“Local Girl Makes Bad” is usually the kind of story the press would love. If that local girl happened to be an accused spy and happened to be working for a member of Congress WHILE spying, that would seem to be front-page news.

Unless it’s the Washington Post, as Tim noted yesterday, the spy is a Takoma “Nuclear Free Zone” Park home girl, and the congresswoman is strident liberal Zoe Lofgren. In that case, here’s how the Metro (not front page) Section story on Susan Lindauer describes the alleged spy’s relationship to her liberal Democrat employer:

” Lindauer worked as a press aide for some Democrats in Congress in the mid-1990s and as recently as 2002.”

Meanwhile, here’s the real story, from the San Mateo (CA) County Times:

“Susan Lindauer, 41, of Takoma Park, Md., allegedly met with Iraqi Intelligence Service members during visits from October 1999 through March 2002 to the Iraqi Mission to the United Nations in New York City; met with Iraqi officials in Baghdad in February or March 2002; and passed documents to an undercover FBI agent with whom she’d talked about helping post-war Iraqi resistance groups.

Lindauer was press secretary in the Capitol Hill office of Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, from March 11, 2002, to May 14, 2002.”

For a newspaper like the Washington Post, this is beyond oversight. This is embarrassing.