Anchorage Daily News

NEW YORK -- The daughter of a former Alaska gubernatorial candidate said this week she wants to prove that she was supervised by U.S. authorities at a time when she is accused of helping an Iraqi spy agency under Saddam Hussein. But first, Susan Lindauer will have to overcome findings that she is mentally unfit for trial.

Lindauer is a former congressional aide and journalist whose father, John Lindauer, is a former Alaska legislator and was a Republican candidate for governor in 1998. She said outside court that she wanted a trial "to clear my name."

Susan Lindauer is charged with conspiring to act as a spy for the Iraqi Intelligence Service and engaging in banned financial transactions. She spoke after the start of a hearing on whether she can stand trial despite mental health professionals' findings that she suffers from delusions of grandiosity and paranoia.

"The accusations are bogus," said Lindauer, 44, who was arrested in 2004. "They fall apart pretty fast."

Lindauer could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted. She asked U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska in August 2007 to let her challenge the psychologists' findings so she could go to trial to "prove that my story is entirely accurate."

She said Tuesday that anything she did regarding Iraq was supervised by U.S. authorities.

"I am horrified I've been left out to dry, scapegoated, while people claim I didn't do things my papers show I did," she said. "I had somebody inside Iraq who was going to help America identify terrorists within Iraq."

Two of Lindauer's acquaintances testified at Tuesday's hearing, which is set to continue in several weeks. The witnesses included Park Godfrey, 45, a computer science and engineering professor from Toronto. He said he had known Lindauer since the fall of 1990.

"She was quite an anti-war activist," he said.

Godfrey said Lindauer warned him before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks not to settle in Manhattan because she suspected there would a "very, very big attack" there.

Godfrey said his background in logic and science made him skeptical of Lindauer's beliefs in psychic abilities and premonitions.

Assistant U.S. attorney Edward O'Callaghan asked Godfrey whether he was aware that Lindauer had taken credit for predicting nearly a dozen terrorist attacks.

He said he had not, but he noted that Lindauer had told him since the mid-1990s that she thought the United States was likely to get into a protracted war in the Middle East, and the conflict was likely to have bad consequences.

"She's very ecstatic on one end and very depressed when things don't go well," Godfrey said.

Sometimes, as Godfrey and another witness spoke, Lindauer shook her head or nodded forcefully before the witness answered.

Outside court, Lindauer's lawyer, Brian Shaughnessy, said it was inappropriate for him to comment. He seemed frustrated as his client spoke at length with reporters.

She said all her dealings with Iraqis were overseen by individuals tied to U.S. intelligence.

"Everything I did was supervised by the Americans," she said.

She said she and others warned of a Sept. 11-type attack after hearing information during litigation over the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 that led them to think terrorists still targeted Manhattan after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing left the twin towers standing.

Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

Lindauer, of Takoma Park, Md., is a distant relative of President Bush's former chief of staff, Andrew Card. She also has worked in the press offices of four Democratic members of Congress and as a journalist for two magazines, two newspapers and a television news company.

She graduated from East High School in Anchorage in 1981.

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