Charges against Takoma Park’s Susan Lindauer dropped
Posted by Thomas Nephew on January 19th, 2009
Takoma Park resident Susan Lindauer is out of legal trouble for allegedly “working as an unregistered foreign agent”; Anchorage’s KTUU* reports that the federal government dropped its case on Thursday, saying the case would “no longer be in the interest of justice.”
I’ve followed this case as best as I could since it broke over four years ago. There’s a real question whether it ever was in the interest of justice, and indeed Ms. Lindauer is suing for false arrest. The outlines are that on March 12, 2004, Ms. Lindauer was arrested for “conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of the Iraqi Intelligence Service and with engaging in prohibited financial transactions with the Iraqi government” — leading to headlines about the arrest of an “Iraqi spy.” In fact, what Ms. Lindauer mainly appears to have done was to try to freelance a peace agreement and then to fall for an FBI sting — all the while informing her cousin and White House chief of staff Andrew Card of her plans.
News stories continue to mention a “mentally unfit for trial” judgment but the ruling I know of — interestingly, by future Attorney General Michael Mukasey –was actually that she couldn’t be forced to take medication during trial, which when you think about it is quite a different thing. (As it happened, Ms. Lindauer had the foresight and diagnosis to prove she was “free of hallucinations, delusions, homicidality, or suicidality,” when a friend, following her directions, found a psychiatric evaluation to that effect filed in her home.)
For what it’s worth, I think the charges against Ms. Lindauer, while colorable, were at the end of the day the trumped-up results of a investigative process that verged on entrapment. Yet perhaps the most troublesome part of a troublesome case was Ms. Lindauer’s remandment to Carswell Prison, in Texas, a facility that “…provides specialized medical and mental health services to female offenders.” Or, it would seem, the merely accused.
I’ve not met Ms. Lindauer myself, but the whole approach of deeming Lindauer “mentally unfit” seems especially pernicious to me, since it might be applied to anyone with the guts to think/hope/wish they could stop a war by dint of their own efforts — and then act on that. “Psychiatric evaluations” under such circumstances are reminiscent of practices in the former Soviet Union or East Germany; whatever the intent was, the process seemed to me to result in a “nearly Gitmo-like legal limbo.”
Ms. Lindauer’s reach exceeded her grasp, but in my view it has been a travesty to punish her the way she has been punished. I’m glad the worst is over for her. Meanwhile, the timing of her case being dropped — in the final hours of the Bush administration — suggests there was a political witch hunt aspect to this all along.
=====
* Ms. Lindauer is originally from Alaska, where her family is well known.
NOTE: For prior posts about the Lindauer case, click http://newsrackblog.com/tag/lindauer/. See also blog posts by her friend JB Fields.
Category: Post. Tags: lindauer, maryland, mukasey.
Thread RSS,
Comment, Trackback.
Print This