A local woman was charged with spying for Iraq and and soliciting assistance for resistance groups in postwar Iraq.
NEW YORK - An American citizen was arrested Thursday on charges she acted as an Iraqi spy before and after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, accepting $10,000 for her work, prosecutors said Thursday.Susan Lindauer, 41, was arrested in her hometown of Takoma Park, Md., and was to appear in court later in the day in Baltimore, authorities in New York said.
She was accused of conspiring to act as a spy for the Iraqi Intelligence Service and with engaging in prohibited financial transactions involving the government of Iraq under dictator Saddam Hussein.
According to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Lindauer made multiple visits from October 1999 through March 2002 to the Iraqi Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan.
Who is Susan Lindauer? It turns out she's a veteran Democratic press spokesperson. I have confirmed three Congressional jobs as well as an earlier stint as a reporter at U.S. News & World Report.
Her most recent work seems to be for Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-IL). Prior to that she worked for Rep. Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR). She was involved in the Lockerbie Trial as a hearsay witness, but given the indictment and the reading of background it is possible her involvement was a cover for spying or information selling.
The trail goes somewhat cold after Moseley-Braun, but given her extensive Hill work, it's possible (maybe even likely) that she was involved on the Moseley-Braun presidential campaign and/or other liberal interest groups activities. After the Moseley-Braun campaign folded she may have moved on to one of the other remaining campaigns.
Update: Via Andrew Sullivan comes a link to the indictment at TSG.
Update 2: Magically *grin* the Washington Post article and this AP story have added information about Lindauer's past. It wasn't in either this morning...
Update 3: InstaPundit has links to BigWig's background research, as well as this Weekly Standard piece that places her in Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) office through 2002. Chuck Simmins and others at Rantburg have been doing legwork on the story all morning.
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Comments (7)
Working it over at Rantburg... (Below threshold)1. Posted by Chuck | March 11, 2004 2:22 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Working it over at Rantburg. "Maybe" in 2002 was a spokesperson for Congresswoman Lofgren.
Rantburg
1. Posted by Chuck | March 11, 2004 2:22 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on March 11, 2004 14:22
2. Posted by Bigwig | March 11, 2004 3:30 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
And here I was thinking I was working the story hard.
2. Posted by Bigwig | March 11, 2004 3:30 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on March 11, 2004 15:30
3. Posted by Cranial | March 11, 2004 7:47 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
The Weekly Standard is reporting she also worked for "Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, according to the San Francisco Chronicle."
The plot thickens!
3. Posted by Cranial | March 11, 2004 7:47 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on March 11, 2004 19:47
4. Posted by Paul Stinchfield | March 12, 2004 12:37 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
NPR did not mention her Democratic Party connections at all:
http://news.npr.org/us.html
They tried to discredit the charges on the basis that:
(1) The US failed to produce a document in which Lindauer agreed to act as an agent for Iraq
(2) Lindauer was paid too little to be a spy
(3) Therefore, Lindauer must be at worst a naive idealistic peacenik
4. Posted by Paul Stinchfield | March 12, 2004 12:37 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on March 12, 2004 00:37
5. Posted by Marc | March 12, 2004 6:25 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Anyone seenthis headline?
Accused spy is cousin of Bush staffer
They are shameless
Do ya suppose the Editors will vote for Kerry?
5. Posted by Marc | March 12, 2004 6:25 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on March 12, 2004 06:25
6. Posted by M.J. Smith | March 12, 2004 9:44 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
When the story first started breaking yesterday, I looked at the Fox News and CNN websites. The differences were startling. Both sites were using the same AP story, but CNN had removed all reference to Lindauer having a background as a Democrat or a journalist, living in a liberal area (which is how the original AP story described Takoma Park, though that's no longer in the AP story), or referring to herself as an anti-war activist. Fox News left all those AP paragraphs in when they put the story up on their site. As crystal-clear an example of bias on CNN's part as you're ever likely to see.
In case you'd like to look at both stories as they appeared yesterday afternoon, I've got them posted here:
http://highway99.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_highway99_archive.html#107908140342495610
6. Posted by M.J. Smith | March 12, 2004 9:44 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on March 12, 2004 09:44
7. Posted by Billy Beck | March 12, 2004 1:35 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
M.J. -- you've missed a crucial distinction in your post that you've linked immediately above. That story-mangling is not about "private-sector censorship" (which is an invalid concept).
It's about propaganda.
Big difference.
7. Posted by Billy Beck | March 12, 2004 1:35 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on March 12, 2004 13:35