What a strange story. Seems like there is another layer, undiscussed. She apparently convinced Andrew Card of something, we just don't know what.
Ex-Congress Aide Accused in Spy Case Is Free on Bail : A former journalist and Congressional aide accused of working with Iraqi intelligence before the war was released from prison yesterday after a federal judge ruled that she could not be forced to take antipsychotic medication in an effort to make her competent to stand trial.The ruling was a setback for the government’s case against Ms. Lindauer, who was arrested in March 2004 at her home in Takoma Park, Md. An indictment charged that Ms. Lindauer, also known as Symbol Susan, conspired to act as an unregistered agent of the government of Iraq from October 1999 until February 2004, and engaged in illegal financial transactions.
...
Investigators said she had tried to influence American policy by presenting herself as an agent of Saddam Hussein’s government in early 2003 to Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff, who was described as a distant relative.Judge Mukasey said that for Ms. Lindauer to succeed as an agent of the Iraqi government, she would have had to influence other people. But her mental condition makes that highly unlikely, he said.
“The record shows that even lay people recognize that she is seriously disturbed,” Judge Mukasey said in a 35-page ruling issued on Wednesday. He said that a neighbor had suspected her of being mildly schizophrenic.
Prosecutors said she met with Iraqi intelligence officers at places in Baghdad, including Al Rashid Hotel, in 2002, where she accepted $5,000 in cash.
Ms. Lindauer told a television reporter after her arrest that she was innocent, and that she was an antiwar activist.
...One doctor found that Ms. Lindauer had a history of psychotic episodes going back to her childhood, possibly at the age of 7, the judge said. These include her contention that she had gifts of prophecy that allowed her to report 11 bombings before they happened, that she spoke with divine inspiration and that she was an angel.
Among her paranoid delusions, doctors said, were the notion that she was being watched by hidden cameras in her apartment, that the Egyptian government had tried to assassinate her and that men next door had videotaped her under instructions from President Bill Clinton.
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Ms. Lindauer is a 1985 graduate of Smith College, where she majored in economics, and she received a master’s degree from the London School of Economics.Her father, John Lindauer, was the Republican nominee for governor of Alaska in 1998.
Very odd.
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