- NEW YORK -- A former journalist
and political press secretary was arrested in Maryland yesterday and charged
with spying for Iraq.
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- Susan Lindauer, 41, was allegedly paid $10,000 (about
£5,500) by Iraqi intelligence agents in the course of several years
of clandestine meetings in New York and Baghdad.
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- She was taken into custody in Takoma Park, near Washington
DC, where she lived.
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- A US attorney said she had tried to sway US foreign policy
early last year in a letter delivered to the home of her distant cousin
Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff, describing her contacts with
the Iraqis.
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- The White House spokesman Scott McClellan told CNN that
Mr Card had "cooperated fully with the investigation" and brought
the matter to the "attention of the appropriate officials."
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- Ms Lindauer worked for a string of respected publications,
including Fortune magazine - for which she wrote on Wall Street - US News
& World Report and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, before becoming
a political publicist. She represented a number of Democrats in the 1990s,
including the former senator Carol Mosely-Brown, who campaigned unsuccessfully
this year for the party's presidential nomination. Her present spokeswoman
said Ms Mosely-Brown had no recollection of Ms Lindauer.
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- The case focuses on events between October 1999 and March
2002. The indictment alleges that Ms Lindauer had prohibited dealings with
members of the Iraqi intelligence service.
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- During the three years she is alleged to have made at
least seven visits to the Iraqi UN mission in New York, and to have visited
Baghdad in early 2002.
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- The indictment says she was known as "Symbol Susan".
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- She is charged with "acting and conspiring to act
as an unregistered agent of the Iraqi intelligence services", and
"engaging in prohibited financial transactions with the government
of Iraq". She could be jailed for 25 years.
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- She is also accused of having a meeting last year with
an undercover FBI agent who was posing as a Libyan intelligence agent seeking
to support insurgents in post-war Iraq. The indictment says she twice left
documents for the agent at a dead-letter drop.
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- The charges arise from a widening case against Raed Rokan
al-Anbuke and Wisam Noman al-Anbuke, the sons of Iraq's former liaison
officer at the UN, who are accused of acting as undercover agents.
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- In 1998 Ms Lindauer was quoted as saying she had been
subjected to surveillance and threats after being involved in the debate
about the Lockerbie bombing.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1167871,00.html
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