Negotiate with the Taliban, Free John Walker Lindh?
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President Barack Obama has made it clear he is willing to talk with “moderate” members of the Taliban in an attempt to gain control — and perhaps bring to an end — the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. Afghan President Karzai has been reportedly negotiating with members of the Taliban for a year and according to one recent report, is opening dialogue with key al-Qaeda linked insurgents there. If the U.S joins Karzai in communicating with Taliban who might have harbored and trained with al Qaeda prior to the 9/11 attacks, does that mean we can now spare John “American Taliban” Walker Lindh another 15 years of prison?
Has enough time gone by that I won’t be considered “un-American” for even suggesting it?
There have been mixed reviews, but the enormous buzz around the possibility of negotiating with Taliban elements hints that it will happen on some level, and in fact today there is a report quoting senior administration officials saying that is exactly what we plan to do.
Aside from acknowledging the failure of previous approaches, the new spirit of negotiation underscores the real bootprint that Gen. David Petraeus has left on military thinking in Washington today, as evidenced by President Obama when he recently justified his willingness to talk to the enemy:
“If you talk to Gen. [David H.] Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of al-Qaida in Iraq.”
Petraeus accomplished the stabilization of the horrific security situation in Iraq in part by putting the Sunni insurgency on the U.S payroll, arming some 90,000 fighters to drive al Qaeda from Anbar. It took three years and more than 2,200 U.S soldier deaths to settle on this path. His “victory” in Iraq has allowed for what we are now seeing as the fashionable approach: “peeling off” enemy elements through co-optation and concession.
So it’s no surprise then that Petraeus devotees on the Right are much less bombastic now over the possibility of Obama talking to the Taliban. It’s not like they’re Iranian. Here’s what Ed Morrissey, a favorite on HotAir.com, had to say about it last week:
It’s worth exploring, however, and if we can peel off significant numbers from the Taliban and reconcile them to the Karzai government (and whatever follows in the upcoming elections), it will go a long way towards isolating the dead-enders, making it easier to defeat them. In the end, as in Iraq, this is a political problem, and eventually will require a political solution.
So what about John Walker Lindh?
Now a 28-year-old serving out a 20-year sentence in the Federal Correction Facility in Indiana for fighting alongside the Taliban, Lindh’s case looks less crystal clear on this side of the protracted Afghanistan war, so far removed from the emotional intensity of the country in early 2002 when the suburban white kid was first picked up on the Afghan battlefield and became the ultimate repository for all the post-9/11 American rage, fear, revenge and yes, extreme intolerance and hate that had been generated since the attacks. Nothing less than his dead, skinny alabaster body waving from one of the cranes at Ground Zero would satisfy the virtual mob in the blogosphere, fueled by comments by our own elected officials, who had him convicted, and in some cases, frying on a chair, before he even stepped inside a courtroom.
What remains of the whole strangely unnerving affair is a much less convincing indictment in retrospect. Strip away all of the emotion and conjecture and gasbaggery on the political Right, add in all we’ve learned about the Bush Administration over the last seven years — the accusations of torture, the legal mishandling of detainee prosecutions, secret renditions, Abu Ghraib, the double-talk and grandstanding — and what you have is a case that might have been the ultimate canary in the coalmine.
After all, federal prosecutors — so sure that Lindh had been al Qaeda and plotting to kill Americans — were nonetheless forced to plea bargain down from 10 charges to two, sending Lindh away only for his Taliban connections. Nothing in his conviction includes treason or terrorism or the al Qaeda treachery he had been tarred with by the court of public opinion.
But this was 2002 — pre-Pat Tillman, pre-Jessica Lynch — Americans never questioned whether it was appropriate for the head of the Justice Department and trusted elected officials — including President George W. Bush – to declare Walker al Qaeda, even accuse him of treason and allude to possible execution, all while the man was allegedly still drugged and bound in a metal shipping container overseas and hadn’t even seen his lawyer yet.
Surely Michael Chertfoff, then head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, knew the situation was potentially volatile, and that is is why he encouraged the plea deal for Lindh, effectively knocking off the most serious of charges against him. The deal effectively gagged Lindh from talking about what happened in that shipping container on the Arabian Sea, where he was held incommunicado, without a lawyer, and where he allegedly gave the FBI the information it needed to prosecute his case. Lindh’s lawyers say he was treated like an animal and Lindh was ready to tell it on the stand — the government, which denied Lindh had been mistreated and had given up self-incriminating evidence under duress — apparently didn’t want to take the chance.
(Of course the mainstream media at the time were incurious as ever, willing to soft-pedal this startling plea agreement as a positive outcome for the prosecution.)
What is known publicly, from his own admission (see the infamous CNN interview here) and from subsequent family testimony, is that American-born Lindh — a Muslim convert at the age of 16 while living in white bread Orange County — traveled to Pakistan in 2000 to indulge his faith, got swept up in the fundamentalist cause to purify Afghan Muslims by joining the jihad and took up arms with the Taliban against the “infidel” Northern Alliance. He trained in camps that were allegedly funded and run by Osama bin Laden, who was leading the fight in Afghanistan, and fought for a Taliban arm called “Ansar” with other foreign fighters, mostly Arabs, from July 2001 to when he was picked up in a Mazar-e-Sharif prison in December 2002 in the early phase of the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom.
The Northern Alliance was serving as our proxy after the initial US bombing of Afghanistan in October 2001. Lindh’s defense was he had taken up arms in a Holy War against the Northern Alliance months before 9/11 and it had nothing to do with America. It fell on deaf ears. Folklore of Lindh’s anti-Americanism, his gay father, his tortured childhood, began to form with lightening speed (to this day it is difficult to parse fact from conflation among all the Internet reports). The CNN interview, conducted while Lindh was on a stretcher, under the influence of morphine, coupled with the surreal circumstances of his capture, fueled U.S public outcry against him and pretty much sealed his fate within days.
“I started to read some of the literature of the scholars and the history of the movement, and … my heart became attached to the movement. I wanted to help them one way or another,” Lindh told CNN in a strange accent unfamiliar to his fellow Californians. He never wavered in this explanation, though, giving a similar statement upon his conviction and sentencing almost a year later.
Furthermore, despite fierce lobbying from the Right, it was never been proven that Walker had anything to do with the death of CIA agent Johnny Spann, one of two CIA agents on the scene in Mazar-e-Sharif. Spann had just interrogated Walker, who was uncooperative and wouldn’t reveal that he was American, when two Taliban prisoners lobbed grenades and launched a melee between prisoners and captors. Spann was shot and killed almost immediately. Walker, who told the CNN reporter afterward that he had nothing to do with the uprising, was shot in the thigh as he was running away, according to reports. He was picked up days later by the Americans, huddled in the basement with other Taliban survivors.
Spann’s grieving family had pushed hard for the death penalty in Walker’s case and are still involved in making sure his sentence is never reduced. They and others are convinced that Walker could have warned Spann about the planned riot when he was being interrogated and deliberately chose not to.
These and other elements of the federal case against Walker we may never know. We have his family’s story, which has been circulating in recent years as they fight for his early release. Just this week, restrictions on Lindh in prison have been eased and might lead to Lindh telling his story for the first time.
We may never know whether the government had a truly solid case against Lindh, but had blown its chances to prosecute it because of the use of potentially illegal interrogation techniques.
In the end, Obama’s negotiations with the Taliban may have no dramatic effect on Lindh whatsoever. He may just serve out the rest of his time in a cell, where I’m sure many if not most Americans believe is where he belongs anyway. But if it’s perfectly reasonable to negotiate with the Taliban today, does not a jailed foot soldier — that’s what Lindh was convicted as — deserve similar consideration? The Taliban elements in Afghanistan we enjoin will certainly enjoy the fruits of concession — perhaps land and sovereignty, even the release of prisoners. That is much, much more than anything the state would do for John Walker Lindh, our “American Taliban.”
UPDATE: Another view. This was written in 2006 by Robert Young Pelton, the writer who interviewed Lindh for CNN at Mazar-e-Sharif. I interviewed Pelton for “Hired Guns” in 2007 for TAC. He wrote License to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror, an intense insider view of the private contracting industry in Iraq and Afghanistan and he has traveled extensively throughout the region with the CIA, the military and private contractors, so he knows his stuff when it comes to the insurgent gangs in Afghanistan at the time Lindh was there. He said it was time to “reveal the truth about Lindh,” and claimed earlier, kinder observations of Lindh, whom he once described as “polite, apologetic — and utterly out of his element,” were designed so as not to “influence his pending case.”
Filed under: Foreign policy, Iraq, War
I enjoyed listening to the late Tony Snow, when he spoke on tv, and I enjoyed his insight and gentle humor.
Then one day, he stood in front of George Bush and said that anyone who disagreed with the President’s desire to give amnesty to illegal aliens, was either racist or having their judgement clouded by being “overly angry”.
I was so sorry for him and his family, as he got sick and passed away. But I never regained my respect for him as a journalist, nor for Bush’s efforts relating to the border.
You said, “…became the ultimate repository for all the post-9/11 American rage, fear, revenge and yes, extreme intolerance and hate that had been generated since the attacks. Nothing less than his dead, skinny alabaster body waving from one of the cranes at Ground Zero would satisfy the virtual mob in the blogosphere, fueled by comments by our own elected officials, who had him convicted, and in some cases, frying on a chair, before he even stepped inside a courtroom.” Now we know how you picture any of the American public who disagree with you.
You said, “…at the age of 16 while living in white bread Orange County — traveled to Pakistan in 2000 to indulge his faith, got swept up in the fundamentalist cause to purify Afghan Muslims by joining the jihad and took up arms with the Taliban against the “infidel” Northern Alliance. He trained in camps that were allegedly funded and run by Osama bin Laden…”. “Allegedly”? “Swept up”? Um, this is 2009. He was 16 in 2000. Now he’s 28? Check your math and/or honesty.
You said, “…a jailed foot soldier — that’s what Lindh was convicted as…”. Um, excuse me. I think taking up arms, for an American, to fight against the US, is high treason. Nobody reasonable cares what his sypathies were.
Contributing to the death of an American agent.
If a driver pulls up in front a bank, and his buddies go rob it, and they kill somebody, that driver is EQUALLY GUILTY OF MURDER. Let’s hope that driver makes a deal with the prosecution, to spare his life by telling on his buddies. In which case they will try to hide him from the public, and keep his testamony secret.
You said, “…might lead to Lindh telling his story for the first time.
We may never know whether the government had a truly solid case against Lindh…”.
Is he brain-damaged? Has his family been in communication with him? Has he access to attornies? Kelley Vlahos, you are implying that the government is preventing him from telling his story, and will prevent him from talking in the future. Do you have any evidence, except a general hate of the Bush administration?
Examine first, why people are incarcerated:
#1 – to disrupt the criminal act taking place
#2 – to prevent the same person from doing it again
#3 – to punish that person for committing the crime
#4 – to make the punishment serve as an example to prevent others from performing similar crime
#5 – to legitimately act out public anger upon the individual who committed the crime
Do you notice that ONLY ONE of the above items (#3), actually require the guy to be guilty?
To get someone out of jail, you have to construct a scapegoat, but NEVER EVER use accusations against the public, the jury, or the officials who put him there.
Instead, tell us what a good guy he was before he went off to kill people. Tell us how sorry he is. Tell us how he wants to help the US stop the brutality in the mid-east. Tell us he won’t commit further crime. Tell us what positive effect he will have on society, in the future.
Your patently dishonest piece did not deal with any of these latter points, and probably hurt his case for early release.
TomT : Thank you for your reply.
You said, regarding my thoughts on whether JWL will have a chance to tell his story,”Kelley Vlahos, you are implying that the government is preventing him from telling his story, and will prevent him from talking in the future. Do you have any evidence, except a general hate of the Bush administration?”
Indeed, the terms of JWL’s incarceration include restrictions on who he sees and what he can say regarding his case.
According to the AP yesterday:
http://rr.com/security/security/article/9001/7178502/Feds_to_ease_restrictions_on_American_Taliban
“Federal prison officials are easing restrictions on American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh, moves that his attorney said Wednesday will allow Lindh to tell his story for the first time. U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokesman Dean Boyd said the restrictions on Lindh, 28, will expire Friday. He said the current limits Lindh faces are not public and he cannot discuss them.
Although former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft first imposed restrictions on Lindh in March 2002, Boyd said they have been modified several times as “the perceived threat of Lindh’s communications diminished.”
Secondly, if you read my post and the corresponding links, Lindh was not convicted of “taking up arms … to fight against the US.” That was my point.
Thirdly, JWL was never convicted with “contributing to the death of an American agent”
As for the age confusion — JWL had converted when he was 16. He traveled to Pakistan for the first time when he was 17 in 1998 — according to his father — and then the second and last time in 2000.
The Journalist Peter Bergen wrote a good piece recently about why hopes of a rapprochement with the Taliban will be forlorn. Karzai has been in talks with them for years. There is no one Taliban and they have little reason or desire to negotiate while the tide of History is on their side.
The Lindh question is interesting. Would he in fact want to go back? Would any faction in the region want him? He’s small fry but it seems to me that he was convicted under US criminal; law. To barter him away to a foreign movement that we don’t recognize as a government would be problematic at best. For one thing, it would constitute an admission that he was a combatant not a criminal. Perhaps he could renounce his citizenship to effect an exchange. I doubt any administration would entertain the propaganda defeat of letting Lindh go to pursue jihad in exchange for, the goodwill of the Taliban.
If memory serves, Lindh joined the Taliban when they were not in hostility with the US and while we officially recognized them as the government of Afghanistan. Of course taking up arms in a foreign army used to be understood to be a renunciation of citizenship. Sadly, we have gotten away from this sensible rule, hence the President’s Chief of Staff. Perhaps we could trade him to the Taliban instead. (just kidding)
John Walker Lindh was captured engaged n making war against U.S. forces and its allies. He was captured on a battlefield in a foreign country and as such is not entitled to “Miranda” or any other constitutional rights. JWL willingly took up arms for a foreign government or organization. In so doing he forfeited all his rights of citizenship — look it up. Besides the Constitution stops at the US border.
He was though entitled to be humanely treated and he has been. In any other era, JWL would have been prosecuted under rule 5.56 and no one would have ever heard of him, at least while he was alive.
Nope — JWL needs to stay right where he is.
Mike, so Rahm E is not a citizen? You’re right he shouldn’t be but obviously things have changed.
According to the AP at
http://rr.com/security/security/article/9001/7178502/Feds_to_ease_restrictions_on_American_Taliban
“…a scheduled release date of May 23, 2019″
You said, “…does that mean we can now spare John “American Taliban” Walker Lindh another 15 years of prison?” The mistake, or “confusion”, was that we forgot to factor in “good time”. Or maybe the math thing again.
I appreciate the civil tone of your reply to me, probably much better than my own. But you completely fail, as does this AP story, to explain why JWL can’t “tell his story” to his attornies, or to his family.
Follow me for a minute: it is of national security that we keep a “standard enemy foot soldier” from revealing his secrets to his fellow soldiers?
Or could we say, we are only gagging him to keep him from revealing misconduct on the part of US officials, but now we’re about to let him say anything he wants to anyone he wants?
Or maybe, it’s okay for the people at Gitmo to tell their personal stories, and get periodic chances for review and to add new evidence, but… JWL?
Moot point. He will be telling us the truth, soon. Or, he won’t, in which case you’ll be free to invent a BUSH CONSPIRACY, to explain why he won’t satisfy your curiosity.
Lindh joined the Taleban when they were getting US aid for cracking down on heroin. If it makes him a traitor to join such a group, then what does that make the government which is sending them money?
I’m not so sure how relevant this is, but I was an expert witness on the Lindh defense team before he pleaded guilty. In my opinion, for what it’s worth, Lindh was little more than a polite, shy, and confused boy who possessed virtually no political sophistication. As both Kelley and Thomas Meehan have noted, he enlisted with the Taliban before they were at war with the US. He clearly was not involved in the death of Mike Spann and there is no evidence that he so much as fired a shot against US forces at any time. That said, as has been noted by several above, he forfeited his rights as a US citizen when he joined the Taliban. If that is so, he should perhaps be judged in the same way as any other low level Taliban recruit picked up at that time. I presume they have mostly been freed. There is a double standard operating here where we are calling him an American so we can try him and hold him in jail while also insisting that he is no longer a citizen.
The whole Jihad in Afganistan got started and was funded by the USA (Charlie Wilson’s War) under Carter and continuted under Reagan to get the USSR out of Afganistan. Some how it never occured to the US that after the Soviet infidels were removed that the Taliban and Bin Laden might like to remove ALL infidels from Moslem lands. But the this is the same country which for a time supported the Khymer Rouge because they were opposed the Hanoi government. It would help if our soldiers would take their oath of enlistment more seriously. The part about defending the constitution against ALL enemies foreign AND domestic. Bush in his trampling of our constitution was an enemy combant, and should be tried and jailed. At the proud start of the American exeperiment in democracy we delared rightly that ALL men are created equal. Doesn’t matter where they are born, or what religious views they hold. Would Christ have had Ceasers soldiers force fed?
Hi Kelley,
The basic concept is that the fed case was badly bungled (lindh was a member of al qaeda), his parents were deeply deluded (A muslim Lindh went to Afghanistan to kill muslims) and his lawyer maintains this bizarre PR program seeking to reinvent Lindh as the second coming of Christ. (see the Esquire, recent GQ and spoon fed Jane Mayer article)
The reality is that Lindh was an adult, he knew what he was doing at all times, he was defiant even in defeat and he chose to take the plea bargain. He could have saved Mike Spann’s life because he knew what was about to happen at Qali Jangi and even before that he could have asked U.S. forces or western media on location for help at any time. He chose to stay with killers and he now is paying the price. As a parent I understand the Lindh’s distress but as a moral human being who has walked through the brains and shredded human cadavers created by John Walker’s Lindh’s chosen group. Its hard to feel pity for someone who deliberately chose to join such a violent nihilistic group.
I hope the time in prison makes him appreciate life not death and when he gets out the first thing he does is personally ask for forgiveness from Mike Spann’s father… and perhaps the hundreds of other Afghan’s and westerners his group of foreign mercenaries murdered.
I ordered a book written by the legal adviser to the FBI on interrogation tactics For Lindh It called “Canary in the Coalmine” good book it says the persecution went beyond John to her Jesselyn Radack Former right wing Republican Justice department lawyer. Read it the story will shock you.
Phillip Giraldi and Robert Young Pelton. I hope the rest of us appreciate the benefit of having knowledgeable commentors such as yourselves on this site.
Hi Robert — Thank you for weighing in on this. As you probably noted, I affixed your 2006 piece to the original post as an update. I think there is an amount of curiosity here regarding the plea deal and JWL’s final conviction, which do not include charges involving the death of Agent Spann or being a member of al Qaeda. Would appreciate your insights sometime on whether the government had a strong enough case or whether other factors, i.e harsh interrogation techniques, played a role.
Some of your posters seem to be of the school,”Kill’em all and let Allah sort out the good ones”. There is still that same sort of presumption of extreme guilt toward Lindh that was applied to all the prisioners at Guantanamo. I was in the Army many years ago and didn’t know of a plot to kill all the people in a small village until after it had happened. A platoon from my company did the shooting. Your Arm Chair Rambos are too quick to convict based on “guilt by association”. I clearly remember how surprised I was when reading in the news that the Justice Department had to wait on the White House to determine what sentence would be applied. The White House became involved for political purposes, quite like at GITMO and the show trials of American citizens like Jose Padilla.
Considered? You ARE un-American, as is this publication.
Aarky Newman. Speaking only for myself, I find Lindh guilty of the one thing that is incontestable. He took up arms in another nations/factions cause. That’s disloyal. As to the other allegations, I leave that to the lawyers and experts.
It’s time we extend an invitation to the Taliban, to emigrate to the home of the leader of the house of representatives , Nancy Peloski. SAN FRANCISCO, and clean up that city, only then then will serious thought be given to eradicating the global menace that is coming at us very quickly.
Lindh was not harshly interrogated. When I took him back to my place one of the SF members gave up his bed and they had a very normal conversation. When they took him to the agency house in Mazar they began to isolate him and treat him like any other violent jihadi. You have to remember the number of false surrenders and his friends who blew themselves up AFTER surrendering peacefully.
When he was moved to Rhino was ridiculed and an officer I met had to collect all the stupid photos that were taken but he wasn’t physically harmed. Then he was on a ship. Its quite normal to leave shrapnel inside people but he had a tiny piece of a AK round in his leg and some small bits along his back.
The government and the Brosnahan case was a farce. Instead of contacting eye witnesses and using logic it became a politicised self aggrandizing witchhunt. Brosnahan threatened me then tried to drag me around the courts. Mike Spann’s father was not given a fair chance to discover the truth (he did finally) and Lindh stupidly took a plea bargain on the advice of his lawyers…who do this pathetic PR program every year. The correct approach would be to tel the truth about Lindh and then compare his “rehabilitation” to date. I am sure he would be like any other kill- cult member snapped back into reality.
Lindh was a self confessed member of al qaeda and should have been tried for that. His part in the murder of MIke Spann and a number of afghans should have been the center point. You might remember there were two American al qaeda members. Yasar Hamdi did the Gitmo circuit but had his rich Saudi parents went through the court system and he went home after they determined that he had not been processed or treated properly.
To Tom T,
There is a gag order placed on John Walker Lindh – this was one of the conditions of the plea bargain which was offered once it was clear that news and photos of Walker’s inhumane imprisonment would surface. By rule of this gag order, Walker is not allowed to receive mail, receive visitors to whom he is not related, or write and publish any statements. If you are interested in more about this person, there is an article in the April 2009 issue of GQ that is written by a former U.S. Army soldier who served in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005. I would like to reiterate the fact that Walker never took up arms against the U.S. – he was participating in Afghanistan’s civil war during a period in which the U.S. recognized the Taliban as the existing government of the nation. Was he misguided? Absolutely. A traitor? Absolutely not.
The April GQ article is factually incorrect in a number of areas, blatantly one sided and one of the PR pieces designed to get Lindh out of jail. The articles begins: “frank lindh’s words break cautiously from his lips. Tall and thin in a smart dark suit, he sits thirty-three stories up, in the San Francisco office of his son’s attorneys.”
Not a second spent talking to the victims of Lindh’s group. Lindh and his cohorts were directly involved in the planning of the uprising and the events that led up to Mike Spann’s death. As I mention in my eye witness version. Mike Spann came to face to face with John Walker Lindh and Lindh said nothing even though he knew exactly what was about to happen in a few minutes. If Lindh had said one word to warn Spann, Mike and over a hundred Afghans would be alive today.
Lindh’s family refuse to address a number of eye witness accounts, nor do they want to come to terms with what their son was part of.
[...] Afghanistan and was wasting my time and peoples’ attention discussing phony issues like the Taliban, al-Qaeda, supply problems, negotiations, and Afghan governance, the sort of things those really [...]
“Pelton argues that Lindh has already fashioned his own punishment—and that he was utterly useless to the Taliban. “How do you punish someone for trying to kill other Afghans in Afghanistan?” says Pelton. “He’s already been punished outside of the law in terms that he’ll be a pariah the rest of his life. He’ll have to live with what he did for the rest of his life.
“He’s basically caused damage to all the people that he associated himself with because he was misguided. The school [Lindh attended] in Yemen doesn’t speak highly of him, the guy at the madrasah didn’t understand why this grownup was sitting with kids learning to speak the Koran, the Taliban didn’t want him. … ”
As for the terrorism charges, Pelton says Lindh “was not part of that world. … He wanted to fight with the Taliban to create an Islamic state. None of those issues tie into what happened on September 11.”
-Robert Young Pelton, 2002
Simply seems Messr. Pelton has been bought and paid for…
“Lindh was given 20 years in federal prison simply for participating in another country’s civil war. Americans have a long history of doing just that. Thousands joined the Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish civil war. Thousands have fought in Israel’s army and continue to do so. Others fought for Bosnia’s Muslim-led government against Serb forces. Some fought with the Contras in Nicaragua…”
As T. Meehan mentions above, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, as well as a good number of American officials, have fought in Israeli uniforms. The difference is one of being caught fighting for a declared enemy. Arguably unbeknownst to Lindh, the political winds had shifted during his tenure fighting the Northern Alliance, leaving him exposed. The Northern Alliance did not betray its offer of safe passage to the Taleban group Lindh was traveling with, and march them to a basement prison because they intended to lavish them with milk and honey. The political windfall for the Bush administration was the fear forced into the minds of Americans, the confession that cemented a supposed victory for the state, and, the ability to quash any potential fissure in the propaganda campaign forcing Americans to hold a taught line against the identified enemy: “Islamic terrorism.”
“Intelligence gathering” CIA special ops style:
“Dave [to Spann]: “The problem is, he’s got to decide if he wants to live or die and die here. We’re just going to leave him, and he’s going to f—cking sit in prison the rest of his f—cking short life. It’s his decision, man. We can only help the guys who want to talk to us. We can only get the Red Cross to help so many guys.”
Spann [to Walker]: “Do you know the people here you’re working with are terrorists and killed other Muslims? There were several hundred Muslims killed in the bombing in New York City. Is that what the Koran teaches? I don’t think so. Are you going to talk to us?”
Walker does not respond.” -filmed transcript by German television crew
Spann’s predetermined conclusion that all Taleban, and Lindh, are working for Bin Laden, and are “Al Qaeda.” “Intelligence gathering,” indeed.
The Northern Alliance chief that Lind joined the Taleban in opposing, and that Spann had been sent to work with as an operator:
“Much of northern Afghanistan was ruled by the Uzbek general, Rashid Dostum, who had been part of the Communist regime and commanded a powerful army. The Pakistani journalist and author Ahmed Rashid once arrived to interview him in a fort overlooking his capital of Mazar-e-Sharif. Noticing bloodstains and scraps of flesh in the muddy courtyard he asked the guards if they had slaughtered a goat. They explained that an hour earlier General Dostum had punished a soldier for theft. “The man had been tied to the tracks of a Russian-made tank,” records Mr Rashid, “which then drove around the courtyard crushing his body into mincemeat, while the garrison and Dostum watched.”
At the time of the terrorist attacks on the US in 2001, warlords including General Dostum and General Fahim were fighting for their lives or were in exile. But within hours of 9/11, the US was looking for local allies to provide the ground troops which, backed by US airpower, advisers and money, would overthrow the Taliban in Kabul.
In a couple of months warlords, many from the main opposition grouping, the Northern Alliance, were the new rulers of Afghanistan.”
Pelton’s lying to cover the facts is revolting, or perhaps he was unaware of the filming and photographs, much less what other hard evidence was obtained later clearly contradicting his version of what happened and when — and what did happen in reality.
Pelton’s commentary here falls flat and lacks veracity.
I had to laugh reading his remarks: “…Lindh stupidly took a plea bargain on the advice of his lawyers … The correct approach would be to tel the truth about Lindh and then compare his “rehabilitation” to date. I am sure he would be like any other kill- cult member snapped back into reality.”
Pelton, do you read your tripe before posting?
More Pelton: “As I mention in my eye witness version. Mike Spann came to face to face with John Walker Lindh and Lindh said nothing even though he knew exactly what was about to happen in a few minutes. If Lindh had said one word to warn Spann, Mike and over a hundred Afghans would be alive today.”
Pelton, so your ‘eye witness version’ included reading minds? Or did you call Ms. Cleo to determine so absolutely who and when a plan was made to riot and that Lindh was part of it and “KNEW” enough to warn Mike Spann?
There were approximately 400-450 prisoners with Lindh, and only 86 survived (one of whom was Lindh) after a week in the basement of Dostrum’s headquarters. There were shootings, torturing to death, gasoline fires and drowning efforts by General Dostrum whose sadistic nature and reputation was no secret to any of those prisoners including Lindh — and that was prior to Spann’s arrival on the scene. How conveniently you omitted those atrosities and the fear those men, including Lindh, had much less the fact they were in no condition to TRUST anyone or BELIEVE any strange face.
Did your “eye witness version” exclude that when the Afghan Army interviewed Lindh before Spann arrived, Lindh asked in whose custody he was fearing it was Dostrum’s?
In the aftermath of that massacre were “all the stupid photos that were taken” that you mentioned of what the Afghan Army discovered to their recorded horror that occurred in the basement as well as outside?
Seems rather strange that Lindh would’ve known about the plan to riot (especially since none of the prisoners including Lindh had weapons) and “could have warned Spann” — yet allowed himself to risk his very life in the process … particularly after he fought to remain alive through all the rest of Dostrum’s week-long “party”.
You talked about witnesses and testimony, but not what or who, yet in the end the prosecutors LACKED sufficient evidence to a degree that 10 charges had to be dropped. Then came the concocted plea bargain (to save face in light of the publicity already released about Lindh based on the typical BS propaganda the world endured for eight years), a gag order and conditions to ensure utter silence from Lindh … obviously so the conspirators could say that over 20 years Lindh forgot what really happened and just imagined ‘this bizarre story he’s now concocting after 20 years’. And you think your proclaimed “eye witness version” is going to be swallowed, in part or whole?
Not only is your timeline skewed, Mr. Pelton, and absent is the fact you interviewed Lindh on a gurney after he was filled with morphine, but shall we presume that your “eye witness version” did not include SecDef Donald Rumfeld’s direct order to Lindh’s interrogators, which was, “Take the gloves off in your interrogation of John Walker Lindh”?
According to you Lindh wasn’t tortured, yet following Rumsfeld’s order, he was stripped naked in the winter – already dehydrated and on the verge of hypothermia. His bullet wound was left untreated. They put plastic restraints around his wrists and his ankles. He was tied to a gurney and placed naked in an unheated metal shipping container in the desert and left there for two days and two nights shivering.
In addition, the Red Cross was denied access to him, and his famaily’s letters were withheld from him for months. What would you call that? Humane treatment? Compliance with the Geneva Conventions?
As a former magazine publisher and editor, you, Mr. Pelton, would be looking for employment after reading your posts here. You claim to be a journalist. An an author, that truly makes me cringe.
Thank you Jane Carter for taking the time to shine a light on Pelton’s intellectual-dishonesty in the way he has framed and characterized events.
In short, John Walker Lindh was sentenced to 20 years for carrying a rifle and two hand grenades in a civil war fought on the other side of the planet. The side that he had aligned himself with had been openly supported by the USA government until shortly before this story broke.
I’m no legal expert but I don’t even see a discernible crime here.
My opinion on John Walker’s Inhumane treatment. I just happened to be there. When I say “there” I mean Marine Corps Expeditionary Camp Rhino. I am pretty familiar with the living conditions of the Marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit and Walker’s living conditions while he was in custody of the Marines.
1. Marines were rationed (2) Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) per day and (2) bottles of water per day. Walker was given (3) MREs per day and an endless amount of water.
2. Yes he was housed in a 20 foot shipping container. His conditions were better than most. The container stopped the near freezing wind and the endless sand. He slept on a litter and had at least two large blankets (one below him and one or two above him). He was given clothes shortly after he was received and he received prompt medical attention. Most of the Marines lived in holes in the and constantly had to fight the cold and the elements.
3. He was there (Afghanistan and Pakistan) , he went to at least two of Bin Ladden’s training camps and met him on at least two occasions. He was sent to train with the Taliban be cause he was not ready to fight for the Cashmeer. He was Taliban.
4. He was never tortured in the Marines Custody. His quality of life increased exponentially once Marines took custody. Besides his small wound on his upper thigh, there were no other injuries or signs of any abuse.
All of what I wrote is first hand or from the mouth of John Walker. I was there.
I could go on but why bother. I am dissappointed about the Gag Order. I wish they would release all of his pictures and investigate and prosecute any claims of mistreatment. I know I am safe.
Jane Carter and others like her have the ability to transport themselves into a fantasy land free of violence, death and evil. I laid out very clearly what Lindh aka Abdul Hamid was doing in Afghanistan. He went there to kill other muslims and consistently sided with al qaeda even though he clearly knew the consequences and had multiple opportunities to surrender himself.
Its easy to invent things from thousands of miles away to support the idea that people who were trying to stop al qaeda trained recruits like Lindh were bad and that somehow there is no punishment regardless of his failed intentions.
While I was with him he was treated humanely, given medical treatment and a warm bed and then he was dropped off. Feel free to invent and insult but the facts will also remain.