Lindauer: I remember it all vividly. In April, 2001 I received a summons to visit Dr. Fuisz at his office in Virginia. We met almost weekly anyway. On this occasion, he phoned my home and asked me to come right away. He also inquired how quickly I was making my next trip to New York to see the Embassies. He wanted to talk to me before I left, and he wanted me to go soon.
Of course I visited him immediately. Dr. Fuisz demanded that I must warn diplomats at the Iraqi and Libyan Missions that their nations would suffer a major military offensive if it was discovered that either had possessed intelligence about possible airplane attacks, and failed to notify the United States through my back channel.
I was reluctant to deliver such a harsh message. I have always been an anti-war activist. That's a major reason for my success in dealing with the Arabs, because they appreciate the consistency of my opposition to violence on both sides. So, on my next trip to New York, I soft pedaled Dr. Fuisz's warning. I requested that diplomats send messages to Baghdad and Tripoli seeking intelligence on possible airplane attacks. But I made no threats of violent reprisal against them.
When I got home to Washington, I met with Dr. Fuisz, who demanded to know how diplomats had responded to his threat. I had to admit that I had stopped short of actually threatening them. But I assured him that I had requested their cooperation.
At that point, Dr. Fuisz became enraged. As I recall, in all our years together, there was never any other time that he lost his temper and yelled at me. He stormed up and down the room. He demanded that I must return to New York immediately, and I must tell diplomats "the United States will bomb them into the Stone Age, worse than they've ever been bombed before, if they don't help us identify any terrorist conspiracies involving airplanes. They will lose everything. We will destroy them." He was not pacified until I promised to deliver that message exactly as he had communicated it. He expressed great satisfaction when I promised that I would make sure they understood the warning came from him, not me, backed by forces above him.
Dr. Fuisz was determined the Arabs should know the threat was deadly serious.
Right then I knew terrorists were actively plotting an attack. This was more than checking our trap lines, or putting out inquiries. Something was moving. Dr. Fuisz was firing back to stop cooperation.
Reinforcing that tension, throughout the summer of 2001, Dr. Fuisz continued to prod and push hard for any fragment of intelligence from Iraq or Libya involving airplane hijackings or airplane bombings. He urged me not to filter intelligence or test its accuracy before informing him. During numerous meetings, he tried to explain how urgently he needed to collect even fragments of intelligence, whether it appeared to make sense to me or not. He begged me to hold nothing back.
That's when I knew that something bigger was going on. Dr. Fuisz was already onto it. Again and again, our talks turned to airplane hijackings and/or airplane bombings in a reprise of the 1993 World Trade Center attack. It sounds uncanny but we all understood exactly what was going to happen.
In turn, I shared those fears and dangers with other friends and family, including Dr. Parke Godfrey.
All of us took the danger very seriously. Our team was strong, proactive and fiercely protective of American security.
Collins: Ultimately, did Libya or Iraq provide any intelligence regarding the attack?
Lindauer: No, they did not. After the attack, it became clear that neither country could have been party to the conspiracy. Gadhaffi and bin Laden hated each other. Back in 1995, Libya was the first country in the world to warn Interpol about Osama, and urge an international warrant for his arrest. Saddam's government hated him, too. Baghdad considered Osama's extreme brand of Sunni fundamentalism to pose a serious destabilizing threat to Iraq's moderate Sunni elite. Osama was a wrecking ball to Arab governments. They all despised him.
In fact, we pushed Iraq so hard for intelligence in the months before 9/11 that afterwards Iraqi diplomats aggressively challenged our U.S. claims of ignorance. A couple of diplomats put it to me bluntly: "Obviously you knew it was coming, because you kept telling us about it. So why didn't you stop it? Why didn't you do something before this, instead of blaming us now? You should be blaming yourselves."
No, even before the 9/11 attack, I deduced that Dr. Fuisz's advance intelligence was derived from an entirely different source. It just happened to be one I had not expected.
Collins: All right. Who did you warn about this attack?
Lindauer: By early August, 2001, our team was gravely concerned that an attack was "imminent."
When Robert Mueller was nominated to be Director of the FBI, we dallied with going to his confirmation hearings to put a buzz in the ears of congressional staffers about our fears.
Instead, Dr. Fuisz instructed me to telephone U. S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's office.
In mid-August, I phoned the staff of his private office at the Justice Department, which probably consists of about 20 people. Identifying myself as an asset covering Libya and Iraq, I made a formal request that his private office issue an emergency alert throughout the department for any fragment of intelligence pertaining to possible airplane hijackings or airplane bombings. I explained that we expected a major attack involving that scenario, and we urgently needed cooperation from all other agencies.
Ashcroft's office told me to contact the Office of Counter-Terrorism at the Justice Department, and repeat what I had just told them. I did so immediately.
Collins: What happened after that?
Lindauer: I didn't stop there. Most Americans would be stunned to know that in mid-August, 2001, our team was so convinced a 9/11 style attack was imminent that I visited my second cousin, Andy Card at his house in Arlington, Virginia, so that we could warn him.
I parked on the street and waited in my car, chain smoking for almost two hours. Occasionally, I could see neighbors peering out of their windows. In my head, I rehearsed what I would tell the police if they showed up to investigate this strange car parked outside the house of the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States.
Unhappily, he did not return home, and I finally left without sharing our fears.
Driving away, I remember feeling that I was making the greatest mistake of my life. Throughout all these years, it is one of my few regrets.
Collins: Who appears to have been Dr. Fuisz's other source on 9/11?
Lindauer: Dr. Fuisz never formally revealed his source to me. But within about 30 minutes after airplanes struck the Twin Towers, he blurted something to me over the phone.
He told me the Israeli Mossad had advance warning about the attack. As I recall, he said it before the buildings collapsed.
He asked me if I thought it was "an accident that a man and woman happened to be waiting on the sidewalk with a video camera, ready to record the attack." He was highly agitated. He challenged me "how often a bystander has a camera cued up to record a car accident?"
Then he said, "Those are Israeli agents. It's not an accident. They knew this attack was coming. And they were waiting for it."
I was outraged and shocked by the images on the television. I shot back something to the effect of, "You mean, we've been looking for an attack all this time! And the Israelis knew about it? And they didn't tell us?" In retrospect, outside the passion of that particular moment, the Israelis may have told us much more than Richard Fuisz may have known.
Immediately the phone line cut dead between us.
I called him right back. Very calmly, he said, "Susan, we must never talk about that again."
There are a couple more details regarding this Mossad team with the video camera. Dr. Fuisz was able to announce their identities before the media publicized who they are. The attack was so new when he said it, that it seemed to me that he already knew about them.
I could be wrong. But I don't think so.
Collins: Thank you Ms. Lindauer. Part two of this series Susan Lindauer will describe the extraordinary efforts by the Justice Department to deceive U.S. Judge Michael Mukasey in the Southern District of New York of the authenticity of Ms. Lindauer's 9/11 warning.
http://www.apj.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2248&Itemid=2
