Hearing this preposterous suggestion, I demanded that my public attorney march right back to the Judge, and deny the Prosecution’s report as ridiculous, politically motivated nonsense.
“Your story’s running all over the media,” the attorney told me. “The White House is in serious trouble over your arrest. They’re looking for a way out. We’ll deny that you’re suicidal, but really you don’t have a choice. They’re willing to accept bail, if you accept the evaluation. The Judge will see that as very reasonable. Then you can go home.”
I looked at the clock. It was 4 pm. I looked at the rows of journalists crowded into the judge’s hearing room, waiting for the next play.
The White House wanted to make the evening news.
Well, okay. Getting out of that tiny holding cage and sleeping in a proper bed that night sounded like a fair trade to me. Doesn’t that argue for my sanity? The evaluation would take an hour. They promised it would be completed that evening. Afterwards, I would spend the night at a half-way house, until my father arrived from Phoenix. Then I would be released into his custody. I’d wait at home in Maryland until Trial.
I could go along with that. I had no emotional issues to chat about to a psychologist. I’m not the kind of personality that finds psychology attractive. Quite the opposite, I consider it whining and malingering, a waste of time and energy. As for this preposterous suggestion that I’d been suicidal a few weeks earlier, that showed desperation. The Justice Department was playing dirty. Surely any honest psychologist would debunk the lie. It was just one meeting. I’d tell the guy I had no interest in counseling.
How much trouble could one psych evaluation cause?
A great deal apparently. In retrospect, I should have refused. At that moment, I made a fatal concession, which irrevocably damaged my reputation and the rest of my case.
That evening after my arrest, I just wanted to go home. Having no prior experience with the courts, a psych evaluation appeared trivial and meaningless to me. I thought it best to show the Judge that I was cooperative to get bail, and set a positive precedent for my future proceedings.
If only somebody had warned me, I would have protected myself from some outrageous character assassination that flagrantly contradicts the facts of my life. Over time, I developed a strategy for beating back the corrupt practices of court psychology, but only after some hard lessons, unfortunately.
I remember that night keenly, in living color. I was so exhausted and hungry that I kept falling asleep. The jerk psychiatrist kept banging on the table to wake me up. My eyes kept closing and my head bounced up and down, when he smacked the table. I dug my fingernails into my hands desperately trying to stay awake. He complained to the Court that my “responses wandered.”
Fortunately, my first public defender in Baltimore was terrific. He insisting on postponing the evaluation until the following day, so I could get some food in my stomach and a good night sleep. The day had wiped me out.
Did the wise and perceptive psychiatrist pick up on that? No, the rational attorney did. The shrink doing the evaluation tried to inflict maximum damage, dismissing my adamant denials that I’d been suicidal, and that I had no idea where such a ridiculous allegation came from. He concluded that I was “not aware” of my suicidal impulses, but they must be there somewhere. (Oh that makes a lot of sense! I don’t know that I wish to kill myself. It’s a secret! I mean, give me a break. I was appalled.)
Somebody also told the feds that my brother has bipolar disorder— which is not exactly true. My brother, John, experiences symptoms of ‘seasonal affective disorder,” a.k.a the winter blues. I lacked the heart to tell my brother that he’s worse than bipolar. He’s confident, creative and intellectual, the most virulent threat to psychology out there.
Demonstrating a profound lack of logic, the shrink declared that if my brother suffered bipolar swings, than obviously I must, too. (My brother and I are evidently identical beings.) In fact, there was no sign of bipolar disorder in our interview, since I was practically asleep. My attorney and I expected some measure of honesty in that regard. However, the shrink omitted any reference to my exhaustion in his report. That was my first lesson of the gross dishonesty of court psychology, which invents, falsifies and ignores for its own purposes.
But it was my word against his. I would learn that lesson again, with more devastating results, until I discovered a solution. There are ways to protect yourself from this kind of psychology fraud that make all the difference to the outcome.
By sheer dumb luck, I had done one thing right. I refused to meet the psychiatrist unless my attorney could be present. So my attorney stopped the loony shrink from doing even worst damage. My public defender put the Baltimore psychiatrist on notice that we intended to get a second evaluation from a different source closer to my home, over the weekend if necessary, before I faced Judge Mukasey in New York. Any counseling referral would be performed by the second evaluator. So the first shrink could not grab a contract for himself—which it became obvious he wanted to do. He wanted the business.
That night I learned the hard way that psychology has become the new ambulance chasers in the Courts, defaming defendants as a source of income.
Providing a community service for stressed defendants is no longer the motivation of court-ordered counseling. Psychology has nothing to do with “helping people.” It’s a power trip. Psychologists approach these evaluations as trolling for long-term accounts. They’re out to nab defendants as a business contract, so they can pay the mortgage and make the car payment. Defendants are cash cows, an ATM card to make withdrawals off the state and county budgets. The Feds pay beautifully. The shrink gets a fee and their practice gets a fee. Everybody makes out. As such, cherry picking defendants has become supremely popular at every possible opportunity. It’s all about money.
It’s also highly subjective—not scientific in the least. That explains how the second evaluation two days later by Dr. John S. Kennedy, a psychiatrist at Family Health Services in Hyattsville, Maryland, reached a wholly different set of conclusions.351
Notably, Dr. Kennedy told me he’d never faced such intense political pressure to deliver a negative evaluation in his whole career. Apparently, Pre-Trial Services in Baltimore and Greenbelt phoned several times to impress him about my need for a psychiatric intervention. He told me he was shocked by it, that he regarded it as “unprofessional and unethical” to slant an evaluation for political purposes. And he would not do it. He would report only what he saw.
Here’s what Dr. Kennedy submitted to Judge Mukasey:352
“Two days ago, Lindauer was indicted on four counts of being an Unregistered Agent of a Foreign Government. There was considerable media interest in the case. (Her) father told authorities that his daughter had recently spoken of suicide. Thus, within hours of the indictment, (Lindauer) was evaluated by Dr. Roskes, a forensic psychiatrist. Dr. Roskes felt she was “hypomanic or manic,” and prescribed olanzapine 5 mg.”
“Lindauer describes herself as a very energetic and creative person. She is outgoing and intense. She becomes engaged in projects and may work late into the night. However, she denies longer periods of sleeplessness, or loss of reality testing. She denies depressed mood or suicidality. She denies the use of alcohol or illicit drugs.”
“Mental Status Exam: Eye contact was fair. Kinetics were activated. Speech was rapid and somewhat pressured. Affect was congruent and full in range. Thought processes were logical, linear and goal directed. Thought content was free of hallucinations, delusions, homicidality, or suicidality. She expressed confidence in an acquittal. Judgment and insight were fair. Cognition was grossly intact.”
Dr. Kennedy discontinued olanzapine, and prescribed Depakote instead, for use if I should become panicked or excessively frightened during my indictment. It was not for daily use, only to calm down if I started to feel overwhelmed. I had no prior arrests. There’s no way to know in advance how you’ll respond to such a threat. I could not antici
pate whether I would use the drug or not. You can experience some bad days under indictment, for sure. A defendant must stay calm, in order to focus on preparing a legal strategy. I agreed to have the Depakote with me, in case I needed it. There were some days that I took it. I got one prescription refill (30 tablets) over the next 18 months.
Once they snagged me for the evaluation, however, the psych crowd would not let go. Dr. Kennedy recommended 4 to 12 weeks of counseling,353 while I sorted out my emotional reaction to the indictment. I considered it tedious, but I could tolerate it for 12 weeks.
By the time I stood in front of Judge Mukasey. Pre-Trial Services and the Prosecutor demanded that I undergo court-ordered counseling right up to trial, as a condition for bail. The phony suicide threat had done its worst.
I was very curious as to how Pre-Trial Services concocted this bizarre suicide threat. Apparently somebody asked my father, who lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, what he knows about my life in Washington, DC. The truthful answer was “not much.” My father volunteered that several weeks prior to my arrest, he mailed me a newspaper advertisement, seeking healthy women to participate in gynecological experimentation of a new drug for ovarian cancer. Since my mother died of ovarian cancer, he thought I might want to participate in medical testing of the new drug.
I was not so altruistic, with regards to loaning my female anatomy to the National Institutes of Health for use by medical researchers. So I tossed the paper in the trash can.
Pre-Trial Services seized on that action: Tossing the crumpled advertisement into the trash constituted a suicide threat, they decided, because my mother died of that form of cancer.
Outrageously enough, that’s how the court-order on forced psychology was imposed.
Given what I would suffer because of the order forcing me to attend psych meetings, I have come to regard the phony suicide threat as defamatory sexual harassment and a degradation of women prisoners. I consider it grossly unprofessional and sexist. Friends have compared my situation to “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood. Indeed, it resonates.
It’s sort of humorous, in a dark and Kafkaesque, because people asked me all the time “why I’m still alive” after dealing with the government in my case.
I told everybody it’s because I refused to die until I got my trial. So I was probably going to live forever.
I mean, suicide? Me? It would never happen. Seriously, you need drugs!
In any event, that explains the twisted path that led from the White House to a court-order forcing me to attend psychology meetings in Maryland. Psychology was a political tool to discredit me.
There’s no question but that I plainly hated the order to attend weekly meetings. Still I obeyed for a year, until the following March, becoming progressively annoyed as no trial date emerged.
Dr. Taddesseh, the Maryland psychologist who saw me at Family Health Services, agreed that the court order was instigated to combat international media attention on my family relationship with White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card.
Ominously, Dr. Taddesseh warned that Pre-Trial Services in Greenbelt phoned repeatedly, asking him to put me on drugs. When he refused, Pre-Trial Services requested that he refer my case back to them, so I could be assigned to another psychology practice. Dr. Taddesseh told me, in his opinion, the government was shopping for somebody to drug me. He considered it grossly unprofessional and corrupt for Pre-Trial Services to interfere with our psych meetings. He regarded it as more evidence of politics trying to guide the application of psychology against me. Thankfully, he resisted.
After the stunt pulled by the first psychiatrist on the night of my arrest, I had no doubt that somebody with less integrity would go along with Pre-Trial Services, in order to keep their business. Court psychology is rife with corruption and fraud. There’s an attitude that if they’re lying and making up stories, it benefits the defendant who somehow will escape punishment, because of a psychologist’s opinion. Aren’t we lucky that they’re willing to manipulate the Court on our behalf! That’s become a bizarre justification for poaching off the courts. And it seems to rationalize their system of dishonesty and corruption.
Even Dr. Taddesseh, who had vastly more integrity than most in the psychology business, was shocked to discover that I was wholly disinterested in anything he had to say. I told him that I had no intention of changing anything about my life. In one year I intended to be exactly the same person as when I first walked into his office.
I took a cook-book to the first meeting, and forced him to listen to recitations of recipes, sans commentary. When he asked if I intended to cook any of the recipes, I assured him I would never do such a thing. I said I considered his insights as useless as a recipe that I would never bake.
Dr. Taddesseh had the good sense to feel embarrassed. At subsequent meetings, he’d bring a copy of the Washington Post, and we’d discuss news articles and current affairs. That’s all I remember about our meetings. In fact, I don’t recall that we discussed anything except the Washington Post and my complaints how psych meetings interfered with my employment, since the bail order stopped me from working full time. I had to take a part-time job, which killed me financially. It was a huge waste of tax dollars.
It was also incredibly tedious. I called it my “babysitting job.” I joked with friends that I had to go “check on Taddesseh once a week to make sure he was okay.” For awhile, to create conversation, I counted how many traffic lights flashed red versus green on the short drive to his office. This gave us something to chat about. He asked once what traffic lights “symbolized” for me. I rolled my eyes, and said that obviously it symbolized him, and the stop-and-go boredom of these road blocks thrown up by the Justice Department to delay us from going to trial.
Another morning, I stared off into space, experiencing serious brain death. Apparently I sighed deeply. “What is it, Ms. Lindauer? What are you thinking?” He leaned forward intensely. “I’m thinking about what kind of ice cream to buy for lunch. I’m thinking if I should stop at Baskin Robbins or go to A & W for a root beer float.”
Dr. Taddesseh sighed. “I can’t help you with that.”
“Of course, not,” I snapped back at him. “Do you honestly think I would consult you on something so important as ice cream!”
After a year of this nonsense, I point blank refused to continue. If the Court wanted to revoke my bail, so be it. I told Taddesseh that he contributed nothing to my life. I accused him of selfishly interfering with my employment, so he could make money off the court. He was happy to see me go.
As fate would have it, our meetings had some unexpected value, however. The 12 months of observation notes on my mental status, submitted by Dr. Taddesseh to Pre-Trial Services, provided a critical reference in my terrible court fight to come.354
Here’s what Dr. Taddesseh documented in his monthly reports to Pre-Trial Services:355 (See Appendix.)
May, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer appears to maintain psychological stability.”
June, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer appears to maintain stability and reports no major psychiatric symptom that may require additional or special attention.”
July, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer reports no mood swing or other psychological problem. She points out that she is not taking any medication. She considers that she is stabilized.”
August, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer expressed concern about her future due to the legal problem. She appears stable and reports no symptom of mood or other psychological problems.”
September, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer reports for therapy as scheduled. She expressed concern and frustration about her legal problems. She shows no unusual sign of mood or anxiety, and she feels comfortable and capable of managing her psychological and emotional challenges without aid of medication.”
October, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer reports for therapy on a regular basis. She reports no symptom of mania or psychosis. She seems stable and focused on her legal problem. At times she gets anxious and worried of fear of going to jail.
”
November, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer’s mental exams show no sign or symptom of psychosis or delusion. However, at times she gets tense and excited when talking about her legal ordeal. Yet she seems goal directed, and her judgment is within normal range.”
December, 2004: “Ms. Lindauer reports for scheduled sessions as arranged. She shares her feelings and thoughts in an open manner. She expresses concern about her freedom and her future. She shows no sign of mood disturbances or psychosis and delusions. She seems focused and goal directed.”
January, 2005: “Ms. Lindauer reports for therapy as required. She appears to maintain psychological stability and shows no sign or symptom of mania or psychosis. However, she appears concerned about the outcome of her legal problem.”
At the conclusion of one full year, in March, 2005: “Ms. Lindauer remained concerned about her legal problem. So far she has shown no sign of mania or depression and symptom of any psychosis that might require additional intervention.”
Those session notes provide critical observation of my mental and emotional stability for 12 months after my indictment—in the same time period, as the psychiatric evaluations for the Defense and Prosecution.
According to Family Health Services, there was nothing wrong with my mental status. I was just fine— mentally, psychologically and emotionally.
What’s more, because those observations had been filed with Pre-Trial Services in Greenbelt, Maryland and the Southern District of New York, the Justice Department was fully aware of it, too. I demonstrated no history of mental defects, or any emotional upset of any kind— “no symptoms that might require additional intervention.”
Interestingly, despite my demands for copies of those session notes, Pre-Trial Services in Greenbelt and New York argued for months against releasing them to me. They flat out refused to hand them over. So I had to get sneaky. I pretended that a wonderful lady in the anti-war movement was actually a psychologist who might start meeting me privately. I requested that copies of Dr. Taddesseh’s session notes should be sent to her,356 explaining that she needed to know the current status of my “mental health,” Otherwise I could never have laid my hands on these documents at all.
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