| Susan Lindauer | |
|---|---|
| Born | 17 July 1963 |
| Occupation | Author, journalist, and activist |
| Parents | John Howard Lindauer Jackie Lindauer (1932-1992) |
| Relatives | Andrew Card, second cousin |
Susan Lindauer (born 17 July 1963) is an American journalist, author, and antiwar activist. She was accused of conspiring to act as an unregistered lobbyist for the Iraqi Intelligence Service and engaging in prohibited financial transactions involving the government of Iraq under Saddam Hussein.[1][2] Lindauer was found mentally unfit to stand trial in two separate hearings and all charges were dropped in 2009.[3]
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She is the daughter of John Howard Lindauer II, the newspaper publisher and former Republican nominee for Governor of Alaska.[3][4] Susan's mother was Jackie Lindauer (1932-1992) who died of cancer in 1992. In 1995 her father married Dorothy Oremus, a Chicago attorney who along with other members of her family owned the largest cement company in the Midwest.[4]
Lindauer is also a second cousin of former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card.[5]
Lindauer attended East Anchorage High School in Anchorage, Alaska where she was an honor student and was in school plays.[6] She graduated from Smith College in 1985. She earned a masters degree in public policy from the London School of Economics.[1] She worked as a temporary reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for 13 weeks in 1987, and as an editorial writer at the The Everett Herald in Everett, Washington in 1989. She then was a reporter and researcher at U.S. News & World Report in 1990 and 1991.[6][7][4][8] Her co-workers said she was a woman "prone to mood swings and erratic behavior".[8]
She then worked for Representative Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon (1993) and then Representative Ron Wyden, D-Oregon (1994) before joining the office of Senator Carol Moseley Braun, D-Illinois, where she worked as a press secretary and speech writer.[7][4]
Susan Lindauer claims she started making visits to the Libyan Mission to the United Nations in 1995,[7] and that she held meetings with Iraqi Intelligence Service officials at the United Nations in 1999.[1] Andrew Card is her second cousin. Her first contact with the former Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush was around 2001.[1] On January 8, 2003, she delivered a letter to Card urging the White House to not invade Iraq.[9][10]
Lindauer was arrested on Thursday, 11 March 2004 in Takoma Park, Maryland and charged with "acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government". The indictment alleged that she accepted US$10,000 from Iraqi intelligence services in 2002. Lindauer denies receiving the money, but admits taking a trip to Baghdad.[1] She was released on bond on March 13, 2004 to attend an arraignment the following week.[2] In 2005 she was incarcerated in Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas for psychological evaluation then moved to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.[10]
In 2006, she was released from prison after Michael B. Mukasey ruled that Lindauer was unfit to stand trial and could not be forced to take antipsychotic medication to make her competent to stand trial.[3][10]
In 2008, Loretta A. Preska of the Federal District Court in New York City reaffirmed that Lindauer was mentally unfit to stand trial.[4][11]
On January 16, 2009 the government decided to not go ahead with the prosecution saying "prosecuting Lindauer would no longer be in the interests of justice."[3][12]
Lindauer has written a book "Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover-Ups of 9/11 and Iraq" about her experience.[13]