Richard Syrett was joined by former Congressional staffer Susan Lindauer, who served as a US intelligence asset and back door channel on anti-terrorism from 1993 to 2003. She discussed what happened when she tried to disclose the true facts of a 9/11 warning and Iraqi pre-war intelligence to Congress and the nightmare of her arrest via the Patriot Act. According to Lindauer, awareness of an impending attack on the United States was widespread amongst the intelligence community in the months leading up to 9/11. As such, she was tasked with telling her contacts in the Iraqi government that the United States wanted any information they had about a potential attack or else "we will firebomb them back into the Stone Age." When they tried to cooperate, she said, the US government balked at the offer because, ultimately, it hoped to use Iraqi noncompliance as justification for a future conflict.
Lindauer also revealed how the Iraqi government attempted to work with the United States prior to the war in 2003. She claimed that Iraq was desperate to end the sanctions imposed on the nation and, therefore, they not only offered to allow extensive weapons inspections but also preferential treatment to American health care and automotive companies once trade with the country had resumed. Additionally, Lindauer said, a senior Iraqi official suggested that Hussein would retire from power and free elections would be held to choose the nation's next leader. Despite all of these concessions, she contended, the United States pushed ahead with a war because it wanted companies associated with senior administration officials to profits from the conflict and it would also allow George W. Bush to satisfy his own personal vendetta against Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
When Lindauer attempted to reveal all of this information to Congress, she was arrested under the auspices of the Patriot Act using secret charges and evidence. Refusing to plead guilty and demanding a trial, she was subsequently ordered to surrender to prison for a psychiatric evaluation. Suspiciously, this occurred at the same time that Colin Powell was giving media interviews where he blamed intelligence failures for misinformation which led to the Iraqi War. "I was being ordered to go to prison," she marveled, "so that I could not contradict the nonsense story he was inventing." Ultimately, after five years of battling the federal government, the charges against Lindauer were dismissed mere months before the start of the Obama administration. "If they could do this me, given how capable I am of fighting and beating them back," she warned, "then imagine what they could do to you."