NEW YORK -- A former journalist and congressional press secretary was arrested Thursday on charges she acted as an Iraqi spy before and after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, accepting $10,000 for her work, prosecutors said Thursday.\nSusan Lindauer, 41, was arrested in her hometown of Takoma Park, Md., and was to appear in court later in the day in Baltimore, authorities in New York said.\nShe was accused of conspiring to act as a spy for the Iraqi Intelligence Service and engaging in prohibited financial transactions involving the government of Iraq under dictator Saddam Hussein.\nLindauer worked at Fortune, U.S. News & World Report and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer before beginning her career as a political publicist. She worked for then-U.S. Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., before joining the office of former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun as press secretary in 1996.\nChris Fitzgerald, a spokesman for Wyden, now a senator, said the office had heard Thursday of Lindauer's arrest and expected to issue a statement later in the day.\n"She worked for us a short period of time," he said.\nMoseley Braun's current spokesperson, Loretta Kane, said the former senator does not remember Lindauer.\nAccording to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Lindauer made multiple visits from October 1999 through March 2002 to the Iraqi Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan, N.Y.\nThere, she met with several members of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, the foreign intelligence arm of the government of Iraq that allegedly has played a role in terrorist operations, including an attempted assassination of former President George H.W. Bush, the indictment alleged.\nThe government said she accepted payments from the Iraqis for her services and expenses amounting to a total of $10,000, including $5,000 she received during a trip to Baghdad in February and March 2002.\nHer acceptance of the money and her willingness to bring it home from Iraq violated a law prohibiting transactions with a government that sponsors international terrorism, the government said. The indictment did not specify a motive.\nThe charges against Lindauer were included in an expanded indictment in the case against Raed Rokan Al-Anbuge, 28, and Wisam Noman Al-Anbuke, the sons of Iraq's former liaison with United Nations weapons inspectors.\nThe brothers were charged last year with acting as Iraqi government agents and conspiring to do so, prosecutors said. The indictment said Lindauer conspired with the brothers.\nOn Jan. 8, 2003, prosecutors said, Lindauer tried to influence U.S. foreign policy by delivering to the home of a U.S. government official a letter in which she conveyed her access to and contacts with members of Saddam's regime. The official was not identified in the indictment.\nThe United States invaded Iraq in March of last year, and the government fell the following month.\nThe indictment said she met on two occasions in Baltimore in June and July with an undercover FBI agent who posed as a Libyan intelligence representative who was seeking to support resistance groups in postwar Iraq. It said she discussed the need for plans and foreign resources to support these groups.\nAccording to the indictment, she continued to correspond with the undercover agent until last month and followed the agent's instructions to leave packages on two occasions in August in "dead drop" operations.\nLindauer, who was not immediately assigned a defense lawyer, faces up to 10 years in prison on the most serious charge and five years on the lesser charge if she is convicted, prosecutors said.\nMore than a half dozen FBI agents could be seen searching Lindauer's residence in Takoma Park, a city known for its liberal views. Her neighbors recalled her as friendly.\nJoao Luiz Vieire de Castro, 39, described Lindauer as "a regular American who walks her dog in the mornings and the afternoon."\n"It's a big surprise. Who would think that it's (espionage) in your neighborhood?" said Dean Paris, 45, who sometimes greeted Lindauer on the street, which is less than a mile from the District of Columbia line. Paris said he never saw anything suspicious.\nBut Malvina Lacey, who lives next door to Lindauer, added, "She lives in a fantasy world."
Associated Press writer Derrill Holly in Takoma Park, Md., contributed to this story.
