Posted on 10/13/2002 2:36:00 AM PDT by Happygal
Frank Walker Lindh father of the young American Muslim, John, arrested while fighting for the Taliban remains firmly proud of his son. Sean O'Driscoll reports from Washington
ON THE day the Good Friday Agreement was signed, a young American Muslim named John Walker Lindh was driving around the Donegal Gaeltacht, trying to learn Irish from Radio na Gaeltachta.
Later that day, dressed in his Muslim head cap and flowing robe, he toasted the agreement with elderly relatives in the Glenties in Donegal. A strict adherent to Islamic faith, he politely declined any alcohol.
His mother's elderly cousin studied his dress for a moment and beckoned him forward. "What religion are you?" she said softly. "You're not a Catholic."
Frank Lindh throws his head back and laughs. He is sitting in the lounge of a hotel in Alexandria, Virginia, a short walk from where his son was jailed for 20 years only three days previously.
He is in a remarkably good mood, having just visited John with his daughter, Naomi. "John is in good spirits too," he says. "They really respect him there in the prison and he's still got that same sense of humour. Even his letters are very funny, he's got a great dry wit that you don't come across in the news reports. I wish people could know my son before they make their assumptions."
A highly respected and well-paid San Francisco lawyer, Frank is travelling under an assumed name. He is dressed in jeans, trainers and a T-shirt, and hasn't been recognised all evening. Out on the streets, he is often approached by strangers three times at the airport on his way to Washington.
"It's all been very positive, but it's still very strange," he says. "I have to adjust to what has happened, and so will all the family. John has already accepted that he will always be marked by this experience."
Across America, Frank is a favourite hate figure for right-wing columnists and talk show hosts the San Francisco wet liberal who never judged his children, and raised a son who joined the most oppressive regime in the world. "I've heard it all," he says with a smile. "But we are not flaky, John is not flaky, we are not what they would like us to be."
John Walker Lindh's fate as one of the most controversial Americans of all time was sealed, in many ways, by his trip to Donegal.
"The trip to Ireland was John's first time abroad," says Frank. "It gave him great confidence and a yearning to see more of the world. It made him see that there was more to life than America and he wanted to see it."
Within months, John had booked a ticket to Yemen to study at an Islamic school. He learnt Arabic and then moved to Pakistan, where he signed up to join the Taliban, then fighting with the Northern Alliance for control of Afghanistan.
"The Ireland holiday was my way of showing John his cultural history and it has had a profound effect on both of us," says Frank.
"I wasn't trying to show John that he was Irish Catholic and not Muslim, because I was proud that he was making his own spiritual connections. In many ways, the holiday in Ireland strengthened John's beliefs, it centred him and made him stronger."
The pair first visited Dublin, where John's western features and Muslim dress attracted the attention of downtown passers-by.
"The only place we could get something to eat was in a pub in Temple Bar," recalls Frank. "Two kids came over and one asked John if he dressed like that all the time, and the other came over and said, 'Are you in a play or something?"'
They went on walking trips around the city centre, one time past a butcher's shop when Frank asked John to pose for a photo.
"He stood there without realising the word 'pork' was in large letters right behind him. He thought it was funny even though I was making fun of his beliefs a little bit."
In deference to John's religion, Frank decided not to take a tour of the Guinness brewery when they went on a city bus tour.
"I also missed out on the Bushmills Distillery in Northern Ireland," he adds with a smile.
The pair travelled to Belfast at John's request. "He was very interested in the Northern Ireland situation," said Frank. "But John's interest wasn't in the politics but in the people, an interest he has kept all his life."
Frank stayed up most of the night listening to the sound of gunfire. He was concerned for John, who was sleeping soundly near the window.
It was only when he got to Donegal that he discovered the gunfire had come from a Country and Western theme night held in a nightclub near the hotel. "I felt so stupid, I should have known better," he says with a laugh. "John thought it was hilarious."
The pair travelled through the picturesque mountains of west Donegal, John tuning into various Irish-language programmes and trying to pronounce some words.
"That was a huge fascination for him," recalls Frank. "He was surprised that there were news programs and even talk shows with people phoning in. He was always very interested in languages, and he wanted to know more about it."
The family of Frank's mother, Kathy Maguire, had emigrated to Philadelphia in October 1929, when she was only six years old. Some of her family were close friends of the playwright Brian Friel, who based many of his plays in the Glenties.
"There is a strong connection between that part of Donegal and Philadelphia you see it in Friel's play Philadelphia, Here I Come," said Frank. "As someone who grew up in Philadelphia, it was very important to come back to Donegal and meet our relatives. We visited our mother's birth house, which was built by the men in the family. That left a lasting impression on both of us because it showed us where our roots lay."
After a quick drive down to Shannon (like a US suburb, they both agreed), the two men headed back to the America, where John began making plans to visit the Middle East, telling his father that the trip to Ireland had brought on a need to travel.
Nearly four years later, Frank heard that his son had almost died in ferocious fighting in Afghanistan. He had been shot in the thigh, after spending a week in a dark flood cellar while Northern Alliance troops fired through the ventilation shafts.
John instantly became a national hate figure and his family was vilified in the press.
Frank had a weekend to think. On the following Monday, he contacted Irish-American lawyer James Brosnahan. "I knew his name, and I knew I wanted him as John's lawyer. Meanwhile he had been looking at the TV footage and thinking: 'God, this kid needs a lawyer."'
The media had already rushed to the San Francisco and Washington suburbs to interview anyone who had ever known the man behind American's number one news story. The Lindh family believed that the interest might fade over time, but it hasn't. In post-September 11 America, the public wanted to know why an American teenager with no Muslim connections would suddenly run off and join the Taliban.
Frank was particularly stung by a national magazine article that he had hoped would finally tell the truth.
"It was below tabloid," he said. "I trusted that journalist and did everything I could to help, but a lot of the US media want a caricature of my son, nothing more."
To the teeth-grinding annoyance of conservative America, Frank is proud of his son. "He is a great guy and, after all he has been through, he can still make me laugh. I am very proud that he went to the Middle East and did what he believed was right."
Even if that meant fighting for a system that denigrates women and destroys art?
"He had no business being in Afghanistan, he accepts that," Frank says quickly. "But he was doing was he believed was correct by his religion stopping Northern Alliance troops from raping and pillaging the country. John felt that order had to be better than mass rape and murder. But he didn't agree with all of Taliban society it is not his overall view of how society should be run."
He is very proud of John's statement to the court last Friday, in which he said he understood America's anger, denounced killing civilians, and accepted that what he had done was wrong.
But the media is already on to a fresh story John is reported to have told the FBI that the September 11 attacks were planned to be the first of three major attacks on the US. He is said to have heard this from the Taliban in June, 2001.
"What he told the FBI was what he had heard, in idle talk around the campfire in October, a month after the September 11 attacks. The whole thing has been completely twisted to make like he knew more than he did. It's just awful," says Frank.
The briefing is part of the plea bargain he must share all he knows if he ever wants to see the outside of a prison again.
"We are hopeful that someone will come to their senses and realise that my son isa good person who loves America," says Frank. "All we can do is hope that day comes soon."
He gets up to leave. He and Naomi have to catch a 9am flight the next morning they won't have a chance to see John before they go. He walks past a newsstand screaming headlines about a sniper slaughtering people in the Washington suburbs. "This guy is probably in the National Rifle Association," says John. "A proud American who hates John Walker Lindh."
Hmmm. The Irish are to blame?
Interesting that they don't mention either Daddy's homosexuality or Sonny's reported homosexual activities in Afghanistan.
IMO: The truth is that these snipers hate America just like his p.o.s. son. As a NRA member, any compassion that I might have felt for Frank Walker as a victim of circumstance has died with this assinine statement.
It's a bit of a reach isn't it? They can't even pin his lunacy on mind-altering Guinness, he didn't drink!
Well Frank, yes, you *are* flaky.
Your offspring's even more flaky, too.
And yes, correct again Frank,
You *&* your offspring certainly are "not what they would like you to be," too. Or any other sane person for that matter; outside, of San Francisco's *gay* community?
This guy has a real knack for understatement, eh.
Well the goofball's after all a sheister, I suppose.
So this is Sean O'Driscoll's "work" while on the payroll of Ireland's, "Sunday Independent," huh.
Is this the rag we spoke of before who's perilously close to bankrupcy, H1?
The one allegedly bringing in some ("conservatively minded") babe to turn things around? ~That one?
If so, methinks she's gonna have more than a little trouble with *Sean*, right-off the bat.
As *Sean* sounds as-if he's a full-blown uselful idiot of the Euro-Communists; forget, "Socialists."
The "truth" & *Sean* are complete & total strangers to one another; furthermore, from all indications of what I can tell [by] reading *Sean's*, "work"?
Selling newspapers isn't about to get any easier for the "Sunday Independent," either.
...not anytime soon, at any rate.
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