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

by Susan Lindauer

  Thank God I did! Those observation notes proved most precious indeed.

  Dr. Taddesseh and I could not know that in the future, those session reports would provide critical documentation that would save me from the most horrific abuse ever attempted against a U.S. Asset since the Cold War. It would be my only protection from the vicious brutality conceived by the Justice Department. But it would be enough.

  For that, I thank Dr. Taddesseh forever. He had ethics and integrity in a court psychology business short on both. He never tried to hold onto my case for profit, and he faithfully documented my mental stability, so the Court order could be lifted. It’s not his fault that Pre-Trial Services in Greenbelt and New York was so corrupt in desiring to protect Republicans in Congress that they abused the psych order, which should have existed only for my benefit, not for any politicians’. There was no justification for forcing me to attend these meetings. But it was Dr. Taddesseh who ended them— over heavy resistance from Pre-Trial Services, which he called “unprofessional and unethical.”

  At the time, however, I could not see past my fury at the court’s intrusion into my private life. I considered it a Soviet-style abuse of psychiatry, like what Moscow inflicted on intellectuals and dissidents under the Communists. It was Stalinist, for sure. I regarded forced psych meetings as slanderous to my reputation, for the purpose of diminishing my credibility before trial. I resigned myself to suffer through it. In fact, I had no choice.

  But I resolved that when the Justice Department was forced to play its hand, all of those puffed up, empty accusations would crash back down on them. The worst they behaved, the worse it would fall for them.

  Never did I contemplate that the Justice Department had discovered a powerful weapon to stop me from going to Trial.

  I understood my rights under the Constitution.

  I did not understand my lack of rights under the Patriot Act.

  And I had no idea that in New York, my public attorney, Sam Talkin, had just been invited to a classified debriefing at the Justice Department to discuss my case.

  I was about to get blind-sided in the most horrifying and unimaginable way possible in a modern court of law.

  This was “extreme prejudice,” after all.

  CHAPTER 19:

  SECRET DEBRIEFINGS AND

  THE “NEW PSYCHIATRY”

  (A LITTLE INTELLIGENCE WAR)

  “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time

  with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

  –Thomas Jefferson

  Or as Cardinal Richelieu put it more bluntly: “Treason is a matter of dates.”

  I was gunning for trial. Unbeknownst to me, my public attorney, Sanford Talkin of Manhattan, had been invited to a “classified debriefing” to discuss my case.

  Somewhere in the bowels of the Justice Department, that “secret debriefing” occurred on February 10, 2005.357 There’s no record of who attended, or what intelligence agencies were represented. I was completely in the dark that it occurred, though that meeting would have profound and grave consequences for my legal rights and freedom. Only four years later, when Talkin finally turned over his copies of my legal discovery to the private attorney who replaced him, the esteemed and honorable Brian Shaughnessy, did we learn about it. In typical style, Talkin forwarded the legal discovery one week after the case got dismissed358— and 16 months after Shaughnessy officially took over. That speaks volumes in itself. It was grossly unethical, but par for the course. Talkin refused to cooperate on any matter of my defense.

  Amidst thousands of pages of legal documents and wire taps, Shaughnessy and I discovered a “Non-Disclosure Agreement for a Classified Debriefing,” signed by Talkin.359 The agreement acknowledged that information contained in the briefing justified a security clearance. It expressly prohibited Talkin from disclosing whatever transpired during the debriefing to anyone, including me, or any subsequent attorney, without written consent from the Justice Department.

  Welcome to the New America.

  I’d just been stung by the Patriot Act, with its rules of “secret evidence,” and its extraordinary authority to force attorneys to withhold vital communications and “classified evidence” from defendants or other attorneys involved in the case.

  The non- disclosure agreement for the secret debriefing was handled by the Department of Justice, Compliance Review and Litigation Security Group, Security and Emergency Planning Staff.

  The two page document reads in part:

  “I hereby accept the obligations contained in this Agreement in consideration of my being granted access to classified information…. marked or unmarked….including oral communications.”

  “I hereby acknowledge that I have received a security indoctrination concerning the nature and protection of classified information, including the procedures to be followed in ascertaining whether other persons to whom I contemplate disclosing this information have been approved for access to it.”

  “I will never divulge classified information to anyone unless… (b) I have prior written notice of authorization from the United States Government Department or agency responsible for the classification of the information.”

  It was signed by Sam Talkin on February 10, 2005. (See Appendix.)

  The pages are in black and white. So the fact that a “classified debriefing” occurred in Washington or New York cannot be disputed. Since I was never told about the meeting, though I had an urgent right to know, it appears the fact of the debriefing itself was regarded as “classified,” too.

  Predictably, the secret meeting had nefarious ambitions. Up to that point, Talkin had promised to file a “government defense,” arguing I had authorization to deal with Iraq because of my Asset status. As of early February, Talkin also promised to travel to Scotland for a face interview with Scottish solicitor, Edward MacKechnie from the Lockerbie Trial, who could verify the CIA credentials of Dr. Fuisz. In Scotland, Talkin also could read Dr. Fuisz’s deposition for the Lockerbie case, which is sealed in the United States.

  Without warning, that “secret debriefing” on February 10, 2005 coincided with a remarkable sea-change in Talkin’s defense strategy.

  Abruptly and without my knowledge, external forces determined that I was not going to use a “government defense,” after all.

  In fact, I was not going to have a trial.

  In flagrant contradiction of the most fundamental protections guaranteed by the Constitution, which I cherish, my right to a trial would be denied over my most bitter objections.

  At the start, I had no idea it was happening. My own attorney kept me in total ignorance of this extraordinary development in my case.

  After replacing Talkin, Shaughneessy and I still had no idea what he’d done. Talkin never told us how he came to throw my case— though his actions convinced us he had. We could see the proof. And we felt the sting of the consequences. It was damn foolish. When Talkin reconstructed my defense to please the Justice Department, he broke the cardinal rule of warfare: Never let your enemy choose the battleground. You do so at your own peril.

  Voila! My winning Defense strategy was gone.

  Shaughnessy and I are not helpless by our natures. As defendant, I had copies of the original papers from the FBI after of my arrest. That totaled 28,000 phone taps, 8,000 emails, hundreds of captured faxes, and every computer document that I ever created. However, through subpoenas, we’d picked up crucial supporting evidence, including bank records of Dr. Fuisz’s payments to me360 in May and October 2001, which demonstrated the strength of our relationship during the critical months of my indictment.

  Likewise, Talkin acquired supremely valuable documents from Scottish Solcitors in the Lockerbie Trial, relating to Dr. Fuisz’s CIA credentials and his central role in the 1992 Congressional investigation of a U.S. corporation that supplied SCUD mobile missile launchers to Baghdad before the first Gulf War.361

  Talkin withheld all of that documentation, until after the case go
t dismissed.

  The Patriot Act injected an extra burden to this dynamic. Under the rules of “secret evidence,” Talkin was barred from informing me whatever transpired in his conversation with the Justice Department, resulting in their collusion.

  I’m sure Talkin did not relish my reaction if he had.

  I would have blown a gasket. I was fully conscious of my rights, which I refused to relinquish. Relentlessly, I demanded my right to face my accusers at Trial, and challenge the evidence in open court. Trials are never pleasant. However my position was simple, but logical. The Justice Department has no business filing criminal charges against any American citizen, if they’re not prepared to back it up in a court of law. Political prosecutions to attack opponents of government policy should be exposed and fiercely condemned, for the sake of other activists. Political prosecutions must never be tolerated in the United States of America.

  Indicting a U.S. Asset for allegedly eating a cheeseburger with a diplomatic source, during a terrorism investigation, smacks of foolishness to begin with. Indicting an American citizen for supporting democratic reforms and human rights in Iraq screams of hypocrisy. The charges against me should have been dismissed immediately, with an apology. However once the Justice Department made those accusations, as the defendant, I had a Constitutional right to prove my actions did not rise to the level of criminal activity. I’m not even the woman who ate the cheeseburgers. As for my anti-war activism, that’s free political speech. That’s something I will fight for.

  Unhappily for the White House, a defendant’s right to plead “not guilty” is sacrosanct anywhere in the world. The right to a trial has been recognized by tyrant monarchs since the feudal age. A defendant could get a trial in China, North Korea or Iran. A trial would never be denied because of a “secret debriefing.” (Well, maybe in Mynamar!)

  Yet that’s exactly what happened to me.

  A Soviet Brand of Psychiatry

  Once the deal was cut, the Justice Department required a vehicle, or pathway, for implementing what was now a “secret decision” to deprive my rights to a trial.

  About two weeks prior to the classified debriefing, on January 18, 2005 Talkin asked me to attend a psychiatric evaluation by Dr. Sanford Drob, former Director of Psychological Assessment at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.362

  In April, 2005, Dr. Drob joined the faculty of Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California, where he teaches how to perform psychiatric evaluations for the Courts. At Bellevue Hospital in New York, he was responsible for establishing criteria for psych assessments, and training staff how to conduct evaluations.363

  My evaluation by Dr. Drob was presented as routine and benign, a method of exploring possible strategies to help our case. At this point, Talkin and Dr. Drob did not advise me that they intended to challenge my competence to stand trial. I would have been appalled if they had. It’s legally absurd, given my background. Instead the interview was portrayed as a non-specific assessment to determine what, if any, psychology angle could be used in my defense. I thought about my chronic fatigue and anxiety after the 9/11 attack. At least that would be honest. Whether it mattered to these court proceedings, I could not say.

  The interview with Dr. Drob took place in New York on January 18, and lasted approximately 2 ½ hours before I drove home to Maryland.

  To put that in context, psych evaluations typically require 8 to 10 hours of interview time. Our meeting time was far below acceptable standards, except in hospital triage, confronting an individual in crisis, which obviously I was not.

  There was a follow up meeting for a Rorschach Ink Blot Test, a couple of weeks later.364 Dr. Drob arrived late, and that second interview lasted no more than 35 minutes, including greetings and good byes.

  There was no other psychological testing, including no MMPI. That’s a personality test from the 1970s, which consists of 500 multiple choice questions, with yes or no answers. It poses such incisive queries as, are you afraid of mice? Are you afraid of thunder or lightning? Did you play with dolls as a child? Do you like to climb trees? Do you like to talk to people? Do you like to read books? It’s loaded with 500 questions that are all equally inane.

  In the religion of psychiatry, the MMPI is considered “the Bible” for evaluations. That’s important, because I never took it until after psychiatrists for the Defense and Prosecution both issued their findings.

  No, I drove 214 miles from Maryland to Manhattan, and home again, to take a Rorschach Ink Blot Test for 35 minutes. Gracious!

  By now I could see that Dr. Drob lacked any understanding of the stress of intelligence operations, which would be necessary to explain my anxiety and performance pressures after 9/11. To show I grieved for it, I would first have to prove it occurred. So this evaluation was premature.

  Ironically, any sign of post traumatic stress (PTSD) had vanished from my life by this time. Therefore, PTSD never registered as a “diagnosis,” though I continued to be highly susceptible to it. Fresh traumas or anxiety would provoke it later on, like flare ups. However at this stage, it was non-observable. Interestingly then, the one condition that might have been legitimate never got flagged.

  And so, after the Rorschach test, I pointedly informed Talkin and Dr. Drob that I had no intention of using psychiatry in my case. I wanted to stick with a straight “government defense,” proving I worked as a U.S. Asset. I was polite but frank. I had no interest in the evaluation, and honestly, I find psychology itself to be pretty worthless.

  Most critically, in advance of our meetings, I signed a waiver for Dr. Taddesseh to submit the 12 months of observation notes to Dr. Drob and my attorney.365 Those papers documented that on a constant basis, I suffered “no delusions,” “no mood disturbances,” “no psychosis,” “no emotional or mood instability.” Most damning of all, several weeks after Dr. Drob submitted his evaluation, Dr. Taddesseh declared that I “required no further or additional psychiatric intervention.” (See Appendix).

  If the session notes had revealed any sort of emotional disturbances or “mental instability,” Dr. Drob would have been entitled to cite it. Instead, he was fully apprised that a year’s worth of weekly psych observations emphasized the absence of “mental health symptoms” of any kind.

  What’s more, Dr. Drob was aware that Dr. Taddesseh and I were taking action to end the psych meetings, which I considered a huge waste of time and taxpayer dollars.366 From Dr. Taddesseh’s perspective, the psych order existed only to protect the Court, if I got overwhelmed by the indictment and tried to harm myself— something I showed no inclination to do. Both of us agreed there was no point in prolonging the agony of boredom for either one of us.

  It’s probably of great importance that I complained to Dr. Drob that Pre-Trial Services refused to give me copies of those session notes. Very likely he believed I would never lay eyes on them. Drob had no idea that I had resorted to a sneaky end run to overcome Pre-Trial Service’s objections. I arranged for the psych records to be sent to a fellow anti-war activist in Washington, whom I pretended was a private psychologist, needing to understand my “mental health history,” for possible future meetings.

  Through this ruse, I got hold of Dr. Taddesseh’s notes. I felt greatly protected when I saw them. We had a year’s worth of documentation of my sterling mental health. It would be fraud and malpractice to pretend anything else. Wouldn’t you say?

  Finally, Dr. Drob could see for himself that no “symptoms” manifested in our conversation. Hence, the 2 ½ hour meeting that ordinarily would last 8 to 10 hours.

  Our interview on January 18 was blasé at best. There were no emotional issues to chat about. Dr. Drob scrounged for conversation, and I had no inclination to provide it. Psychology flat out bores me. I consider such whining and malingering to have no place in the courts, except under the most striking circumstances. A defendant had better suffer serious schizophrenia to earn my sympathy. A battered wife or child who strikes back against an abuser would merit my compa
ssion. Otherwise I’d vote to convict. Low IQ doesn’t cut it for me. I don’t want to hear that somebody suffers bi-polar disorder, and therefore won’t accept responsibility for embezzling money, bank robbery, identity theft, or what not. Psychology provides no excuse for criminal behavior, in my opinion.

  I think Judges are terribly victimized by the confusion created by psychiatry in the courtroom, for the sake of its own self-importance and grandiosity. Psychiatrists falsify and embellish their testimony. Then they spout nonsense of how their interpretations are “scientific” and “medical,” and must not be questioned. They desperately fear confrontations with participatory witnesses, who have engaged in events and daily life, because it exposes flaws in a psychiatrist’s thinking.

  “Reality contact” is not helpful for psychiatry.

  Psychiatry’s not helpful to defendants, either. It’s much better to take responsibility for good and bad decisions in our lives. Then each of us has the capacity to make new choices, and develop new habits. Ironically, psychiatry robs us of empowerment. Calling bad decision making a “disease” stops people from making new choices and decisions to repair their lives. They’re designated as throw-aways. Change is a hopeful thing. Rejecting victimization is the first step to self-improvement.

  I did not sugar coat my opinions for Dr. Drob. I spoke candidly against using psychiatry in my Defense. I told him I objected to distracting my attorney from vital work to prepare for trial. Drob was fully conscious of my antipathy towards psychology, and my strong desire to prove my innocence, when he left Talkin’s office.

  A perceptive psychiatrist would have anticipated that such deeply held beliefs would stay constant and unchanging. I’m a strong personality. I’m not a Defendant who appreciates efforts to manipulate a Judge. That offends me enormously.