Terrorism: Boo Hoo Hoo Lindh's "Real" Story

[Lunatock]

According to Lindh Senior, four years after the conviction he's coming out with the "truth".

http://www.comebackalive.com/phpBB2/...ic.php?t=15328

The Real Story of John Walker Lindh
By Frank Lindh, AlterNet. Posted January 24, 2006.

After years of almost total silence on his son's arrest and imprisonment, Frank Lindh sets the record straight about the 'American Taliban.'

Editor's Note: The public has heard little about John Walker Lindh since the media frenzy over his capture in the winter of 2001. On January 19, John's father Frank Lindh delivered an address at The Commonwealth Club of California. Lindh explained that he and his family have avoided the press for nearly four years; he now wants the public to understand the truth about his son, who he says didn't stand a chance of getting a fair trial in the emotional days following 9/11. Immediately characterized as a "terrorist" by the press and politicians, Lindh faced a jury in Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Pentagon. The trial date scheduled by the judge was the anniversary of 9/11. Initially facing 11 criminal counts -- most relating to terrorism -- the only charge that John Lindh was found guilty of was violating economic sanctions by supporting the Taliban government, for which the 20-year-old was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The following is excerpted from Frank Lindh's speech.

I believe the case of John Lindh is an important story and worthy of this audience's attention. In simple terms, this is the story of a decent and honorable young man, embarked on a spiritual quest, who became the focus of the grief and anger of an entire nation over an event in which he had no part. I refer to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. The reason I think this story is important is because our system broke down in the case of John Lindh. My goals today are first, just to tell you the story of John Lindh. Second, to ask you to reflect, based on the fact of John's case, on the importance and the fragility of the rights we enjoy under our Constitution. And my third point is to suggest that the so-called war on terrorism lacks a hearts and minds component.

I want to begin by asking you to call to mind the September 11th terrorist attacks and the shock and horror they engendered in the hearts of everyone. On that awful day, a band of terrorists, who claimed Islam as their cause, hijacked four airplanes and flew three of them full of passengers into occupied buildings without warning -- the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. They crashed the fourth airplane, also filled with passengers, into a field in Pennsylvania. Three thousand innocent Americans lost their lives that day.

But for those attacks, John's activities, which I will describe, would have been treated with indifference, or perhaps curiosity here in the United States. But, viewed through the prism of the September 11th attacks, those very same activities caused this young man to be vilified as a traitor and a terrorist.

Childhood

John was born in February 1981 in Washington, D.C., during a time when I was working for the federal government. He's the second of my three children. John was the kind of kid that any parent would want. From the time he was a baby, he was very centered, peaceful and content. Later, after he converted to Islam, I told John that I thought he had always been a Muslim, and he simply had to find it for himself.

I'm a practicing Catholic myself, and we raised John as a Catholic. He attended Sunday school along with his brother in Washington. In 1991, when John was 10 years old, we moved from the D.C. area to the Bay Area. At age 12, John saw the movie "Malcolm X" by Spike Lee and became deeply interested in Islam. He later wrote in his autobiographical statement for the court, "I had first become interested in Islam during 1993, after becoming aware of the Hajj, in which thousands of Muslims all over the world gather at Mecca, a holy site in Saudi Arabia. I learned that all Muslims are required to make this religious journey at least once in their life. I was very moved by the image of thousands of people praying together. Perfectly equal and perfectly humble. I began to read all that I could about Islam."

When he was 16, John formally converted to Islam at a mosque in Mill Valley in Marin County where we live. An elder at the Mill Valley mosque testified in John's case and wrote a statement for the court in which he said that in all of his experience in knowing Americans who had converted to Islam, "no one has come close to John in the embodiment of piety and of the true noble Islamic character." By the time he was 17, John was ready to embark on a course of studies overseas and he went to Yemen to study Arabic.

Travels in the Middle East

His first trip to Yemen lasted from July of 1998 to May of 1999, and then his visa expired, so he came home for a few months. Then, in February of 2000, just before his 19th birthday, John returned to Yemen to continue his study of classical Arabic and Islam at a school in Sanaa, Yemen. Again, he had visa trouble, so in November of 2000, John made a decision to go to Pakistan and to continue his Islamic study, memorizing the Koran. It's the goal of every scholarly Muslim to memorize the entire Koran verbatim, and John's goal was to become both fluent in Arabic and to memorize the Koran so that he could then go on and become a Muslim scholar. His goal was to attend the Islamic university at Medina in Saudi Arabia or a comparable world-class Islamic university.

It is November of 2000 when John goes to Pakistan with my blessing. In late April of 2001, John wrote to me and his mother to say that he wanted to go up to the mountains of Pakistan to get away from the heat. That made sense. John never tolerated the heat in Washington, D.C. What he didn't tell us, what we didn't learn until later was that John was going over the mountains, into Afghanistan, intent on volunteering for military service in the army of Afghanistan.

Civil war in Afghanistan

The Soviet Union, as you know, invaded Afghanistan in 1979. They imposed a communist puppet government upon the country. From the time of that invasion, right up through 2001, Afghanistan was engulfed in constant war. After the Soviets withdrew, the country descended into a civil war among the factions -- many of whom had been funded by the United States in the war against the Soviets, and the consequent civil was resulted in terrible devastation in the country.

Afghanistan had by far the largest refugee population in the world. Many of these refugees lived in terrible conditions in refugee camps in Pakistan, across the border. Eventually, the Taliban, which rose up out of those refugee camps, managed to consolidate power over most of the country. So by the year 2001, they had consolidated power over all except the Northeastern region of the country, which was still controlled by the Russian-backed Northern Alliance, a group of warlords.

America's allegiance with the anti-Russian factions in Afghanistan extended not only through the presidency of Carter, Reagan and the first President Bush, but also to the current Bush administration. In the spring of 2001, roughly at the same time John went to Afghanistan, Secretary of State Colin Powell personally announced a grant of $43 million to the Taliban government for opium eradication, which the New York Times then refers to as "a first cautious step towards reducing the isolation of the Taliban incoming by the new Bush administration." Secretary of State Powell released a press release in which he said "we will continue to look for ways to provide more assistance to the Afghans." This is the context in which John goes to Afghanistan.

When he did go into Afghanistan, John received infantry training at a government-run military training camp. But the training camp was funded by Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden really had two operations going on. One was to finance the Afghan army operations -- these training camps for infantry. But he also, as we all know now, had a terrorist organization under way, a highly secretive terrorist organization that we call al Qaeda.

Twice in the course of his training there, John actually saw Osama bin Laden and met him on one occasion. He came away from those encounters very skeptical about bin Laden because John recognized instantly that bin Laden was not an authentic Islamic scholar based on what John himself knows. In the course of John's subsequent criminal cases, attorneys hired a professor named Rohan Gunaratna. He is the world's leading authority on al Qaeda and author of the book "Inside al Qaeda."

Gunaratna has been employed by the U.N., but also by the government of the United States as an expert in al Qaeda, and he interviewed John extensively. After all these interviews, he made this following conclusion: "Those who, like Mr. Lindh, merely fought the Northern Alliance, cannot be deemed terrorists. Their motivation was to serve and to protect suffering Muslims in Afghanistan, not to kill civilians."

U.S. in Afghanistan post-9/11

After the September 11th attacks, the United States goes to war with Afghanistan. There's a period of one month in which the United States attempts to negotiate the extradition of bin Laden and his terrorist group. Those negotiations failed, and so, in October, almost a month later, the United States begins an invasion.

I wanted to introduce an important player in these events. It's a notorious Northern Alliance warlord named Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum had served as an officer in the Soviet-backed communist puppet government in Afghanistan. The New Yorker magazine last year said he was "perhaps Afghanistan's most notorious war lord," and he's viewed by most human rights organizations as among the worst war criminals in the country. Throughout the 1990s as well as during the U.S. invasion of 2001, Dostum was involved in numerous documented cases of torture and murder of prisoners of war. He dominates the area of North Central Afghanistan around the city of Masari Sharif.

In the period in late 2001, Taliban forces in Northern Afghanistan were overrun by the Northern Alliance forces after an aerial bombing by the United States. The American strategy was to use Northern Alliance troops as a proxy rather than commit American troops to the ground. This may have been a sound military strategy; however, it appears that the American generals who planned this invasion made no provision for the handling of the prisoners of war.

What happened as a consequence was the murder of thousands of Taliban prisoners by the Northern Alliance during the period of November and December of 2001, the same time when John's case comes to our attention. These war crimes have been documented by Physicians for Human Rights and in the mainstream media here in the United States, including a cover story in Newsweek magazine.

Capture in Afghanistan

Let us return now to the story of John. In early September, before the 11th, John arrived at the frontline in Tahar. The two armies there -- the Taliban army and the Northern Alliance army, were locked in an old-fashioned stalemate. John arrived, he was issued the standard rifle and two hand grenades and performed sentry duty there at the front. He never fired his weapons. After the American bombing campaign began in October, the line broke. Again, no American troops are here in Tahar, it's all Northern Alliance troops, but the American bombing happens.

The frontline breaks, the Taliban soldiers retreat to the capital of Tahar -- Kunduz. It's a confused retreat. Many of them are killed. If they're captured by the Northern Alliance, they're killed. There's a chilling series of pictures in the New York Times of a prisoner as he's taken, castrated and then killed. This is what John faced. He was very desperate and near dead by the time he got to Kunduz.

Then there's a deal made by General Dostum for safe passage of these prisoners from Kunduz to a city in the west called Herat, near the border of Iran. John is one of the 400 that are part of this deal with Dostum. They make this deal, and a large amount of money is given to Dostum in return for the safe passage. The only condition Dostum imposes is that the soldiers must give up their weapons before he'll allow them to pass through. So they give up the weapons and then immediately Dostum breaks the deal. He diverts the prisoners from their path into his fortress -- a place called Kuala Jungi. It's an old 15th- or 16th-century walled fortress near Mazari Sharif. And there all hell broke loose.

The next morning, John was brought out along with these other prisoners, with their hands tied behind their backs for interrogation. There are no American troops present here, but there are two American CIA agents, and they're doing the interrogation of the prisoners as they're brought out of the basement. Their arms are tied behind their backs at the elbow, and they are being very brutally abused by Dostum's troops. All of them are afraid that they are going to be killed by Gen. Dostum given his reputation.

John is struck in the back of the head with a rifle butt by one of the Northern Alliance troops as he's brought out of the basement just moments before some video was taken of John being interrogated by the two U.S. agents. They threatened John with death. John remained silent (Lindh believed the two agents were working for Dostum.) His only goal was to get to Herat so that he could get back to Pakistan.

Moments after this video is shot, the last of the remaining 400 or 500 prisoners, as they're brought out of the basement, jumped Dostum's guards, seized their weapons, and a melee broke out. Dostum's troops panic and begin to shoot down all the prisoners in the yard, most of them, like John with their hands and arms tied behind their backs. Dozens and dozens of these Taliban prisoners are killed on the spot. John gets up and starts to run. He is shot immediately in the thigh.

He lay on the ground there for 12 hours, pretending to be dead while the carnage continued around him. That night, some of the survivors managed to get back down into the basement of the building where they had been taken when they first were brought to the fortress. They went in among the dead and found the wounded and brought them down into the basement. John was one of them.

In the days that followed, there was a deliberate effort by Dostum, supported by the United States Special Forces, to simply exterminate all of the Taliban prisoners in the fortress. By the end of that week, most of them were dead. John and a group of them were still holed up. They were unarmed, they were wounded, and they were in the basement of the fortress. They dropped hand grenades down, they poured burning oil down. At one point, they attempted to drop a 1,000-pound bomb on the building, but it was misdirected and actually killed some of Dostum's troops, so they stopped with the bombing, but they continued to try to exterminate these prisoners.

There was a British journalist there named Luke Harding, and he wrote at the time that "Dostum's Northern Alliance and his British and American allies had only one plan: to kill all those in the compound." On Friday, the 30th of November, after six days, they flooded the basement with water from an irrigation stream and that killed many of the remaining soldiers down there in the basement. As Luke Harding wrote, "For those who had died, it had been a cold, terrifying, and squalid extinction." Harding wrote, "We had expected slaughter, but I was unprepared for its hellish scale."

Media storm

John was discovered among the 86 survivors of this massacre in the basement of the building, and he instantly became an international sensation. He was quickly dubbed the "American Taliban" in Newsweek magazine which initially broke the story. The coverage from the beginning was overwhelmingly negative and prejudicial, and falsely linked John with terrorism. After the prisoners emerged from the basement of the fortress, they were taken to Sheberghen -- a town nearby -- for medical treatment. They were all starving, they had nothing to eat the entire week. They were suffering from exposure, and pretty much all of them were wounded, including John.

John had the AK-47 bullet in his thigh and numerous shrapnel wounds. He was very near death when he arrived at Sheberghen. As he's lifted onto a gurney by attending medics, a CNN cameraman named Robert Pelton began to film John. The tape shows John saying to Pelton, "Look, you don't have my permission to film me. If you're concerned about my welfare, don't film me." The ethical thing to do at that point would have been to turn off the camera. But Robert Pelton did not do the ethical thing. He kept the camera running and the microphone on as John was interviewed.

The sensation that resulted from the CNN interview is difficult to describe. I think you probably all have seen it. The interesting thing about the CNN interview, from my perspective, is that it was completely exculpatory. He was injected with morphine, and of course then begins to talk, and he forgets about turning off the camera. He tells his story and it's completely exculpatory. He says everything that I've told you -- "I was in the Taliban army, I met bin Laden," and then all the terrible events around this massacre, but the effect in the United States at that time, given the post-9/11 mood, was just terrible. The effect of this video seemed to confirm people's suspicions that John was a terrorist.

It wasn't just the television media that caused this prejudice, it was the print media as well. Newsweek magazine published a terrible cover story saying that John had supported the 9/11 attacks. The tabloid media was on to the case as well. The National Enquirer, which appeared at grocery store checkout lines throughout the country, featured a cover story with John's picture saying "America's traitor tells all." But even worse than this coverage by the tabloids, I believe, was the treatment that John received in the mainstream media including the New York Times.

On Tuesday, the 11th of December 2001, the Times published a front page article above the fold featuring a very compelling photograph of the funeral of Mike Spann, the CIA agent who had been killed at Kuala Jungi at the uprising. The theme of the entire story was that John had fought against his country and had caused the death of Mike Spann.

Interestingly, directly alongside of this incredible damaging article on page 1 of the New York Times, there appeared a leading article that same day about the widespread killing of the Taliban prisoners by General Dostum and the Northern Alliance. The byline of the article was Sheberghen, the very place where John had been taken and filmed by the CNN crew. But the New York Times overlooked the fact that this was the context in which John had been found, that John was the fortunate survivor of a mass killing of prisoners by the Northern Alliance.

Mistreatment by the military

Upon his capture, John was quickly transferred from Dostum's custody to the custody of the U.S. military. I would have thought at that point that John was in safe hands, and John himself thought the same thing because he said so in a brief letter that he dictated to the Red Cross who visited him that first day. But an order, emanating directly from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, instructed the U.S. military to "take the gloves off" in the questioning of John Lindh.

Rumsfeld's order is documented in a letter that was provided to John's lawyers by the prosecutors, and it also has been reported as a front-page story in the L.A. Times. I do not want to dwell here on the military's mistreatment of my son, but I will say categorically that he was treated in a way that is shameful to our nation and its ideals. John's bullet wound was left festering and untreated; he was blindfolded and bound hand and foot with tight plastic strips that caused severe pain. He was stripped naked and duct-taped and, in this condition, blindfolded, bound naked to a stretcher and then left in the cold in an unheated metal shipping container on the desert floor in Afghanistan.

After one initial visit, the Red Cross was denied any further access to John. The letters I wrote to John through the Red Cross were never delivered to him. All of this conduct was in violation of the Geneva Conventions of war. It was beyond what any civilized nation should tolerate. Yet, despite the fact that the torture and abuse of John Lindh was fully disclosed in the press, there was no outcry here in the United States, so strong was the emotion at that time against this young man.

What I find most troubling about this treatment, however, was that it was completely gratuitous and unnecessary. John Lindh did not need to be tortured in order to tell American forces what he knew, where he had been and what he had seen. He was glad to be rescued, he had nothing to hide. I cannot fathom why the military would have felt it necessary to humiliate him in this way.

Prejudicial commentary

I would venture to say that never before in the history of this country has any criminal defendant been subject to anything approaching the kind of prejudicial statements made by officials in John's case. Interestingly, though, in the very beginning, when John was first captured, President Bush had a sympathetic response. He said, "I don't know what we're going to do with the poor fellow" in an interview with Barbara Walters. And he referred to him by name, he said, "John." Sen. John McCain had sympathetic words, and Sen. Orrin Hatch also said that he thought that John was on a spiritual quest. But after the CNN interview was aired, the whole mood shifted.

It was both parties, Republicans and Democrats. All of these statements were broadcast and covered in the national media and came into everyone's home in the country. In an Oval Office interview on December 21st, President Bush said, "Obviously Walker is unique in that he is the first American al Qaeda fighter we have captured."

John had never even heard of al Qaeda.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, in a nationally televised interview on "Meet the Press," calls John a "traitor." Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld says, "John Lindh was captured by U.S. forces with an AK-47 in his hands." Imagine the prejudice to John from such a false and inflammatory statement. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the same Colin Powell who had sent the money to Afghanistan in April says, "John Walker Lindh has brought shame upon his family." Former President George Herbert Walker Bush says this: "He's just despicable. I thought of a unique penalty: Make him leave his hair the way it is and his face as dirty as it is, and let him go wandering around this country and see what kind of sympathy he would get." This was on Good Morning America, December 19th.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, said that John was a "terrorist" who belonged to "an organization that took American lives and came against the American Constitution." Sen. McCain says, "I'd like to take him to Ground Zero, and show him Ground Zero and see how he feels after that." Rudy Giuliani was the person of the year in Time magazine, and what does he do with that bully pulpit? He says, "When you commit treason against the United States of America, particularly at time when the U.S. is in peril of a further attack, I believe the death penalty is the appropriate remedy to consider."

But the most prejudicial commentary of all came from Attorney General Ashcroft. He held two nationally televised press conferences in John's case. I have a copy of the New York Times, the page 1 article on the first of those conferences. This was on the 15th of February. Mind you, John is still overseas, still hasn't even had a chance to visit with his lawyer. He says, "We cannot overlook attacks on America when they come from United States citizens." This is announcing the criminal complaint against John. He's the leading prosecutor in the United States. The same day he says, "We may never know why he turned his back on our country and its values, but we cannot ignore that he did. Youth is not absolution for treachery, and personal self-discovery is not an excuse to take up arms against one's country."

In the second of these conferences, announcing the indictment, the attorney general says, "The reasons for his choices may never be fully known to us, but the fact of those choices is clear. Americans who love their country do not dedicate themselves to killing Americans." As any lawyer would know, it is a breach of professional ethics for a prosecutor to make prejudicial comments about a criminal defendant who is awaiting trial.

Criminal case

Then we get to the criminal case which the Boston Globe refers to as a "collapsed terror case." Initially, the government charged John with 11 criminal counts, most of terrorism-related charges such as supporting al Qaeda. In the end, the government dropped all of the terrorism-related charges in a plea bargain. The one charge that John pleaded guilty to was providing assistance to the Taliban government in violation of the economic sanctions that President Clinton had imposed.

I think it's clear that the government really had to stretch to find any criminal statute that John's conduct had actually violated. But for that one offense, and because he carried a weapon in the commission of the offense, John has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, and he's serving that sentence now in Southern California.

On the basis of the inherent unfairness, and also the fact that John has been a model prisoner from the beginning, John's lawyers have filed a petition with President Bush asking that John's sentence be commuted, and that petition is currently pending with the president.

Conclusions

Quickly, I have three conclusions that I have based on the facts of John's case. First, the rights we enjoy as citizens under the Constitution at times of war and national crisis, and they can be undermined by politicians and the media. Recall that every one of the government officials who I quoted took an oath of loyalty to the Constitution when they were sworn into office. And yet look how quick they were to disregard the Constitution in order to make rhetorical points about John Lindh.

As I tell law students when I speak with them about John's case, the Constitution of the United States does not live in a vault at the National Archives, the Constitution lives in our hearts, and it's up to us as people to maintain the values embedded in the Constitution. We cannot trust the politicians and the media to do the job for us. I think I have to say, too, that it was only the intervention of a courageous legal team, headed by Jim Brosnahan, that literally saved my son's life. I cannot even contemplate what might have happened if these lawyers had not stepped up to defend John.

I think it's clear that the United States really made a mistake in treating Taliban footsoldiers and the Afghan army as if they were al Qaeda terrorists. This was unjust in the eyes of the whole world, but especially among Muslims. And finally, I hope you will indulge me when I say that the mistreatment and the imprisonment of John Lindh was and is a human rights violation. It was based purely on an emotional response to the 9/11 attacks, and not on an objective assessment of John's case.

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American Journalism
Posted by: Poederbach on Jan 24, 2006 4:01 AM [Report this comment]
Reading John Linds story is a chilling experience. Reasons to believe why some bullying cowboys and their nodders are running the US is a complete abcense of main stream critical journalism and a well functioning Senate and Congres. The simplicity of denying any nuance but simply hold on to if you are not with us you are against us shows the level of thinking of a 6 years old spoiled child, and these people are judging John? A crital journalist is simplified to a traitor.
The second observation is that democracy in the US system is not working. To much uncontrolled lobbying and to much false emotions are involved. Even old Rome did better.
The US should wake up and realize that they are in a large Holywood set up, many can't make the distinction between fiction and civilized reality. Please wake up out of this night mare. For John I can only say he was very unlucky he was casted in the wrong plot. Hopefuly one day there will be someone that be a real Christian that shows him the other cheek and real justice (no entertainment) can be done. Some Holywood movies do have a happy end so there is hope.

Tom,
Amsterdam
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alternet readers know who the real terrorists are
Posted by: karyse on Jan 24, 2006 4:08 AM [Report this comment]
This is one of the most informative articles I've ever read on alternet. The only thing missing is a contact to send a "you are not forgotten" card from Amnesty International.
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A difficult subject to respond to but good to get the other side!
Posted by: Pepper on Jan 24, 2006 4:38 AM [Report this comment]
I guess first, I had read that John's father who wrote this was a corporate attorney at the time and supported GW Bush. Now I don't hold that against him, but I do think it makes his commentary even more powerful because of that fact. I am just curious what took him so long to come out of the dark to give the people the story?

Second of all, I am glad he has chosen to speak out now about the facts of this case and the number of charges that this gov had to drop or plea bargain. It means they had a weak case against him. It also shows the presumption of innocence is long dead and gone in this country.

Third, its a perfect example of the difference in treatment he received as an AMERICAN BEFORE the law was passed called the "Safety Enhancement Act" as opposed to afterward. Had this boy been arrested under the same circumstances under the new act as an AMERICAN, he would have been:

A. Stripped of his American citizenship, then because he is NOT an American, he would not have been afforded all the rights under the Constitution that he received in this case and

B. he would have languished in Gitmo or some other hellhole prison without benefit of counsel, without a trial, without contact with family or even knowledge as to which rendition he was relegated to in Europe or Some other torture country.

C. He may well have been tortured or killed and no one would be the wiser.

I believe his fathers commentary doesn't even begin to touch on the worst of what "could" have happened under this repressive nazi regime.

I am glad though to know there is documentation to the crimes committed by Rumsfeld against this prisoner and the instructions to torture. It will make the prosecution of this crazy piece of filth easier to conduct when the time comes.

I wish to thank his father for the other side of the story and to say that while I am sorry for the injustice his son has received at the hands of our placating press, weakkneed politicians on both sides of the aisle, that I am sorry he had to discover the rapid decline in our Constitutional republic in such a horrible way. I wish he could have seen it earlier like some of the rest of us back before we went into Afganistan.
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Freedom & Justice are just words in the USA
Posted by: mizipi on Jan 24, 2006 6:01 AM [Report this comment]
In October 1989 just a few weeks after the first Pres. Bush gave his War on Drugs speech and held crack cocaine on national TV, I was arrested in upstate New York and charged with smuggling cocaine into the US from Canada. The substance was styptic powder and amazingly it was in my toiletry bag. Under Zero Tolerance, everything except my driver's licence, car tag and the clothes on my back was confiscated. I was treated like a modern day prisoner in Iraq. No one believed me when I said I was innocent. My senators and my congressman refused to help me, even after it was proven by the state of New York that I had no drugs. I was thrown in jail and had my property seized, though I had never been convicted of a crime. No one cares about liberty and justice in our government. It took me months and several thousands of dollars to get my car and the contents in it. I was never apologized to. I was a poor redneck a long way from home and learned that our Constitution is just some words scribbled on a piece of paper a long time ago.
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» Notice that these words mean nothing under Bush administrations. Posted by: Pepper

[Lunatock]

And here's Pelton's opinion of Lindh and his motives. He also points out (the typo) about Lindh Sr. "smearing him in pubic".

Originally Posted by RYP

This is something I wrote in response to the recent PR campaign and articles by Frank Lindh Sr to ask for clemency for his son.


Lindh's Clemency Campaign Links:


http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...AGNKGQ4DS1.DTL

http://marinij.com/ci_3421029

http://www.alternet.org/story/31211/

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...=la-home-local





The Truth about John Walker Lindh

By Robert Young Pelton


John Walker Lindh aka John Walker aka Suleiman Ferris aka Abdul Hamid aka The American Taliban is a person that I will mostly likely to be associated for some time to come. I am sure on my obituary there will be a bombastic note that I was “the journalist who “discovered” Lindh after the battle at Qali Jangi” (the afghans have that dubious honor) Many have told me that Lindh’s story was a big deal back in the States. I will never know, I was in Afghanistan covering combat operations with in the ongoing war against the Taliban for CNN so I will never have the chance to the get the full impact of finding an American professing his love for the Taliban.

To me Lindh was just an unpleasant arrogant kid who preferred to stay with his murdering friends. He was in the fact, the second Irish-American Jihadi I have met and interviewed. The first one was a one-legged psychopath who had been trained in the same camps and had fought in Kashmir, Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya and Liberia gave me his opinion. When I called him to discuss Lindh’s hejira, Aqil Collins simply called Lindh “a *****”. When I returned from Afghanistan I was quite aware of the outrage he had caused. I only did interviews in which I spoke positively about Lindh in a deliberate effort not to influence his pending case. Privately I warned his lawyers to keep me off the witness stand because I would send their little Johnny to prison. Wisely Lindh copped a plea and I was spared months of inconvenience. Some people wanted a trial to get to the bottom of Lindh’s nefarious activties, among them the grieving family of Mike Spann. Lindh’s plea bargain denied them and the country of that truth finding.

So it was left to me to set the record straight. My decades of travels with jihadis and terrorists, my time with both the Taliban leadership, the Northern Alliance aka the United Front, Dostum’s forces and and based on my time spent during and after talking to the players involved with Qali Jangi leads me to believe that I am uniquely qualified to pass judgment on Lindh and to accurately describe who he was and what he was doing there. Now that Lindh’s father has decided to wrongly blame me for his son’s misery and seek clemency under false pretences, I feel its time to reveal the truth.

Quite simply in my opinion, Lindh was a terrorist, a member of what we call al qaeda and a man who chose to stay with killers even though he was afforded numerous opportunities to separate himself from his murderous associates. Twenty years in jail may be a blessing compared to how many of his friends have been dealt with since.

Frank Lindh cannot be blamed for the emotions behind his need to reinvent history or doing what he can to get his son out of jail. But he is lying. His son did not “love America”, he fought for bin Laden against us, his son is not “honest”, he lied to his parents and others. His son is not a “decent” young man; he trained to be a murderer. His son went to kill strangers in a stranger land. A spiritual quest? What part of grenades and AK 47’s can be described as spiritual? What part of patriotism is eating bin Laden’s food, listening to Usama’s droning hate-filled speeches against America and sitting obediently within strangling distance of our greatest single enemy? To think that the American public is that stupid is an insult. John Walker Lindh was an Arab speaking member of bin Laden’s terror legions. He called it Al Ansar (the correct term) we call them al Qaeda. He was never a member of the Taliban. Why because Lindh only spoke Arabic and English he would have been useless in a combat situation among Pashto or Dari speaking troops. I have seen Taliban ID cards and spent time with bin Laden’s “055 Brigade, “al Ansar” members and al qaeda. Lindh was exactly the person we were trying to kill in Afghanistan and now around the world. An educated, idealistic young Muslim who chose murder of innocent people as his path in life. He is no different that Mohamed Atta, Zarqawi or thousands of other terrorists that come from nice middle class families.

The elder Lindh would have us believe that somehow America supported what his son and bin laden did at one time. Pure invention. Osama bin Laden never received any US CIA funding, he channeled Saudi money into what was then called the Office of Services and then into his own ventures. Yes the Taliban were mujahids but their draconian regime and support of bin laden made them pariahs long before Lindh went there. Later in the post Soviet era of Afghanistan the CIA would pay Massoud money to try and kill Bin Laden. John Lindh went there to kill the members of Massouds’ fighters. When the war broke out there was no clearer distinction of “with us or against us” than the forces of bin laden and the Taliban against the combined Afghan forces we called “the Northern Alliance. Lindh was on Bin Laden's side against us. Period. End of conversation.

I agree with Frank Lindh that perhaps his son’s timing sucked. Johnny's perverse need to run around Afghanistan looking to murder other Muslims would not have been that big a deal pre 9/11. Once he and his Arab jihadi friends heard on their BBC shortwave radio broadcasts that the US was coming…Well only the dumbest or the most resolutely criminal were going to stay for what was going to be a high tech, high ordnance ass whupping. Lindh chose to stay. He watched America’s B52 contrails in the sky, he felt the destruction American bombs dealt his friends and yet he stayed with his terrorist friends. When he fled to Kunduz he again chose to stay with his murdering friends and when a small group of foreign jihadis was chosen for a Hail Mary suicide mission to nearby Mazar i Sharif. Lindh was on board.

What you say? I thought poor Abul Hamid (Lindh's “jihad” name) was fleeing his evil master and seeking help. No. The group of around 460 jihadis that left Kunduz towards Mazar i Sharif were on their way to link up with Mullah Dadullah (now the leader of the Taliban military) in Balkh (just west of Mazar) and then attack the city while the US and Afghan forces were tied up in Kunduz monitoring the surrender. Yes, thousands of fighters did surrender peacefully but Lindh again chose to associate with a rag tag group of die-hards led by one of bin Laden’s lieutenants; Abdul Aziz, as well as the hardest core terrorists that comprised Saudi, Uzbek, Iraqi, Russian, Sudanese, Yemeni and Pakistani jihadis.

This group was stopped heading west early in the morning and had an armed standoff with afghan and US forces. (Yes Lindh’s group was fully armed during their purported “surrender” and they had no good reason to explain why they not going east towards Pakistan). The stand off was tense until bombers appeared overhead. Dostum drove by on his way to Kunduz and told them to be disarmed and taken to his garrison called Qali Jangi. Lindh during that entire time was within feet of western journalists and US forces and could have simply identified himself as an American. But he chose to stay in the company of killers. Lindh also knew that his cohorts were still secretly armed with pistols, rifles and even grenades tied by shoelaces and dangling around their groin area. A place where they knew Afghans dare not pat down.

The Uzbek terrorists among Lindh’s group were ecstatic. Qali Jangi was where they had trained under the Taliban and the storage rooms of garrison were literally overflowing with weapons confiscated and stored by the Taliban.

Upon arrival one of the Uzbeks immediately killed himself with a grenade while trying to murder what he thought was Dostum. It was Dostum's Intel officer (who survived) and a Hazara general was killed. This event was filmed and once again, despite the presence of western media and the casual atmosphere (prisoners were even being interviewed by CNN and others), Lindh refused to identify himself or ask for help.

Terrified and outnumbered by the false surrender the Afghan guards (there were only about 100 guards for the 460 prisoners) pushed the killers down into the basement of a fortified schoolhouse until they could be searched in the morning. That night in the cramped five-room basement there was an angry and desperate argument among the prisoners. The Saudis and Uzbeks planned an attack; they just needed a diversion to get to the weapons stored a few yards from the pink schoolhouse. The Pakistanis wanted to just surrender and go home. According to the survivors I interviewed, Lindh was an Arab speaking al qaeda member and had full knowledge of this discussion and he has yet to admit which path he was going to choose. Some insist that Lindh was among the main proponents of this violent action. I was not in that basement so I don’t know what happened. What I do know is that Lindh’s actions the next day would provide the damning answer.

The next morning two CIA officers went to Qali Jangi to interview the prisoners. Mike Spann and Dave Tyson arrived in separate vehicles. Tyson spoke a number of languages but Spann only spoke English. The prisoners were brought up one at a time. They were searched, bound with their turbans and then marched into lines inside the southern courtyard. Spann walked up and down the lines of prisoners. He asked an Iraqi mechanic who spoke English if there were any other prisoners who spoke English. The Iraqi pointed out the “Irishman”. Lindh had been told to say he was Irish in the camps to avoid problems. Spann had Lindh brought over away from the main group and put out a blanket for him. Spann and Tyson tried to talk to Lindh. Mike even calls him "Irish". Away from his peers Lindh just stares down. Mike pleads with Lindh to talk. Lindh remains hostile and silent.

Spann and Tyson play a clumsy game of “good cop, bad cop”. But one thing is clear; they offer Lindh a way out. Lindh is alone with two of his fellow countrymen with full knowledge of the violence that is about to happen. He says nothing. If there was ever one moment that will define one man and damn another this was it. Lindh is put back into the lineup and Mike Spann will die in the next few minutes as Uzbeks rush up from the basement, yelling Allahhuakbar detonate hidden grenades. The fighting begins. Lindh has once again has been given a clear choice between right and wrong and once again. He makes that clear choice again.

It is not know what Lindh and his fellow terrorists did for the next few days while fighting raged and Mike Spann’s still body lay there. Two Ak 47 bullet holes through his head. One straight down and one from left to right. When the afghan Commander Fakir used pleading, threats, then finally flame, explosions and flooding, to roust the killers, the first person that came up to negotiate on behalf of the jihadis was John Walker Lindh. The same murderous group that had shot and killed a clearly identified elderly Red Cross worker who went down to look for bodies a week earlier.

I had asked Dostum to bring me the prisoners. I wanted to interview and meet these men. At around midnight after Lindh and his 85 friends surrendered, two open trucks showed up filled with shivering, screaming jihadis. One truck load was unloaded in front of me. I photographed and talked to the men while a group of Special Forces soldiers watched from a distance, their guns at the ready. This was not the first false surrender they had suffered. One truck was full of moaning and crying men. Way in the back sat John Walker Lindh. He slowly hides from view in my series of photographs. Once he had a chance to identify himself and surrender but he chose to stay in the company of killers

A few minutes later Dostum’s cameraman runs into the living room and says there is an American. He shows me an image of Lindh repeating his name” John” on his Panasonic camera. My first impression is that whoever this American is, he needs help. Fast. I ask the Special Forces medic if he will bring his medical bag and come with me. We jump into a truck and I along with my cameraman and some SF team members go into the triage room. The doctor is whacking Lindh on the head trying to talk to him. I motion for the doctor to back off and ask if I can ask the questions. I clearly identify myself to Lindh as working for CNN. Frank Lindh ignores the fact that all my initial questions are about his son’s health and if he wanted to contact his loved ones. Lindh Jr (who calls hims self "Abdul Hamid" and "John Walker" repeatedly states that he is not. I move him to a private room so the medic can examine him properly. Downstairs the doctors hate these people. They have just murdered their compatriots in cold blood there will be no pity for the men left downstairs. They are all now dead or in Gitmo. Lindh will be the lucky one.

Upstairs Lindh and despite our attempts to improve his condition, he was yet again rude, arrogant and unhelpful. I still press him for someone to contact. He refuses. He is being given gentle medical care by a US medic who was busy killing his murderous friends a few days earlier. There is a myth that morphine somehow forces Lindh to talk. But his statements (some of them true and some of them false) begin well before and are consistent until I turn off my camera and tell him to sleep. I clearly identify to Lindh when he is given morphine (happy juice) and I ask no leading questions. My interest is simply understand who is he is and how he got there. In fact the reason Lindh talks to me is because he senses that I know about jihad, Muslims and his cause. He even asks me if I am a Muslim. I know jihadis and I know jihad. On tape I ask him if it is Ok for Muslims to kill other Muslims. He brushes me off saying the Koran deals with this. Finally I ask him what he thinks of his condition and decisions. He is unrepentant.

Despite his attitude and affections. I gave Lindh tea and cookies and once again ask him if he wants to contact his parents. He refuses. Finally I let him sleep and decide to take him home with me for his own safety. One of the special forces men, fresh from three weeks in combat, gave up his room so that Lindh could sleep in his bed.

The next morning he is taken to the Turkish School, rested, attended to and dressed in a clean pair of pajamas and out of my control. I know what happened to Lindh after that because I met some of the Marines that did it. He could have suffered much worse.

For an entire month I called Lindh’s parents and lawyers to provide the details of his capture and events surrounding the uprising. They refuse to call me back but his mother had time to chastise a gossip columnist for criticizing her relationship with her lawyer. During Lindh’s 15 minutes of fame, I respect my responsibility as a working journalist for CNN and do nothing that would influence his case. Despite my dark knowledge I tell his lawyers to keep me out of it. They play games and still I refuse. They smear me in pubic as an agent of the government and harass me in private. The waste $64,000 or CNN’s money and work the media to present me as a greedy story hungry freelance. I have made no additional money from Lindh’s story and never will. Now that Lindh’s father is now blaming me for his “exculpatory” interview and has restarted the negative spin. The gloves are off. The truth will prevail.

I don’t think about the evening of December 1 2001 that much. I continue to cover conflict and the actors within but on a recent motorcycle trip from the east coast to the west coast, I found myself passing through Victorville close to where "Johnny Taliban" is staying. The cold dirty wind and high mountain air reminded me of Afghanistan. I thought about Lindh, felt the air on my face and wondered how lucky Lindh is to be still alive. A privilege that Mike Spann, a real hero and American patriot will never have due to John Walker Lindh’s duplicity.

So for Mike’s sake, don't let Frank Lindh's PR and legal campaign change the fact that his son was the exactly the kind of person that fly aircraft into buildings, blow up American troops in Iraq and kill innocent Muslims on their "spiritual journey" to paradise. He was and is a terrorist.

To hell with John Walker Lindh and his murderous ilk. They have done nothing to advance the cause of Muslims and they have caused a world of heartbreak in their arrogant pursuit of senseless death. To support Lindh Sr’s naïve and false view of his son and his actions furthers that dark vision.





END

[Dreadnought]

He should have been hung. But with any luck the guys in prison will take care of him.

[Lunatock]

Originally Posted by Dreadnought

He should have been hung. But with any luck the guys in prison will take care of him.

He should be so lucky as to have gotten jump by Aryan Nation members at least once. That'd be a vacation compared to what Rashid Dostum would of done if he was given custody of johnny boy.

Not to mention Zell Miller was barred from taking him out back and wasting a perfectly good bullet.

[Amled]

There are times when the American judicial system, to outside appearances seems to break down.
Self-admitted serial killers are allowed to cop a plea if they "co-operate" with the authorities, and are give life imprisonment instead of the death penalty.
Traitors like Aldrich Ames; whose actions is said to have caused more then a dozen deaths, are allowed to cop a plea. Now Lindh, who fought against his own countrymen, is allowed the same.
You have the death penalty over there, and there are some crimes that deserve it. Ames and Lind are the perfect examples thereof.

[Aryan]

That was a good read, cheers luna.

[Kid<2>Nite]

Originally Posted by Dreadnought

He should have been hung. But with any luck the guys in prison will take care of him.

John is struck in the back of the head with a rifle butt by one of the Northern Alliance troops

Agreed! And if I had any say in the matter, the imbecile that used the wrong end of a weapon would have been marched back to training camp with pink underwear over his head.

[Wooglin]

Originally Posted by Amled

There are times when the American judicial system, to outside appearances seems to break down.
Self-admitted serial killers are allowed to cop a plea if they "co-operate" with the authorities, and are give life imprisonment instead of the death penalty.
Traitors like Aldrich Ames; whose actions is said to have caused more then a dozen deaths, are allowed to cop a plea. Now Lindh, who fought against his own countrymen, is allowed the same.
You have the death penalty over there, and there are some crimes that deserve it. Ames and Lind are the perfect examples thereof.

It looks that way from inside as well. There's no doubt that there are times when it does break down. The plea bargaining bothers me less than the times it let's the guilty walk free though.