Ex-Senate aide charged with giving Iraq secrets

Ex-Senate aide charged with giving Iraq secrets[/u]
Indictment says relative of Card accepted $10,000
NBC News and news services
Updated: 2:58 p.m. ET March 11, 2004


A former congressional aide was arrested Thursday on charges that she gave secret information to Iraqi intelligence agents for $10,000, federal prosecutors said.

The woman, Susan Lindauer, 41, who U.S. officials told NBC News was a second cousin of White House chief of staff Andrew Card, was arrested in her hometown of Takoma Park, Md., a suburb of Washington, and was to appear in court later in the day in Baltimore, authorities in New York said.

She was charged with conspiracy, acting as an unregistered foreign government agent and taking money from a government that supports terrorism. If convicted of all counts, she could face 25 years in prison.

Lindauer, shouting to reporters as she was taken into custody Thursday morning, maintained that she was an interntional peace activist, "and I'm innocent."

"I have done good things for this country," she said. "... I'm very proud, and I'm very proud to stand by my achievements."

Ex-reporter, congressional aide
Lindauer worked at Fortune, U.S. News & World Report and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer before beginning her career as a political publicist.

She worked for Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., in 1993 and then-Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in 1994 before joining the office of then-Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, D-Ill., as press secretary in 1996. From March to May 2002, she worked for Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.

Chris Fitzgerald, a spokesman for Wyden, now a senator, said the office had heard Thursday of Lindauer's arrest and expected to issue a statement later in the day.

"She worked for us a short period of time," he said.

Moseley-Braun's current spokeswoman, Loretta Kane, said the former senator did not remember Lindauer.

Multiple visits to Iraq alleged
According to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Lindauer made multiple visits from October 1999 through March 2002 to Iraq's U.N. Mission in Manhattan.

There, she met with several members of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, the foreign intelligence arm of the government of Iraq that allegedly played a role in terrorist operations, including an attempted assassination of former President George H.W. Bush, the indictment alleged.

The government said she accepted payments from the Iraqis for her services and expenses totaling $10,000, including $5,000 that she received during a trip to Baghdad in February and March 2002, where she met with Iraqi intelligence officers.

Her acceptance of the money and her willingness to bring it home from Iraq violated a law prohibiting transactions with a government that sponsors international terrorism, the government said. The indictment did not specify a motive.

Brothers charged last year
The accusations against Lindauer were included in an expanded indictment in the case against Raed Rokan Al-Anbuke, 28, and Wisam Noman Al-Anbuke, the sons of Iraq's former liaison with U.N. weapons inspectors.

The brothers were charged last year with acting as Iraqi government agents and with conspiring to do so, prosecutors said. The indictment said Lindauer conspired with the brothers.

On Jan. 8, 2003, prosecutors said, Lindauer tried to influence U.S. foreign policy by delivering to the home of a U.S. government official a letter in which she conveyed her access to and contacts with members of Saddam's regime.

The indictment did not identify the official, but federal sources told NBC's Pete Williams that the official was Card, Lindauer's second cousin. The sources said it was Card who alerted authorities to his relative's activities.

The indictment said Lindauer met twice in Baltimore, in June and July, with an undercover FBI agent who posed as a Libyan intelligence representative who was seeking to support resistance groups in postwar Iraq. It said she discussed the need for plans and foreign resources to support those groups.

According to the indictment, she continued to correspond with the undercover agent until last month and followed the agent's instructions to leave packages on two occasions in August in "dead drop" operations.

?'Fantasy world'
More than a half-dozen FBI agents could be seen searching Lindauer's residence in Takoma Park, a city known for its liberal views. Her neighbors recalled her as friendly.

Joao Luiz Vieire de Castro, 39, described Lindauer as "a regular American who walks her dog in the mornings and the afternoon."

But Malvina Lacey, who lives next door to Lindauer, said, "She lives in a fantasy world."

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