An ex-staffer to four members of Congress was busted yesterday on charges she acted as a spy for Saddam Hussein before and after the Iraq war.
In the latest Iraqi espionage case, Susan Lindauer, 41 – a distant cousin of White House chief of staff Andrew Card – faces up to 25 years in prison after being nabbed by FBI agents at her home in Takoma Park, Md., on three federal charges.
The former journalist and ex-press secretary for Democratic members of Congress is accused of conspiring to spy for Saddam’s feared Mukhabarat intelligence agency.
She pocketed $10,000 from the terror-supporting state for her services, the feds said in documents unsealed in Manhattan federal court.
After meeting with Saddam’s thugs regularly at the United Nations complex in New York starting in 1999, Lindauer traveled to Baghdad as a guest of the intelligence agency in February and March 2002, the documents say.
During the trip, Lindauer, who used the alias “Symbol Susan,” allegedly met with Mukhabarat agents at the Al-Rashid Hotel, where she was paid $5,000 to meet the costs of the trip.
Prosecutors claimed she also tried to influence American foreign policy in the weeks before the war by delivering to an American official – believed to be Card – a letter in which she claimed to have access to members of Saddam’s regime.
After the war, Lindauer met twice with someone she thought was a Libyan intelligence agent to support anti-American resistance groups in Iraq, the feds charge.
She left packages – believed to contain copies of her writings opposing the war – for the “representative” in so-called “drop dead” operations in August 2003.
But unknown to her, the “Libyan contact” was an FBI agent.
After her arrest yesterday, Lindauer said she was nothing more than an anti-war protester.
“I did more to stop terrorism in this country than anybody else . . . I worked to get weapons inspectors back to Iraq when everyone else said it was impossible,” she said.
Lindauer’s arrest came as a shock to neighbors, who described her as a regular American who seemed to dote on her two dogs.
“I would talk to her occasionally while she was watching her dogs play,” neighbor Tirena Bolden said. “I now realize anything is possible in this world.”
But Malvina Lacey, who lives next door to Lindauer, added, “She lives in a fantasy world.”
Neighbors watched as FBI agents pounced early yesterday on Lindauer’s home in Takoma Park, a “nuclear-free zone” city in Montgomery County, Md., known for its liberal views.
Lindauer has a long association with Washington, working for Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) in 1993; Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in 1994; Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.) in 1996; and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) in 2002.
Her father, John Lindauer, was the Republican nominee for governor of Alaska in 1998.
Lindauer has been added as a defendant to an existing federal case in which two sons of a former Iraqi diplomat to New York were arrested last year on spy charges.
The trial of Raed Rokan Al-Anbuke, 28, and Wisam Noman Al-Anbuke, 24, the sons of Iraq’s former liaison with United Nations weapons inspectors, was due to go ahead next month, but is now likely to be delayed.
SPY FILE
Name: SUSAN LINDAUER
Alias: Symbol Susan
Age: 41
Residence: Manor Circle, Takoma Park, Md.
Marital status: Single
Occupation: Political activist
Career record:
* Journalist and researcher at Fortune magazine, U.S. News & World Report, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Fox News Channel
* Press secretary for Rep. Zoe Lofgren, (D-Calif.) in 2002, Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in 1994, Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun in 1996, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) in 1993
Charges: Conspiracy, acting as an unregistered agent for Iraq and engaging in a prohibited financial transaction with a government that supports terrorism
Penalty: Maximum 25 years in prison