This was about America, and the bad things happening to ordinary people under the Patriot Act. JB and Janet argued fiercely and passionately that the legal traditions of this country must be defended. They kicked up one helluva fight. And they refused to back down.
Blowback from the blogs fired seismic shock waves through Washington. You’d be amazed who told me they heard JB’s radio interviews after I got out.
As long as the corporate media stayed silent, Capitol Hill could pretend this judicial abuse of a U.S. Intelligence Asset was not occurring. Safe behind their ivory tower walls, the Power Elite of Washington imagined they were untouchable, their fortress impenetrable.
Only now, thanks to JB Fields and Janet Phelan, Capitol Hill confronted the emerging force of the blogs and alternative radio, at a crucial moment when the internet community was proving it’s got the muscle to shatter the media silence.
JB and all the other bloggers who picked up my story saved my life and my freedom. Without that outcry, my fate would have been very different.
That’s what separated my victory from the tragedy of so many others. Other women don’t have those resources. Sadly, their stories suffocate and die from lack of exposure, while my ordeal was redeemed by JB’s perseverance.
Finally, JB and I got a break.
On April 24, 2006, the Court made a surprise announcement.
CHAPTER 26:
THE FRIENDLY
SKIES OF CON AIR
JB and I used to joke that I was starring in my own Robert Ludlum spy thriller. Every action invoked a sinister plot twist that got more dangerous as I went along.
Like the lovely April morning I got the news that I was finally transferring out of Carswell.
With a mischievous grin, the guard on duty stuck his head in the doorway to my cell.
“Hey Lindauer, pack up! You’re outta here. You’re leaving tomorrow night.”
I think I screamed with joy, because other inmates in the hallway came running to hear my news. I started to grab the guard for a hug before I caught myself.
It was April 24, 2006. I crowed in jubilation, ecstatically thrilled. Elated with joy!
In all, I had been detained 7 ½ months for a psych evaluation that ordinarily takes six to eight weeks, and only because so many prisoners are getting processed simultaneously. Federal guidelines set a maximum of 120 days for prison evaluations.502 My detention lasted 210 days— in strict violation of federal law. Not to mention the evaluation lacked purpose. I’d proven myself over and over again. The whole thing amounted to a convoluted scheme so the Justice Department could escape a trial.
But that morning I felt overjoyed.
“I’m going home! I’m going home!” I started dancing around my cell.
“Um, Lindauer. Uh, no. I’m driving a bus-load of prisoners to the inmate transfer center in Oklahoma City tomorrow night. You’re, uh, flying to New York. On Con Air.”
“To New York? On Con-Air? There must be a mistake. I live in Maryland.”
“You’re not going home, Lindauer. They’re sending you to the Metropolitan Correctional Center for Pre-Trial detention in Manhattan.”
The wheel of “extreme prejudice” was turning alright.
They were coming in for the kill.
At that moment I wasn’t nearly paranoid enough to conceive the depth of their malevolence.
“I’m staying in prison? Seriously? I don’t understand. I’m supposed to go home after the evaluation.” (Carswell filed its report on December 22, 2005—four months earlier).
“I talked to my attorney yesterday. Why didn’t he tell me that I’m going to Court? How could my attorney not know I’m getting transferred?”
“I don’t know.” The guard shook his head. “Hey, you’re out of here, Lindauer.”
He leaned closer. “That’s a good thing, right? Your Judge has something he wants to say before he lets you go. That’s all. Be cool.” This guy was a good guard.
“Yeah, yeah. That’s got to be it. My Uncle just sent a settlement offer to the Court. My uncle had to do it, because my stupid ass attorney couldn’t figure it out.”
“That’s probably what the meeting’s for. Hey, Lindauer, it’s all good! You’re packin’ up. You’re leaving Carswell. Stay happy.”
As for divining my future in New York, my fellow prisoners jumped straight into the tea leaves. Their verdict was unanimous.
“If they’re sending you out of here, Susan, you’re not coming back. Why else would they go to the trouble? You’re done! It’s over! Your uncle’s taken care of you.”
I could not count how many of my fellow inmates wished they had an Uncle Ted Lindauer.
“You’re going home. You’ve just got a stop over in New York first.”
JB was ecstatic. He saw it as proof that the blog community had forced Carswell’s abuse and threats into the open. The game was becoming untenable to continue.
I was deliriously happy. There are few moments in life that I have experienced such joy.
My attorney was less enthusiastic.
“The Judge has called a hearing, Susan. You wanted a hearing, right? Well, you’re going to get one,” Talkin told me, glumly. “That’s why they’re sending you to M.C.C.”
I gave a deep sigh, and shook my head.
It was everything Ted and I feared when Judge Mukasey ordered me to surrender to Carswell in September. It put us back to square one. I’d suffered seven months in prison for nothing!
Ted warned that anger would be a waste of energy. I had to focus on getting home.
I growled to myself, but Ted was right. At least Judge Mukasey would learn the truth. There would be no more question marks. He could hear it for himself— just like the FBI, the U.S Attorney’s Office, the prison staff at Carswell, and Uncle Ted. We’d all be on the same page. Nobody could pretend I had invented this story.
I imagined that after the hearing, the Court would restore my bail until trial. I’d already surrendered to prison once, on the court’s whim. I was hardly a flight risk.
But what a waste of 7 months. We could have gone to trial already. I could have been acquitted without spending a single night in a prison cell.
I grit my jaw. That made me so angry.
I could see Ted’s face, and hear his words: “Stay focused. How you got here is less important than what you do next. We’ve got to get you out of the Hoosiegow, kid.” At least I had an excellent source of legal advice, even if it wasn’t my own attorney.
I turned my attention back to Sam Talkin.
“Very well. We’ll call witnesses to prove my story’s true. That’ll put an end to this psychology garbage. Judge Mukasey will hear enough to know it’s all baloney.”
Now I could see Richard Fuisz before me again, solemnly raising his finger, counting like a metronome. “Every situation, every encounter gives you a weapon or a tool. Anything that comes at you, you must use.”
Okay then. A hearing it would be. I would have been overjoyed if the Prosecutor kept his word about dropping the charges. Who could blame me? On the other hand, once witnesses verified my story, we could argue for dismissing the indictment ourselves. It would be up to the Judge. But this gave us a fresh chance to undo the damage of Dr. Drob’s report, which misrepresented the quality of my witnesses. The Justice Department had its pound of flesh. A pre-trial hearing might be the best thing for everybody. It might satisfy the Court of my innocence, and make the case go away.
Not to mention the great satisfaction I would get proving the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office had always known I was telling the truth. They’d been playing games with Judge Mukasey, gratis of the Patriot Act.
I heard another whisper from my mother, Jacqueline Shelly Lindauer. “Save your emotions for revenge.”
Alright then. A hearing it would be!
“I don’t know if we want those witnesses—” Sam Talkin began to whine.
“What are you saying? Of course we want those witnesses!”
Idiot! Sam Talkin was exasperating! As soon as I got home, I intended to fire him. In the meantime, any hearing before Judge Mukasey would be precious.
“We can talk about it when you get here,” Talkin pouted. How do you break the news to a prisoner that she’s getting fucked again? (As delicately as possible.)
“See, the hearing isn’t about your competence,” Talkin started whining. “It’s on forcible drugging.”
“WHAT THE FUCK are you saying? A hearing on forcible drugging? Are they INSANE!!???!!!”
My heart thudded to the floor at this bad news. Now I saw with clarity why Talkin had dreaded telling me before. The mere suggestion staggered with obscenity.
I mean, reality is not a disease. Psychology might be, however.
“No, Sam. No F—G—Damn Way,” I’d buffed up my prison vocabulary at the law library, too.
(JB declared that I “cursed like a pirate” when I got home.)
“The law guarantees my right to a competence hearing, and I refuse to give up that right. I’m entitled to call witnesses and show evidence to address the questions raised in these idiotic psych evaluations.503 That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“Yeah well, I told them we didn’t need to do that,” Talkin mumbled into the phone. “I didn’t know the Prosecutor was going to ask for this.” He whined, pitifully.
“You did WHAT?!”
This was “extreme prejudice” alright, to the hundredth degree. And my public attorney walked into their trap, every time. Talkin would refuse to listen to me or Ted. He would miscalculate their sincerity, and he would be wrong again and again.
Except he was playing with another person’s freedom.
I suspect Talkin was afraid the Court would hear how Uncle Ted had been forced to interview my witnesses for my Defense, and how effortlessly he succeeded in validating my story.504 His success contradicted the image of difficulty Talkin was projecting, and exposed his own mediocrity in the case.
“YOU agreed to give up MY rights? Oh no. I’m going to send Judge Mukasey a letter today. I will demand the Court uphold my rights as guaranteed by federal statute. JB will get in touch with everybody, so they know they have to come. We’ll be ready.”
“I’m not playing, Sam.” I swore adamantly. “That’s one good thing about prison. I’ve had lots of time to Read the Law.” I was ferocious.
“We’re having the God damn hearing. I don’t give a f— what you told Judge Mukasey. You are not entitled to violate my rights. I’m going to make sure that Judge Mukasey registers my demand, as the Defendant. Parke Godfrey will be in Court that day, ready to testify that I warned him about 9/11.”
“And he’s going to tell Judge Mukasey that he told the FBI all about my 9/11 warning a FULL YEAR before I got shipped to Carswell. He talked to Shadduck here, too. So the FBI, the US Attorneys Office and the Bureau of Prisons all know that it’s true, and they’ve all been playing games with Judge Mukasey.”
“There’s a name for that in prison, Sam. It’s called perjury.”
“If I were the Judge, I would be madder than hell about it.”
I always saw Judge Mukasey as the second victim of psychiatry in my case.
Again I saw the face of Richard Fuisz, stern and quiet: “Every situation gives you a weapon or a tool.”
That was the best advice I’d heard all day.
Alright then, I was getting out of Carswell. I was going to face my Judge. There’d be no distance between us. I would look him straight in the eye, and I’d bloody well lay out the whole thing.
A weapon or a tool was right.
After 7 months cut off from Court access, we’d all be in the same time zone, the same city! Glory hallelujah!
How could any defendant expect to prepare a legal strategy separated by a distance of 1,600 miles from her attorney? I was stuck in Texas, and my attorney was half way across the country in New York. It struck me as legally absurd to complain about my capacity to assist my defense, then deny me physical access to legal counsel. That’s a killer for any defendant.
OK, so a prison transfer to New York would be like paradise. I swore to God on a stack of Bibles that I would never go back to Texas again! I know lots of proud and wonderful Texans. They can visit me in Maryland.
Driving out of Carswell on the prison bus that night felt surreal. We stayed up all night, excited to leave. The bus pulled out at four in the morning, while it was still dark, for the 200 mile drive to Oklahoma City. It felt like a party, a heart-felt celebration.
Some of my fellow inmates had been trapped inside that razor wire for years. Getting on that bus, you wanted to grab that free earth and give thanks to God!
Surprisingly, the prison transit center is located at the Oklahoma City Airport— It occupies a separate compound, like an island outpost, with its own runway in sight of the main passenger terminals. That intrigued me. It appeared to house 300 women at a time, with a separate shed for male prisoners.
The detention center had the look and feel of a huge hangar for airplanes. There were no windows that I recall, just extra large holding cells big enough for 40 to 50 people, used for inmate processing. Each holding cell had two open toilets with no seat rim or toilet paper. The toilets were mostly broken and couldn’t flush. That’s prison for you. They don’t want anybody coming back.
After processing, we got escorted into a vast open room behind locked doors, with cafeteria tables and a prison laundry. Some of the women inmates folded towels and sheets to stay busy throughout the day. Tiny cells lined the edge of the walls. .
First though, we had to go through inmate screening. One by one, guards called us out of the holding cell, lined us up, and ran through our records.
When they called me, I discovered that Carswell had played dirty. Again.
Carswell had singled me out of all the transfer prisoners, with an urgent recommendation that I should be locked in the SHU, or solitary confinement during transit, citing the Patriot Act.
To their credit, Oklahoma City stopped to ask some questions. The guards said only the most violent and dangerous prisoners go to the SHU in transit. They assured me it would be terribly unpleasant for a woman. Besides that, Carswell’s request made no sense. Looking at my prison record, I had no disciplinary problems. Some of the other women had serious behavior problems at Carswell, and none of them was going to the SHU. The guards finally struck down Carswell’s recommendation.
Oh but I understood Carswell’s motivation immediately. And it had nothing to do with behavioral problems or confrontations with prison guards.
Don’t forget— Just as I contributed to the 9/11 investigation, I also contributed to the Oklahoma City bombing investigation. And I complained the Justice Department was suppressing intelligence from Iraq, proving a broader conspiracy in the Oklahoma attack. Iraq claimed to possess proof of Middle East involvement in Oklahoma, including financial records for early Al Qaeda fighters, formerly known as the “Inter-Arab Group.”
There was circumstantial evidence that Terry Nichols, the lead co-conspirator of the Oklahoma bombing, had meetings with Ramzi Yousef, ringleader of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, while both men visited the same University in the Philippines, known for Islamic radicalism. Both attacks relied on truck bombs loaded with fertilizer.
Carswell didn’t want me talking to prisoners or guards in Oklahoma City. They didn’t want those folks listening to what I had to say. Odds are those detention officers might know some of the Oklahoma families, and the word would get out.
Still, the SHU is a bad place for any prisoner. It’s for heavy duty punishment. I could only imagine what Carswell would concoct once I got to New York.
Try to imagine this brutal irony from where I was standing—in shackles and prison uniform.
I was booked for transport on Con-Air from Oklahoma City— where I contributed to their bombing investigation. My final destination was New York City, where I gave advance warning about 9/11 and the first World Trade Center at
tack in 1993. New York had been a primary beneficiary of my anti-terrorism work for almost a decade.
If that’s not ironic enough, the federal courthouse in New York sat approximately 1,000 yards from where the World Trade Center once graced the New York skyline.
Pending the outcome of the decision, I would be locked up at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) a couple of blocks from Ground Zero. I would be detained in the same prison where Ramzi Yousef and other defendants waited for trial in the 1993 terrorist conspiracy that launched my career as an Asset.
Like the cycle of a Greek tragedy, the most profound experiences of my life turned on the World Trade Center, from start to finish.
I gave my whole life to this work. It defined me. I sacrificed all of my personal life for it. For all of the excitement of it, I enjoyed no public fame. Very quietly I celebrated my triumphs with a small number of people who understood my contributions. If most of my work was anonymous however, my role as a back channel to Iraq and Libya was no less critical, for the simple fact that almost nobody engaged in direct conversations with those pariah nations in the 1990s. I quietly provided an opening for covert dialogue.
If I must say, my team did a damn fine job.
And this was how America paid me back.
I was not traveling by limousine to a red carpet reception with roses and champagne. I would receive no special plaque with the Keys to the City from the Mayors of New York and Oklahoma City.
There would be no “first class” seating with a wine bar and cocktails on a 757 jumbo jetliner. No five star hotel accommodations at the Trump Plaza in Manhattan.
I would travel in shackles and chains.
I would fly the friendly skies of “Con Air,” with hard core criminals and brokenhearted souls and stripped down creature comforts. I would be gawked at by male prisoners who hadn’t seen a woman in years. Some of the women prisoners flirted mercilessly, teasing them. Odds are they’d be remembered for years.
EXTREME PREJUDICE: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq Page 50
