By Dave Lindorff

Enough is enough. It’s time to free John Walker Lindh, poster boy
for George Bush’s, Dick Cheney’s and John Ashcroft’s “War on Terror,”
and quite likely first victim of these men’s secret campaign of torture.

Lindh is in the seventh year of a 20-year sentence for “carrying a
weapon” in Afghanistan and for “providing assistance” to an enemy of
the United States. The first charge is ridiculously minor (after all,
it’s what almost everyone in Texas does everyday). The second is
actually a violation of a law intended for use against US companies
that trade with proscribed countries on a government “no trade” list
like Cuba or North Korea. Ordinarily, violation results in a fine for
the executives involved.

As I wrote in an article in the Nation back in 2005 (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050214/lindorff),
Lindh was put away for so long on these minor charges not because he
was a traitor or terrorist, but because he was living proof, back at
the time of his trial in 2002, that the US had begun a program of
brutal torture in the so-called “War on Terror.”

Lindh, in fact, was never really an enemy of the US. Son of
middle-class white parents in suburban San Francisco, he had developed
an interest in Islam which, following his graduation from high school,
he decided to pursue by traveling to Pakistan. In 2001, still just 18,
he began studying at a madrassa, or religious school. There he learned
about the struggle of the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan to free
that nation of the influence of warlords who had collaborated with a
brutal Soviet occupation. Attracted by what he saw as the nobility of
that struggle, and with a youthful sense of adventure, Lindh
volunteered. In August of 2001, at a time that Bush administration
officials were negotiating about a possible oil pipeline deal with
Afghanistan’s Taliban government, and talking about providing funds for
a program to get farmers to shift away from opium cultivation to more
useful cash crops—a time, that is, when the Taliban were not considered
America’s enemy—Lindh crossed the border and started training to be a
fighter.

A month later, of course, the World Trade Center in New York, and
the Pentagon in Washington, were struck, and the US launched a war
against both Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Lindh, who was
still just in training, found himself suddenly in the wilds of the
Hindu Kush, with American planes bombing and with US Special Forces
troops firing at him and his companions. Whether he wanted to be there
or not, he was in no position at that point to change sides. You don’t
just walk away from a group like the Taliban—especially if you are an
American to begin with, and you’re deep in the bush.

Eventually, a malnourished, dehydrated, and wounded (in the leg)
Lindh was taken prisoner along with a group of Taliban fighters by
American forces.

At that point, when the Americans discovered they had an American
amont their captives, Lindh’s situation worsened dramatically. Stripped
naked and duct-taped, blindfolded, to a gurney, he was then placed
inside an unheated metal shipping container. Left there for days in the
cold and dark, Lindh was removed once daily and interrogated. His
interrogators allegedly tortured him, as well as threatening him
repeatedly with death. His pleas to see an attorney were mocked, and
word that his parents had already arranged for representation was
withheld from him (a situation that led a government lawyer involved in
his case to protest and ultimately resign).

At some point during this abuse, Lindh caved in to his fears of
death at the hands of his captors and signed a “confession” to being a
traitor to America. At that point he was flown back to the US, where
Attorney General Ashcroft touted him as the “American Taliban,”
initially vowing to try him for treason (which carries a death
sentence).

What changed things dramatically, as I reported in 2005, was a
decision by Federal District Judge T.S.Ellis to permit Lindh and his
defense team—over strenuous government objections--to challenge that
confession letter by introducing evidence that Lindh had signed it will
being subjected to torture at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. The judge
ruled that Lindh would be able to call witnesses from Guantanamo and
from among the soldiers where he had been held in Afghanistan.
Suddenly, the Justice Department, in the person of Michael Chertoff,
then head of the Justice Department’s criminal division and in charge
of terrorism prosecutions, offered a one-day-only, take-it-or-leave-it
a plea deal. Chertoff (acting with an alacrity that stands in marked
contrast to his sluggish response time several years later when faced,
as secretary of homeland security, with the Katrina disaster in New
Orleans) offered to drop the serious charges in return to a guilty plea
to the two minor charges, but only if—and this is the key—Lindh would
cancel the scheduled evidentiary hearing into torture. Under the
offered deal, Lindh would also have to sign a letter stating that he
had “not been intentionally mistreated” by his American captors, and
waiving any right to claim such mistreatment or torture any time in the
future. Lindh agreed, but following sentencing, Chertoff also added a
gag order, technically a “special administrative measure,” barring
Lindh from even talking about his experience for the duration of his
sentence.

It is now clear why Chertoff went to such hurried great lengths to
completely silence Lindh. His wasn’t just the first trial in the “War
on Terror.” Lindh was the first victim of the secret Bush/Cheney
torture program.

Now that we have the trail of memoranda that set that wretched
torture campaign in motion, it’s time for the Obama Justice Department
to free Lindh. If President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder
think Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens suffered from malicious prosecution and
were willing to drop charges against him, they certainly should toss
out the case against Lindh, who besides being innocent of the original
serious charges leveled against him, was a victim of war crimes
perpetrated by his own fellow Americans, and authorized by his own
government. His arrest, conviction and sentencing are a travesty of
justice, and perhaps, given that torture is a criminal offense in the
US Code, even constitute a crime of cover-up. He should be the first
witness in any official investigation by Congress or the attorney
general’s office into the origins of the Bush/Cheney torture campaign.

Free John Walker Lindh!
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(Note: This article was offered to the Nation magazine, and
rejected. It was also offered to Salon magazine, which never responded.)
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist. His
latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006).
His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net