Susan Lindauer (born July 17, 1963) is an American journalist and former U.S. Congressional staffer who was charged with "acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government" and violating U.S. financial sanctions during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. She was incarcerated in 2005 and released the next year after two judges ruled her mentally unfit to stand trial. The government dropped the prosecution in 2009. In 2010, Lindauer published a book about her experiences. Since 2011 Lindauer has appeared frequently on television and in print as a U.S. government critic.
Early life and education
Lindauer is the daughter of John Howard Lindauer II, a newspaper publisher and former Republican nominee for Governor of Alaska. Her mother, Jacquelyn "Jackie" Lindauer nee Shelly, died of cancer in 1992. In 1995, her father married Dorothy Oremus, a Chicago attorney.
Lindauer attended East Anchorage High School in Anchorage, Alaska, where she was an honor student and was in school plays. She graduated from Smith College in 1985 and then earned a master's degree in public policy from the London School of Economics.
Career
Lindauer began in journalism working as a temporary reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1987, and as an editorial writer at The Everett Herald in Everett, Washington until 1989. She later worked as a reporter and researcher at U.S. News & World Report in 1990 and 1991.
Lindauer worked as a Congressional staffer for Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR, 1993) and then Representative Ron Wyden (D-OR, 1994) before joining the office of Senator Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL), where she worked as a press secretary and speech writer. She served as Press Secretary for Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) from March 11, 2002 to May 14, 2002.
Interest in the Middle East
In November 1993, a friend of Lindauer's father introduced her to former Vietnam War combat pilot Paul Hoven at a restaurant next to The Heritage Foundation. She began socializing in an informal circle of conservatives interested in counterterrorism, including Capitol Hill staff and intelligence community members, including Dr. Richard Fuisz and, according to an article posted on New Zealand website Scoop, senior Congressional staffer Kelly O'Meara.
Lindauer has described Fuisz as her Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) "contact" and "handler". At the time of Lindauer's first meeting with Fuisz, theories of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 were divided between blaming the Libyan government under Moammar Gaddafi (which took responsibility in 2003) and the Syrian Ahmed Jabril. Lindauer said that Fuisz had shared with her his belief that the US government had falsely pinned the blame on Libya. Lindauer and Fuisz said they met an average of once per week from 1994 to 2001. In 2000, the Sunday Herald in Scotland reported that US sources told them Fuisz had been an operative for the CIA in Damascus during the 1980s. Fuisz did not confirm or deny this, saying he was not permitted to speak about it.
Lindauer said she began making visits to the Libyan mission at the United Nations (UN) in 1995 and with Iraqis at the UN in 1996. In 2000, she told Middle East Intelligence Bulletin that she had been subject to surveillance, threats, and was attacked after meeting Libyan officials in 1995 to discuss what she had learned about the Flight 103 bombing.
On November 26, 2000, then President-elect George W. Bush appointed Lindauer's second cousin once removed, Andrew Card, as White House Chief of Staff upon his inauguration. Card had previously served as Deputy Chief of Staff and Secretary of Transportation for George H. W. Bush, and had been selected by George W. Bush to run the 2000 Republican National Convention. Starting in 2000, Lindauer delivered multiple letters to Card, leaving them on the doorstep of his home in Northern Virginia. In her letters, she urged Card to intercede with President George W. Bush not to invade Iraq, and offered to act as a back channel in negotiations. According to Scoop, over approximately two years, Lindauer wrote Card a total of eleven letters, the last on January 6, 2003, two months before the invasion of Iraq. Card later told the FBI that Lindauer had tried to contact him several times, but according to a statement by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, Card did not recall seeing or talking to Lindauer after the January 2001 inauguration.