I've listened to one of the interviews on the
intelhub website and based on that interview and admitting that I haven't actually read her
book, I have to say I am beginning to have doubts about her. I don't think that she is a malicious figure but I don't believe that she fully
understands her own story.
It is interesting to here her tell it though. If she is a typical "asset" of an intelligence service, then it is obvious that the sort of people who
devise intelligence gambits operate on an intellectual level well above hers. She's a specialist with an exaggerated estimation of her own importance
in the larger scheme of things and would make a perfect dupe or tool. Her explanation of the meaning and importance of what she was doing is very
naive.
I would like to read her book because she is spilling the beans, although it is clear that she doesn't know if they are lima or fava. That doesn't
really matter though. Other people can figure that out.
At one point she says that one of her "handlers" tells her to give a message to the Iraqis that they should investigate a possible hijacking
scenario involving middle eastern terrorists and relay information about this to the Americans, and to make it clear to the Iraqis that if that attack
goes ahead, the US intends to go to war with Iraq.
Her story of this message is just classic. Her handler gives her the message in the most stark, uncompromising terms and wants the message delivered
in those terms. Lindauer,
the asset starts thinking for herself and decides to be polite when she gives the message.
Of course she's only an asset, not a diplomat. She wouldn't have received that wonderful bit of hazing they give you on the first day of class in my
fantasy diplomat school. "Write
'I will follow orders to the letter' one thousand times on the blackboard."
Consequently communication has not occurred.
At their next meeting she tells her handler what she has done and he goes ballistic, . . . filthy, profanely, ballistic.
In her online radio interview, Lindauer starts talking about that message as some kind of attempt to establish an overt motive for the war against
Iraq. That line of course, of Iraqi connections to terrorists, was never bought seriously by anyone and the Bush administration moved on to WMDs as
their justification for war.
It seems much more likely that this message was an attempt to sabotage the 9/11 attack.
I haven't read her book but as I said, I don't think she understands her own story. I think that her handler's message to the Iraqis and the manner
in which he directed it to be given indicates that he was trying to get them to realize that Lindauer was conveying a message within a message, i.e.,
A terrorist attack against us is immanent. We can't stop it on our side. Our hands are tied. Stop it if you can.
I'm not sure but this handler may have been the same one who told her that there was surveillance on vans seen doing business at the WTC between 3
and 5 in the morning for a couple of weeks prior to 9/11.
I think Lindauer is very lucky to be alive. Her connections, related to Brent Scowcroft, if I am not mistaken, probably saved her.
