‘American Taliban’ fighter from Marin set to be released
Family and friends saw John Walker Lindh as an impressionable Marin County kid who bumbled his way onto the battlefields of Afghanistan at the height of America’s post9/11 invasion there. To the rest of the world, he was the wildhaired jihadi dubbed “The American Taliban.”
That was in 2001. Lindh’s name may draw a blank for many today, but his nearly forgotten tale is about to get a new chapter: Lindh, 38, is set to be released Thursday from federal prison after serving 17
years of a 20-year sentence. Whether he planned to move back to the Bay Area remained a mystery Wednesday.
In the end, most of the 10 terrorism-related charges against him were dropped at trial, and he was convicted of one count of aiding the Taliban, a violation of U.S. economic sanctions, and one count of carrying a gun for them. But the public remained enraged by an American fighting alongside the country’s enemies — and by the death of a CIA officer who had questioned Lindh just before his capture.
After his capture in December 2001, when the horror of the 9/11 terror attacks was fresh and U.S. forces were raining hellfire on Afghanistan, Lindh was a pariah. President George W. Bush and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton both called him a terrorist, and New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani suggested he be executed for treason.
The first American of the era captured as a jihadi soldier, Newsweek labeled him “American Taliban” on its cover. The National Enquirer ran a story headlined “America’s Traitor Tells All.”
Lindh, who professed when arrested that he considered himself a warrior for Islam, later tearfully denounced terrorism and 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden — whom he met while training as a Taliban soldier in Afghanistan — at his sentencing in 2002. But some remain unconvinced that he’s changed his views.
In March, two U.S. senators asked President Trump to look into continuing Lindh’s sentence, saying they think he is a “terrorist” and may pose a public threat if freed. The White House did not respond to requests for comment, and the senators referred The Chronicle to news releases and an April 1 tweet from one, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, saying Trump “supports my call for Lindh to serve his full sentence.”
The father of Mike Spann, a CIA operative killed in a prisoner revolt at the mud-walled Afghan fort where the fighter was snared, also says Lindh should never leave prison and that he was at least partially responsible for Spann’s death because Lindh was part of the uprising. Lindh, however, was not convicted of any charges related to Spann’s death.
A Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman said by email that prison regulations mandate that Lindh be freed Thursday, nearly three years early, taking into account good conduct behind bars and time served prior to his sentence. He’ll be released to Virginia, where he was sentenced.
As for who this man is now, and what he will do after he gets out — that’s unknown.
“Who knows what he’ll do?” said Mitch Silber, former terrorism analyst for the New York Police Department and founder of Parallel Networks, a nonprofit that works to reform former terrorists. “The trouble is that there really aren’t programs in federal prison, or for those coming out, that help them acclimate to a better life in the real world.
“We reached out to him over the past couple of years, but he never answered back. I do know, though, from a colleague who was in prison with him that he still holds extremist views. He can certainly express them if he wants, under the First Amendment, but he can’t act on them.”
That view is backed up by government documents leaked to Foreign Policy magazine in 2017, contending that in 2016 Lindh “continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts,” and “had made pro-ISIS statements.” His friends, and his father, have said he is simply studying his religion.
Whatever his views, Lindh likely won’t become a threat, Silber argued.
“There is a low probability he’ll turn to violence,” he said. “He’ll be on a tight leash. Under terms of his release, he will be monitored for three years and won’t be able to go onto social media, leave the country without permission. And he will be monitored to some extent for the rest of his life.”
Lindh’s family and friends dispute that he has terrorist sympathies.
His father, Frank Lindh, a lawyer who teaches part time at the University of San Francisco, has been the only family member to speak out over the years. From the beginning, he’s insisted his son was misguided and never meant to harm anyone.
When the young man was positioning to fight for the Taliban, a few months prior to 9/11, the U.S. was still sending financial aid to the group. After American officials learned that the Taliban was harboring bin Laden, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan — but by then the younger Lindh was already deep into his spiritual journey overseas, his father said.
“John is a very sweet kid, devoted, religious, devoted to his religious conversion ... a good boy,” Lindh said in 2001. Five years later, he argued that his son “never fought against America . ... He was absolutely not a traitor.”
Lindh’s family and the lawyers who defended him at trial, led by James Brosnahan of San Francisco, declined to comment about his scheduled release. Friends said Lindh was scapegoated, and the family just wants the attention to blow over.
“Everyone still believes John was just caught up in something he didn’t understand, and because the government didn’t have bin Laden at the time they pointed all their rage at John,” one close friend said several months ago, before the family asked that no acquaintances speak publicly. “He was just a scared kid who wound up half-dead in a fortress, then got dragged into that whole mess. He is still a good person.”
When he was captured, Lindh seemed like an unlikely candidate for a jihadi.
A young man raised in privilege in Marin by a corporate lawyer father and a peaceloving Buddhist mom, he had wanted to become a professional flutist before reading “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” at 16. He then joined a local mosque and eventually wound up studying the Koran in Afghanistan, where he picked up a rifle, which he never fired in battle, according to court testimony. Lindh reportedly wants to immigrate to Ireland. He was granted Irish citizenship because a grandparent was born there, but he lacks an Irish passport, which he would need to move there. The Irish Embassy and CAGE, the British nonprofit that has advised him on immigration matters, would not comment on Lindh’s postprison plans.
Whether Lindh can melt quietly back into American life is anyone’s guess, said Silber and other experts. They worry that he won’t get enough help despite probation requirements that he undergo mental health counseling. He could have a rocky re-entry into civilian life, Silber said.
“We’ve gotten pretty good now at deterrence and apprehending these types of guys before they go overseas, but there is no national strategy for what to do after that,” said Patrick James, a researcher at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism in Maryland. “We do nothing real in the way of rehabilitation, or for creating off-ramps for people either coming out of prison like Lindh, or kids who are getting pulled into terrorism philosophies online. And that is worrisome.”
As for Lindh’s spot in history? James says he may momentarily be in the spotlight, but that will fade.
“He was a big story back then, but if you talk to a younger person today they probably don’t know who he is. And really — was he just an impressionable doofus or a real jihadi? It depends on who you ask.”