Our relationship was easily corroborated by the crowd of top Republican Congressional staffers who got together for drinks every Thursday night at a watering hole known as “the Hunan,” close to the Senate, where Hoven and I met. At trial, some of those individuals could expect subpoenas— which probably did not endear me to their former Republican bosses who lead the Senate to this day— Those would be the same Republican leaders who aggressively deceived the public about 9/11 and Iraq.
4. How Dr. Fuisz’s CIA bona fides covered Syria and Lebanon in the 1980s. Those included:
• The hostage rescue of Terry Anderson et al. in Beirut. It was Dr. Fuisz’s team that infiltrated the terrorist network hiding the hostages, and located the coven of cells in the back alleys of Beirut, where they were chained. Dr. Fuisz called out the Delta Force to make the rescue only to be stopped by top officials in Washington, who postponed the rescue until right before the 1988 election of President George H. Bush. Dr. Fuisz never forgave them.
• Dr. Fuisz and Raisa Gorbachev, wife of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, launched the very first Russian modeling agency in the West—which incidentally imported computers to the Soviet Union at the height of Glasnost.
• Dr. Fuisz’s first-hand knowledge of Lockerbie, and ability to map out the conspiracy and masterminds behind the bombing of Pan Am 103.
• How Dr. Fuisz got outed as CIA after he stole the blueprints for Syria’s brand new telecommunications network from a locked crypt. Syrian agents tried to congratulate him by kidnapping him in London for a private interrogation. Scotland Yard had other plans— a first class spy thriller involving a decoy.
5. Finally, Hoven could confirm our team’s advance warning of a precise 9/11 scenario, involving airplane hijackings and a strike on the World Trade Center, throughout the spring and summer of 2001. Prosecution psychiatrist, Dr. Stuart Kleinman, acknowledged that Hoven told the FBI he spoke with me 40 to 50 times after 9/11.539 Ergo, by Hoven’s own admission, we were in close contact during the 9/11 investigation.
It was a critical acknowledgement, and I seized on those implications.
The key was to ask Hoven direct questions: Did Susan and Richard do this? Yes or no?
Give me a chance and I could prove everything.
More witnesses were coming forth every day, (including old friends from the Hunan) appalled by news leaking out on the blogs of this horrific threat to forcibly drug me. They abhorred the judicial abuse I was suffering under the Patriot Act. They had the integrity to want to make things right—for which I am eternally grateful.
If Hoven committed perjury under oath, he would be exposed. After what I suffered, I would not hesitate to prosecute today, if he or Dr. Fuisz lied about supervising my work. That’s obstruction of justice. I would demand they face maximum penalties in sentencing.
In which case, they’d get front row seats to life at M.C.C.
M.C.C. is a maximum security pre-trial detention center, subject to lock downs for every inmate count. Lock downs confine inmates to our cells a good 15 hours a day. Morning lockdowns lasted until 10 am. After lunch, we got locked down again from about 3 pm until 5 pm. Then after dinner from 8 pm to 9 pm—or in that ballpark.
At times I was the only English speaker in my cell, which made conversation an interesting challenge. Mostly we tried to be friendly, with lots of pantomimes and smiles. But whenever four people get crammed into a tiny space, there’s inevitable tension. All of us were pushed to our breaking points, waiting for Judges to decide our fates.
Lock downs give prisoners lots of time to think. Indeed, prison life swamps inmates with old memories. Dr. Fuisz and Hoven certainly occupied a lot of mine.
I remember sitting in Hoven’s truck in October or November of 1993, and Paul chuckling to himself, in his dark way.
Hoven: “Do you think it’s an accident that I found you, and I just happen to know that you warned about the World Trade Center bombing (in 1993)? I know things your closest friends and family don’t know about you.”
“What do we have in common? Nothing at all. I’m a conservative Republican, and you’re a goofy Democrat. I’m a soldier, and you’re a peace activist. There’s no way that we would have any social contact except for your warning about the World Trade Center. They sent me to find you. They think someone needs to keep an eye on you. They don’t want you wandering around Washington getting into any more trouble.”
Or before my job interview with former Rep. Ron Wyden, now Senator for Oregon:
Hoven: “Don’t go complaining to Wyden about surveillance. Nobody’s violating your rights by watching you. The CIA’s not allowed to target American citizens, or conduct operations inside the United States. That responsibility falls to the Defense Intelligence Agency. And they’ve got a legitimate reason to keep track of you. Nobody’s doing anything wrong here.”
One conversation particularly echoed back in tragic chords. It was during the Lockerbie Trial in 2000.
Hoven: “I’ve been thinking about what I’d say if I ever have to testify about you in Court. You’d better know something. If anybody asks if I’m a Defense Intelligence Agent, I’m going to tell them “no.”
“Agents are foreigners. And I could never be a foreigner, since I was born in the United States. Americans who work at the Defense Intelligence Agency are called “officers.” To be correct, I’m your “case officer.”
“You’d better remember that. Because spooks can be very particular about the use of language. That’s how we can deny things without actually lying. If you ever get in trouble, you’d better tell your attorney to ask if I’m your “case officer.” Or your “handler.” If anybody asks if I’m a Defense Intelligence Agent, I’ll look them straight in the eye and say “no.” And that would be the truth.”
Any way you cut it, it would be crazy to deny that Hoven was deeply entrenched in the murky world of intelligence, whatever technical capacity he chose to admit. It’s a shadow world of double blinds, certainly. But this was the guy who bragged about exposing Oliver North and Iran-Contra. His circle of spook friends included legendary CIA figures like Bill Weisenberger, closely tied to Edwin Wilson, that dark angel of the covert crowd, who served 27 years in prison for a black operation involving Libya.
Among friends, Hoven presented himself as a dedicated intelligence-passer, a straight line to the Intelligence community. He called himself my “handler” and my “case officer.” And he gave me protection when some of the less friendly Arabs stuck their heads up to say hello. Heck, his sources would tell us when they were coming.
As Hoven used to tease me, about identifying spooks who might approach me at the United Nations: “Susan, if it walks like a duck. And it quacks like a duck. It’s a duck!”
Hunkered on my top bunk on lock down at M.C.C, I used to ask myself: After so many years together, how could these men stay silent while this happened to me? Knowing that I faced “indefinite detention” for up to 10 years and forced injections of Haldol to erase my knowledge of our field operations, how could they take no action to help me?
I never expected such cowardice.
We know Hoven and Dr. Fuisz told the truth at first. They told the truth to the New York Times Magazine, which botched the story. Hoven spoke with Ted Lindauer, and acknowledged everything. Yet throughout my indictment, Dr. Fuisz refused to speak with my attorneys. He would hang up when they called, often shouting expletives.
I got a glimpse into Dr. Fuisz’s fear one afternoon, at the close of a court meeting.
FBI Agent Chmiel leaned back and whispered that Dr. Fuisz denied knowing of my trip to Baghdad.
That astonished me. I recalled painfully those 30 to 40 phone calls in the two weeks before my trip, pleading with Richard for payment of my debts that had accumulated from our work together. I bombarded him with requests to arrange payment for my years of service—In those days, Assets got paid at the end of a project, in order to make sure objectives got finished, not dropped mid-way.
&nb
sp; On Capitol Hill, Congress made glorious pronouncements, in grand speeches and press conferences, that I would receive spectacular rewards for my work on Lockerbie, arranging the hand over of the two Libyans for the Lockerbie Trial— Indeed, I qualified for a number of rewards— for 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole, the 1993 World Trade Center Attack, and my contributions to anti-terrorism overall.
Only the TV cameras had packed up. What did promises matter? Didn’t I understand those speeches on Capitol Hill were only to glorify themselves?
Promise of leadership support for anti-terrorism had nothing to do with me, after all.
Hearing the FBI agent’s whisper as I got shackled to go back to my cell, I saw with clarity that Dr. Fuisz was afraid of a Trial, too. He probably told his spymasters at CIA that I never requested payment for my work—so he could keep all that operations money for himself. Which is what he did. After 9/11, Congress appropriated a special “black budget” for the 9/11 investigation. Dr. Fuisz got to draw $13 million. And rightfully so, if he had applied the federal monies to our field work.
Only he didn’t. He built a mansion, instead.
Richard Fuisz was a creature of the Black Budgets alright, and he kept the whole pot of gold for himself. He hoarded American tax dollars like a miser.
I saw none of it.
My Iraqi source in Baghdad, ready to identify terrorists playing hide and seek in Iraq—worth a King’s ransom for what he could do for us— got none of that money, either—though let’s face it, the success of the 9/11 investigation depended on us—not our money managers in Washington.
In all other ways, Dr. Fuisz functioned as an outstanding handler.
Alas, that one black mark on our relationship brought us to a tragic crossroads. Dr. Fuisz’s unwillingness to hand over any of that money forced me to improvise in Baghdad to arrange payment for my friend.
And I got thrown in jail for it—though my crime turned out to be practicing extreme resourcefulness in the face of extreme deprivation. It breaks my heart even now.
That’s what I thought about on lock downs at M.C.C.
At the beginning, Hoven and Dr. Fuisz tried to claim me.
Within weeks of my arrest, a freelance journalist for the New York Times Magazine, David Samuels, interviewed both men for a profile about me.
Samuels called me all excited. Both men freely volunteered my bona fides, including my team’s 9/11 warnings—
Think what that meant.
The New York Times had confirmation from CIA and Defense Intelligences sources about our team’s 9/11 warnings six (6) months before the 9/11 Commission published its findings.
It was David Samuels again, who told me that Hoven and Fuisz denied receiving advance warning of my arrest. Samuels said both men got very angry at me. But the strike surprised them.
Finally, according to Samuels, Hoven and Fuisz quickly rushed to grab me back, so the intelligence community could correct the mistake made by the Justice Department.
The New York Times had an exclusive alright.
But they declined to print the story. They fudged the details for reasons that nobody outside that newsroom could understand.
If the New York Times had acted as a watch dog, on behalf of its readers, the spooks could have moved swiftly to kill the whole indictment. Very likely, they would have forced me to accept a hefty non-disclosure agreement as part of the deal. The CIA would have come out on top, no question.
Instead, the New York Times Magazine published an amateurish profile on my life and legal tribulations, on par with high school journalism. Strangest of all, the article sidestepped any explanation of my work as a long-time Intelligence Asset!
The only conclusion was that David Samuels was too young and inexperienced to handle such a sensitive assignment. Unhappily for me, it exceeded his reach. Friends griped at me for choosing an ingénue journalist, who botched it. I would have to agree.
By example, Samuels telephoned a few days before publication to say Dr. Fuisz got quite distressed after talking to fact-checkers at the Magazine. Dr. Fuisz wanted to change his quote —which surprised me. Immediately after the interview, Samuels told me that Fuisz described me as “one of the top Assets in the 1990s.”
According to Samuels, Fuisz said I was “uncanny in my level of perception and accuracy in my forecasting.” I was quote, “the smartest, smartest, smartest woman he’d ever met.” Fuisz called me a “genius dealing with the Arabs.”
Heavens I loved those quotes! How marvelous! Before publication, I imagined any quote by Dr. Fuisz and Hoven would be stellar.
I was shocked when I read the article!
Other friends told me Samuels cobbled together obscure statements from their interviews, and twisted them out of context, drawing conclusions that were not discussed.
So much for the New York Times throwing sunlight onto the situation.
This was sort of an intelligence war, and they played right into it. But I wasn’t the only casualty. The Intelligence Community got smashed pretty hard by Republican leaders. Ironically, the bloodbath to punish opposition to its War Policy gutted the intelligence community to the lasting detriment of national security and terrorism policy.
Vice President Cheney wasn’t the only wrecking ball, either. The Republican leadership as a whole demanded that intelligence reporting must reflect the GOP message. Congress wanted to pick and choose truth, and hide unhappy intelligence, so as to make their leadership appear more successful in the public’s eye.
In the Republican mindset, intelligence exists to protect politicians from criticism for their mistakes. It must shield them from responsibility to the people.
That’s anathema to intelligence field work, which exists to protect the people and the community of the nation before all else. And it’s grievously offensive to the principles of democracy, which we serve. Nobody reputable does intelligence work to protect political figureheads, or shield leaders from accountability. That’s genuinely despised.
By attacking me so viciously, these Republicans—like John McCain and Trent Lott, and their cohorts on Capitol Hill— exposed something very ugly about their position.
Despite all the tough talk at election time, Congress really doesn’t understand how anti-terrorism gets done in the field. They don’t recognize it when they see it. And they don’t appreciate the men and women who do it.
Quite the contrary, they blame and bully us. They arrest us when our knowledge threatens the story they want to invent for the people.
Any politician in Washington claiming otherwise would be lying.
CONCEALING A DEFENDANT’S INNOCENCE ON THE PATRIOT ACT
Many times I have been asked why, if my Asset work was authentic, the FBI did not discover as much during its investigation.
Ah but who says they didn’t?
Chalk it up to the Patriot Act.
My indictment was loaded up with all the bells and whistles of that atrocious law. I tripped all the wires. For openers, I’d been subjected to at least two “warrantless searches” before my arrest. The first time federal agents ransacked my home office, they broke a filing cabinet. The second time, the Feds broke my front door.
They got zilch. Nothing to show the grand jury. The Prosecution was left with three lunch receipts totaling $92.92, suggesting I ate a cheeseburger with an Iraqi diplomat after 9/11.540 Plus video from a hidden camera at the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad a year before the Invasion,541 on the last day of my trip to Iraq. The video captured my meeting with a senior Iraqi official— and, most critically, my friend in the Mukhabarat who was going to help the FBI Task Force identify terrorists playing hide and seek with Iraqi intelligence.
The video was red hot alright—just not the way my Prosecutor wished to claim. I could hardly wink at the camera: (It was their camera, after all.) However the tape provided startling evidence of the success of our peace framework, including Iraq’s cooperation with anti-terrorism efforts, and the ability of U.S. corporations to return to Baghdad
in key sectors, post-sanctions.542 It was awesome!
I recognized at once the CIA could never play that tape to a jury. The House of Cards to justify this dreadful war would fall in a day.
And so a conspiracy was born to throw the brakes on my demand for a trial.
Under the Patriot Act, the US Attorneys Office, the FBI and the Bureau of Prisons made a decision, individually and collectively, to deny my status as an Asset. They simply declared the facts of my life “classified” information, when challenged by Ted Lindauer and Shaughnessy, who were highly aggressive on my behalf.
In regular court proceedings, that’s called “withholding exculpatory knowledge.” A prosecutor could face disciplinary action, even disbarment from the legal profession, because it’s so grossly unethical and dishonest.
That’s the Patriot Act for you.
Welcome to the New America. Franz Kafka would be appalled
Oh yes, I was fighting for my life.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL MOMENT:
They might have succeeded, if not for the unflagging perseverance of JB Fields and civil rights activist and radio journalist, Janet Phelan, now living in Toronto.
One morning at M.C.C, a few weeks after the hearing on forcible drugging, I was unexpectedly roused by guards at 5:30 a.m. for an unscheduled court appearance. Inmates going to Court have extra time for a shower and breakfast. It took my by surprise. I had no idea why Judge Mukasey had called us, and I feared the worst.
In my cell, I wept inconsolably, believing the Judge was about to issue his decision on forcible drugging.. I’d been forewarned that I would get seized by U.S. Marshals and forced back to Carswell right away. A few days before, my cellmate caught a six year sentence for heroin trafficking from Brazil. That morning she was left to comfort me. I was in worst shape than she was.
When I got to the holding cage outside the courtroom, my attorney rushed in.
I was prepared for anything except what he came to say!
“Somebody has started a blog on your case, Susan! They’re running your story on internet radio. People are writing the Judge!”
EXTREME PREJUDICE: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq Page 54