EXTREME PREJUDICE: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq

by Susan Lindauer

  Like the copy of the Wall Street Journal that appeared on my desk, a trustworthy source revealed this information after Extreme Prejudice had gone to galleys.

  Late on the night of August 23, 2001, at about 3 a.m. security cameras in the parking garage of the World Trade Center captured the arrival of three truck vans. Visual examination determined the vans were separate and unique from trucks used by janitorial services, including different colors and devoid of markings. More curious, all the janitorial trucks had pulled out of the Towers by about 2:30 a.m—about half an hour before the second set of vans arrived.

  According to my source, who saw the tapes, no vans matching that description had entered the World Trade Center at that extraordinary hour in any of the weeks or months prior to August 23. It was a unique event.

  Security cameras caught the vans leaving the Towers at approximately 5 a.m—before the first wave of Wall Street tycoons arrived to track the Asian markets.

  For the next 10 to 12 nights, the same mysterious truck- vans arrived at the World Trade Center at the same mysterious hour— after the janitorial crews had left the building and before the most fanatic robber barons on Wall Street started their work day. The vans clocked into the parking garage from approximately August 23, 2001 until September 3 or 4, 2001. After that last night, they never appeared at the Towers again.

  The vans were never heard of again, either. The 9/11 Commission was never informed of their surprising presence three weeks before the 9/11 attack. Most of the 9/11 Truth Community has no knowledge of this extraordinary nightly activity, either.

  For all the public’s ignorance, video from the security cameras could be the most significant missing evidence of the 9/11 puzzle. My source was convinced those mysterious trucks transported explosives into the towers, so that an unidentified orphan team could finish wiring the World Trade Center for a controlled demolition. He has stayed quiet to protect his job, his retirement pension and his reputation—knowing that others who spoke up have gotten fired or thrown in prison. Like me.

  Though I was still ignorant of those parking garage tapes, I had plenty to be angry about inside that holding cage, waiting for a Federal Judge to throw my bail. From the moment that holding cage clanged shut behind me, I was furiously aware that my arrest was a crucial part of the 9/11 cover up. They might have triumphed over truth, except the Justice Department hit a snag.

  After my arrest, the FBI quickly discovered that the CIA wasn’t the only party knowledgeable of our team’s 9/11 warnings. I had warned some of my civilian friends about the possibility of a 9/11 style of attack, too— particularly friends with family or professional ties to New York City.

  That’s where the Feds got crossed up.

  A Personal Warning to a Friend

  Dr. Parke Godfrey was one of my closest friends in Maryland, working on his doctoral dissertation in computer science at the University of Maryland in College Park. His family lived in the Connecticut suburbs of New York City. We spoke frequently, socializing a couple of times a week, and shared much of the same political outlook.52

  Godfrey has gone on to launch a distinguished career as a tenured Professor of Computer Science and Technology at York University in Toronto, Canada. He presents a calm, studied demeanor. He speaks precisely and methodically, choosing his words carefully—what some friends have teasingly compared to Dr. Spock of Star Trek fame. During difficult courtroom questioning, he would frequently pause and take his time to give an accurate, thoughtful response. He proved a superior witness by any measure.

  In shattering testimony a mere 1,000 yards from Ground Zero, Godfrey told the Court how several times in the spring and summer of 2001 I warned him that we expected a major terrorist strike that would encompass the World Trade Center.

  In courtroom testimony, Godfrey said I told him that, “a massive attack would occur in the southern part of Manhattan that would involve airplanes and possibly a nuclear weapon.”53

  He testified that I told him “the attack would complete the cycle of the first bombing of the World Trade Center. It would finish what was started in the 1993 attack.”

  On cross examination, he was more specific, declaring that I warned him in August, the attack was “imminent.”54

  Equally devastating, Godfrey testified under oath that he told the FBI about my 9/11 warning during a sit down interview in Toronto in September, 2004, a few months after my arrest—and before the 9/11 Commission issued its report. At that point, it was still possible to alert the 9/11 Commissioners about this shattering revelation.55

  The FBI interview with Godfrey was jointly attended by the Canadian Royal Mounted Police. Asked why a member of the Canadian Police was present at the FBI interview, he replied with a smile: “They were there to assure my protection.”

  Unfortunately, nobody was present to assure mine.

  The fact was I knew too much, and I was starting to talk. That’s why I was sitting in that holding cage waiting for my bail arraignment.

  My arrest came hard and fast after I approached Senator Lott and Senator McCain’s offices,56 asking to tell the whole saga from start to finish.

  U.S. Intelligence understood exactly what that meant. I would blow the whistle and expose the whole façade. I was their Asset, after all. They’d been supervising my work for many years, and they were intimately familiar with how I operate and what I would reveal. And they knew that my truth would be nothing remotely similar to what Congress and the White House were selling to the American people.

  Perhaps most significantly, from their intelligence profiling, they understood that once I made up my mind to talk, it would be damn near impossible to shut me up. I would find a way to speak, one way or another. That was my nature.

  Only one thing could be guaranteed to stop me. I would have to be “terminated with extreme prejudice—” the operative phrase for destroying an Asset or Intelligence officer, body and soul— usually as an assassination.

  In that holding cage at the Baltimore Federal Courthouse, I had no idea yet how “extreme” that act of prejudice would be.

  Our intelligence war was just getting started. And it would be a fight to the death.

  CHAPTER 3:

  PEACE ASSET

  “I’m dancing barefoot—”

  Patti Smith

  There’s a saying in the Intelligence Community: When they want you, they will come and get you.

  But sometimes I forget how extraordinary all of this strikes outsiders. I mean, how does an American peace activist get tapped to become a U.S. Asset engaged in counter-terrorism, dealing regularly with the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations? Or the Libyan Embassy, for that matter?

  My clandestine life began quite unexpectedly, with a collision of events tied to the first World Trade Center bombing in February, 1993.

  Yes, like some sort of Greek Tragedy, the great moments of my life all turned on the World Trade Center, start to finish.

  At a National Press Club lunch for Palestinian women’s leader, Hanan Ashrawi in late 1992, I leaned across the crisp linen table cloth and whispered to a diplomat from Tunisia that I had information about somebody who might be engaged in terrorism.

  “He’s a real terrorist. He was held in an Israeli prison for a year, and his mother thinks he’s dead,” I recall saying to the diplomat.

  My attempt at conversation was interrupted by Ashrawi’s excellent speech, but I contacted the Tunisian Embassy in Washington DC several weeks later. I asked the Embassy to help locate the diplomat from the luncheon, explaining that it was imperative that we should finish our conversation at the earliest possible convenience.

  On that mysterious note, Tunisian diplomats determined that I had spoken with a member of Ashrawi’s travel entourage, and the diplomat had returned home to Tunis.

  Sensing the urgency behind my request, however, Mr. Mounir Adhoum invited me to visit him instead at the Tunisian Embassy in Washington DC.

  With much trepidation, we met, and I confided that
I believed the World Trade Center was about to get attacked by Islamic fundamentalists from the south of Egypt who sought the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

  The full scope of our conversation remains extremely sensitive to this day. Let’s just say, the people who ‘need to know’ already have that information. Beyond that circle, it would be considered extremely unfriendly to expose any part of our discussion. I will only say that my warning was fully accurate in all details. I have never withdrawn any part of the remarks I made to Mr. Adhoum on February 24, 1993. Eerily enough, it makes my work in anti-terrorism a perfect cycle that started and ended with warnings about the World Trade Center. That stuns some people. Even me.

  Mr. Adhoum was polite, but skeptical. That’s not surprising. I was completely unknown. I appeared out of nowhere to share some extraordinary information, then I retreated to the shadows. For me, it was enough that I fulfilled my obligations to come forward.

  Attitudes at the Tunisian Embassy changed quickly, however. Two days after my meeting with Mr. Adhoum, the World Trade Center suffered its first historic attack on February 26, 1993, when a truck loaded with explosives detonated in the Secret Service section of the parking garage.

  The explosion ripped through three floors of concrete and steel in the 110 story building, scattering ash and debris, and starting a fire that shot smoke and flames up one of the Twin Towers.57 It also left a gaping hole in the wall above the Path underground station. Miraculously, only five people died in the crush of concrete, though over 1,000 New Yorkers suffered injuries. The World Trade Center lost all electricity and lighting, and elevators stopped working. It was a chaotic crisis that put thousands of lives at risk.

  That moment changed my future forever. Fast on the ball, the Justice Department announced to an excited throng of journalists that an unnamed woman had warned of the terrorist strike two days before the attack. The Justice Department assured the media that all leads from the woman’s warning would be pursued aggressively.

  The next day, the warning was retracted as “a hoax.”

  It was not a hoax. I was that woman. Only the substance of my message, including my description of efforts to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak, remains far too sensitive for public disclosure, even after Mubarak’s ouster 20 years later.

  If the media was totally ignorant of my identity and warning, U.S. law enforcement and the Intelligence community were intensely aware of me—especially as it became obvious that I had correctly anticipated the threat to President Mubarak’s government in Egypt in its full scope. Sheikh Abdul Rahman and Ramzi Yousef, both convicted in the conspiracy, agitated for the violent overthrow of President Mubarak’s secular regime, in favor of a radical Islamic government based on Islamic Shariah.58

  Very quickly U.S. Intelligence and the FBI turned a harsh spotlight on me. At first the investigation terrified me. But my paranoia was not irrational, as some have accused.

  I was 29 years old. My mother, a source of inspiration for me, had died the previous year of cancer. All of a sudden, having correctly warned about the first major terrorist attack inside the United States since Pearl Harbor— involving the World Trade Center no less—I found my life subjected to the most extreme scrutiny. That’s really an understatement. It was baptism by fire.

  All parts of U.S. law enforcement mobilized rapidly to capture the terrorists. Overnight, I became a ‘person of interest’ in the truest sense. When I shunned publicity, they got very curious as to why I did not rush to claim my 15 minutes of fame. Why not take credit? On the other hand, my silence must have been highly desirable since it created a false sense of security for the terrorists, who had no idea of the depth of information the U.S. government already possessed about their cause. That gave the FBI, the CIA (and several other alphabets) an advantage in their work. At that point, surveillance techniques became intrusive enough to discourage me from changing my mind about coming forward.

  On the bright side, the furniture in my apartment got dusted more thoroughly than it’s ever been since. I couldn’t rub a finger over any surface in my living room and find a speck of dirt anywhere. It was spotless, like a Stepford wife’s house.

  Small teams of FBI agents and NSA types staked out my apartment in the vibrant immigrant neighborhood of Adams Morgan. When I left for work in the morning, somebody would tail me to the Dupont Circle metro, stopping at the top of the escalator as I went down. On the other end of my commute, the same woman would wait every morning at the Capitol South Metro, going nowhere. When I got off the escalator, the woman would fall in behind, escorting me all the way to the Longworth House Office Building where I had started working as Press Secretary to Congressman Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, before switching over to the office of his rival, Congressman Ron Wyden, who ultimately defeated DeFazio in a Senate race.

  Street surveillance continued every day for 5 or 6 months.

  Some of the surveillance struck me as comical. Carrying groceries one afternoon, I was accosted by a genial Arab fellow wearing dirty jeans and a t-shirt about a block from my apartment. According to my journals, this occurred in May or June of 1993. The Arab man greeted me loudly, with a huge smile plastered on his face.59

  Very quickly he got to the point. And there was nothing subtle about it.

  “I am visiting from the south of Egypt. Do you know anybody from the South of Egypt? Do you know any terrorists? Really, I am very serious. Do you know any terrorists? You should tell me.”

  At that point, he made a clumsy overture to pay me for sex, pulling a large wad of hundred dollar bills out of his tattered jeans pocket. I burst out laughing and slammed the door in his face.

  In ordinary circumstances, the idea of subjecting a young American woman to foreign surveillance in Washington DC would raise eyebrows. It would be unthinkable. In truth, such encounters were the tip of the iceberg.

  From the perspective of law enforcement, that sort of aggressive surveillance qualified as a necessary infringement on my civil liberties. However, as a 29 year old woman living alone in Washington DC, all of that attention felt dreadfully unnerving. It didn’t continue very long, fortunately. I’d done the right thing. The more the FBI and National Security Agency verified the accuracy of my warning, the more they had to respect that I came forward to try to stop the attack. At least I tried to do something, instead of looking away.

  I kept a journal after the 1993 World Trade Center attack. Many years later my entries on surveillance gave ammunition to critics, who accused me of “irrational paranoia” during my imbroglio with the Justice Department.60 However, my writings only seem paranoid because my 1993 warning had been kept secret from the public. In light of my actions, it’s not terribly surprising the government acted aggressively to track my activities. In a sense they had to.

  After the 1993 attack, the style of surveillance struck me as overt and intrusive. As an Asset, I learned that if the government desires to conceal its surveillance, you would never guess you’re a target. If you’re aware of surveillance, it’s because they want you to be conscious of it. Intrusive surveillance is designed to scare you off. It’s a method of psychological warfare. And believe me when I say, it can be very effective.

  Still, I considered it excessive. For one thing, I am the social opposite of the terrorist network I exposed. I am a life-long peace activist opposed to violence in all its forms.

  My mother, Jacqueline Shelly Lindauer, raised me to oppose War and violence from my earliest childhood during the Vietnam War in the 1960s. A college teacher of children’s literature at Cal Polytechnic in Pomona, California, Jackie Lindauer testified at numerous draft board hearings to keep her students out of Vietnam as “conscientious objectors.” A few of her students fled to Canada, with her encouragement.

  Jackie also counseled young American soldiers who returned from Vietnam emotionally damaged, as they tried to adjust to college life.

  Years later, when our family moved to Alaska, my mother became a bright l
ight on the small Anchorage social scene. She served as President of the Anchorage Fine Arts Museum Association, and entertained various foreign dignitaries and foreign policy experts, who would speak before the World Affairs Council in Anchorage, while traveling in the wilds of Alaska. To her immense credit, she launched five country radio stations and 10 weekly newspapers throughout rural Alaska.61

  I spent my teenage years listening to the Rolling Stones and Hank Williams, Jr.

  As publisher and editor-in-chief of her small Alaska media empire, Jackie championed sustainable fisheries management in Alaska, the protection of Alaska Native culture, the restoration of Russian Orthodox churches, rural education and health care, among other local causes. Fiercely pro-development, nevertheless Jackie mobilized Alaska’s fishing community to support a ban on drift-nets that wiped out millions of fish and sea life in the open ocean. She also lobbied hard for an international treaty to stop over fishing in international waters called the “Donut Hole,” between the U.S., Japan and Russia. She was much loved and civic minded.

  In a switch from her past, Jackie frequently entertained top military brass at our home, including some of the Generals from Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson who got their stripes in Vietnam. On occasion, at her parties, these Generals would tease her about military dossiers tallying her protests of the Vietnam War, and her transformation from 1960s radical activist to civic leader. But the Generals and military attaches in Anchorage always praised the support she gave young soldiers coming home from Vietnam. My mother opposed the War; she never opposed the young men drafted to fight it.

  In a real sense, I followed in my mother’s footsteps as an Anti-War activist. During Vietnam, my mother had a poster that read: ‘War is harmful to children and other living things.’ She taught us that all life should be treated as precious and sacred. She revered civil rights activist, Rev. Martin Luther King. While America battled racism in the 1960s, my mother made sure that we played with little black and Hispanic children in our home. In 1968, that was different.