Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 45 - John Walker Lindh, The American Taliban

Episode Date: April 8, 2019

Joe and Nick talk about how a sickly kid who liked to pass his time trolling people on the internet ended up traveling across the world and joining the Taliban and his court case that followed. Follow us @lions_by Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Get some merchandise: https://teespring.com/en-GB/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store sources: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/my-letters-john-walker-lindh-american-jidahist/590071/ https://www.npr.org/2019/05/23/725865999/john-walker-lindh-the-american-taliban-set-to-be-released https://www.dcbar.org/bar-resources/publications/washington-lawyer/articles/may-2005-taking-the-stand.cfm

Americans got to hear from the 20-year-old Taliban fighter in an interview conducted the first week in December. He'd recently surrendered after a prison uprising and was interviewed by author Robert Pelton. Mr. Pelton, good morning. Good morning. When you first came in contact with John Walker, what shape was he in? What condition was he in? Well, he was in pretty bad shape. There were 18 fighters that had been pulled out of the prison that were seriously wounded. And when I opened the door of the hospital, the stench of sort of just people that had been in the basement for seven days with dead bodies was pretty overpowering.

He had been bombed. They had put water in the basement of that prison. They had gassed the prison. Were you surprised an American was so willing to endure such hardship in a fight against other Americans? Yeah, I think I was. I've been with another American in a jihad in Chechnya, but I was surprised to see what Walker had gone through. There were a number of people who had died in the bunker, and he was one of 86 people left. Let me play you a small, very small portion of your interview with him and ask

you about it on the other end. Was your goal to be Shaheed or a martyr? It's the goal of every Muslim. Was this the right cause or the right place? It's exactly what I thought it would be. I mean, it was a good cause. It's a little difficult to understand, Mr. Pelvin. Hello. Yes. And welcome to another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe.

I'm Nick. With me finally is Nick. Yeah, I beat you to it, remember? What is crackling? My bacon. Is that a good intro? Is that a good intro? I don't know.

I like bacon. I'm a fan of bacon. Is that a good intro? Is that a good intro? I don't know. I like bacon. I'm a fan of bacon. Anyway, Nick is finally back to us. Thank Christ. From his long, horrible trip into the Californian desert. Nick, how you doing, man? I have a terrible tan. It's not good. Yeah, but you know what? It's my natural skin color, but it's not we're only on your face half of my face and on my hands so nick you almost got kind of demoted while you were gone yeah do you want to talk about that is that okay to talk about yeah i guess calling a false gas attack apparently is a bad move when your SAR major is a, I don't know. Not a swell fella? Yeah, pretty much.

I feel like that's a safe thing to say. I don't have to worry about being demoted. You don't. No. I really don't care, but I do also. It's kind of a weird situation. It's a weird knife I'm trying to go on right here. I don't blame you.

In the same rotation, you nearly got demoted, but also were given an award. Yes, I was. I was given an award. I don't know why. They called in like 80 people for a fucking award. I was like, this is a lot of fucking people. That actually happened to me once.

Go back to, I don't know, Fort Knox at some time at like 2007. Nice. A colonel was giving me an army achievement medal. He was shaking my hand and he was like, why am I giving this award to you? I said, sir, I don't know. I'm a private. And he just shook my hand and he was like why am i giving this award to you i said sir i don't know i'm a private and he just shook my i said all right and he moved on by and then i got my army achievement medal nice yeah so nick you are what six years younger than me something like that yeah uh so you missed a lot of the,

or maybe you don't remember some of the most news stories from the beginning of our current forever war as a name that's gathered. Have you ever heard of John Walker Lind? John Walker Lind. He is now known. Country singer. So that's John Walker,

which made Google searching this a bitch. He is also known as the American Taliban. That's not a country singer. No. Well, it's a country, and he probably sang things. So because it seems like I can't seem to do a single fucking story on a single American in the modern age, it does not lead back to your state of California

we're talking about California again. Yes. So John Walker Lind or as we will be calling him because this is what he calls himself, John Walker was born in 1981 in Washington D.C. to Marilyn Walker and Frank Lind.

He was the middle child of three and fun fact he was actually named after John Lennon the beetle. Really? Yeah which will become more ironic as the story progresses. Yeah that's pretty cool. If only he

followed the John Lennon venue of just doing a ton of LSD and beating his wife he probably wouldn't be in jail today. Oh. Yeah. Not a lot of people know that about John Lennon. He was a horrible person.

Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, he abused his child and his wife. I do know he got shot. He did get shot. Yeah. That is like the least worst thing to happen in John Lennon's family. So John Walker was... So unlike a lot of people, Walker...

We cover a lot of individuals, and a lot of those people come from weird backgrounds. You know what I'm saying? Like from the beginning, whether it be... If we go back to our first episode, we talk about Luigi Cadorna. His dad got him his job. If we talk about Hague, his dad kind of got him his job because he's rich.

Another good one. They come from backgrounds that either elevate them or just abuse them terribly. John Walker isn't that guy. John Walker had a very boring background. He was not poor. He was not abused. And his family was mostly functional, which is more than either one of us can say.

So middle class? Upper middle class. With a functioning family. So his dad, Frank, was actually an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice in D.C. Oh, they're doing good. They're doing pretty okay. His mother was a nurse, which in modern times means a lot of money.

I don't know what they made back then. I don't know about back then, but no. But still solid. He was a bit of a sickly kid to the point that he couldn't attend public school. So he's homeschooled for a bit. Not like the whole time, but when he was little. When most people think

that you're developing as a person with your... It doesn't bode well. At the age of 10, his family decided to pick up and move to where else but Nick's people's republic of california as some people like to call it i imagine him as the kid that had to get his hair

shaved and nobody wanted to hang out with him at the monkey bars is it you're probably not wrong he was pretty because that was me he was pretty um so it's interesting you say that because there's a lot of things he did he's definitely not mexican he's very white um there's a lot of things that he did. He's definitely not Mexican. He's very white. There's a lot of things that he did that I totally identify with as a teen myself. The difference between us is I never went and fought for the Taliban. Pretty defining difference, I guess. difference i guess but um so once he got to california his uh pretty much everybody he got contact with to include his parents thought he was a bit of a strange introvert but a good humored

guy that could laugh at himself which is something any good introvert yeah could use like to include myself one of my one of my favorite things i like doing is lat and making jokes at my own expense i think we both like doing yeah like if you scroll through my Twitter feed, you'd probably think I need deep-seated therapy, and you wouldn't be wrong, but also I think it's funny. That's how you get along when you don't have healthcare. He liked to laugh and make jokes at his own expense constantly, so eventually his health improved, and he was able to enroll at a normal high school at the own expense constantly. So eventually his health improved and he was able to enroll

at a normal high school at the age of 14. And since you're in California, I'll tell you which high school it is. Maybe you'll ring a bell. It is Redwood High School. Not the slightest bell. In Northern California. I never crossed the SoCal border

until I was an adult. Nah, it's probably for the best. Otherwise you'd become a terrorist apparently. Yeah. I was just adult. Nah, it's probably for the best. Otherwise, you'd become a terrorist, apparently. Yeah. I was just exposed to tacos. I mean, that's the best thing any of us can know for. Tacos are pretty great. Yeah, they were fucking amazing.

And whatever you fucks in Texas think is a taco, go fuck yourself. I've never thought I've had to say this before, but in the defense of Texas, breakfast tacos are great. They are good. Because that's the only place I've had them before. I was but in the defense of Texas, breakfast tacos are great. They are good. Because that's the only place I've had them before. As a little white dude who grew up in Detroit,

breakfast tacos. Relatively new thing for me. Really? Yeah. I mean, those things, I'm sure they exist somewhere up north, but they weren't open all the time. Like Christian's in San Antonio is some of the best tacos i've ever had in my life

that's his annunciation is my lily white ass can get and and you know what best tacos i've ever had all right and you're not even paying me i won't argue that i won't argue that because I like breakfast tacos too I mean honestly a bad breakfast taco Is a lot like sex In that even when it's bad You're still alright with it Well I imagine sex really isn't that bad Because you know guys We train in harsh conditions

Your hand So all sex is better than your hand. Oh, well. What would be the hand of breakfast tacos? Jack in the Box? No, because they're tacos. Jack in the Box has breakfast tacos. Do they?

Yeah. So Jack in the Box is the masturbation version of breakfast tacos. That's canon now. We can't change it. Nice. I'll take it. Cans are all car carpaled and tunneled. Well, I mean, with the head shaped like that,

Jack didn't stand a chance. It's all water up there. Skin up and slam it back down. Moving forward. So, like most of us that moved around a lot when we were kids, Walker had a hard time making friends in normal high school. His teachers all noted he was very smart. But he had a very hard time with math and science.

That's me. That's me too. Fuck. Because of that, it was recommended that Walker attended Tamaskal High School. It's a local alternative school. Fuck, that's me. Damn it. So, I'm glad I have an ally here.

So, alternative school means something very different depending on what state you come from. And I feel like that's pretty important here. And maybe that's to defend myself and defend Nick or to defend our friendly neighborhood local Taliban member. But I never thought I was going to have to say this.

But in the defense of John Walker Lind, alternative high schools get a bad rap. They really do. I actually finished high school in an alternative high school. It was known as Manly Campus for anybody who grew up in the metro Detroit area, it doesn't exist anymore. It got bulldozed. But it was around 2005. But unlike other high schools,

they'd let me take the classes that I wanted to take. They let me pick them like I was in college rather than like, oh, you have to do X amount of hours hours doing this x amount of hours doing that they let me build my own high school education same z's which means for certain people like myself who are really apt in the arts or history or i don't know whatever you did good in probably history and the arts as well uh we could skip the advanced math classes because clearly i wasn't gonna fucking need them i was able to take accounting after algebra which

was great because i was able to pick if you can take it and geometry and accounting and i said well accounting sounds like something i'll actually need yeah later in life so for me and i spent an entire day reading and studying history which which is absolutely what I want to do now, and I'm 30. Also, I was able to graduate in a year and a half early, so go fuck yourself. Yeah. Walker, it turns out,

is pretty much in the same boat. He wanted to study world cultures and history. Fuck all that math bullshit. And that's where he started to study Sunni Islam for the first time. Now, he wasn't studying seriously yet. He was just studying everything. And he just kind of latched on to Sunni Islam. I'm not going to go into the history of Sunni Islam. I'm just going to assume that everybody who's listening kind of has a perfunctory knowledge of the different sects of Islam. So, total side note here.

During his time out of school, because remember, he was sickly for a while. He was homeschooled for a while. He had a summer vacation. There was a lot of time there. And remember, he had no friends. Walker was not a popular guy. He trolled internet chat rooms.

And remember remember at the time frame, this is definitely AOL chat rooms. America Online for the very young in the crowd. Also, if you're so young and you're listening to us, you don't know what AOL is,

maybe you shouldn't be listening to us. I feel like that's too young. I know ASL was really big. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it really was. That's a little bit, it turned into a little bit of a joke for me. So I, okay.

I trolled internet chat rooms around the same time that I'm all crumpled and dead. What were you trolling? All right. Now, I'm not really so this is where things are gonna get kind of twisted I don't know if this is John Walker Lynn's origin story or mine

because I literally do the same thing just so I can show my age for a second since Nick likes to remind myself how much older I am of him. If you never had AOL Instant Messenger with the chat rooms and shit.

So imagine it's like Reddit or Twitter except it's live chat all the time. You'd go into those chat rooms. You'd say really stupid shit. You'd troll. I mean trolling is trolling, and trolling is eternal.

Right. You'd say dumb shit. Consider ye olde shit posting. Anyway, someone would eventually instant message you, which is kind of like a, if you've never used it, it's like a DM on Twitter. It's a one-on-one message.

And they'd eventually ask your ASL, your age, sex, and location. Which is really weird to ask somebody. Yeah. Nobody does it anymore. No, because now there's profiles and Facebook already knows where you live. And the algorithm has already hooked you up with everybody you've ever even fucking brush shoulders with at the mall.

And if you ever have ever had sex to anybody, you're now mutual friends with everybody on Facebook. And you know what the nicest thing that's happened recently is MySpace deleted all their pictures and video since like pre-2010, which is like the nicest thing anybody's ever done for me. I remember probably sometime last year I was trying to get on my old MySpace

because I could remember everything. I just wanted to listen to what I had on my old playlist and the fucking page. You shouldn't. know what because I do remember putting on some Insane in the membrane Type shit on my playlist Honestly I'm more shocked You had a MySpace at all

Really? By the time social media came around you're an adult man Facebook is already a thing I wasn't an adult at the time I mean pre-teen whatever So Anyway Um adult man facebook is already thing i wasn't an adult at the time i mean pre-teen whatever so anyway um what i would do in these situations where somebody eventually get sick of me trolling them uh they would ask what my asl is and i would say really dumb shit like i'd say i'm a 99 year old broomold broom, and I live in your closet.

It doesn't make any sense. I thought it was the fucking cutting edge of comedy at the time. Fucking hilarious, right? It's not stupid. Anyway, I'd also get, like, anybody who knows me, I like to swear a lot. It's shocking. It's literally never changed.

Bad parenting, whatever. I called somebody an ass butt. Nice. I literally heard this from The Simpsons. Double. Yeah. So at the time, if you were to connect to AOL, you were all linked to one username. And I managed to get my entire family banned from the whole internet for weeks.

With ass butt. With ass butt. Nice. entire family banned from the whole internet for weeks with ass, but with ass, but nice Walker did much of the same thing. Um, though he would go into chat rooms claiming to be a black guy and a black rapper. And he would loudly criticize other people in the chat room for a quote, acting black and insulted. So there's hip hop music critics.

He insulted a hip hop music critic as a, quote, worthless dick writer. And so he was a white guy. I should underline this more. As white as I am. White is a driven stone. If you were to pick a screen name for him to use during this, what would it be? Oh, a screen name? Screen name.

What do you think a screen name would be? Hold on. Granted, he is not quite a ravenous terrorist yet. Okay. Screen name. AOL back in the day. Channel your inner suburban loser. And it's not... Fuck.

It's not a racial slur. It's kind of... I know. I definitely wasn't swinging that way. I mean, if I'm thinking a literally white motherfucker in the suburb pretending to be black, I'm going to think he's going to be a bit racist. But he wasn't. In his screen name, at least. That's why it's really hard to make a decision here.

You ready? Please give it to me. Doodoo. How is it spelled? It's exactly how you imagine it's spelled. His screen name was Doodoo. That's it? Yes.

His screen name was Doodoo. I'm getting the feeling that John Walkerer and lynda would really fucking love twitter i wonder what his handle would be uh doodoo probably doodoo at taliban at gmail.com uh so anyway around the age of 16 walker watched the spike lee movie malcolm x which uh really piqued his interest in Islam for the first time. He was studying Islam, but he never thought about converting until he watched Malcolm X.

After that, he began attending a Bay Area mosque for the first time. After a few months of studying at the mosque, he dropped out of high school. Nice. Not a good idea, but despite the fact that he had just dropped out of fucking school. Nice. Yeah, not a good idea, but despite the fact that he had just dropped out of fucking high school,

for instance, if you dropped out of high school, how would your parents have reacted? Not good, I assume. I know one would be definitely disappointed, and the other would say, go find a job. My mom probably would have thrown me out in the street. I would assume.

His parents were surprisingly supportive really? yeah after he devoted himself no it's not like he just dropped out and like me or you we just like crashed on the couch and smoked weed and played video games and shit like he dropped out and he just went to mosque

full time threw himself into his new religion all the way it was his driving force it literally drew driven everything he did um now remember his his parents know he's really smart so do you think the mosque at one point said dude you're kind of here all the time can you just fucking leave uh the mosque is definitely a problem and that's for a different reason.

We'll talk about it a little bit later. I feel like you dropping out of school to go to the mosque, how much of this time are you spending at the mosque for you to drop out of school? Now, if you substitute mosque for just about anything else, you get

a pretty hard line origin story for almost every anything else. You get a pretty hardline origin story for almost every extremist that's existed in the US since either one of us have been born. He's an introvert. He doesn't have a lot of friends. He's kind of rejecting society. He doesn't have a lot of familiar support.

He's finding family somewhere else. You could see the same origin story in timothy mcveigh um you could see the same thing in a lot of the modern day lone wolf attackers just online right okay certainly the guy who just shot up new zealand yeah um he was a social outcast, and he went to find support somewhere. The place that picked him up was not a well chat room. It was a Bay Area mosque. And this is not, I don't feel like I need to say this because people listening to us know who we are, but this is not a condemnation of Islam.

This is a condemnation of people who had contact with John Walker Lind. Anybody can twist this shit. I mean, the people who teach people to kill people in the name of Islam are just as Islamic as the Catholic people who rape children. Yes. They're not functionaries of the faith. They're monsters. I just feel like I need to say that just in case somebody feels like

I am accidentally saying something anti-Islamic or saying something pro-John Walker Lind. Yeah. I'm definitely not on either side here. It's anything else. A gang could have picked them up, which has happened. Yes.

These people aren't looking for beliefs. They're not looking for aesthetic. They're not looking for a message.'re looking for belonging and he found his at the mosque unfortunately uh and unfortunately it was a mosque that had somebody who had a track record which we'll talk about in a little bit um so also unfortunately this is pre 9-11 oh so uh a lot of americans aren't thinking of islamic terrorists they're not thinking of any terrorists really yeah i don't i mean i was a child when 9-11 happened i was in middle school i know i certainly wasn't thinking about terrorism but before 9-11 most terrorism was white dudes.

And then obviously the Twin Towers were bombed in the early 90s as well. There's the coal bombing, which we'll talk about in a little bit. They had a B-25, I think, go through the towers in the 40s, 50s? Yeah, yeah. I don't know if it was a B-25 exactly, but yeah, it was definitely during World War II. I think. So cool story about that. I believe it was the Empire State Building, so, cool story about that. It was the, I believe it was the Empire State Building.

Yeah, cool story about that. One of my buddies has parts of the wreckage, like, like, has them. It's pretty sweet. That's a weird thing to own. It is, but he also owns one of Body and Clyde's cars, used in a bank heist, or an heist.

You know, when it comes to the reenactor circle, and this is an episode where I originally did not plan on having, but as more and more questions come up, like, we're going to do a whole reenactor thing. We probably should. Because it's a weird community, man.

Because I just showed you something. You did. On Instagram. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it later. So, like I said, Walker was spending a lot of time at his local mosque, like any pious child. And nowadays,

if anybody's spending a lot of time in a very insular religion, and this is like, I'll call it a cult because it's a murderous cult effectively. And that's not Islam. That's not Christianity. It's not Hindu or whatever. It's anybody who wants to teach a violent sect of their religion. He fell into that sect.

And he was very devout to the point that his own father, who once upon a time had trained to become a priest in the Catholic faith thought he's like, well, there's nothing weird going on. He just has the lifestyle of a seminarian of somebody who's in, you know, preschool.

Um, at least the parents are taking this pretty well at this point. His parents take it exceedingly well to the present day. Really? Yes. We yes talk about that a bit is that bad parenting or is that just supportive parenting i don't know i am torn that's something we'll debate a little bit yeah maybe our listeners can join in the same way uh so it was around this time that Walker's parents began to hit the rocks a bit, so to say. Walker discovered his dad. So you know how I told you before, he had a relatively normal home life.

This is where the cracks start to show. His dad was cheating on his mom. Ooh. Spicy. But not normally. And I don't mean to malign any homosexual listeners we have, but this is

the 1990s and his dad left his mom for another man. I'm willing to bet that that whole idea is a little bit weirder for a kid who has no understanding of homosexuality. Oh, it definitely is.

Like, we're saying this is the year 2019, so we're a little bit more understanding now. But, like, if... I mean, judge me how you will. I mean, if my dad was still alive when I was 15 or 16 or whatever, and, you know, America was not understanding at all of homosexuality at the time, it's a little bit more harder to handle. And he accepted it as much.

I never heard of it. He retreated much further into the church, or into the faith, whatever you want to call it. It was the only stability he had is he ran to faith. And to make things worse, his mom didn't kind of

want him anymore after that. So he ended up just kind of living with a friend. So mom didn't want child. Yeah, which is weird. That is really weird. Yeah. I mean, I felt like that as a kid sometimes, but I still think in the back of my head,

like, she loves me. Yeah, she's just kind of busy or whatever. Yeah. And instead, mom just kind of crawls out of a bottle. Not mine. She just told me to go away. Yeah, mine just started smoking a lot of weed. Walker, who is always kind of closer with his dad

than his mom moved in with his dad eventually after things kind of stabilized and the other guy? yeah, turns out for being a hardline Islamist Walker is pretty understanding for the people that he loves

this is an all understanding family very understanding which is weird because at this point he is not fully militant but he's definitely bought into Sharia Islam well he's definitely bought into Sharia he's definitely bought into the school of Islam

he's very extremist this is a positive family. Everybody except John, yeah. Yeah. I mean, his mom didn't take it too well. She just got hammered. But I mean, that's not a gay thing.

That's like my husband left me a thing because he's cheating on me. But also his dad's kind of an asshole for cheating on his mom. But whatever. I could have got him in on it so like i just explained to you most people would assume so like it's 2019 now as i've said before most people's understanding of hardline militant islam would be uncompromising right

they're they probably don't have a great sense of humor right john walker lynn was wasn't that way um he yeah i would assume he'd be a humorless prick so apparently that wasn't him in 1998 walker and his dad took a trip to ireland uh walker was so devoted at the time that he had a full Islamic dress, beer, keffiyeh, everything. During one stop on the trip, a local restaurant patron thought he was in a play. Not a lot of Muslims in Ireland at the time.

Right. And he just laughed it off. So yeah, definitely in a play, man. Do you want to act? Whatever. In other cases, dad took his picture of a smiling walker, laughing even. The picture still exists to this day

and is open on Google. Standing under an Irish butcher's shop sign that advertises bacon and pork. He thought it was hilarious. Isn't that like, what is the thing people think it's for some reason like garlic to vampires right like i i have known a lot of muslims uh in my life i'm best friends one of my best friends is my interpreter from afghanistan amit it's not like they're they don't understand the humor in it especially in american life because amit lives in fucking lansing michigan um they think it's hilarious that we're so off-put by it from my understanding

um granted i've also gotten drunk with amit so take that for what it's worth. But he thought the off-puttingness was kind of funny. Walker just laughed it off. Good sense of humor. He has a great sense of humor. That's the weirdest part. Where did he turn? I don't know. So we'll get to that.

Okay. So we'll get to that. Okay. So in another case, sorry, I'm repeating myself. So during this time, because remember I told you Walker dropped out of high school. Right. As a second thought, he went and got his GED. Oh. He's a smart guy. He doesn't have to study for it.

He's just going to go get it. Yeah. After that, he started talking about all the great things he's going to do with his life. He's going to go to medical school. He's going to go to this school. He's going to go to that school. He wants to help people. He doesn't want to, say, pick up an AK and go fight a goddamn war.

He wants to go to college. It seems like he wants to help people. He does. He does. And so I feel like I need to a new point here a lot of this uh the only people know him at this point of his life are his parents so pretty much every source i've ever found coming straight from their mouths okay could they be lying sure absolutely they could be lying to make their kids sound better, but the lie doesn't matter.

Like they'd have to be. So in my opinion, for somebody lying about a historical source, there has to be a reason they're lying, right? They're trying to make them look better. Right. It doesn't matter. He's already convicted at this point.

So there's no point in lying. Right. Now he knows who John Walker Lind is in 1999, lying about his point of going. Right. Nobody knows who John Walker Lind is in 1999. Lying about his point of going to Yemen. Pointless. He's already convicted. Right.

He already did it. I'm willing to accept his family's account at face value. But I also cross-referenced the FBI's 15-6 investigation. So I did two bases. That's almost baseball. So that's alright. I'm a Tigers fan. You have to forgive my understanding of baseball.

So for people who are not aware, Nick, I don't know if you know this. If you are a Muslim, you should read Arabic. The Quran is written in multiple languages, but the only true language you can read in is Arabic. For instance, I have read the English translation of the Quran, but the English translation of the Quran is not the Quran.

Okay. I didn't know that. I did know it was in multiple languages. It is like most holy books. Now the main differentiating point there is if you've never read anything that's been translated before, you understand that a lot

of things are lost in translation. Right. So Muslims believe in order to read the true Quran, you have to read it in the original Arabic because it has remained unchanged since the time of the Prophet Muhammad. John Walker Lynn did not speak Arabic. He did not read Arabic. So

something he wanted to do was go learn. So that is why he wanted to go to the Yemeni Language Institute. Now for people who have been listening to our show for a while now, this is not quite the Yemen that Travis and I have talked about. Pre-Civil War.

They have schools and people are dying of cholera. But John Walker Lynn has no money. His parents send him off to Sana'a to study Arabic because, like a priest studying the Bible, you gotta read Latin. Right. It's like going to Rome in Vatican City. Remember, pre-911. It's a different world. Yeah.

I know, I mean, I remember pre-911 America, but I was a child. I assume your memory of pre-911 is much different. Very foggy. Yeah. It was is much different. Very foggy. Yeah. It was there, but it's foggy. It's almost like reading a history book in a different language at this point.

Like hearing that a lily white Muslim convert is going to fly to Yemen to learn Arabic in the year 2019, a bit strange. It is. It is not that long ago. Right. This is well within our lifetime that just goes to show you how awful things can get so quick right because we're depressing show we're gonna bring guys down a bit um so he frequently updated his parents via long emails about his journeys around the country. Because, I mean, he had free reign.

He could go wherever the fuck he wanted. Eventually, Walker came back to the States. He got a bit homesick. He wanted to visit his parents a bit before he went back to school. His dad, being the dutiful father that he was, decided to drop him off at the airport. being the dutiful father that he was, I decided to drop him off at the airport. While at the airport, Walker's dad was strangely congratulated

by several other members of Walker's Bay Area Mosque for having such a devout child. Now, Walker's dad thought this was a bit strange because it's never happened before. But remember, it's February of 2000. We are several months away from when the world will change. But even he thought it was weird. So in October of 2000, USS Cole was attacked.

For people who do not remember, it was a suicide boat attack that killed 17 US sailors. And this led to a tense email exchange between the elder and the junior Walker. Walker's dad was pretty upset at the deaths and as anybody should be. Right.

I don't care what your political bent is. You should never be okay with anybody being murdered for political beliefs. He's pretty upset. Now, Walker's dad was upset because the sailors that died were largely the same age as his son. The sailors that died were largely the same age as his son. Walker, on the other hand, who had spent a considerable amount of time in Yemen at this point, said the attack was justified.

This is because an American ship was entering a Yemeni water area, technically Yemeni border, and that is an act of war now I do not feel like I need to discount a uneducated future Taliban militant but I will Yemen at the time

had a central government like most countries do and it was a routine fuel stop for US Navy ships and the US had full permission to stop in Yemeni waters

because now the reason why I feel myself stopping and explaining myself why ramming a boatload of explosives into a boat full of anybody is wrong is because I've seen this argument

repeated recently. Really? Yeah. Nobody should ever support killing anybody, whether it be through a suicide boat or a drone strike or an airstrike or whatever. But here I am disproving a suicide bomber

and their logistics so fuck me right he's already won anyway so was dad understanding of this email no no he was not uh which we'll talk about in a little bit small side note here. Since we're talking about something really depressing like a terrorist attack, we have to lighten the mood a bit, right? That's kind of our brand. Terrorists have actually plotted previous attempts on U.S. Navy ships in the region. A similar attack as the one that happened on the coal uh happened back in january but the poor al-qaeda terrorists held the boat with so much explosives that it just fucking sank and killed the pilot how he drowned how he didn't He decided that he was so committed to fucking suicide bombing,

he couldn't bail out of it. Was it? I feel like it was the boat version of the Austin Powers scene, where he's like, stop! I'm kind of picturing The Perfect Storm right now with George Clooney. Yeah. And he's just sitting there looking at all the other guys just like, I'm the captain dog. Except it's only one guy.

It's just one guy. He's just looking at everybody else while it's sinking. It's at his shins. He's just like, I got this. Fuck. You guys should see this it was on a boat called the awkwardly titled the USS

the Sullivans that's what the terrorist boat name was uh no I'm sorry have you never heard the Sullivan brothers I have That was the ship

That was the name after I don't know why I just heard that And then I heard It turns out Al Qaeda in Yemen Was very proud of our US sailors During World War II And while they christened the boat To attack the US Navy

They're like you know who really deserves a shout-out? The Sullivan brothers. Let's go ahead and shatter this bottle of holy water on this dinghy. Fuck, we popped it. Oh, he's dead. Our pilot. And that's how he died. So at this point, if you have not noticed walker had learned a

little bit more than just arabic and yemen um his emails to his parents has he learned weight distribution in a boat he was not part of the al-qaeda navy no i feel like he probably should have actually he is uh not a part of much okay Okay. It was around this time. And I warned you before that the mosque in the Bay Area would not be so normal. Because remember, Walker's dad is not just a normal guy. He's an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice. Seems like a really nice dad, though. Super understanding.

Yeah. Like, if I got a really nice dad though. Super understanding. Like if I got a D he'd be really understanding. D means agree. It's fine. It's fine son. I wish my dad said that. No. My mom was like what? You didn't want to fucking see you lazy bitch? So John Walker's dad

began to talk to a few of his mosque friends because he was starting to lose contact with his son. His son was further and further away. You know, whatever. It was around that time that he learned that several of Walker's friends had run off to Chechnya to fight the Russians. Oh, fuck. Which we have talked about briefly in the past.

It'll be a full series eventually, but briefly. Yeah. To this, Walker's dad said probably the most understanding thing anybody in this position can possibly say. And that is, quote, he had simply developed a different point of view by joining a terrorist militant organization. Wow. Yeah, I think John Walker Lynn's dad wins the most understanding dad of all time.

Really? Like this is, I'm astonished. This is great. I need to underline this point. Walker has not fought anybody yet. He's gained a different point of view at this point. He's simply gained a different point of view. Now, near the end of that year,

Walker informed his parents that in order to further his studies, he would be traveling to a madrasa in the northwest frontier province of Pakistan. I'm sorry. I just got a really weird image of Walker. He's a total douche to his parents he is he definitely is all right mom all right dad fuck you first of all second of all fuck you again later and they're just like love you not that much different honestly because

remember up until this point i've been emailing constantly like they had been hearing from their weekly, which is more than I can say my parents heard from me during my first deployment. So apparently, they had a better internet connection than me, but that's fine. Now, it was at this point, Walker's dad started to get a little worried about his son. I mean, remember, like I said before, he's not a normal guy. This episode is about really Walker's dad. This is great. He's the most understanding father in American history. But remember, he's not a normal guy.

He understands what madrasa means, which for our listeners, we'll be talking about at much longer points in a different series down the road. But he understands what a madrasa is in the early 2000s. He understands, like, he's catching all these little bits of bait that John Walker's leaving out. And he's worried about his son. He's worried bad, but not for the reasons that you think.

He knew the area. If you were a state or a Justice Department employee at the time, and your son went to the northwest frontier province of Pakistan, you should

absolutely be worried about your kid falling with a militant organization. That's just what that area is. To this day, the Pakistani government hardly controls it. That's not what John Walker's dad was worried about. He was worried about some weird shit like

I hope he's getting a bit like I had a good time. Oh, that would be funnier. But he's worried about him just being caught up in the violence. Clearly, his son couldn't be involved in the violence. He might just be an innocent bystander. He gained a different point of view. Yeah, that's right.

God, I hope he's going to bed at a good time. You don't have kids. I don't have kids. I have a dog. I also have several dogs and iguanas and a drinking habit. Hopefully a bird soon. That'd be sweet. Thank you. That's a drinking habit. Hopefully a bird soon. That'd be sweet. No, thank you. It's a hard pass.

Now, as a hypothetical parent, if you were to talk your kid out of, I don't know, say joining a militant movement, what would you say? I constantly have to tell my dog not to interact with the pack of dogs in the back of the backyard that we have. Chewy, please don't join the IRA. It's just this random ass pack of dogs that she goes and fucking barks at.

But I think they're underlining like come with us. So this is where I start to feel like we dig holes in other people's yards and fuck them up. This is where I start to believe that John Walker's dad kind of sounds like a dog parent. So, for instance, your dog and my dogs have had disagreements.

Yes. When that happens, you generally believe it was my dog's fault, correct? Depends on who the dog was, to be honest with you. No, that's fine. You don't have to sugarcoat anything because whenever anything happens i just blame it on chewy okay yeah that is kind of what john walker's dad did he's he said for instance he's in chewy he said well john wouldn't do anything because he knows that what i would disapprove okay which like, I don't know if that's an airball, but it's not good. It's definitely not.

Because at this point, remember, he hasn't seen him in months. Well, he wouldn't join a terrorist organization because clearly I'm disapproved. Right. Yeah. Solid, right? Whatever. Understandable. So at that point, now in

Pakistan, not speaking the language, John Walker became even more of an introvert. Probably not good for him. Local people and local imams would invite him out to the local villages for dinner, prayers, just away from the school. Because it should be noted, there's a lot of people who studied at madrasas who did not become terrorist militants right um a lot of those

people did become terrorist militants it is pretty clear to me that his imam was trying to to um introduce him to the local culture as was like his normal plan like he wanted to come to pakistan he wanted to learn about the urdu culture he wanted to learn the plan. Like he wanted to come to Pakistan. He wanted to learn about the Urdu.

He wanted to learn the language Urdu. He wanted to hang out with Pakistanis. He wanted to do all this shit, but he was too introverted to do it. So he just hung out in the school around the other Mujahids. I wonder, like, he doesn't know any of the language. He's good with languages, to be honest.

It does not take him long. John Walker Lynn learned just about every language he ever touched. It took him some time, but I mean, to be fair, I spent two fucking years in Afghanistan and barely learned a goddamn thing. So he's got a heads up on me. I spent my whole life around Spanish. You're Mexican. Didn't learn shit, apparently. I speak no whole life around Spanish. You're Mexican. I didn't learn shit

apparently. I speak no Armenians. That's fine. He just must have that face of we can understand. People are just like, okay, this guy's pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, eventually

his imams and all the locals just kind of gave up because he's so anti-social um and then that's around the same time that the emails home so began to dry up he's so anti-social but he joins a group right to fight because he is is he his own group at one point just to fight by himself no because he's he's so antisocial? Because name an antisocial person who's ever done an act of violence. Columbine

Sheeners? There's two of them. I mean, everybody's looking for camaraderie. So is he. Honestly, if at some point before John Mockerland bought a plane ticket to Yemen, if somebody would have got him, I don't know,

a fucking ticket to priesthood, a ticket to anything, anyone that would have accepted him, this would have not have happened. And somebody out there is going to tell me I'm fucking wrong. Right. But I am treating John Walker Lynn like any other cult member, any member of Jonestown, any member of Scientology, any member of ISIS.

For every handful of hardline believers, there's thousands of people who are just in it to feel better. Looking for a niche. Yeah, they're looking for family. They're looking for acceptance. I mean, this is a guy that was sickly. He didn't go to school for 14 fucking years. And even when he did go to school, he didn't have any friends.

That's fucking insane. There's a very good chance he's sitting in prison right now, a virgin. I mean, there's a lot to this. Just like, I mean... Well, he knows what he likes. He probably just wants acceptance. Okay, you win somewhere else.

I mean, it's like the weird people who subscribe to QAnon, the weird people who subscribe to Anonymous, the weird people who subscribe to the Resistance Twitter, whatever it may be. They just want to be surrounded by people who believe the same bullshit they do. I don't. I mean, but we do.

We're in this room together. That's true. By no collection of common things are we friends. Both of us are weird anti-social history buffs who joined the army and eventually ran into one another. The only difference that

John Walker Lynn was looking for is that they're Muslim. But there's a very good chance that was not the case if somebody made friends with them in high school. It's just like probably a good chance that the Columbine shooting would happen if one of those motherfuckers got laid or they never met.

I mean, I fully believe that nobody's looking for violence. Everybody's looking for acceptance, but a lot of people are comfortable with acceptance and violence. As dumb as that sounds. I mean, look at some of these cult people that kill people

they don't really believe in xenu they don't really believe in like om shinrikyo in japan they just want to belong yeah and sometimes belonging is destructive as shit i mean look at some of the other personality calls yeah. I could definitely see that, yeah. Like, a good example, there's a self-help guru in Arizona, or maybe New Mexico. Someone will correct me on that. This is not part of the script, so I'm ad-libbing, if you haven't noticed.

He's a self-help guru, which eventually kind of molded into a weird Native American-esque cult. And then he held a sweat lodge. Sweat lodge is a decidedly Native American activity. He is a white guy, as white as I am. Where is he holding the sweat lodge? Is he doing it in a teepee? Homemade teepee.

He doesn't understand, like, venting and things like that. Oh, what an asshole. Yeah. No venting, tons of charcoal. what an asshole yeah no venting tons of charcoal he killed like three people but people followed him to their death past their natural survival means of like this is not okay i should run right ignored it went right into that bitch and they fucking died the only difference between the people willing to die for yoga in New Mexico

and people willing to die for Islam in Kunar Afghanistan is the faith that's the only difference and I feel like that's the main thing I'm arguing here is that it all depends on you if you find the right person

needing help acceptance whatever it may be, at the wrong fucking time, I could probably make somebody want to kill somebody for this podcast. It doesn't matter. Don't? I mean, I don't want to. Just please give us a dollar on Patreon. Buy a t-shirt.

The message doesn't matter. It's the delivery t-shirts actually they're really they come out really well out of the drive I just wanted to point that out too mine has not shrunk yet and I'm not good at it so like I said

the emails back home start to peter out why? internet access ain't so good. Out in the mountains. Granted, he doesn't tell his family this. Kind of ghost them? Kind of. He ghosts his whole family.

Honestly, I know we keep bringing it up. They're really understanding at this point still. So understanding. I feel like a lot of it is like their understanding and they're like oh fuck i just hope he's still but i hope i feel like all this understanding has been really destructive in his life you know at this point i don't know what to have meeting him is there because i really because all there's no other measurement here exactly like name something else like this that happens like your lily-ass son decides that he's really smart.

So, I have to drop out of high school. Like, fuck. Okay. How do I? Well, he can definitely use GED because he's really smart. Oh, well, now he's really into religion. Okay, well, maybe I'll give him the organizational things that he needs for his life or whatever. Oh, fuck.

Now he wants to go to Afghanistan. Or now, fuck, now he wants to go to Pakistan. Like, I don't know what the cutout is here. I would just... So supportive. It's all I can get out of it. I don't think being unsupportive would have helped either. No, I don't think so either.

He was going to go. Because, I mean... There's a lot of what ifs, but definitely. There's so many. 15-6. People are not aware. 15-6s are in-depth investigations on certain aspects

of crimes or violations of rules and things like that. The 15-6 investigations in the mosque and the Bay Area lead me to believe he was going to get over there, whether he needed his dad's money or not. Which I'll talk about, I guess, a little bit later. But his family

just made it easier. He didn't make it impossible. Because remember, going to Pakistan, and I understand this requires almost 20 years of revisionist thought here. For instance, if I told you tomorrow I want to go to Iceland or Finland, would you think twice about it?

No. Right, because nothing's ever happened between the United States or Iceland or Finland. I'd question you. No, you wouldn't. I really would. Like, why wouldn't. I really would. Like, why? What am I going to do? We live in Washington State. There's a little train that'll bring me to Canada. I literally live

four minutes from you and I'd be like, what am I going to do? You'll be alright. You'll watch my dogs. I really will, sadly. You're not going to think any weird things about me. No, no. Right.

I always feel like whenever I explain how the world was back then, because I kind of remember it, it's a different world. It really is. There's no such thing as a suspicious country, because it may be like North Korea. If I told you you're going to North Korea now, it's weird. If I told you North Korea then it's weird if I told you North Korea then still kind of weird

I'd still totally go to North Korea for vacation though I'd probably want to come back yeah I can imagine you doing some dumb shit they'd fucking kill my ass you fucking writing about it later I'd be like out of a warm beer and get fucking executed for stealing a poster but

they tell you not to do something and you do it way harder. So hard. But like, it's troubling. What I'm trying to say is here, what Walker's family went through, it sucks. But like, everybody's like, how did they not know? Well, we're almost near fucking 2020. We can't judge them in 2000. Yeah.

This is before the towers fell. His family were just trying to be supportive. Which is honestly understandable. Yeah, and that's... I'd imagine I'd want to be really supportive of my child. Yeah, dude, absolutely. So I'm not knocking him for it, obviously. Now that we talked about that at length,

we can be like, oh, fuck, because about that time he crossed over the mountains to Afghanistan. Now, this is... What's the time period we're looking at here? Year 2000. The Northern Alliance is fighting the Taliban. And regardless of how many historical

revisionaries want to put their hands on it, the Taliban is irrevocably bad. The Taliban is always bad. Hardline Sharia law advocates, they kill people horribly. Northern Alliance

not innocent. No matter how many times people want to talk about the line of panchere or how many how many times hollywood wants to remake oh my goodness uh abdul dostum and was it 13 strong or oh yeah can we not talk about that so bad that was a terrible movie wasn't good they wanted him to be Amit Shamasud so bad, but he was already dead. So in May of 2001, Walker crossed the mountains into Afghanistan. No one is really sure how or when,

because he's been gone for so long, but everybody knows he did it around then because there's people in Afghanistan that confirmed seeing him around that time. He apparently emailed a friend back home and said that he did not want to join the Taliban, but he simply wanted to see how Sharia law looked like in action because as a devout follower,

I mean, this is like all those weird people who want to rule the country based on the Ten Commandments. He just wants to see how it looks. So, okay, he has to see for himself. Right, right. That's what he said anyway.

Is that true? Fuck, I don't know. That's just what he told somebody. And from what we know from then on, that isn't true. Once he got there, however, it's not the Taliban that he hooked up with. Because most people know John Walker Lind

is the American Taliban. It's not entirely true. It was none other than Osama bin Laden that he met and he joined. It is known as the Al-Faruq Brigades. It's the foreign fighter regiment of Al-Qaeda.

That's, I didn't know that. Yeah. That's crazy. He began to train with firearms and small unit tactics and explosives in an Al-Qaeda training camp. He even briefly hung out with old OBL himself. Really?

Yeah. I mean, this is kind of like, I feel like this is the hipster version of being a terrorist. Because 9-11 hadn't happened yet. Nobody really gave a shit who OBL was. This is like if dude hung out with Mumford & Sons back in 06. Mumford & Sons. Dude, I used to listen to him heavy in fucking middle school bro

back in the old days yeah nobody gave a shit he wasn't a thing just a little line man he was training at Kandahar my old stomping ground so yeah back in the day do you want to do a shameless book plug oh do you mean like

the hooligans of Kandahar the book that has now what an audiobook and has been known uh by francis horton of the hell of way to die as the most important book that has been written about the global war on terror that book yeah yeah that's the one you should buy it because i need to pay my mortgage you gave it to me well you shouldn't buy it you're my co-host oh okay i mean if you want to give me five bucks it's cool i imagine i'll give it to you um so uh also that's been noted and this is by other people that were in the camp with him, he began blazing hell of weed. Like, smoking a fuckload of weed.

I don't know why this is noted, but it's noted. So him and Osama were boys smoking hell of weed, bro. And then Muhammad said to his men, smoke weed every day. Like, it doesn't make it... Like, I literally read, like, three first-hand accounts, like, yeah,

Walker really liked the hashish. Why are all of you saying this? Yeah, he was kind of weird. Dude blazed it, though. Really ate a lot of rice, because he was just blitzed all the time. Imagine being trapped in like a terrorist training camp where life already sucks and

some dude is just ripped out of his gourd all the time. Fuck the American and he's like goddamn rice again the fucking asshole. That's fucking awesome to be honest. Everybody just remembers him just for having iron lungs. Everybody just remembers

him for hitting the dab hard as fuck. He just hit the fuck. He's sucking up bong water. Bro. And it wasn't shortly after that that Walker's first mission came up. And for listeners of the show, you may remember the time frame.

Nick, you were in California, so I forgive you. It was around 1999. Nice. That John Walker first joined Al-Qaeda militants for action in Kashmir, where he saw action against the Indian Army. Yeah? against the Indian army.

Yeah. Now, so, no one has any fucking idea exactly what kind of combat or any, for that matter, that John Walker Lynn had seen. It's simply implied. He's not talking. One, he's not allowed to talk

because of the son of Samro, which we'll go into. And also, he doesn't really talk to much anybody anymore but he's still anti-social well he's in prison okay that'll do it to you yeah that'll do it to you um but eventually after a few weeks of service he was recalled back to afghanistan and then the september 11th attacks happened now uh for people like myself, I'm 30 years old now. I remember vividly where I was when 9-11 happened.

Most Americans do. Nick's a little bit younger than myself. But most people remember where they were. We're not going to go to 9-11. 9-11 was awful. Regardless of the excuse, flying plane loads of innocent people into buildings is unforgivable. Sorry.

We need to watch that 9-11 Charlie Sheen movie. No, we do not. Please. I would rather... Because you know one existed. Yes. I've heard of it. Yes. Whenever you ask me things like that, I really wish i didn't clear

ieds so well like i really wish the talent would just snuffed my ass out i mean can we yeah sweet because it was either that or spf 18 or whatever that movie was with keanu reeves did a cameo in or whatever uh Why are you making me hate all my fucking favorite people? Dude, the movie's terrible and he's in it for like 10 seconds. I'm gonna chug fucking bleach. So, as you can imagine,

the trickle down of news to a random white dude in Afghanistan pretty slow. But by the time John Walker heard about the news of the 9-11 attacks, he became fucking terrified. Unlike a lot of people around him, he's like,

holy shit, America is going to attack us. We want to get the fuck out. So he wasn't down with it? No, no, absolutely not. So we only can accept this from John Walker's mouth and evidence, but there is no point in John Walker's life did he say he wanted to fight Americans. Now remember, when you join, so this would be like if you went and joined the war war in ukraine tomorrow on russia's side or whatever and then a

month after that america decided to get involved in the ukrainian side did you ever sign up to fight americans no no either did he says he so that's what he says okay and i kind of buy it for reasons we'll talk about a little bit um so he wanted to run according to him he wanted to run immediately but everybody knew he was american because of course everybody knew he was american he was the english-speaking guy i mean he spoke arabic he spoke Urdu brokenly at that point. But everybody still knew him as the American guy. They also knew him as the guy who can smack a bong. Yeah.

Just fucking clear that bitch. So that's why when the, when the unit he was attached to was dispatched to fight the Northern Alliance, he went with them. And then, like most Taliban formations, in the wake of American bombing, they surrendered. Because

American bombing is pretty brutal. It's not anything anybody there is used to. Soon, they were in open retreat. Pretty quickly after that, they were in open retreat. Pretty quickly after that, they were in open surrender. Okay.

And that is when... So, he did not surrender to American forces. He surrendered to Northern Alliance forces. More specifically, Abdul Arshidastim, which is the hero

in the lovely movie 13 Strong okay I watched that did not enjoy it it's a bad movie and not historically accurate most importantly Abdul Rashid Dostum is a goddamn war criminal he suffocated

Taliban prisoners of war in storage containers which is just like the storage container that John Walker Lind was thrown into I'm not saying that John Walker Lind demanded special treatment I'm saying he did not

deserve to be thrown into a metal container to die once in those containers Northern Alliance people shot into them, thousands were killed. I say this meaning the best possible things

about the Northern Alliance. If you were to believe me, Mohammed Shah Massoud is one of the greatest, if not the greatest commanders of the Afghan war against the Soviets and would have been the most transformative commanders

in the coming Afghan civil war if he was not killed about a day before 9-11. What? How'd he die? Suicide bombing via Al-Qaeda. What? Yep.

They knew. Throughout Northeast Afghanistan to this day, there's pictures of him all over the place. I personally served in Charkar in the Bagram province and later in Kapisa in 2008, 2009, and 2010. And you cannot go anywhere without seeing portraits of him everywhere. He's known as the Lion of Panjshir for very good reasons. But the Northern Lions had plenty of their own crimes,

which is what I was getting to. Now, moving past that, eventually, like I said, he fell into the captivity of dostum who brought him to his prison in a place known as kwala i jangy which is a large prison fortress that dates back hundreds of years now at this at this point, CIA, FBI, all those dudes are already there. Have we ever talked about

Dostum before? Briefly. Okay, that's why it sounds familiar. Dostum is interesting. Okay. Glad you brought up CIA. I actually wrote an entire article on Dostum for Lima Charlie News,

which you can look up if you really want to read. I do not get paid by the page view, so I will say Dostum's an asshole. Full disclosure, I worked with someone who disagreed with me that Dostum was an asshole, so the mission's a bit split, but things be what they may. Nice.

So a side note on Dostum, since I was not allowed to say what I wanted to say when I worked for Liam and Charlie. Abdul-Washi Dostum is a war criminal, as I've said once before. He is a man so terrible, even though he is Afghanistan's current vice president. As we sit here today in the year 2019,

he was banned from entering the country because he had sexually tortured his political opponents. What? What? He shoved a bayonet up a man's asshole. Yes. What size are we talking uh rifle bayonet I don't know big enough to be a bayonet and that is current I mean since then he has been let back in the country but he was banned for a significant amount of time. Who let him back in?

The president, it turns out. Yeah, democracy works, Nick. All right. So many, if not all, of the war crimes attributed to the Northern Alliance, many of those same crimes that Walker's parents claim motivated Walker to join Al Qaeda and the tailband were committed by Dostum. Um,

so take that as you may. So Dostum, not a good guy. No Walker and his fault. Fellow POWs are stashed, stashed in unventilated cargo truck and driven to Dostum's prison fortress at Kuala Ijangi, like I said before. It's in the city of Masri Sharif. Hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners died due to mistreatment, torture, and murder during the drive.

It was there, while in Northern Alliance custody, that Walker came in contact with the CIA for the first time. CIA officers Mike Spahn and Dave Tyson singled out the strange white guy amidst a crowd of brown faces. You couldn't get that much of a tan? Well, he tried, but a crowd of Iraqis who had been captured and questioned by Spahn said that Walker wasn't an American. So they kind of covered for him,

but he was Irish. Technically, they were wrong. So for a obscure Irish law, if you can prove that a family member of yours, which I believe within two, like your great- within two, uh, like your great grandparents, grandparents,

great grandparents, something like that. If you can prove they are born to Ireland, you have Irish citizenship. How do you prove it? I don't know. Paperwork. Technically,

if you don't have paperwork, technically he's Irish. Um, so when they walked up to, when they walked up to him and started talking to him, he introduced himself as Suleiman Al-Faris and said nothing else. That was his name? Suleiman Al-Faris.

I hope it means something fucking cool. Eh, not really. Just a name. Spahn began demanding to know if Walker was actually a member of the Irish Republican Army. Because remember, now he's a terrorist in Afghanistan. He's supposed to be Irish. Because remember, obviously the IRA

is known for the fucking jihadi terror links in Afghanistan. During this time, there happened to be a camera rolling, which recorded two CIA agents screaming at Walker, who wasn't saying anything back, which, now, I'm not saying the CIA should not scream at the Taliban, but it made them look bad. Around two hours into the interrogation, prisoners stood up in the courtyard and began attacking their captors with hand grenades. What?

It was then that an accidental battle of Kuala Ijengi began. How? How? What? How? I mean, they just still had them on them. They hid them. They captured them from their Northern Alliance prison guards. Hey, I keistered this one. Oh, God. Help me.

Like most prisons, prisoners outnumber their captors four to one and quickly overran the guards. Spahn was beaten to death. And... The CIA guy? Yep. Holy fuck. Yep. As soon as everybody else could run,

they ran for their lives. Tyson managed to escape to a more secure part of the fortress where he happened to find a German television crew. What? There's a lot of television crews present. There's a lot of nationalities joining here. He took their satellite phone

and quickly called the U.S. Embassy in Uzbekistan for reinforcements. He specifically told them to not bring in air support due to how close the Afghan forces were to the prison. Now this is allied Afghan forces. Instead, they sent a task force dagger, which was the U.S. Special Operations Force in Afghanistan. operations force in Afghanistan. Soon, Delta Force British SAS Rangers and members of the Air Force Pararescue Troops were joined by thousands of local Afghan

soldiers and several T-55 fucking tanks, which if people are paying attention, people's tank! People's tank! For trying to retake the fortress. Well, Tyson may have been a bit worried about killing people with airstrikes.

The Afghans did not have the same worries and began just pumping fucking tank rounds into the goddamn prison. Oh boy. It reminds me of the Beslan school siege in Russia. Oh fuck.

Just pumping tank rounds at point-blank range. Oh, such a clusterfuck. Allied forces assumed that the prisoners who at this point had taken the prison's weapons and ammunition had dug in and would crumble once forces showed up to fight back. And they could not have been more wrong. Afghan forces repelled time and time again,

day after day, forcing Americans to say fuck it and just make it rain from the sky. Unfortunately. Where's Tyson? He's still hiding somewhere. Unfortunately, if you think U.S. forces have a hard time not killing the wrong people

with airstrikes now in the year 2019? It was even worse in 2001. Fuck. They're probably hitting people behind them. A 2,000 pound bomb was dropped, guided by an Air Force combat controller, and landed right on top of a Northern Alliance

platoon, killing all of them, including destroying a T-55 and wounding five members of Delta Force who were embedded with them along with several members of the SAS. Eventually, allied forces beat back the prisoners, taking back the fortress room by room

and trapping the surviving prisoners in the basement. They eventually flushed out when the Northern Alliance decided they were not really game for this cuddly bullshit that their allies were playing so they decided to pour huge barrels of fuel down into the basement light it on fire fuck yeah out of around 500 prisoners. Holy shit. That were there. It's a big basement. When the uprising started, 80 made it out alive. Including our boy.

To include John Walker Lynn. Wow. I wonder what he was doing the whole time. So John Walker Lynn was brought out of the burning basement on a stretcher in full view of the Newsweek camera crew. What? Walker had managed to get himself shot in the leg just about as soon as everything started and ran to the basement.

Now, he was trying desperately to just not get killed. At one point, he and most other prisoners wanted to surrender. But he claims, and what has been corroborated by most people, was the entire situation had been taken over by several other fighters who refused to allow anybody to surrender.

So he just had to wait them all out when they were killed. Then he surrendered. This guy's really good at surviving. It seems to be his most apt skill. Yeah. Walker was taken to a rotting, disgusting hospital ran by the Northern Alliance. And he was actually cared for

by American Special Operations Forces. While he was there, he ran into a CNN journalist named Robert Pelton, who had a camera rolling. Despite the fact that Walker had refused to say anything to the CIA, CNN, and interrogators, he ended up being pretty goddamn open with Pelton. During the interview, Walker first said his name was Abd al-Hamid, and he spoke with a- Oh, that's a different name. Yeah, he spoke with a really obviously fake fucking accent

and I'll post the video to our Twitter for other people to be judges but it's a bad fake now he attempted to make himself sound vaguely Arabic now in his defense as I've said once before

this may also have been because according to Pelton Walker was in a state of hypothermia and shock from blood loss because remember he had been shot in the leg and at this point he had not received much treatment so maybe it wasn't an accident as much

as it was Walker being drunk from being so close to death could go either way in my opinion I think he was faking an accent. Could be wrong. I'd have to watch it. It was only when Pelton asked if he

wanted to talk to him. Maybe he could let his family know if he was still alive. Because remember, he had not spoke to his family at this point for seven months. I hope he stopped the accent and stopped the language and he started speaking American. Oh yeah, that'd be totally sick. Now,

Walker refused for Pelton to call his family, but he did admit who he was. He said, yeah, I'm an American. My name is John Walker Lynn. Now, Pelton is not innocent. It is at this point in the interview, I should point out that Pelton got kind of weird.

I have watched countless interviews with people in war zones, people doing jailhouse interviews with criminals, whoever it may be. So, take that for what it's worth. During the interview, Pelton told

Walker that, quote, he respects the call and respects the cause what now he was called on to the called out on this on multiple occasions and pelton said in his defense um he respect he said now he quote he respects other religions and I respect jihad, which means struggle. Jihad is the five pillars of Islam. Okay. So there's a few things to parse there.

Jihad does mean struggle, does not mean holy war. Right. Jihad is not one of the five pillars of Islam. Okay. Now if he respected other beliefs and he respected Islam as much as he says he did he'd probably know

that jihad is not one of the five pillars those would actually be faith, prayer, charitable giving, fasting during the month of Ramadan and hajj which means you know going to Mecca none of those things are fucking jihad he said this during the interview.

Yes, this is during his interview with CNN. And it will be the intro to this episode. He's a problematic character, in my opinion. Now, here's my opinion on Pelton. He wanted to get Walker to fucking talk. What's a better way to get you to talk? I understand why you did it. Sympathizing with him. Yeah, I get Walker to fucking talk. What's a better way to get you to talk? I understand why he did it. Sympathizing with him. Yeah.

I get it. Now, it'd be a lot fucking easier during his interview with CNN, like, yeah, I fucking lied. I don't believe in that shit. Or, certainly, jihad is not a five-pillar of Islam. Now, jihad does mean struggle. Jihad does not mean holy war.

Those are two different things. Neither one of those things are one of the five pillars of Islam. He's fucking lying on his ass. Now, what I think is much more likely is he thought he knew a whole lot of shit he didn't know. But if I was him, I would say, yeah, I totally lied, so he talked to me. You're literally interviewing a guy on a cot in Afghanistan who thinks he's probably going to get the death penalty. Lie your fucking ass off.

Yeah. I don't know. That's believable, honestly. Now, that interview broadcasted across the world was the first time the Walker family had heard from their son for seven months. And it was the first time they ever heard about him running off to fight a

war after the interview Walker was sent to Camp Rhino where he is strapped naked to a stretcher while blindfolded and was left in a metal shipping container for days at a time now according to the 15-6 which I had referenced multiple times

this investigation was because walker was a potentially dangerous terrorist despite the fact he had a bullet wound in his leg and he had certainly was about half dead at that point from blood loss not to mention the point he had never once threatened anybody who was holding him prisoner. Right. I point this out for reasons we'll go into later. He was interviewed by the FBI and he requested a lawyer. Remember, John Walker Lind is an American citizen. Yeah.

He requested a lawyer. It's a constitutional right. It was refused. This was despite the fact that the U.S. Department of Justice ethics advisor Jessalyn Raddick said that he absolutely needed a lawyer. The FBI told him he would not be going anywhere to include a real hospital for real treatment.

Unless he talked like anybody. He did just that. He talked. Remember he has a fucking bullet wound in his leg. Not treated at this point. Absolutely not. At this point, he was sent to the USS Peleliu, where he's forced to send a confession

before they would operate on his now almost certainly festering leg wound. Small side note here. Now, I am not making this up about the ethics advisor. Raddick, Deslin Raddick, ethic advisor to the FBI, openly disagreed

with the actions taken by the FBI during this investigation. She even went on record disagreeing with her boss, the Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcro of the United States, John Ashcroft. Mysteriously, less than two months after this happened,

she received a horrible performance review. I don't know a lot about being a lawyer. I know a lot about being a public employee. Having a bad performance review is not good. good now key caveat to this this performance of you did not have to be final just sign this letter of resignation and it won't go in your file she did not take it wow instead she tried to fight it for a bit before she resigned uh so she quit and because the US government is full of assholes

she was promptly put on the no fly list really? what the fuck now since then she has become a champion of whistleblowing and several other very key court cases

but her life has been a living hell for standing up for John Ashcroft for over a decade. Jessalyn Randick is the only good person in the story. She's, she's received numerous awards for her service since then, but like she's literally not allowed to leave the country for several years. Assholes.

Yeah. And there there's, this is all comes down to a basic thing. allowed to leave the country for several years. Assholes. Yeah. Shit. This all comes down to a basic thing. If you're arrested and you're questioned without an attorney and you are not giving the right to an attorney, that is a constitutional violation. That is all she was arguing. That's it. That's all it was.

Now, a lot of this had to come down to the fact that John Ashcroft which who is her boss wanted to make a example out of John Walker Lynn to include her boss's boss the president of the United States Jessalyn Randick was fucked thankfully for her

she got her comeuppance which we'll talk about in a little bit can we also say the other good person of this story is the dad? Can we do that? Oh, I mean, he's definitely the best dad in the story. Alright, cool. The bestest dad.

Now, on February 5th, 2002, Lind was indicted on a federal grand jury on the following charges. Conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals. What? Two counts of providing material support to terrorists. What?

One count of supplying services to the Taliban. Oh, man. Conspiracy to supply services to the Taliban and contributing services to Al-Qaeda. Using and carrying firearms and destructive devices, and committing a violence. And marijuana charges. If convicted, Walker

would almost certainly spend the rest of his life in prison. Then, Radek happened. Jessalyn Radek, the woman we were just talking about. What are her main hitching points here was her insistence for the ethics office that he required representation before being questioned now her advice was discarded completely by the fbi later on um the f FBI's whole position was he does not require representation because he's a terrorist.

It goes in direct violation of constitutional law, which they talked about in emails between Jessalyn Randick and her boss, the attorney general. When Jessalyn Randick saw the person she was not technically defending being railroaded, she said, fuck it, and leaked her entire cache of emails to Newsweek. Holy shit. Now, is that illegal? Abso-fucking-lutely. Is she wrong? No.

Wow. Take that for what it's worth for various cases going on to this day. She's fucking cool. Jesslyn Renick is a fucking badass. That was awesome. Now, here's the thing. She tanked her own career. And she did.

It took her several years to recover. But now, what did John Walker Lynn do during aboard the USS Pelew? He sent a confession. The confession is no longer admissible. He did not have representation. None of the questioning was admissible.

He did not have representation. So now the U.S. federal government was fucked. They had nothing. Nothing could be admissible. So they backpedaled pretty goddamn fast. And they went, look, look, look. All right, slow down. They offered Walker a deal.

They said, look, man, without saying as much that we fucked up, we'll give you a plea deal. Plead guilty to helping the Taliban and for carrying a destructive device in the admission of a crime. Sign a gag order and drop all claims that the U.S. forces tortured you, you'll get 20 years. It doesn't sound like a bad deal, but it sounds like a bad deal. It's a bitter apple.

Yeah. Here's the thing. On July 15, 2002, Walker pled guilty, or in his own words, he said, quote, I plead guilty. I provided my service as a soldier to the Taliban last year from about August to December. In the course of doing so, I carried a rifle and two grenades. I did so knowingly and willingly knowing that it was illegal.

willingly knowing that it was illegal. I went to Afghanistan with the intention of fighting against terrorism and oppression, fighting for the suffering of ordinary people at the hands of the Northern Alliance. He'd be eligible for release in 17 years. Yeah. Now, during his time in prison,

he has not been allowed to speak about his time as a soldier of the taliban or al-qaeda because the gag order uh but he has not been so silent as suing the fuck of the federal prison system uh that's for various reasons now uh john marco lynn is part of what's known as a communication management unit they still to day, consider him a high threat person. Might plan an attack. He might plan something. Despite the evidence that

that has never happened. He doesn't seem like the type. He gets one visit a month. Guess who visits him every month? Please tell me he's dead. His parents. Wow. They fly in from California every month to visit him in month. Please tell me he's dead. His parents. Wow. They fly in from California every month to visit him in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he is still incarcerated.

That's understandable. Now, just so this doesn't sound so rosy and nice. Yeah, why you always got to do that? All right. He still 100% support the Taliban. More than that, in the few things he has said that have escaped into the outside world, he also supports ISIS. But he has also sued the U.S. government multiple times.

Being part of the communication management unit means, for whatever reason, he cannot pray with other people. He won that lawsuit. And it went to the Supreme Court of the United States. And he won. Wow. More than that. When did I say he got sentenced?

2002. Yeah. What year are we currently sitting in? Ooh. He's up for... John Walker Lind, the American Taliban, will be released in May of 2019. Really?

Wow. That's right. Within one month of listening to this, John Walker Lind will be a free man. So with that, we're kind of on topic here. That's honestly really nice. Can somebody mark that down? For once, just go ahead and put that tick mark up.

We're on topic. We missed Stalingrad and all that other stuff. Our first year. Now this is an interesting topic. A lot of people are really fucking upset he's getting released. How do you feel? Listening to his life story like that.

Listening to it? Honestly? Greg, this is a guy who's, I mean, ISIS is relatively new. It is. He voiced support for ISIS. Cool, he supports it. Yep. I honestly don't care that he's getting released.

I am in the same boat. Now, do I agree with him? No. No, of course not. Of course I don't. I do not agree with any single thing he's done in almost his entire life. There is... Now, if you want to do something as, I don't know, reductive as find him guilty of a thought crime, like supporting ISIS, that's like some minority report shit with Tom Cruise.

Obviously, nobody's ever going to say, I'm fine with people supporting ISIS. ISIS is bad. ISIS is just as bad as the Nazis were. At the same time, if you were to put a man in a position to not hate the federal government and not support militants, would a federal prison be the system you put him in? So of course he fucking supports ISIS. It's in my opinion that there was a miscarriage of justice in the very beginning.

Where I can see why he would show hate towards. No one. Now, all right, here's my toss up here. At no point in John Walker Lynn's life did he sign up to fight Americans. There's no evidence could I be wrong absolutely but he never once admitted and there's no

evidence ever submitted that he fought Americans on purpose now he also fought the same time where American A-10s and you know whatever we're bombing him that's a thing but he signed up to fight the Northern Alliance and Indians. We have Americans,

and I know we have Canadian listeners, we have Irish listeners, we have German listeners, we have Danish listeners. We're international at this point. There's probably more than one person from your country right now that signed up to fight for the Peshmerga, the PKK, the YPG, the YPJ, whatever it may be, to fight ISIS.

Solely using an AK-47 or an RPG or an IED overseas. Is that illegal? Because that's what he did. Is it good? Fuck no. No. John Walker Lynn's an asshole. And he's getting out of prison an asshole. But it's been 20 fucking years. And the real indictment

here is John Walker Lynn went to Afghanistan before we did and he's going to get out of prison before we get to Afghanistan. That's the indictment here. That's insane. Yeah. Now, I'm not saying I'm going to buy him a fucking beer. I hope he gets hit by a car.

He's a dick. He's going to cause problems when he gets out. He's not going to be a well-adjusted member of society. But that's more of an indictment of our federal prison system than John Walker Lynn as a person. But, yeah, that's our topical episode. Now everybody's all cheered up and shit. John Walker Lind, if you got out of prison, you listen to this podcast.

You go fuck yourself. You worked for the Taliban. Yeah. You worked for Al-Qaeda. We're not your friend. Your dad sounds cool. He had to buy his dad a beer for sure. Yeah.

Now, that's another thing is his parents have been interviewed multiple times since then. And they've said they're proud of their son. Really? Now, I get it. They're like, we're proud that our son stood up and fight for what he believed in. Troubling. they're like we're proud that our son stood up and fight what he for what he believed in troubling but like that's still on the same note of they're supportive but was it destructive for them to be supportive ah i don't know man it's just so weird i don't know um i was known as john walker linden's gonna get to prison in may and he has irish citizenship

yeah he does fuck um so uh some people have been interested in finding out what exactly that means um and that uh so the irish foreign ministry reached out i believe is a fox news article and they said if somebody presents themselves at the Irish border with an Irish passport, we do not, by law, have a reason to reject them. But he's getting out with good time. He's going to begin out with about 17 years. So the U.S. government can actually refuse

to allow him to leave the country. And now if I was U.S. government and he has an Irish passport, I would say it's in our best interest that we let him leave the country to Ireland, right? Get rid of him. Or he might be able to have a normal life if I was him.

So that might mean if you're listening to us and you live in Ireland, the Republic of, not Northern, John Walker Lynn might be your neighbor in the next couple months yeah that's significantly more forgiving than they've ever given any IRA guys but anyway that's

our show for this week Nick so happy to have you back that's a real asshole of an episode to bring me back I had to bring you down a peg you're really happy coming up into the room. Yeah, I was like, oh, fuck. We're going to the recording room.

We got whiskey. We're going to have a good time. I have a slight cough for some reason. Don't know why. That desert air. And I believe this is the longest episode we've ever done. Is it? Hour 45 minutes.

Nice. Anyway, thank you so much for um supporting this show i believe i told nick and rich the other day that uh i originally started the patreon to cover our soundcloud and our drinking habit almost a year ago now um and i was looking for 30 and because of our awesome fans and maybe just a little bit amazing fans yeah uh i've had books sent to me i've had shirts sent to me i've had booze sent to me uh and you are now at over 400 a month still waiting for that pink shirt we'll get it i was told i I was going to get it one day. Thank you guys so much. We'll make sure you get bonus episodes out to us.

Only $1 a month will get you access to everything we have. $5 a month will get you a free copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar. Two book plugs in the episode. If you don't want to support the show, but you still want to copy

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And for all of your other following accounts, we got nothing for you. We'll see you next week. Later.