As a result, from my earliest childhood in the 1960s, I learned a profound respect for the cultural rights of other peoples, a lesson that crossed racial and ethnic lines and all geography.
It also meant that anti-war activism and social justice formed the deepest core of my political philosophy long before the first Gulf War in 1990.
As a graduate of Smith College (one of the Seven Sisters colleges) and the London School of Economics, I opposed virtually all American foreign policy during the Reagan-Bush era. Most ironically, the focus of my politics bitterly opposed the CIA. I campaigned hard against apartheid in South Africa and opposed all U.S. intervention in Latin America throughout the 1980s. Politically, I championed the Sandinistas against the Contras in Nicaragua, and abhorred the death squads in El Salvador and Honduras (trained and financed by the CIA). I argued passionately against war and militarism. I supported liberation theology and nuclear disarmament. Anti-war philosophy profoundly shaped my dogma and religious viewpoints.
My favorite economics professor at Smith College, Dr. Andrew Zimbalist, campaigned aggressively against the Cuban trade embargo, and ranked as one of the foremost opponents of sanctions policy in his day.62
Now a leading expert on American baseball franchising and sports economics,63 in those days Zimbalist showed me how sanctions reduce entire nations to struggling poverty, with long term consequences that harm the rise of new markets for U.S. goods. In that sense, he showed me how sanctions cripple economic prosperity for trade partners in both directions.
From there I came to see that sanctions break down communications exactly when diplomacy is most urgently required to address conflict. Sanctions lay barriers to quid pro quo solutions, which are vital to breaking deadlocks, in favor of “all or nothing” solutions, which are most difficult to attain. Very serious conflicts continue to fester without relief, as a direct result of sanctions policy.
That lesson would affect me deeply. My passion against sanctions that I nurtured at Smith College would catapult me into the most surprising opportunity of my future. Above all, Smith filled me with a sense of empowerment, and inspired my unshakeable belief that women should expect to contribute solutions to difficult issues. That sense of confidence encouraged me to embrace the challenges of performing as an Asset dealing with conservative Arab governments. And it’s what saved me when the Justice Department tried to smash apart my sense of identity and achievement, and the pride I felt for my accomplishments.
Without Smith College, I could never have survived the harrowing ordeal of my indictment. I could not have fought so hard to defend myself, or marshalled confidence to confront such powerful foes.
I owe Andy Zimbalist and Smith College everything.
After Smith, I headed to graduate school at the London School of Economics. There I gained something else pivotal to my life— close, personal exposure to the sons (and a few daughters) of high ranking government ministers and diplomats around the world, including Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq and Iran. The L.S.E.’s philosophy exposed me to a global diversity of policymaking, including an Islamic philosophy of government that contradicted everything I understood about politics. It challenged me at every level.
At the outset, I admit I was not tolerant. As a young feminist, I was both tantalized by the teachings of Islam, and frightened by its repression of women. Yet Arab culture excited me. As a spiritual person, I discovered genuine admiration for Islamic teachings. Ultimately I learned to respect Arabs culturally, and I learned how to discuss non-violence in the context of Islamic philosophy, in such a way that they could hear me, and we could understand each other. In that way, my immersion at the London School of Economics made it possible engage in successful dialogue with Arab diplomats years later at the United Nations. Without that early confrontation with diversity in government agendas and policymaking, it’s doubtful I could have been effective in building bridges to those Embassies.
All of those aspects of my early life forged into a passionate commitment to dialogue, and opposition to militarism, which would culminate in my very unique occupation.
There is one more striking peculiarity that defines my life. I have a life-long interest in spiritualism and metaphysics. Since my earliest childhood, I have possessed psychic abilities, including telepathy and precognition, which I have always embraced.
Ultimately, what I cherish as a beautiful gift would prove to be the most controversial aspect of my life. It painted a bull’s eye on my back during my legal battle, though many people around the world share those same types of experiences, and hold them to be quite wonderful. In my case, whatever you choose to call this presence, it is loving and righteous. And it has brought me to some extraordinary moments.
One particular event has stoked controversy over my spiritual beliefs. Though somewhat mysterious, like so much in my life, it happens to be entirely truthful.
It occurred on the morning of April 15, 1986, after U.S. and British fighter jets bombed Colonel Gadhaffi’s camps in Tripoli. The story goes that when fighter planes crossed Maltese airspace without permission, Malta’s Prime Minister called to warn Gadhaffi, who narrowly escaped death at his family compound.64
As fate would have it, that night I was stuck at the Moscow International Airport in the old Soviet Union, returning to London with a school travel group. Unbeknownst to any of us, the United States had issued a special warning to the Kremlin that all Soviet planes must stay grounded during the attack on Libya. Any Soviet planes lifting off any runway would be interpreted as threatening the United States, and would be shot down. This was Ronald Reagan’s Administration, already infamous for joking that “the bombing starts in five minutes.”
Without our knowledge, our student group from the London School of Economics had just become pawns of the Cold War. After hours of delay, our flight was rushed out of Moscow International Airport. Shortly after take off, a U.S. fighter jet appeared on our wing and escorted us out of Soviet airspace. That’s something you don’t forget.
The next morning, safe on British soil, we discovered why the fuss. Banner headlines in the “Times” of London proclaimed “President Reagan Bombs Tripoli.”
During that school year, I lived in the Earls Court neighborhood off Cromwell Road and Kensington High Street, the heart of a thriving Arab community in London. I was excited about my trip to Moscow and Leningrad, and decided to walk to Holland Park near my home.
Rage on the street was palpable. Fist fights broke out in the neighborhood. Inside Holland Park, police cordoned off the British Commonwealth Institute because of a bomb scare.
I sat down on a park bench.
An old Arab man, very dignified with a black cane, cautiously sat down next to me.
What followed was the most extraordinary conversation I’ve ever shared with any soul in this life-time. Our meeting fully changed my life, and opened my heart to the opportunities I would confront later on. Almost immediately it became apparent this old Arab man possessed a great gift of precognition. That’s stunning to a western audience, but much better understood and accepted in the Middle East. Given my own predilections for spiritualism, I responded encouragingly.
For about an hour, the old Arab man spoke extensively about the future of the Middle East—and the future of my life, in highly subtle and precise detail. I was fascinated. He spoke with such patience and confidence and an uncanny sort of ancient wisdom. He was an extremely conservative Arab, who addressed me as a woman, in the old way— from the side of his mouth, with his eyes lifted away from my face.
Mostly he spoke about Libya and Iraq. With striking precision, he described how “the United Nations would impose sanctions on Libya for the bombing of an airplane that would go down on the roofs of Scotland.” Those were his exact words. When he raised his hands forward, I could see red clay roofs through the ripped fuselage of an airplane. There was no mistaking it as the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
He also harshly criticized what he called ‘the War of the Ti
gris and Euphrates—’ For these purposes, I have updated my vocabulary to call this the “Iraq War.”
Extraordinary as it sounds, that morning the old Arab man fiercely condemned United Nations sanctions against Iraq—which he claimed would cause ‘horrific suffering and deaths for the people of the Tigris and Euphrates after the War ends and’— quote “before it continues.” Without question, he saw the possibility of a second phase of the war and vigorously wished to stop it. We know that, of course, as the Iraq War. He described the situation inside Iraq in tremendous detail, as if he was standing on a street corner in Baghdad, watching the violence unfold.
Most interesting to my Arab and Muslim friends, in advance of the War, the old man declared what’s called “a fatwa,” that all true Muslims would be required to help Iraq. He insisted that “true Muslims would be required to oppose the sanctions and the War.”
As for the War itself, he declared: “We must all do everything in our power to stop the fighting.” Muslim peoples “would be required to compensate the Iraqi people for their suffering and help them rebuild the country.” That’s what he demanded, in his own words. His warning was redlined: All violence against the Iraqi people was strictly prohibited under Islamic law—and he declared that Arabs particularly would suffer punishment if they hurt the Iraqis. No sanctions. No suicide bombings. No. Occupation.
Interestingly, he stressed his authority under the Shariah to justify his fatwa. Perhaps more controversially, Arab behavior towards the Iraqi people mattered more to him than the Infidels.
Now, it’s important to understand that the old Arab man was speaking on April 15, 1986—the morning after the bombing of Tripoli.
Pan Am 103 got bombed and crashed over the roofs of Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988— two and a half years after our conversation. The United Nations imposed sanctions on Libya in 1992. That’s six years later.
The United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq in August, 1990—four and a half years after the Old Man’s fatwa. The United States launched the first Gulf War against Iraq in January, 1991 and the second War in March, 2003.
Nevertheless, the old Arab man described all of those world events in explicit detail on the morning after the bombing of Tripoli, as if all of it was happening in the current day. He foretold it all, years in advance. It’s controversial, but no hoax. I refuse to recant any part of this conversation.
One more observation struck me personally as uncanny. Repeatedly the old Arab man told me, “The authorities of the Court are going to ask you questions about me.” That’s how he described it—‘authorities of the Court.’ And he urged me not to be afraid of answering those questions. He was so adamant about the “authorities” wanting to interview me, that while we sat on the park bench in Holland Park I began to look for police. I wanted to get that interview over with! And he just smiled, and said, “No, no. That’s later on. You will testify in a courtroom.”
What he described would indeed occur— 20 years later.
The old Arab man was so emphatic that I would be interrogated by ‘authorities of the court” that during the Lockerbie Trial in the summer of 2000, I insisted to Libyan diplomats in New York and my American Intelligence handlers that they must allow me to testify at Camp Zeist, because the old man had foretold it. One Libyan diplomat asked if I thought perhaps there would be a second trial.
Our conversation over that single hour affected the most important decisions of my life. More than 24 years later, the old man’s observations continue to have great validity to my experiences—and to events in the Middle East.
All of these factors influenced who I am, and how I came to work as an Asset, despite my frequent criticism of U.S. foreign policy.
From its first stage in 1990, I recognized the Iraq War would define our global age.
As the old Arab man predicted on the morning after the bombing of Tripoli, the brutality of U.N. sanctions on Iraq grieved me profoundly. Sanctions closed down the entire Iraqi economy. Iraqi families could not buy food or medicine, school books or basic household commodities. Children starved and died. Literacy was wiped out in a single generation. The future of the country was ravaged in all parts. It was deliberate cruelty and a mockery of the humanitarian principles embodied by the United Nations.
As the cruelty of U.N. sanctions took its toll, I began to search for more effective ways of participating to end the conflict. My education encouraged me to believe that I should participate in tackling social problems. Perhaps the natural hubris of youth protected me, since I was unaware that most efforts like mine end in failure and disillusionment.
Primarily I wanted to help Iraqi women. I wanted to help Iraqi mothers feed their children. I wanted to help teachers so children could thrive in the classroom. I wanted to help doctors get medicine for the sick. I looked to the history of the Silk Road through Persia hundreds of years ago, and recognized that trading goods and culture would give momentum to social and political reforms.
Like any other activist, I recognized how small I am. But I also recognized that hard work and dedication would compensate for small size and lack of financial resources.
All of these factors were known to the U.S. Government, as a result of intensive scrutiny during the 1993 World Trade Center investigation. U.S. Intelligence identified me as holding strong anti-war and anti-sanctions beliefs. I was recognized to have a personal interest in spiritual metaphysics and psychic phenomenon. They knew all about the Old Arab man from London. Above all, I appeared to have an uncanny capacity for recognizing terrorist scenarios, and correctly configuring all the random parts to anticipate events and trends.
Everything was on the table—every part of who I am, all my strengths and foibles. I had been fully vetted in every conceivable way.
None of that changes the remarkable choice of tapping a life-long peace activist to serve as a U.S. Intelligence Asset, dealing with Iraq and Libya on counter-terrorism at the United Nations.
Yet that’s exactly what happened to me.
In late August, 1993 I received an unexpected phone call from Pat Wait, Chief of Staff to Congresswoman Helen Bentley, (GOP- Maryland). Briefly, Mrs. Wait was acquainted with my father, John Lindauer, who lost a race for Governor of Alaska on the Republican ticket. She called to express sympathy for the death of my mother. Mrs. Wait lived next door to Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. That would be the same Senator Thurmond who famously told my former boss, Senator Carol Moseley-Braun (the 8th African American elected to the Senate) he would sing “Dixie” until she cried. I suspect that communicates the depth of Mrs. Wait’s own conservative philosophy.
Privately, for months after the 1993 World Trade Center attack, I had wept over the phone to friends about how desperately I missed my mother. I could not confide to my friends that I warned about the first attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. I might have exposed them to danger. So instead I blamed my grief on my mother’s death, which they could understand. For awhile I cried a lot. I was tremendously sad. Once we got to know each other, Pat Wait confided that the spooks had known this, and deliberately appealed to my sense of loss of my mother to establish contact with me.
We met for lunch at a diner in Alexandria. The two of us could not have been more different. We were fierce opposites on all matters of importance to my life. We’d been sitting together no more than five minutes when Pat declared that she’d campaigned against the Equal Rights Amendment, and took great delight in seeing it defeated. Well, I’m a life-long feminist. And my mother, whose life we were presumably honoring, had lobbied hard for passage of the E.R.A. It struck me that Pat was not remotely repentant for the loss to American women.
About that time, she glanced up from the menu to announce casually that a close friend of hers, Paul Hoven, would be joining us for lunch.
I looked up just as a big mountain of man climbed out of a white pick up truck. Pat peeked above the menu and declared, “Paul works for the Defense Intelligence Agency.”
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br /> Then she popped her head down, silently giggling over my obviously terrified reaction.
It could only be described as an ambush. All I could think was what would happen if this Pat Wait and Paul Hoven discovered my secret—that I’d warned about the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center a few months earlier. What would happen to me then?
I felt like I’d wandered into a lion’s den, and these were real lions. I was a goat. I was going to get eaten.
Much later, Paul and Pat delighted in assuring me they had both known my secret before we ever met at the diner. Given our extreme political differences, they swore they would never have made time for me otherwise. But apparently it had been decided that somebody really ought to watch over me in Washington. Somebody needed to keep me out of trouble. That task had been assigned to two hard-right Republicans who would not tolerate any liberal shenanigans.
But I did not understand that yet. I still believed in “coincidences.”
I resolved to shake them off. They hated my politics, right? So it should have been simple never to cross paths again. Well, they had other ideas. They refused to be shaken off. And I quickly discovered that these two—Pat Wait and Paul Hoven—were real players. For all his blood red conservatism, Hoven had accomplished some truly remarkable things. And Pat Wait was a formidable political historian in her own right. For all the differences in our outlooks, I developed tremendous respect for her analysis, though I always opposed her extreme conservative philosophy.
Hoven was a hero by anybody’s standards.65 In Vietnam, he saw active combat from 1968 to 1970, as a 23 year old helicopter pilot who flew medical evacuations into hostile enemy zones. In Vietnam, his first combat mission was the assault on the Y Bridge in Saigon. But mostly, as a chopper pilot, he would haul out American soldiers trapped under enemy fire. He would fly straight into live mortar fire to save young soldiers desperate to get out of a jungle fight, and frequently injured or dying. He’d land his chopper in the thick of battle. Sometimes soldiers died in his arms, but he never left a man behind. Paul is fierce that way. He got shot down at least twice over hostile territory. In all, he flew 1392 hours.
EXTREME PREJUDICE: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq Page 7
