John Walker Lindh
Posted on 06/21/2002 12:13:29 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
MANASSAS, Va. – Ten-year-old Alison Spann was baptized in Christ here about four months after her father, CIA agent Johnny Michael Spann, was shot by rioting Taliban prisoners, the first American killed in Afghanistan by enemy fire.
When John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban, was 10, by comparison, his Birkenstock parents moved him to Marin County, Calif., a leafy liberal enclave where religion is optional and all religions – and value systems – are the same.
John Walker Lindh |
Not long after his Catholic mother started practicing Buddhism, Lindh converted to Islam, adopted the Muslim name Suleyman and began wearing an ankle-length white robe. He dropped out of high school and went to Yemen and Pakistan to study the Koran in Arabic.
His parents "were very supportive" of his newfound faith, said a family friend. His "papa" wired him money.
Around the same time, Lindh's mother, Marilyn, took his young sister to a small local rally against U.S. missile strikes on Iraq.
Now she and her ex-husband, Frank Lindh, claim to be shocked that their 21-year-old son is in a jail cell in Alexandria, Va., on charges he conspired to kill Americans abroad and aid the Taliban and al-Qaida.
 Johnny Michael Spann |
Spann, a paramilitary officer with the CIA's Special Activities Division, had been interviewing Taliban and al-Qaida fighters – including Lindh – at the Mazar e-Sharif prison when he was killed Nov. 25.
"Mike Spann lived and died a hero and patriot because he knew who he was," said Barry Bryson, the Manassas Church of Christ preacher who baptized his daughter, Alison, in March – after burying both her parents. Spann's ex-wife, Kathryn "Cissy" King, died of cancer a few weeks after his death.
"Mike was sure," Bryson added. "John Walker Lindh lives a coward because he isn't."
Bryson blames his parents' "liquid morality" for him taking up with radical Muslims.
"Raised by affluent and secularly 'enlightened' parents, he was taught that all value systems were equal," he said in a recent church bulletin. "He was never told that this or that behavior was wrong, absolutely, just because some things intrinsically are.
"And so, as soon as he could, he fled gray, amorphous, liquid morality and connected himself to the most repressive group he could find – the Taliban," he continued. "These radical Muslims would quickly have put his parents to death for their lifestyles. And they could not protest, if all value systems are equal."
His mother says that he was "brainwashed," and his father says he was astonished to hear his son had joined up with terrorists.
Only, Frank Lindh got an e-mail from his son in the fall of 2000, after the USS Cole was bombed in Yemen by al-Qaida, that said the American ship should not have docked in an Islamic nation.
Spann's family, on the other hand, consider John Lindh an accomplice in their 32-year-old son's death.
"Mike was a hero," his mother, Gail Spann, said outside the Alexandria courthouse in February. "John Walker is a traitor."
His widow, Shannon, says U.S. prosecutors should have charged Lindh with treason and sought the death penalty. He faces a life sentence instead.
Shannon Spann, who also worked at the CIA, is now caring for Alison and her other stepdaughter, Emily, 4, as well as their 11-month old half-brother, Jacob Michael Spann.
The Spanns have tried to avoid Lindh's parents at the courthouse. During the arraignment, an official with the U.S. attorney's office reportedly had to push aside Frank Lindh as he approached the Spanns as they waited at an elevator.
They'll no doubt be bumping into each other again.
Pretty well sums it up.
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