resident denies

connection to

Iraq intelligence

The woman at the center of an international spy case said last week she is the victim of a political effort to silence criticism of the U.S. administration's foreign policy approach to issues in pre-war Iraq.

Sitting in a neighborhood coffee shop March 17 for her first day of media interviews following her arrest the week before, a passionately intense Susan Lindauer presented herself as a woman fully aware of both the gravity of her actions and the seriousness of her situation.

Lindauer, 40, is accused of acting as a paid agent of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's intelligence service, the Mukhabbarat. Federal agents arrested Lindauer March 11 at her Takoma Park home following a grand jury indictment accusing her of accepting $10,000 from Mukhabbarat operatives before Hussein's government was ousted.

Although Lindauer said she could not comment specifically on the government's allegations, the self-described peace activist who works as a media and political consultant used broad strokes to paint the picture of a woman wrongly accused of working against her own government in an effort to avert a second Gulf War.

"Everything I did worked to implement the priorities identified by our own government," Lindauer said. "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."

Lindauer said she worked on those priorities, using her contacts as a former journalist and congressional press secretary to create a sort of back-channel dialogue over the past three years between diplomats and nationals of various countries. Those parties, she said, were interested in two things: lifting the United Nations-imposed sanctions on Iraqi and getting weapons inspectors back into Baghdad.

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.

Instead, Lindauer said, she is a citizen with a "private passion for peace building and conflict resolution in the Middle East" who "offered alternative solutions that would have made war [in Iraq] unnecessary."

Lindauer said she tried putting those solutions in front of American policymakers in two ways: through three letters to White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., her second cousin, and through a letter last month to congressional leaders.

One of the Card letters is mentioned in the grand jury indictment count alleging Lindauer committed conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. 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 March 15.

The government described the Card letter as one "in which Lindauer conveyed her established access to, and contacts with, members of the Saddam Hussein regime, in an unsuccessful attempt to influence United States foreign policy," according to the indictment.

Marvin Smilon, a spokesman for the U.S. District Attorney's office in Manhattan, declined to provide any additional information beyond what is contained in the indictment and an accompanying press release.

Lindauer also declined to comment on the exact content of the letters because of her pending trial, noting only that the documents were intended to "offer an initiative -- a 'framework for peace' is what I called it." She flatly denied that there was anything in the letters that created a threat to the U.S. government.

"I hoped [the letters] would provide a starting point," Lindauer said. "They were intended to create an opening for peace-building ... an opening for conflict resolution."

Lindauer also declined to discuss specifics about her recent letters to Congress, although she said she believes they were the impetus for the government's indictment.

The letters "offered alternative solutions that would have made war unnecessary and showed how easily avoidable the past year [of war in Iraq] has been. Immediately after I go to Congress with this info," she said, "immediately after that, a grand jury is convened against me."

Looking ahead to her trial, Lindauer said she is concerned about the use of classified evidence, a move she said prosecutors mentioned during her hearing Monday at the federal courthouse in New York. If she is found guilty on all counts, she faces up to 25 years in jail.

Lindauer's view of the case is one of a woman using her professional skills and personal and professional contacts from a career in the media and on Capitol Hill to put action behind her convictions. But unlike the "Think globally, act locally" mantra of other Takoma Park activists, Lindauer both thought and acted on a world stage.

"The kind of stuff that I do is not easy -- it's very hard," she said. "We're all trying to figure out how to make our world better, and I've taken on some extremely difficult situations, or policy areas, and I've tried to make a difference."

It is the global-mindedness of the city's residents and a sense of shared values that brought Lindauer to Takoma Park three years ago, she said.

"I believe that I've got good values and that I'm doing good things for peace building in our community," she said. "I take action -- I have initiated frameworks for resolving conflicts that I am incredibly proud of. I'm incredibly proud of what I've done.

"...There are times when you take for granted the community you live in ... because you get busy with life," she said. "And then something like this happens, and you just have to say 'Thank God' that you can reach out and touch people who are committed to the same social justice and committed to respect for diverse opinions, whether they agree with you or not.

"Thank God, I live in Takoma Park. I will never complain about my property taxes again."