For one particular reason, I believe them It’s sort of “inside baseball.” Within the intelligence community, it’s considered a big mistake to go after an Asset without first consulting that Asset’s handlers. What is the Asset legitimately doing? What could come back to bite everybody else if it got exposed? In my case, it appears the White House and Justice Department wanted so desperately to silence me that they failed to perform the most elementary due diligence within the agencies, a sort of internal background check. 

The FBI did not learn before arresting me, therefore, that Dr. Fuisz and Hoven had made a critical decision at the beginning of our relationship, calculated to protect me in any legal setting. 

Since I would be working on counterterrorism, in direct contact with pariah governments in Tripoli and Baghdad, my handlers decided that I should not be required to sign any non-disclosure agreements. 

And I never did. Not once in nine years. In Court, I could disclose everything. 

By the time I approached Libya in 1995, there was already a tradition at the Justice Department of legally harassing anyone who disputed the official story of Libya’s guilt in the Lockerbie bombing, as our team intended to do. They’d gone after Lester Coleman, 321 imprisoned as pay back for his book, “Trail of the Octopus, ” which exposed the role of heroin trafficking in the Lockerbie conspiracy. Dr Jim Swire, spokesman for British families of the Lockerbie victims, declared: “The gross maltreatment of Coleman by the American authorities appears to fit a pattern of victimizing people who challenge the official story that Libya was solely to blame for Lockerbie.” 322 [Trail of the Octopus is one of the best books I have ever read, when it comes to the lengths,this government will go to,to cover up the Truth and obstruct justice,pure evil.When they talk about something done in behalf of national security,do not get it twisted,they are not referring to the countries national security.They are referring to their own security, and what would happen to it,if the information they cover up became public knowledge,they have been doing this now for over 70 years unabated DC]

Vince Cannistraro, the CIA’s former Chief of Operations and Director of Intelligence Programs for the National Security Council 323 likewise got indicted— and acquitted— as punishment for challenging the official story of Lockerbie. 

Clearly this fight carried serious risks. Since our team was part of the same faction that opposed the Lockerbie cover up, too, for my own legal protection, it was agreed that I would retain my rights to total disclosure for all times. If attacked, I would have legal recourse to tell everything in a court of law, as necessary to protect my liberty. 

That decision probably saved my life. 

It should have stopped the Feds cold from coming after me. If they had known. 

Their obvious ignorance suggests Dr. Fuisz and Hoven told the truth that nobody spoke to them before my arrest. 

They would have thrown cold water on this thing in a jiffy. Because in fact, if the goal was to silence me, the worst thing you could do would be to shove me into a courtroom with subpoena power. I could conduct my very own oversight investigation live on Court TV. I could whomp everybody. If the White House wanted to silence me, going to Trial would be a very bad way to do it. 

That explains why, after the shock of my arrest wore off, I had a great big smile on my face for the rest of the day, waiting for my bail arraignment. They’d handed me a golden opportunity to wallop them all. 

By the end of the day, I have no doubt that Andy Card realized it, too. The White House had made a monstrously stupid mistake. They had gotten blinded by visions of vengeance, and the desire to thrash me for criticizing their war policy. They never thought to the next step—my trial, where I would give them a thrashing right back. It was typical of the Republican Party not to think ahead to consequences before taking imprudent actions. 

Ironically, it means that while Andy Card probably lied to the grand jury—so the Prosecutor, Edward O’Callaghan insisted throughout my indictment 324— O’Callaghan himself also lied in Court, when he scorned my defense arguments, filed pro se at one point, that the FBI investigation supported my claims. 325 

Oh we know what witnesses told the FBI. They freely repeated their statements to my own attorneys—Brian Shaughnessy and Ted Lindauer, for the Defense. We know that they fully corroborated my story. And we know that O’Callaghan was guilty of gross prosecutorial misconduct and withholding exculpatory evidence, when he stood up in Court, hand on heart, and denied confirmations of my long-standing relationships with Hoven and Dr. Fuisz. 326327 O’Callaghan perjured himself in front of Judge Mukasey, who later replaced Alberto Gonzales as U.S. Attorney General. 

Appallingly enough, the Patriot Act sanctions this sort of behavior—with its despotic rules on “secret evidence.” 

Medieval despots would have adored this law. Friends of Joseph Stalin in the old Soviet Union and Communist Eastern Bloc would have quavered in rapture for the hypocrisy of it. Anti-democracy forces in China and Mynamar must chortle in delight. Tyrants love this stuff, because it’s ideally constructed to smash anti-government activists, and crush truth-tellers who expose government corruption. 

Indeed, Stalinists would recognize that its 7,000 pages plagiarize much of the old Soviet Criminal Act of 1926, which established the KGB and Siberian Gulags. 

As Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s head of the dreaded secret police said proudly, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” 

In “American Lawbreaking, ” in Slate in 2007, Tim Wu provides ugly evidence that U.S. Prosecutors are chasing the same scripture—especially U.S Attorneys in the Southern District of New York, who argued for my indictment. 

At the federal prosecutor’s office in the Southern District of New York, the staff, over beer and pretzels, used to play a darkly humorous game. Junior and senior prosecutors would sit around, and someone would name a random celebrity — say, Mother Theresa or John Lennon. 

It would then be up to the junior prosecutors to figure out a plausible crime for which to indict him or her. The crimes were not usually rape, murder, or other crimes you’d see on Law & Order but rather the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield: Crimes like “false statements” (a felony, up to five years), “obstructing the mails” (five years), or “false pretenses on the high seas” (also five years). The trick and skill lay in finding the more obscure offenses that fit the character of the celebrity and carried the toughest sentences. The result, however, was inevitable: Prison time. 

I was a premium catch in this macabre game. Think about it. With the CIA’s Chief Intelligence Asset on Iraq out of the way, Congress and the White House had free reign to rewrite the history books on Iraq and 9/11. They could exaggerate their performance on national security to their heart’s content. 

And that’s exactly what they did. 

In the holding cage at the Baltimore courthouse, I saw at once the indictment was loaded with payback, if not criminal actions. 

Advocating the use of international law to protect democracy and block human rights violations was decried as “Organizing Resistance to American forces, ” under the Patriot Act. Apparently it’s now a crime to hold Washington responsible for its actions, or apply the Geneva Conventions of War to U.S. soldiers. 

I could not be prouder. The accusation itself trumpets the cynicism of the Republican age, launching international campaigns to promote democracy throughout the Middle East and Asia, while criminalizing support for democracy at home. 

And yes, with “extreme prejudice” in play, clearly some factions of the intelligence community (but not all) seized the chance to punish me for not going along with the official story of Libya’s guilt on Lockerbie. 

Like children squabbling on a playground, it sent a zinger to me.

We finally got you, bitch. 

Oh yeah? Tell it to the Judge! (I didn’t think so.) 

My witnesses don’t have to lie. Yours have to lie. And I will prosecute the hell out of them when they do. 

And I wasn’t kidding. 

Surprisingly enough, I felt safe. If my indictment was loaded with payback, it was also packed with desperation. 

Studying the indictment calmed my nerves. Politically motivated or not, I saw at once that no Prosecutor could risk taking such a case to trial. Nothing in the indictment rose to the level of a misdemeanor, much less a serious crime worth exposing the enormity of leadership fraud on Capitol Hill—all that huffing and puffing about the superiority of Republican leadership on national security. 

Those masks would be ripped off in the first minutes of testimony. Their lies would be naked, an Emperor with No Clothes. 

My reaction strikes me as entirely reasonable. 

Alas, we were wrestling in the mud and the muck of the Patriot Act. This would be the starting point of this legal nonsense. 

Nothing would be logical. Nothing would be rational. 

Nothing would be Constitutional. 

Four years into this drama, my legal debacle would prompt a marvelous headline on an incisive political blog, WelcomebacktoPottersville.com: 328

“Susan Lindauer, Meet Franz Kafka.” 

Hey, you gotta love the feds. 

Secret Charges and Secret Evidence 

My case shone a klieg light on how the Patriot Act damages essential protections in a courtroom, regardless of the U.S. Constitution. 

Courtroom proceedings were scattered with “secret evidence” and “secret testimony.” I lost the right to face my accusers at a public trial or hearing.

Most offensive of all, the indictment contained two “secret charges” that illustrate the real dangers and abuses of the Patriot Act. My attorney and I were given the dates that the two offenses allegedly occurred, one on October 14, 1999, a very specific date almost five years before my indictment, the other “approximately” October, 2001. 329 

Beyond those dates, my attorney and I were not allowed to know what my actions allegedly consisted of, or what laws I might have broken. The Justice Department had no obligation to describe my alleged crimes, even in the most generic language. (For example, on October 14, the defendant entered a liquor store. The defendant robbed the liquor store using a gun. That action constitutes armed robbery.) 

I got none of that. The Justice Department invoked the Patriot Act to declare that some unidentified action occurred on October 14, 1999, which violated some unidentified law— That’s all we got to know. 

The Justice Department was quick to inform the Court, however, that conviction of either of those “secret charges” would catch me five years in federal prison. 

If that was not Kafkaesque enough, the Patriot Act relied on “secret evidence” to justify those “secret charges.” Quite literally, the Prosecution had the right to ask a jury to convict me of “secret charges, ” without revealing any evidence whatsoever that the alleged criminal misdeeds even occurred. The Prosecutor had no obligation to provide a shred of evidence that I engaged in the actions, let alone demonstrate why they rose to a level of criminal behavior that deserved prison time. The Patriot Act requires a jury to “take it on faith, ” because the Prosecutor says so. 

If a Judge so instructed, a jury could be required to ignore the lack evidence in their deliberations. The Judge could simply instruct a jury that the Justice Department regarded the evidence as “sufficient” to constitute a crime, and that would be “sufficient grounds for conviction. 330 I am not making that up! 

“Guilt beyond reasonable doubt” got shattered under the Patriot Act. The jury system in the United States got bludgeoned to a pulp. 

Most ominously, evidence that might exonerate me of the charges could be ruled “secret and classified, ” and therefore inadmissible, as well. My attorney and I would be prohibited from knowing of its existence. It remained to be seen whether the Court would allow us to present sensitive information to a jury, if we located it on our own. Evidence seized from my own home, which belonged to me, got blacked out and redacted, sometimes absurdly, too. 

For example, one lengthy phone call to United for Peace and Justice in San Francisco was marked “classified” by the Justice Department 331—though it’s one of America’s largest anti-war groups. Suspiciously, phone conversations with journalists at Fox News in Washington got stamped “classified, ” and blocked out, too. 

The serious question is why? 

Grand jury testimony was “classified” because it involved public officials. The Justice Department barred it from my sight or use in pre-trial proceedings, even though it should have authenticated my claims that I worked as an Asset, and resulted in the immediate dismissal of the major charges in my indictment. I would have been saved. Yet as a defendant, I was prohibited from receiving it or using it. Stacking the deck against me even more, the Patriot Act authorized the Prosecutor to submit papers “in camera” to the Court— for the Judge’s eyes only. My attorney would not be allowed to receive copies of the Prosecutor’s submissions to dispute them. The Justice Department has no obligation to acknowledge that an “in camera” submission has been made. 332 

Along those lines, if big shot Washington politicos like Andy Card or Colin Powell lied to a grand jury to advance a government cover up of 9/11 or Pre-War Intelligence, the Patriot Act has a full arsenal of judicial weapons to protect them from exposure. 333 

Those in power win. Those out of power go to prison. 

That’s the Patriot Act. It’s the new American way. 

This point must be underscored. No matter if evidence or witness statements tossed out the whole case against me, and might save me from years in prison, under the Patriot Act, my attorney and I would not be entitled to know of its existence, or receive copies of it, or examine it. My own attorney could not argue its merits in front of a jury. 

That’s exactly what happened to me. 334 

Oh yes, the proceedings would get very, very scary before the end. 

How Secrecy Rules Work 

Within the category of “secret evidence, ” the law pretends to establish a safeguard by allowing two levels of secrecy. 335 

Under the main category of secrecy, both the attorney and defendant are prohibited from laying eyes on evidence. 

In the second subsection, the defense attorney may petition the government for a security clearance, in order to review some parts of the “secret evidence—” but only what the Prosecutor chooses to reveal. The process of getting the security clearance drags out for six months to a year, typically, while most defendants languish in prison waiting for trial. (In most national security cases, there’s no bail. And because the case involves the Patriot Act, most male defendants get locked up in solitary confinement, even pre-trial. I learned that the hard way. I had to fight tooth and nail to stop from getting stuck in “the hole” myself.) 

Needless to say, applying for an attorney’s security clearance costs valuable time for reviewing evidence and planning a rebuttal. 

That’s not all. Depending on their backgrounds, different attorneys qualify for different levels of clearances. Activist attorneys with a history of pro bono cases, working for the American Civil Liberties Union or the Center for Constitutional Rights, might qualify for very low security clearances. Previous caseloads might pose a “threat to the State, ” if an attorney has made a career supporting socially motivated causes that conflict with current government agendas. As a result, one attorney might have more or less access to secret evidence than another. 336 But a Defendant choosing an attorney would not know the difference until the security review is complete. 

By then, you’re close to Trial. It’s too late to change. 

Mostly it’s irrelevant, unfortunately. To put that in context, in five years under indictment, I had two separate attorneys with vastly different levels of security clearances. My first public attorney, Sam Talkin, had no experience on cases of this sort. My second outstanding attorney, Brian Shaughnessy, was a former chief federal prosecutor assigned to Judge John Sirica’s court in Washington. In his elite law practice, Shaughnessy regularly handles the highest level domestic and international cases involving national security and U.S. intelligence. 

Yet neither Shaughnessy, who is extremely clever and blessed with a top security clearance for much of his career, nor my first public attorney—who was not— could ever determine what those two secret charges contained. Neither attorney ever got to review the “secret evidence” behind those “secret charges.” 

And so, lest hope floats and expectations rise, the safeguard for attorney clearance turns out to be largely meaningless and procedural anyway. It’s window dressing. 

Even after a security clearance is granted, the attorney does not get to examine the full range of “secret evidence.” It’s the prerogative of the Justice Department to decide what merits disclosure. 337 And a Defense attorney has no way to challenge the security classification, because the Defense has no idea what evidence is still hanging out there in the legal ether. 

See the difficulty? 

And here’s the fine print—Regardless of access levels, the attorney is strictly prohibited from confiding the nature of “secret evidence” to the Defendant anyway. It’s for the attorney’s eyes and knowledge only. The Defendant cannot see it or know about it, and therefore cannot provide an effective response to it. 338 

An attorney who violates the Patriot Act, by confiding the nature of “secret charges” or “secret evidence” to the Defendant could face court sanctions, or disbarment from the legal profession—even criminal prosecution, under the law. 

That’s right, under the Patriot Act, an attorney would risk going to jail or losing the right to practice law entirely, if he or she informed the defendant about the nature of secret evidence, even in nonspecific terms, for the purpose of building a rebuttal to the charges. 

It’s flagrantly unfair. Not surprisingly, most attorneys are afraid to challenge that rule, however, because the cost of testing the law would be too high, even for the most skillful practitioners. They’d risk everything. 

Notably, by this rule, the Patriot Act cripples a defendant’s capability to assist in preparing a rebuttal strategy to an unreasonable degree that surely impacts the outcome of the proceedings. 

In the strictest interpretation, invoking the Patriot Act renders any defendant “incompetent to assist in his own defense.” 

It’s an interesting point, because it has nothing to do with a defendant’s competence to function in daily life or understand courtroom procedures. Legal competence pertains exclusively to a defendant’s capacity to assist an attorney in preparing a defense. And that’s frankly impossible without knowing the charges, or seeing the evidence that would make or break the case. 

Ah, the plot thickens. 

Speculation on Secret Charges 

Wait now! I can hear some of you sputtering! Surely the American people can trust the Justice Department to restrict “secret evidence” and “secret charges” to only the very highest matters of national security. Indeed, such legal matters must be so sensitive as to require the most delicate touch! 

Are you ready to stake your freedom on that? 

Let me enlighten you. 

In five years, my Defense could only speculate about the “secret charges.” But on our end, we certainly could identify my activities during those time frames. We surmised that with regards to October 14, 1999, I got indicted for blocking the Iraqi Government from making financial contributions to George Bush’s Presidential Campaign in 2000. 

That’s right. At the urgent instructions of my handlers, I stopped Iraq from making illegal campaign contributions to George Bush— at least through my channels. Ironic, isn’t it? Saddam Hussein anxiously desired to renew his old friendship with the Bush Family. Iraqi diplomats pushed me very hard for help— something I reported immediately to the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency in October, 1999. Hence the FBI’s knowledge of the exact date of Iraq’s first request. 

My Defense Intelligence handler, Paul Hoven, was apoplectic, threatening to go nuclear on Baghdad himself if I failed to stop them. Iraq’s efforts would have been highly embarrassing for Republicans at all levels of the government. For that reason alone, I had been commanded to do everything in my power to stop Baghdad. 

Notably, my actions were reported to Andy Card in two letters, dated March 1, 2001 and December 2, 2001. 339 That’s right! The White House got alerted to this conundrum by me! My attorneys speculated that, perhaps, GOP leaders feared Saddam might have succeeded through some other channel. And they didn’t want anybody snooping around, or digging into campaign records to determine which fundraisers might have drawn the illegal money. 

If we’re correct, that illustrates graphically how the Patriot Act can be abused to protect political ambitions. Obviously there’s nothing remotely illegal on my end, because I stopped a crime from occurring. 

Nevertheless, I got arrested! And secrecy got invoked to protect Republicans from embarrassing revelations that might damage the party apparatus. The welfare of the American people had nothing to do with it. I was gagged by indictment and threatened with five years in prison to stop me from alerting voters—who, let’s be honest, have a right to know who’s buying access to power in Washington. 

As for the second charge, my Defense was always in the dark about what occurred “sometime in October, 2001.” 340 However, we speculate that it involved my efforts to collect health statistics from Baghdad on depleted uranium from the first Gulf War. 

Depleted uranium has resulted in a spike in Iraqi birth defects and cancer rates from long-term exposure. In Baghdad, health officials say cancer in children is more prevalent than the flu. It’s an epidemic. 

A public debate at trial would have raised the profile of those health problems, causing discomfort for the Pentagon. Especially with American soldiers serving three or more tours of duty in Iraq, prolonged exposure to depleted uranium poses serious health risks for them —and their unborn children, too. 

There’s the rub. Birth defects rise in male soldiers as well as female soldiers. That would raise expectations about the U.S. military’s financial responsibility for long term health costs, as from Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome. 

That’s all it took to categorize “depleted uranium” as a “secret charge, ” supported by “secret evidence.” The deception was designed to stop American soldiers and their families from receiving vital health information. 

Only by invoking the Patriot Act could the Justice Department claim authority to arrest an American citizen for collecting public health statistics. Only by invoking “secret charges” and “secret evidence” could the Justice Department pretend that such meaningful activities qualified as something sinister and criminal that should be punished by imprisonment. 

Look, it’s so terrible, we can’t tell you what it is. 

It turns out that it’s only terrible for Pro-War Congress members who want to withhold health benefits from hardworking American soldiers. 

And that’s a real crime! 

The X-Factor 

The wild card or XFactor in any criminal prosecution on the Patriot Act would be the Judge. The outcome of my case depended how Judge Michael B. Mukasey— later named U.S. Attorney General— decided to apply these Constitutional restrictions. 

At the start, his predilections were unknown. Over time I came to see that Judge Mukasey had a razor sharp eye on the bigger picture of my case. I’m convinced he could see that once the hype was stripped away, my actions never rose to the level of criminal activity that justified prosecution. 341 If the Justice Department acknowledged my work as an Asset— and my handlers cleared up a few minor points— the indictment would have collapsed into dust.

Worst by far, the case made a lot of bad law, creating dangerous precedents that could be cited in other cases, affecting other defendants. I believe Judge Mukasey questioned if the mediocrity of evidence justified the potential damage to due process throughout the U.S. Court system. For those reasons, one could not blame Judge Mukasey if he wanted the case out of his courtroom. 

I believe that’s critical to understanding his actions. 

It was clear that I could never plead guilty to any of these charges. Organizing resistance to the United States? Forget about it. Performing as an Iraqi Agent? Conspiracy with Iraqi Intelligence? Not on your life! 

A plea bargain was impossible. I had to demand a Trial. 

In which case, Judge Mukasey had to find another way to kill the case, and clear it out of the federal court system. 

The question was how? That’s not so easy to do. 

And so I forgive him. 

The Patriot Act is so dysfunctional that it took one of this nation’s truly preeminent Judges to outmaneuver it. 

A lesser Judge could not have done it. 

That’s truly frightening, given how it was ultimately done. The actions against me provide the most damning evidence anywhere why this horrific law should be repealed immediately to safeguard the integrity of the judicial process. Our path through this Constitutional mine field would be monstrously evil. And yet, from the Judge’s perspective, it would be the lesser of two evils, compared to applying this atrocious law to court procedure for all defendants. 

Aggravating difficulties, a senior attorney would have been capable of fighting on the merits, possibly knocking out parts of the Patriot Act altogether. Unhappily, I had a junior public attorney, who lacked the sophistication to handle such a thorny law. 

My ordeal taught me a terrifying lesson why our Constitutional rights must be regarded as sacrosanct for all defendants, and protected at all costs. The Patriot Act bludgeons those rights in the most unthinkable ways. With every blow, I discovered most painfully why those rights are vital to the judicial process. 

And so I will give thanks until the day I die for Judge Mukasey’s perspicacity in using the tools available to his office to kill this case. He saved my life and my freedom. 

Because what the Justice Department tried to do next was pretty close to attempted murder. This was “extreme prejudice, ” after all. 

The Justice Department and the Intelligence Community could not allow me to survive. Once the attack swept into play, they had to carry it all the way to its most vicious conclusion. Anything short of total destruction would have left ground to take down Republicans on national security, overall. 

On the morning of my arrest, I did not understand that yet. I vowed to go all the way to Trial, come what may. 

In an awful sort of way, I regarded this attack as the greatest honor Republicans could pay me. I am intensely proud that I stood out like a thorn for warning Congress of the catastrophe of War, and trying to tell Americans the truth about 9/11. I have never for one day regretted the consequences I paid. 

Still, I had no idea that my nightmare under the Patriot Act was just beginning. I was ignorant that all of our most sacred constitutional rights, enshrined by our founding fathers to prohibit political prosecutions, would be lost to me. 

I had no idea that the Patriot Act would devour five years of my life. 

I would never get my day in court. There would be no trial by jury, according to the Constitutional protections guaranteed to all Americans. By the end, I would come very close to getting destroyed—body, mind and soul. 

The powers that control the government had every expectation the abuses I suffered would lead to a lifeless Susan Lindauer, physically and spiritually damaged and discredited beyond repair. 

Frighteningly, but for one honest Judge, they would have succeeded. 

Come into my nightmare now, and let me show you why.

Next
THE CASE OF THE MISSING TRIAL


notes
CHAPTER 16 
297. Ibid. Washington Post. “CIA could count Agents in Iraq on One Hand.” 
298 Presidential Commission on Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence. Findings. New York Times. 2005. 
299. A Woman of Intelligence. Smith Alumnae Quarterly. Summer 2005. 
300. IBID. A Woman of Intelligence. Smith Alumnae Quarterly. Summer 2005. 
301. FBI Evidence. U.S. vs. Lindauer 
302. FBI Evidence. U.S. vs. Lindauer 
303. FBI Evidence. Education for Peace in Iraq Center Lobby Days. June 17, 2002. Schedule for meeting staff for Senator Nickles of Oklahoma and Rep. JC Watts, Oklahoma 
304. FBI Evidence. Captured fax transmissions to Congressional offices, 2003-2004. 
305. Ibid. FBI Evidence. Wire Taps with Senator Lott’s staff. February 2, 2004 
306. Ibid. FBI Evidence. Fax Wire Taps. Congressional letter. February, 2004. 
307. Ibid. FBI Evidence. Citizens for Public Integrity papers, fax and email lists. 
308. Ibid. Letters to Andy Card December, 2000 through January, 2003 (ii) Dec. 2, 2001; (iii) Letter to Colin Powell Jan. 27, 2003. 

CHAPTER 17 
309. Washington Post, New York Times, March 12, 2004. “Susan Lindauer Arrested as Iraqi Agent.” 
310. Ibid. FBI Evidence. Lindauer Letters to Andy Card, Dec. 2000 through Jan, 2003. 
311. Ibid. FBI Evidence. Lindauer Letters to Andy Card, Dec. 2000 through Jan, 2003. 
312. Court Transcripts from March 11, 2004 through January 15, 2009. U.S. vs. Lindauer 
313. 9/11 Commission Report. Released October, 2004. 
314. FBI Interview of Parke Godfrey, September, 2004. (ii) affidavit of Parke Godfrey, (iii) Court testimony of Parke Godfrey, Southern District of New York, June 2008. 
315. Ibid. FBI Arrest Report, Susan Lindauer, March 11, 2004. U.S. vs. Lindauer 
316. Ibid. Federal Indictment U.S. vs. Lindauer 
317. Ibid. Susan Lindauer letter to Andy Card, January 8, 2003. 
318. Ibid. FBI Evidence. Manila envelope and hand written notes to Secretary Colin Powell on copy of Andy Card letter dated Jan 8, 2003. Also letter to Secretary Powell dated January 27, 2003. 
319. Ibid. FBI Evidence. Manila envelope and hand written notes to Secretary Colin Powell on copy of Andy Card letter dated Jan 8, 2003. Also letter to Secretary Powell dated January 27, 2003. 
320. Ibid. FBI Evidence Summary presented to legal defense. U.S. vs. Lindauer 
321. “Lester Coleman: From Agent to Outcast.” Plane-Truth.com. Ongoing blog. 
322. Ibid. Lester Coleman: From Agent to Outcast. 
323. Vince Cannistraro, Wikipedia bio. 
324. U..S. vs. Lindauer. Court transcripts from March 11, 2004 through January 15, 2009. 
324. Ibid. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Court transcripts from March 11, 2004 through Jan 15, 2009. 
325. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Court transcripts from September 2005 through August, 2008. 
326. Ibid. U.S. vs. Lindauer. Court transcripts from September 2005 through Aug, 2008. 
327. Ibid. U.S. vs. Lindauer Court transcripts from September 2005 through Aug, 2008. 
328. WelcomebacktoPottersville.com “Susan Lindauer, Meet Franz Kafka.” 
329. Ibid. Federal Indictment. U.S. vs. Lindauer 
330. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute. 
331. FBI Evidence. Classified Phone Calls. United for Peace and Justice. San Francisco 332. Ibid. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute. 
332. Ibid. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute. 333. Ibid. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute. 
334. Ibid. U.S. vs. Lindauer Court transcripts from March 11, 2004 through Jan. 15, 2009. 
335. Ibid. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute. 
336. Ibid. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute. 
337. Ibid. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute. 
338. Ibid. U.S. Patriot Act. Federal Statute. 
339. Lindauer Letters to Andy Card, dated March 1, 2001 and December 2, 2001. 
340. Ibid. Federal Indictment. U.S. vs. Lindauer 
341. Judge Mukasey raised the question of whether my actions rose to a level of criminal activity in his decision against forcible drugging, Sept. 8, 2006.