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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.

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* 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.

Lindauer’s friend and renter JB (“Jays Politics”) writes “Susan is home“:

Judge Mukasey wrote a VERY interesting decision. I’ve had time to read only the first 10 pages, but hope to get through the rest of it before motorcycle safety class, this morning. It was his last day in the court room. [...]

The judge found no reason not to “enlarge” Susan, letting her return to a free on bail state.

Susan Lindauer is a resident of my home town of Takoma Park, Maryland who remains accused of working as an unregistered paid agent of a foreign government (Iraq’s) in a bid to influence US foreign policy.

The case and subsequent legal process have been confusing and extremely drawn out, with much of the past year or so centered on the question of Lindauer’s mental competence. Judge Mukasey finally ruled earlier this week that she could not be forcibly medicated with a view to standing trial, signalling a turning point in the case. In Wednesday’s ruling, the judge reportedly held that “the importance of the government’s interest seemed “significantly weaker” than in cases in which defendants were ordered to receive medication or treatment.

Ms. Lindauer is not out of the woods. From an AP report in the International Herald Tribune:

At a hearing Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen A. Miller said the government still intends to prosecute Lindauer, who could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted of charges of conspiring to act as a spy for the Iraqi Intelligence Service and engaging in banned financial transactions. [...]

Mukasey shares doubts about Lindauer’s mental state:

The judge noted in his written opinion that Lindauer cooperated initially with the examinations but became angry and uncooperative when it was suggested that she was mentally ill. [...]

The judge said experts, including the government’s, had concluded Lindauer suffers from hallucinations, grandiose and persecutory delusions and mood disturbances, including purported gifts of prophecy and spiritual visitations.

He said the delusions result in endless futile requests from Lindauer that her lawyer contact witnesses who she claims would support her description of events and otherwise “follow leads that exist only in her imagination.”

For more background on this blog, see “Remember Symbol Susan?“, which has links to two prior posts of mine on the case. (However, I should say that for all that I’ve tried to follow the case, I hadn’t really understood Lindauer “voluntarily agreed to spend most of the last year in custody” for psychological tests, as the latest AP report indicates. But I also don’t know what her alternatives were.*) For more direct news on the case and yesterday’s ruling, see JB’s “JaysPolitics” blog.

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PREVIOUSLY, 9/8: “Symbol” Susan Lindauer case at turning point.
* UPDATE, EDIT, 9/13: Thanks for clearing this up, JB. His latest post , “Voluntarily, ” in full:

Susan says that, a year ago, she was given a choice of traveling to Carswell in ten days and turning herself in voluntarily, or being escourted by Federal Marshalls immediately.

That’s about as “voluntary” as a come-along hold. I’m striking out the related sentence above, and plan to complain the Associated Press about that choice of words.

Takoma Park resident Susan Lindauer was arrested in March, 2004 and charged with acting as a paid Iraqi agent code named “Symbol Susan” by the FBI. Initially out on bail, questions about her mental competency were raised by the defense — perversely resulting in her seemingly interminable re-incarceration pending the resolution of mental evaluations and, eventually, a New York judge’s ruling on the government’s demand she be medicated in order to stand trial.

On Wednesday the government lost that argument. From an AP report via the International Herald Tribune:

A judge dealt a severe setback to the government’s case against a one-time journalist and congressional aide accused of becoming a paid Iraqi intelligence agent when he ruled she cannot be forced to take medication to control delusions of grandiosity and paranoia.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey on Wednesday also criticized the strength of the case against Susan Lindauer. He rejected the government’s request that it be permitted to administer drugs to try to make her competent to stand trial.

Lindauer had seemed to fall into a disturbing, nearly Gitmo-like legal limbo once the mental competency issues were raised:

Although Lindauer initially was free on $500,000 bail, she has remained jailed for most of the last year as she has undergone the psychological examinations and faced determinations over her competency for trial.

Lindauer has always disputed that she was mentally incompetent or psychologically disturbed. Earlier this year she produced a psychiatric evaluation done in 2004 shortly after her arrest, while she was still free on bail, that bore out her view — as did, arguably, her foresight in arranging that evaluation. (See “Remember Symbol Susan?“, 6/26/06, on this blog.) While this may have helped her in yesterday’s ruling, it seems that Mukasey’s concern was mainly that the government’s charges weren’t strong enough to warrant the drastic step of involuntary medication:

[Judge Mukasey] said the importance of the government’s interest seemed “significantly weaker” than in cases in which defendants were ordered to receive medication or treatment.

“It would be a denial of reality … to find otherwise,” he said, adding that he doubted whether the proposed medication would succeed.

Lindauer’s lawyer Sanford Talkin was pleased with the “just result,” but was reportedly uncertain where the case would go next. Lindauer’s friend and renter JB Fields, who has followed the case closely on his blog, reports there will be another hearing of the case in New York this morning at 11:30.

While I’m hoping for dismissal or maybe a guilty, time served verdict, or at least a trial on the merits, it seems likeliest to me that Mukasey believes Lindauer is incompetent after all – she just can’t be medicated for it to stand trial:

The judge said even the government’s psychiatrist had testified that Susan Lindauer, who is in her 40s, suffers from hallucinations, grandiose and persecutory delusions and mood disturbances that may be traced as far back as age 7, including purported gifts of prophecy and spiritual visitations.

On the other hand, maybe he’s saying these don’t rise to the level of outright mental incompetence. It seems to me like you could hardly accuse Lindauer of “persecutory delusions” at this point — sometimes they really are out to get you. JB seems hopeful, at least; we’ll see.

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EDIT, 9/8: “mainly” for “also”.
UPDATE, 9/9: JB says Lindauer is out on bail, and is back in Takoma Park. JB also says Mukasey’s decision is very interesting. No doubt! I guess this will go to trial now (otherwise, why bail?) but I’ll wait to read more. Congratulations to her on finally getting back out in the world and on this case finally moving forward again.

Some recent posts by Jim Henley about the Miami “Seas of David Cell” got to me to wondering about whatever happened with another case of the (possibly) “in over their head” crowd closer to home. In March 2004, Susan Lindauer — a.k.a. “Symbol Susan” to the FBI — was snared in my home town of Takoma Park, Maryland, by an investigation that ultimately charged her with working as an unregistered foreign agent, which is illegal under Title 18, section 951 of the United States Code.

The charge actually seemed oddly weak, given that Lindauer allegedly did the following:

o. On or about June 23, 2003, SUSAN LINDAUER, a/k/a “Symbol SUSAN,” met in Baltimore, Maryland, with a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) acting in an undercover capacity as a member of the Libyan intelligence service seeking to support resistance groups in post-war Iraq (the “UC”), and discussed the need for plans and foreign resources to support these groups operating within Iraq.

Naturally, this was what got a lot of attention when the arrest was made. But I should think it could have resulted in a charge of treason, or at any rate something like espionage that was considerably weightier than “failure to register as a foreign agent.” The “failure to register” charge seems to better fit many of the more innocuous contacts she made with Iraqis up to then — and it’s not exactly small potatoes, either: the maximum penalty includes a ten year prison term.

But what might happen to Ms. Lindauer instead could be worse. In February, 2006 the Seattle Weekly‘s Rick Anderson reported there had still been no trial:

She is confined to a federal mental facility in Texas, perhaps never to get her day in court, according to friends, officials, and public records. Mostly unnoticed, a New York federal judge has found her incompetent to stand trial and ordered further evaluation. She is being held past her scheduled release date, which had been sometime early this month, and, she tells friends, might be forcibly medicated as part of her treatment.

As of today, there has still been no trial and no decision on Lindauer’s fate.

The Seattle Weekly article mentions fellow Takoma Park blogger JB Fields, who came into the story by chance: he rents a room from Lindauer. Struck by several elements of this story, Fields has made it his job to keep the world informed of Lindauer’s case, even though he told Anderson he’s not sure she’s innocent of wrongdoing: “I wonder what she really did—what evidence there might be that I don’t know about. But I sure would like to see due process observed.” Fields is not dismissive of the prosecution’s case — there are apparently Iraqi videotapes of Lindauer accepting money which may have done more to trigger her prosecution than the subsequent “Libyan agent” farce.

But Fields resists the psychiatric diagnosis some relatives and lawyers are trying to push. In late April, he published a March 2004 psychiatric evaluation he discovered among Lindauer’s things, marked “In case I don’t return,” and which Ms. Lindauer had solicited after her arrest. The examining psychiatrist wrote:

Thought content was free of hallucinations, delusions, homicidality, or suicidality. She expressed confidence in an acquittal. Judgment and insight were fair. Cognition was grossly intact. [...] I do not believe there is grounds for a psychosis diagnosis. [...] In the light of the improvement in the patient’s clinical status, there does no longer appears to be a clinical reason for her to reside in a supervised setting.

The psychiatrist found a “stress-induced bout of hypomania” but prescribed nothing more than psychotherapy and actually discontinued some medication she’d been on.

Fields’ and Lindauer’s revelation had the hoped-for effect of throwing courtroom psychiatric testimony into doubt. Once judge Michael Mukasey — a reasonable, conscientious guy by Fields’ account — learned about it, he held a June 3 hearing attended by Lindauer (who was held in a New York City facility by this time). However, a June 13 followup hearing was cancelled on grounds that the judge reportedly had all the information he needed, and the case remained in limbo as of this weekend. Fields had been pessimistic, writing in late May:

It’s pretty clear that Susan will be returned to Carswell for medication after the hearing of the 13th. The only thing that will prevent that would be if somebody were to come forward for the funding for a private institution.

Carswell is a Bureau of Prisons facility near Fort Worth, Texas that “…provides specialized medical and mental health services to female offenders.” Or, it would seem, the merely accused. Personally, I react very negatively to the thought of being held in a mental institution and medicated. Looking back over things, there seems a circularity to logic where anyone who would do all this stuff must be nuts, ergo Lindauer is delusional. Sprinkle in some flaky vibes from Lindauer, and one begins to fear for Lindauer’s fate in a whole new way. Reflecting on a hearing he attended, Fields wrote:

It seemed to me there was a hunger, among the professionals testifying, for Susan to become a patient. The opinion of many, including some with direct experience in federal mental [facilities], is that if Susan gets sent to Carswell it is likely she will die there. The parallels with Martha Mitchell, during Watergate, are just numbing.

Most of Lindauer’s actions seem to fit a “reach exceeding her grasp” description. She was after nothing less than single-handedly ending sanctions and then brokering a peace deal between Iraq and the U.S. in the months before the Iraq war. Sure, that sounds crazy and was a huge long shot, to put it mildly — but she had apparently built up some Middle East and intelligence contacts, at least on a casual basis, while pursuing a theory of hers about the Pan Am 103 disaster.*

And no doubt she felt her ace in the hole was that she really was related to then White House chief of staff Andrew Card. Far from concealing her activities from anyone, she actually delivered a detailed message about her talks with Iraqis to Card as early as December, 2001 (well before the January 8, 2003 message mentioned in the indictment).** While her writing is breezy and affected, and the notion of a random citizen conducting diplomacy with Iraq is admittedly pretty far out, it doesn’t strike me as flat out delusional, much less traitorous or evil.

Many of the counts of her indictment would probably stand up to jury scrutiny — e.g., videotaped acceptance of money. Whether that rises to the level and intent of the Title 18 law cited in the indictment, I don’t know, although it probably does violate executive orders listed there.

From what I can tell, Ms. Lindauer deserves her day in court, at least as opposed to being judged mentally incompetent. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to have been terrifically well served by her court-assigned defense; relevant witnesses haven’t been deposed, and she doesn’t seem to have trusted them enough to have given them the psychiatric information Fields found. Most importantly, the competence defense has possibly put her in worse jeopardy than criminal proceedings would have.

My feeling right now is that it would be a waste of resources if this goes to trial, let alone if she’s put away for ten years. At this point, Ms. Lindauer has already spent over a year in custody as it is — and under particularly trying circumstances, judging by what both she and Fields report about Carswell. Maybe other peoples’ need for justice and protection would be served by yet more incarceration, but not mine.

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* This theory makes something else intriguing about the point “o.” of the indictment cited above — the word “Libyan.” That’s because the FBI must have been aware of Lindauer’s previous cause — her insistence that it was not Libyan intelligence that had been involved in the Lockerbie Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. (She believed it was the Syrians.) Thus, being approached by a “Libyan intelligence agent” must have been all but irresistible to her — and it seems at least as likely to me she was suspicious of the agent and interested in proving him false — as indeed he was — as that she was actually cooperating with him (or her) in the way suggested by the indictment. Based on speaking with a former tenant, Fields says that Lindauer suspected the agent was no Libyan. Whether she knew he was a fake or not, I think for an FBI agent to pose as a “Libyan” itself verged on entrapment in Lindauer’s case.
** Fields has posted a collection of Lindauer’s letters to Andrew Card, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell on his blog site, including the January 2003 message to Andrew Card (page 1, 2) mentioned in the indictment. Letter dates range from 12/23/2000 to 1/22/2003; as Fields points out elsewhere, it’s unknown whether all were delivered.

SELECTED “JAY’S POLITICS” LINDAUER HEARING POSTS (all 2006): February 22, April 24, May 5, May 10.
PREVIOUS “NEWSRACK” LINDAUER POSTS: Symbol Susan (March 11, 2004); Susan Lindauer update (March 22, 2004: Gazette story).
EDIT, 6/27: JB Fields, not Jay Fields; “Based on speaking” footnote sentence rearranged for clarity.

Susan Lindauer is the Takoma Park resident recently indicted on charges of serving as an unregistered foreign agent — a “spy” by some readings of the charge. Sean Sands of The Gazette (a local Maryland newspaper group) interviewed her last Friday. Excerpts:

Everything I did worked to implement the priorities identified by our own government,” Lindauer told The Gazette. “I didn’t create the priorities — they created the priorities. I wasn’t giving speeches on the Senate floor — they were giving the speeches on the Senate floor.

“I was the one taking their speeches seriously enough to try to listen and do something about it.” [...]

At no time, she asserted, did she spy on the United States, nor did she have access to information that could have jeopardized national security. She also denied being in the employ of Mukhabbarat operatives. [...]

She said she met her alleged co-conspirators, Raed Noman al-Anbuke and Wisam Noman al-Anbuke, for the first time in court in Manhattan on Monday. [...]

Sands didn’t press Lindauer about the aspect of the case that interests me the most — Lindauer’s alleged efforts to support resistance groups in Iraq after the war, and the FBI’s apparent efforts to coax her to do so.

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EDIT, 6/26/06: link to Gazette article fixed.

FOX News reports that one Ms. Susan Lindauer, from my home town of Takoma Park, has been arrested as an Iraqi “spy” — a tendentious version of the true indictment, for “conspiracy to act as [an] unregistered agent of a foreign government” (Title 18, United States Code, Section 951).

Ms. Lindauer’s alias among investigators was “Symbol Susan,” and reading the indictment, I can’t help but wonder whether that was a play on words for “Simple Susan.” But as poorly as the story reflects on Ms. Lindauer, it doesn’t exactly wrap the FBI in glory, either.

The ex-Congressional staffer apparently accepted cash from Iraqi intelligence services in return for … it’s not exactly clear. She traveled to Iraq before the war, took some money from some Iraqi intelligence officers, then came back. The whole thing culminated with Ms. Lindauer trying to deliver some documents to a U.S. official — reportedly White House chief of staff Andrew Card, a distant relative — on January 8, 2003.

So far, so kooky. But then came the war, and a 6 month hiatus in Ms. Lindauer’s ‘crime spree.’ Then things took an entirely different turn. From the U.S. vs. Lindauer indictment (PDF file):

o. On or about June 23, 2003, SUSAN LINDAUER, a/k/a “Symbol SUSAN,” met in Baltimore, Maryland, with a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) acting in an undercover capacity as a member of the Libyan intelligence service seeking to support resistance groups in post-war Iraq (the “UC”), and discussed the need for plans and foreign resources to support these groups operating within Iraq.

p. On or about July 17, 2003, SUSAN LINDAUER, a/k/a “Symbol SUSAN,” met in Baltimore, Maryland, with the UC and discussed the need for plans and foreign resources to support resistance groups operating within Iraq.

q. On or about August 6, 2003, SUSAN LINDAUER, a/k/a “Symbol SUSAN,” pursuant to instructions received from the UC, left documents in a designated location in Takoma Park, Maryland.

r. On or about August 21, 2003, SUSAN LINDAUER, a/k/a “Symbol SUSAN,” pursuant to instructions received from the UC, left documents in a designated location in Takoma Park, Maryland.

s. From in or about June 2003, up to and including in or about February 2004, SUSAN LINDAUER, a/k/a “Symbol SUSAN,” regularly communicated via email with the UC. (Title 18, United States Code, Section 371.) (link, emphasis added)

Ms. Lindauer’s interactions with Iraqi agents were of course a thing of the past by late June of last year: Saddam’s statue was down, Baghdad was secured… more or less. Assuming it happened as described, her particular attempts to serve as an interlocutor may well have been illegal, and would then merit some kind of punishment: a fine, probation, maybe jail time.

But the case they had — points (a) to (n) of the indictment — apparently wasn’t good enough for the FBI. So they set out to make it “better,” by coaxing her into committing a far worse breach of faith with her country and her fellow citizens. If the story above is true, they succeeded, in which case: shame on her.

But shame on the FBI as well. There’s enough real trouble in the world without manufacturing more.

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UPDATE, 3/12 12:30AM: Jim Henley discusses the story. He’s (rightly) tougher on Lindauer than I was, and reserves judgment on entrapment:

My best guess is that, at the least, Lindauer crossed a line she shouldn’t have crossed between opposing her country’s foreign policy and advancing another’s. It is an honorable thing to oppose an unwise or an unjust war – IF you do it of, by and for love of YOUR country. You don’t take money from an evil regime, or even give its minions the time of day. (Imagine Lincoln accepting funding from Santa Ana.)

It may be as true that the government took advantage of a weak woman’s naivete in hopes of political gain.

I suppose I’ve assumed that the FBI initiated the “UC” contact, but maybe not. Henley also links to an “Outside the Beltway” item chock full of links to Ms. Lindauer’s rich and varied past.