But that day I was blinded by the light.
I confess there’s something about “extreme prejudice” that doesn’t sink in until you face the brutality of it full force. “Extreme prejudice” shoots for absolute physical destruction and spiritual annihilation of the Intelligence Asset—the death of body, mind and soul.
Trying to chemically lobotomize an Asset certainly qualifies as “extreme termination.”
When they come at you like this, they pull every dirty trick in the book. You have to take every dirty punch. And you have to fight. And fight. And fight.
Because if you stop for anything— to cry or complain that it’s not fair— they will take you out. That’s the whole point.
And they are bigger, better financed, more powerful and absolutely fucking corrupt. More than anything, they are unashamedly corrupt.
It’s a dirty fight until you’re down.
But you have advantages, too. You are small. You can pivot in your strategy. And the old intelligence rule still holds: Everything that comes at you is either a weapon or a tool.
To fight back, you have to keep hold of your wits, and you have to build a counter-strategy and take them on proactively. You cannot afford to be reactive or passive.
One thing more, not everybody opposes you. In an intelligence war, there are always factions. In “extreme prejudice,” one faction holds superior force— for the moment—like the pro-War camp in the Republican Party, which supported the selfish and malicious Iraqi Exiles on Capitol Hill. And they take no prisoners.
However, they are most likely to shoot the hostage in “extreme prejudice” when they are going down or about to fall. That’s when they fight dirtiest. That’s when they’re most sensitive about their vulnerabilities. They’re still at peak. So they can attract weak allies, like corrupt prison psychiatrists willing to prostitute their credentials for a few bucks, and get their hands dirty.
For a moment those psychiatrists got to play in a real intelligence game. But that’s not their world. They are pawns. They don’t recognize how the pendulum swings back the other way— the sword of Damocles, as I call it. When it comes back, they’re out in the open, and the forces that gave the kill order have left them high and dry.
Other factions hone in on that. So you’re out there, fighting alone, and somebody behind the scenes recognizes the tides are turning, and they throw you a wrench, so that you can wage a stronger battle.
You keep fighting alone. But now you’re fighting with a wrench. Even so, you can’t flinch. You have no choice but to take every dirty blow.
Once extreme prejudice came into play, I was fighting for my life and to protect myself from a chemical lobotomy, which this cocktail of super potent psychotropic drugs (Haldol, Ativan and Prozac) definitely intended to inflict. Secondarily, I was fighting for my freedom, to get out of prison. Protecting myself from drugs was my greatest priority, however, without question.
Calling me “incompetent,” ironically, meant nothing to me. Sticks and stones, baby. Smear tactics don’t work on me. Notoriety doesn’t frighten me, or I could never have dealt with Libya and Iraq— or the CIA— in the first place. No insult by a psychology freak ever mattered to me. Reputations are for sissies in games like this.
What terrified me was the threat of forcible drugging. I abhor drugs. I consider that my brain and my consciousness are precious gifts, and I would not destroy or alter my thinking and the magnificent working of my mind or soul for anything in the world.
That was unacceptable to me.
I would come out of this fight standing or dead. There was no middle ground.
That first morning, I made a critical decision. I would not allow them to kill me. And I would not accommodate them on any level in this terrible game. As the fight continued, my strength would ebb and flow, but my knowledge and confidence of who I am would grow stronger, because to wage this battle, I had to know who I was. I had to believe in who I was. And from that moment, the illusion of their power to decide who I was, was lost. They couldn’t take away my identity, because so long as I stayed alive, I was my identity.
Deep in my gut I understood that if I could survive this brutality, once the pendulum swung back, I would be resurrected. The truth that I carry would stay constant and unyielding, no matter who controlled the White House. This truth mattered—or Republican leaders would never have fought so violently to destroy it.
Many times at Carswell I murmured a prayer by the great Rev. Martin Luther King. “The arc of the universe bends towards justice.” Over and over again.
A chemical lobotomy, however, would be living death for me. It was too grotesque to contemplate.
And so, while I waited, tense and frightened, for Carswell’s internal decision on “involuntary drugging,” as they were now calling it, I could not help but consider the powerful forces arrayed against me. My adversaries were powerful, indeed.
My own cousin, Andy Card served as Chief of Staff to President Bush all the time I was locked up at Carswell. I often thought of Secretary Colin Powell, stumping on CNN to wash the blood and dirt off his reputation.
The only thing more dangerous than “delusional psychiatry” turned out to be “delusional” White House officials and Congressional leaders so desperate to hold onto power that they denied responsibility for their own hellacious stupidity. They lacked the courage and integrity to take responsibility for their own decisions. They had to destroy me to obliterate evidence of their weakness.
Shortly after my release, John McLaughlin, a powerhouse Washington journalist and host of the McLaughlin Group, lamented how the White House and Congress created “a virtual reality about Iraq,” and fought desperately to attack anybody who threatened to expose the cracks in their reality.
I was not alone in recognizing the “group psychosis” seizing the GOP war camp.
Unhappily for me, my case tossed together “delusional psychiatry” with “delusional War policy—” And the crazies in Congress held the balance of power so long as I remained in prison and under indictment.
I was Dorothy lost in a Land of Oz created by White House Wizards. The fact that I was right meant nothing. They could not allow Dorothy to pull back the curtain, and show that all of their spectacle and glitz was a bunch of circus tricks. They were so vulnerable and weak. They could not tolerate the smallest person poking at them.
Once little Dorothy entered the stage with Toto, the Wizard of Oz was finished. Republicans in Congress recognized that little Dorothy might quickly metamorphis into Susan Lindauer.
I thought about all of these factors as I waited anxiously for Carswell’s internal decision on involuntary drugging. Thinking proactively, I began mapping a strategy for appeals if they attempted to carry out this terrifying threat.
My heart was pounding when prison staff thrust the internal staff decision under the door of my prison cell.
I ran to grab it, and flipped anxiously through the pages to the end of the report, my heart thumping fast and hard.
“Involuntary medication not approved.”451
I gasped. I had won this round! I laughed deliriously and hugged my cellmates. I danced around our cell, jumping up and down like a kid. I was elated.
When I calmed down, I examined the internal report more carefully. [See Appendix] On page 4, the hand-written “Summary of Evidence” stated the following:452
“Lindauer reported she was against medication of any kind, including psychotropic medication.”
“She denied the possibility of mental illness, once again reporting in detail her belief that the government is having her detained because she represents a threat to the Administration due to her differing beliefs about their policies on Iraq. She states she has been a government agent for 9 years working in “anti terrorism.”
“Lindauer denied any wish to hurt her or others, and denied any history of aggressive behavior.”
“The document is signed by William M. Pederson, MD and Collin Vas, MD.”
<
br /> There was no ambiguity in that hand-written memo.
The summary provided damnable and irrefutable evidence in itself of the Bureau of Prison’s logic and rationale for “treatment.” Harsh psychotropic drugs had one single purpose— to “cure” my beliefs that I worked as a U.S. Intelligence Asset.
No other evidence from Carswell was offered to justify drug treatment. Staff described no depression, no weeping or hysteria, no behavioral problems dealing with guards or other inmates. There was no mention of hallucinations or hearing voices, or suggestions that I suffered disjointed thoughts, and showed poor cognition skills.
No, the rationale for psychotropic drugs was strictly to “correct” my claims of working as a “government agent for 9 years in anti- terrorism.” Carswell suggested drugs would be necessary to “cure” my “detailed belief” that the government was prosecuting me for dissenting from Republican policy on Iraq.
There was just that small pesky problem. My story happened to be true. And they all knew it.
Even the corporate media had acknowledged from its coma that the White House had a fondness for punishing dissension to protect its War policy. And now Carswell had made a play straight out of Soviet psychiatry in the Cold War.
My strong offensive at the internal “medication hearing” stopped them. When I saw that document however, and I saw the desperation and illogic behind it, I knew that prison staff would not stop trying. They hadn’t figured out how to do it yet. But it seemed doubtful that they could resist looking for another way.
Under a second page of the report, there were boxes:
Had the inmate requested witnesses? Dr. Pederson marked “No.”453, 454
Liar!
Under the second box marked “Evidence Presented,” there was a category for “Statement of witnesses.” He checked off “Not applicable.”455
Bastard liar!
That told me a lot. Carswell would not acknowledge my witnesses, even if falsifying a report amounted to perjury in federal court—which would be a punishable felony.
Well, they’d been warned.
I took a deep breath. I’d won this round!
If it was only up to prison psychiatrists, the question of involuntary drugging had been decided. I had won the argument. They couldn’t pull it off.
But I was sure that if the White House or the Justice Department intervened from outside the prison, this attack would not stop.
I was willing to bet it would get really ugly.
On January 1st, I called JB Fields and told him that it looked doubtful that I would be coming home on February 3rd.
Sometimes it helps to be paranoid.
CHAPTER 24:
CORRUPTION AT
CARSWELL
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
–Edmund Burke
Something more sinister was happening at Carswell than prison rapes and withholding health care from very sick inmates— as if that wasn’t bad enough.
Much worse, the prison had a history of refusing to release women inmates after the completion of their sentences, on the most flimsy grounds.
It happened more often than anyone would like to think.
The first time I witnessed it, I could not believe it myself.
A woman prisoner from Chicago had won a tremendous victory in the United States Supreme Court. She’d filed what’s called a “pro se” appeal, meaning that she prepared a legal brief by herself without an attorney’s assistance. She challenged her conviction and sentencing alone.
That the United States Supreme Court took up her appeal at all was quite impressive in itself. No matter the merits of a case, there are umpteen thousands of appeals that never get heard, most filed by experienced attorneys, let alone those submitted “pro se” by defendants. From out of that multitude, the Supreme Court chose her case for review.
More impressively still, the Supreme Court granted her appeal, striking down all or part of her conviction, with a declarative order that she should be released from Carswell immediately.
That’s a tremendous victory for any defendant, manna from on high! It’s what we prisoners dream of, getting our day in the Supreme Court—and winning! It almost never happens. Even if a Supreme Court Justice agrees to review a petition, at best you hope that parts of it are accepted. In her situation, the Supreme Court Justice accepted her argument in total. And she wasn’t sent back for re-sentencing. The Judge expressly ordered her to be freed with time served!
I read it with my own eyes.
So what do you think happened to this woman who’d just triumphed at the Supreme Court of the United States, getting her conviction and sentencing overturned?
Given Carswell’s history of dealing with other appellate court rulings and federal judges, do you think prison staff gave a damn what a Supreme Court Justice had to say?
They didn’t care what the 2nd Circuit Appellate Court had to say about inmate rights at “medication hearings.” They didn’t care what federal judges had to say about the rights of prisoners to have sleep apnea machines, or access to heart medication for post-surgical recovery. Prisoners have died, because Carswell flouted federal court orders.
And so, horribly enough, Carswell Prison refused to let this woman go home.
She had filed her appeal “pro se,” so she had no attorney on the outside to enforce the Supreme Court order on her behalf. Instead, Carswell sent a message to all those other women inmates who might think about filing appeals, too. It wouldn’t do any good. Carswell prison staff would mete out punishments. No outside court authority, no Federal Judge was going to contradict them.
If a defendant had a court order from the United States Supreme Court itself, Carswell would not be compelled to obey it.
And so, while the Supreme Court ruled in her favor sometime in November, Carswell poohed and pouted about filing the paperwork for her release, dillydallying with the central Bureau of Prisons until mid-April.
She suffered an extra five and a half months of prison detention.
With a Supreme Court decision in her hand, carried from office to office, never leaving her person 24 hours a day, that freed woman could not leave the prison.
One prison staffer snidely told her that “when she got to Washington, she could complain.”
Unconstitutional? Without question. On all counts, it was despicable and corrupt. That’s Carswell, in a nutshell.
Flouting a direct Supreme Court order wasn’t the only example of Carswell manipulating procedures in order to deny prisoners their freedom at the end of a sentence.
The case of Kathleen Rumpf, a Ploughshares activist and Catholic lay worker, exposes another way that Carswell routinely skirts the courts, in order to hold prisoners after their release dates. Rumpf spent 8 months at Carswell for “rewriting the welcome sign for the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, to read “School of Shame.”456 The School of Americas is also called the “School of Torture” by peace activists, because its graduates include members of the violent juntas of Latin America, famous for murdering intellectuals and political dissidents.
For messing up the sign, Rumpf and four fellow Ploughshares activists each got sentenced to one year in prison and fined $2,000.
On the day of her release, other peace activists gathered at the prison gates to celebrate. “West Wing” actor, Martin Sheen, a Ploughshares activist with 58 arrests in his own right, flew in from Los Angeles to welcome Rumpf home.457
Carswell Prison Warden, J.B. Brogan, didn’t like those rabble-rousers outside his gates. He decided that Rumpf would be ordered to sign a promissory note for the $2,000 fine—or else she would be held “indefinitely” at Carswell. As part of the promissory note, she had to agree that if she could not pay the fine, she would be subject to re-arrest and sent back to prison.458
Rumpf, who lives on Social Security disability, refused on the grounds of poverty.
Very well, Brogan refused to grant her r
elease. She would stay at Carswell until she worked out her finances.
Maureen Tolbert, Rumpf’s attorney, called it “unconstitutional,” pointing out that the obscure federal statute “basically allows prison officials to re-sentence someone who has already served his or her time.”459
Carswell is one of the very few prisons that enforce this mostly unknown twist in the legal code. When women prisoners can not pay court fines, Carswell continues their detentions until family or friends post the money on their behalf. If they can’t pay, because they’re alone in the world, often times they don’t go home at all—though the prison sentence has been completed. If they promise in desperation to meet a payment schedule and break it, they are subject to re-arrest and indefinite detention.
No Judge oversees the extended imprisonment. The Warden makes the decision without Court consultation. There’s no hearing, no right to an attorney, nor any time restraint on how long the Bureau of Prisons can hold prisoners who don’t sign the agreement—even if they are desperately honest that they can’t be sure how they would honor it. Most ex-cons are incredibly poor, with limited job prospects after prison. An agreement like this poses serious burdens as they try to reintegrate with society. It could even force them to commit more crimes, so they could pay the prison bill.
As Rumpf discovered the hard way, that’s a matter of habit at Carswell. In her case, friends paid the fine on her behalf. She stayed in prison an extra two days. Others are not so lucky, and their release gets delayed much longer, sometimes for months. It’s prison gossip, when it happens. And it happens more frequently than anyone wants to imagine.
The Story of Neeran “Nancy” Zaia
Politics guides so many decisions at Carswell. But the fates often have a tragic sense of humor, as well.
As it turns out, I was not the only prisoner with a case tied to Iraqi War politics who arrived from Washington on October 3rd, 2005. An Iraqi émigré named Neeran “Nancy” Zaia got shipped to Carswell for an extensive psychiatric evaluation, too.
EXTREME PREJUDICE: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq Page 45
