The PhoeniciaPhoenix blog today publishes a lengthy post headed "Former CIA asset speaks out after criminal charges dropped." It reads in part:
'Former CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) non-official cover (NOC) asset Susan Lindauer is speaking out after, in one of its final acts, the Bush Justice Department dropped all criminal charges against her for acting as an "unregistered" agent of the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein, traveling to Baghdad, and other acts. Lindauer was arrested in March 2004 after she volunteered to testify before a blue ribbon commission on pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Lindauer, the second cousin of George W. Bush White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and the daughter of a one-time Republican gubernatorial candidate in Alaska, approached two commission members, Trent Lott of Mississippi and John McCain of Arizona with her offer of testimony about intelligence. It was after she made her approach that she was arrested on charges of acting on behalf of Iraq's government. (...)
'In her NOC asset role, Lindauer covered the Iraqi and Libyan missions to the United Nations in New York. She refused to discuss details of the non-official cover status under which she worked, saying it remains sensitive information. Neither country had diplomatic relations with the United States and, therefore, had no embassies in Washington, DC. Lindauer was responsible for maintaining "back channel" links between U.S. intelligence and Iraq and Libya, primarily dealing with counter-terrorism matters. (...)
'Lindauer said her CIA handler, Richard Fuisz, a long-time U.S. intelligence agent in the Middle East, said the CIA learned from the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland that terrorists might use hijacked planes as weapons. (...)
'Like CIA NOC Valerie Plame Wilson, who, along with her NOC firm Brewster Jennings & Associates, was outed by the Bush White House, the failure of the Bush administration to protect Lindauer and her contacts had potentially catastrophic consequences. Lindauer said her intelligence work with Iraq and Libya had made her enemy number one for Syrian-based Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command, the actual perpetrators, along with Iran, of the Pan Am 103 bombing.'
Whenever the names of Susan Lindauer and Richard Fuisz are mentioned in relation to the Lockerbie bombing, I just know I'm going to end up being confused.
ReplyDelete[Susan Lindauer, to whom I am grateful, has communicated to me certain clarifications and corrections to the article from which excerpts appear in this post. I am happy to publish them here.]
ReplyDelete1. It's correct to call me an "Asset" -- not a NOC agent or NOC Asset. Just an "asset" is fine.
With regards to 9/11, the following sentence is not accurate:
Lindauer said her CIA handler, Richard Fuisz, a long-time U.S. intelligence agent in the Middle East, said the CIA learned from the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland that terrorists might use hijacked planes as weapons.
It is accurate to say that we worked up a terrorist scenario involving airplane hijackings and a reprise of the World Trade Center attack in 1993. (…)
In April and May of 2001, Lindauer was told by Fuisz to pass on to Libya and Iraq that if either government heard even so much as a whisper about any sort of terrorist attack on the United States, and did not pass that intelligence on to the CIA, through Lindauer, the United States would bomb both countries "back into the Stone Age."
Neither Iraq or Libya had any intelligence to give us, but over the summer of 2001, we worked up a scenario of an attack involving airplane hijackings and the World Trade Center, which I shared with Dr. Godfrey. In August 2001 Fuisz told her to pass the information on to Attorney General John Ashcroft's Office of Counter-terrorism, which she did. Lindauer's intelligence was very specific: that planes would be used to strike the World Trade Center...
2. However, witnesses from the Lockerbie trial were prepared to testify that Fuisz was with CIA and had a long established working relationship with Lindauer.