Autorank, you show the ability to understand what shoddy reporting is when it suits you. You've pointed out that most of the media is reporting this as a spy case when a charge of "unregistered foreign agent" is not necessarily one of espionage -- although spies are by definition unregistered foreign agents and several actual spies have been convicted of this charge. But as the Seattle Weekly points out, it is
unconventional spycraft for the spy to write to her second cousin, Bush's chief of staff, and announce her ties to the Iraqi government and offer her help as a go-between.
Therefore you'll understand why I ask these questions of you after my reading of your Lindauer opus.
1. Why did you suppress vital information about Lindauer's January 2003 letter to Andy Card? You quote from the letter extensively in "American Cassandra" and even give a link to it. But you somehow avoid the thrust of the letter, which is why it was used in the case against her. Nowhere in any of your stories can I find mention of paragraphs from the letter like these:
Andy, I can still influence this situation.
Therefore, I need to ask you, one last time, what specific actions can be taken by Baghdad, so that President Bush can declare victory without going to War. What do you need? Cooperation on terrorism, including interviewing authority for the FBI? Does the U.S. want the Lukoil Contract? What else? I can get it. Just tell me.
If you call me at (number redacted by bolo), or send the Secret Service, I will come to you at any hour of the day or night. I will fly to Baghdad with 24 hours notice to deliver any message directly to that leadership, regarding any of the above suggestions or anything else you seek.
Do you deny the contacts she'd made with the Iraqi Intelligence Service? Do you deny that she operated as the FBI said she did with one of their agents posing as a Libyan intelligence agent? All of this was the basis for the charges, and the letter she wrote to Card certainly seems as if she is presenting herself as a agent of Baghdad.
2. Although only one source I can find mentioned Lindauer sticking out her tongue during her most recent hearing on mental fitness, both the "New York Times" and the "
New York Sun" mention a grandiose gesture where she turned to the audience and gave an enthusiastic thumbs down when the prosecutor mentioned her receiving money from the Iraqis. You did not report this, however, though you claim to have been in the room and berate the "Times" for mentioning the tongue gesture, one you admit not being a position to have seen.
Can you confirm or deny that Lindauer made this hugely inappropriate gesture at her hearing? If you can confirm this, then why did you leave it completely out of your reporting when the "Times" reported it in the same sentence as the tongue being stuck out?3. What was the reason that both prosecution and defense waived the testimony of Kleinman at the second fitness hearing? Was it not because Kleinman had already submitted a full and complete report of his findings, one that Preska could use in her deliberations? You make a lot out of Preska giving her verdict immediately after the testimony -- from a TelePrompter, you even tell us. Yet if she'd already read Kleinman's report and heard nothing in cross-examine to change her mind, why shouldn't she proceed to the end of the case? Isn't that what they were all there for, to hear her finding?
4. What is your opinion of the story she now has about Fuisz telling her before the WTC buildings collapsed concerning the Israeli couple with the camera? I'll share mine -- I think it's ludicrous. As I explained on the other thread, the story matches no video taken of the event whatsoever, certainly none that was available to be seen before the WTC towers collapsed. What reason is there to think that this is anything but the fabrication of a delusional mind?
And isn't it similar in character to another story Lindauer has repeated concerning Fuisz, one she put into a deposition, one that lays open the Lockerbie story? Fuisz certainly does seem to be a chatty fellow, doesn't he?
5. What do you make of the other stories of her strange behavior? Her stuffing toilet paper in her mouth, her displays of agitation (scribbling "furiously on a pad, shaking her head when she disagreed with a witness and passing notes to" Shaughnessy who would walk off that day when she spoke to the press against his advice, her ideation of Mukasey as a hero -- it was these kinds of incidents that led Preska (along with other expert testimony) to conclude that Lindauer was unable to even comprehend the process by which she would be tried. Lindauer even interrupted Preska during the reading of the finding, trying to offer evidence when it was not the appropriate time. This was another display of her inability to grasp the seriousness and the very process in which she was engaged.
(Sidenote: after reading that "Motion to Reconsider", I'm surprised Shannessy wasn't disbarred. Maybe I need to read more motions, but that one stunk to high heaven. Another post.)
6. In your 19 June 2008 story, "911 Prediction Revealed at Lindauer Hearing in NYC," you talk about Kelly O'Meara, a witness called by Lindauer. As you inform us, Kelly is the author of the book
Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills That Kill, a quack book attacking the psychiatry profession and one that O'Meara has no qualification for writing. Indeed, when asked for her qualifications to declare that Lindauer had no mental disorder, she said that "she could read the official diagnostic manual for mental disorders like anybody else."
Do you understand that this means O'Meara is grossly unqualified to speak authoritatively on the subject of mental disorders?7. Concerning the testimony of Parke Godfrey, do you understand that the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was not "very similar" to the attack that occurred in 2001? Perhaps you can produce specifics of his testimony here. I don't have the trial transcripts in front of me.
8. Why is her 2003 letter's assertions of Iraqi resistance and an Al-Qaeda resurgence a "prediction" and a "prophetic plea" when you also acknowledge that "other knowledgeable observers believed" this very thing? What element of her letter makes you elevate it to this level? Do you think that it was so difficult in 2003 to make those kinds of claims?
9. In "American Cassandra," (Part 1 of a two-part series that I cannot find the second part of, even in your bibliography -- perhaps you mean it to be the next piece you wrote about a year later) you make this caveat about a third of the way through the piece:
...In this article, I present her story as she told it to me. In part two of the series, I cover her confinement at FMC Carswell, examine how the initial round of her case was handled, including Judge Mukasey's dismissive remarks about the merits of the case against her. I will also present information from individuals who support her character and knowledge of Lockerbie and Iraq and offer some speculation on motives and handling of her arrest.
What follows is neither a brief in favor of her case, nor is it a fishing expedition to generate cheap shots regarding her claims. It's simply her story.
Therefore, it could be that "American Cassandra" should simply be understood as her side of it, presented uncritically (although you reserve the right to offer speculations on motives of her antagonists), something for which Lindauer could have hired a stenographer.
However the rest of your stories on this subject don't give this same caveat and appear to treat every statement of Lindauer referred to thereafter as gospel.
Will you submit a summation of what you feel are the strong points and weak points of Lindauer's side of the story, and support your arguments with your evidence and reasoning for so thinking?10. You report several times on Judge Mukasey's denial of forced medication of Lindauer. Yet you rarely, if ever, present
Mukasey's reasons for doing so.
In his 35-page order, Judge Mukasey said Ms. Lindauer suffered from "hallucinations, grandiose and persecutory delusions" and was not competent to stand trial.
He doubted the government could prove the charges against Ms. Lindauer and criticized the prosecution as excessive.
"There is no indication that Lindauer ever came close to influencing anyone or could have," he said, adding that several mental health professionals, including a psychiatrist retained by the government, had found Ms. Lindauer incompetent to stand trial.
In other words, Mukasey thought the case was as weak as Lindauer's mind. Forcing Lindauer to go through this ordeal so that the prosecution could screw up a trial on weak evidence was not in the interest of justice or humanity.
Yet you have consistently described Mukasey's ruling as you did in "Bush Political Prisoner Gets Her Day in Court":
Judge Mukasey presided over the hearing. After evaluating the evidence, he refused to order the forced administration of medication. He ordered that Lindauer be set free. The case was continued.
From your reporting, one would be hard pressed to learn that Mukasey did indeed find Lindauer unfit to stand trial to her mental disorders.
Why have you consistently downplayed this aspect of Mukasey's ruling while playing up the denial of forced medication?11. If the subject of Mukasey's ruling of Lindauer's unfitness does come up, you emphasize that evidence was withheld from Mukasey (in some cases by her own attorney!) that would have changed his verdict. You did so in the OP.
One assumes that the evidence of the Maryland psychiatrist and two Maryland PHD-level (?) therapists was presented to the court.
On what basis was this evidence denied to be admitted? Whoever didn't let it in, be it Mukasey or the prosecutor or even her own attorney, what was the specific reasons given to Lindauer for not allowing that into evidence?
Did it have anything to do with the fact that Mukasey sent her to doctors that he himself had appointed to rule on Lindauer's mental condition? Wasn't it Mukasey who sent her to Carswell?
******
Personally I think this case is indeed a shameful one, a blot on the Justice Department. But that is because I've seen enough evidence to agree with two federal judges that Lindauer is mentally unfit to stand trial and that she never could have obtained the results she claimed to be able to achieve (like "full democratic reforms - free elections w/ intl. monitors, free opposition parties, free opposition newspapers, and free student organizations at Universities" -- her handwritten addition to her last letter to Andy Card).
No, the Iraqis first went fishing with her delusions to see what they could get from her connections, and then the Justice Department blew her case out of proportion to get some nice headlines, and then the quack O'Meara grabs her to push her book. Susan Lindauer's story is again and again one of exploitation of her mental illness.
Please give me some evidence and assurances that in an effort to maintain access and push this story with your byline that you are not doing the same.
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Enough of the second grade class room antics 
