Md. woman charged with spying for Iraq

BALTIMORE -- A former journalist and congressional press officer was arrested and charged yesterday with acting as an agent for the Iraqi intelligence service under Saddam Hussein and trying to contact White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, a distant cousin, in an attempt to influence US policy.

Susan Lindauer, 41, was taken into custody by FBI agents at her home in Takoma Park, Md., a Washington suburb. Her arrest came after federal prosecutors in New York unsealed an indictment against her and two Iraqis, the sons of a former Iraqi diplomat, who previously were charged with acting in New York as agents for the Iraqi intelligence service.

Last night, US Magistrate Judge Susan K. Gauvey released Lindauer to a halfway house and ordered her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

During a brief court appearance, Lindauer smiled and laughed as she conferred with federal public defenders representing her. As she was led out of the Baltimore FBI headquarters, she proclaimed her innocence.

"I've done good things for this country; I worked to get the weapons inspectors back to Iraq," she said. "When everybody said it was impossible, I worked to do it, and I'm very proud and I will very proudly stand by my achievements.

"I'm an antiwar activist, and I'm innocent," she said. "I've done more to stop terrorism in this country than anybody else."

The indictment alleges that Lindauer accepted $10,000 from the Iraqi intelligence service, including payments for travel to Iraq and lodging at the Al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad, and expenses during meetings in New York City with Iraqi agents. It does not detail information Lindauer allegedly supplied to the intelligence service. Prosecutors said Lindauer tried to influence US foreign policy in January 2003 by delivering a letter to a US government official, who was not identified, in which she claimed to have access to members of Hussein's regime. The Associated Press, citing a government official, said the official was Card. The White House confirmed that Lindauer is a distant cousin of Card.

According to the indictment, Lindauer met with officers of the intelligence service six times in Manhattan between October 1999 and February 2002. In October 2001, prosecutors said, she "accepted a task given to her in Manhattan by an officer of the" intelligence service.

She traveled to Baghdad as a guest of the intelligence service from late February to early March 2002 and met there with its officers.

Lindauer also met on June 23, 2003, in Baltimore with an undercover FBI agent posing as a member of the Libyan intelligence service seeking to support resistance groups in postwar Iraq.

At that meeting, the indictment said, she "discussed the need for plans and foreign resources to support these groups operating within Iraq." In July 2003, she again talked of a need to support resistance groups.

Then, following instructions from the undercover agent, she twice left documents in a designated location in Takoma Park in August 2003. The indictment did not disclose the documents' contents.

The US government says the Iraqi intelligence agency was involved in bombings during the first Gulf War and has intimidated and killed Iraqi defectors and dissidents living abroad, and has played a role in terrorist operations.

Lindauer, a 1985 Smith College graduate, is a former journalist and political aide. She worked at Fortune, US News & World Report, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer before going into politics. Her father, John, was the GOP nominee for governor of Alaska in 1998.

She worked for two Oregon Democratic congressmen, Peter DeFazio in 1993 and Ron Wyden in 1994, then as press secretary for Senator Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois. In 2002, she worked for Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California.

As FBI agents carted boxes from her home, neighbors described her as friendly. Bumper stickers on her Mazda read: "War Is Not the Answer" and "Peace in Iraq Through Change at Home."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this article.