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U.S. Woman Charged with Giving Secrets to Iraq
A Maryland woman was arrested on Thursday on charges she gave secret information to Iraqi intelligence agents and was paid $10,000 for her services, federal prosecutors said.Susan Lindauer, 41, also known as Symbol SUSAN, was arrested in Takoma Park, Maryland, on charges contained in a federal indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan. She is expected to be presented later on Thursday in court in Baltimore. The charges against Lindauer are included in a case against two sons of a former Iraqi diplomat. The indictment against them, filed last year, charges Wisam Noman al-Anbuke and his brother, Raed Roman al-Anbuke, with passing information to Iraqi intelligence agents about Iraqi dissidents living in the United States. The case focuses on activity between the first Gulf War in 1991 and March 2002, a year before Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was ousted by a U.S.-led invasion. Lindauer is charged with conspiracy, acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government and taking money from a government that supports terrorism. If convicted of all counts, she could face 25 years in prison. The two other defendants previously pleaded not guilty to the charges. Although court documents spell their last name as al-Anbuke, a defense lawyer in the case said the men go by al-Anbuge. The brothers are the sons of Rokan al-Anbuke, who was deputy permanent representative to Iraqâs U.N. Mission until Aug. 1, 2000, when he returned to Iraq. His sons remained in New York. The indictment accuses them of conspiring to act as agents of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, or IIS, and failing to register with the Justice Department as an agent for a foreign government. Prosecutors said the intelligence service had helped carry out terrorist operations, including the attempted assassination of former President George H.W. Bush and attempted bombings during the 1991 Gulf War. They said that the Iraqi service has also "located, intimidated and killed Iraqi defectors and dissidents living abroad." A spokesman for the U.S. attorneyâs office in New York would not comment on Lindauerâs relationship to the two brothers or about her employment. The expanded indictment charges that Lindauer made multiple visits to the Iraqi Mission to the United Nations in New York and met with several members of the IIS from October 1999 through about March 2002. It charges that Lindauer received payments from the IIS for her expenses in return for her intelligence services. It is also charged that Lindauer traveled to Baghdad in February or March 2002 and met with several IIS officers. The indictment charges that Lindauer was paid more than $10,000 by the IIS and brought some of the money back to the United States. That action violates a law that bars transactions with a government that sponsors international terrorism. It also charges that Lindauer delivered a letter last year to the home of a U.S. government official in which she said she had access to members of the Saddam Hussein regime. Prosecutors said the letter was an unsuccessful attempt to influence United States foreign policy. WOW! Posted by: Chuck Simmins 2004-03-11 |
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