The fall of John Walker Lindh

He met bin Laden and carried arms for the Taliban. And when he was finally captured, he faced the fury of Americans -- U.S. soldiers in particular. Part 2 of an exclusive excerpt.

By Mark Kukis

Aug 26, 2003 | John Walker Lindh reported to Osama bin Laden's al Farooq training camp outside Kandahar in June 2001 with about 20 other volunteers, mostly from Saudi Arabia. The desert base was similar to the mountain camp in northern Pakistan where Lindh received his first arms training with Kashmiri militants weeks earlier. But these grounds were home to Arabs, rather than Afghans or Pakistanis, and the men who ran al Farooq had even darker ambitions than training and arming a guerrilla force.

Living in a tent, Lindh joined about 100 Arab volunteers at the camp, which sat on a hidden canyon floor in a chain of low mountains arching across the desert plain surrounding Kandahar. Instructors woke recruits early and ran them through a daily regimen of running, hiking and arms training, broken up by prayers. The trainees had target practice and learned how to handle grenades and Molotov cocktails. They went on camping excursions and learned battlefield tactics such as different types of combat crawls, surveillance methods, camouflage techniques, signs and signals, navigation of rugged terrain and how to carry weapons properly.

The trainees gathered together in the evenings at the camp mosque. But instead of accountability sessions, al Farooq offered guest speakers every night. Among the lecturers who addressed the group was Osama bin Laden, who showed up at the camp a handful of times toward the end of Lindh's course.

The evening lectures had always been a chance for Lindh and other recruits, who sagged at the end of a day's training, to nod off. Sitting through a bin Laden lecture required a special kind of endurance. Bin Laden, apparently ill, spoke softly and slowly as he sipped water during his talks, which covered topics ranging from local problems to global politics. Lindh dozed through at least one of bin Laden's lectures, and found the others unmemorable, despite bin Laden's obvious stature in the camp.

Lindh also had heard rumors that bin Laden masterminded the embassy attacks in East Africa, and he knew that the wealthy Saudi had worked with Azzam and supported jihadi causes. But he had also heard that bin Laden thought jihadi struggles like Chechnya and Bosnia were a lost cause, leaving Lindh uncertain of what to make of him. Also, Lindh disdained how some in the camp looked with reverence to bin Laden, who was always accompanied by an unusually large entourage. Lindh felt jihad was not a celebrity cause, and that bin Laden's apparent stardom did not mesh with the egalitarian ideals of Islam.

Each time after bin Laden spoke, recruits who wanted to meet him would line up for a handshake. Lindh passed on the first evening, as did some of the other trainees, and went back to his tent to sleep. On one of bin Laden's other visits, however, recruits were told at the end of bin Laden's talk that they could either meet the famed Saudi exile, or do camp chores after the mosque session. Some of the camp instructors had told Lindh beforehand that anyone who wanted to meet bin Laden had to be sincere about jihad, since many in the camp seemed ready to drop out. Lindh was indeed serious about jihad -- and wanted to get out of work detail -- so he joined four other trainees, with whom bin Laden spent about five minutes, thanking each for volunteering.

The meeting seemed insignificant to Lindh at the time, an excuse to avoid unpleasant camp duty. He didn't know the United States already wanted the terrorist leader for mass murder, or that in those very days bin Laden was orchestrating the death of thousands more in New York. He walked away thinking little of the encounter, eager only to be done with training so he could finally go on duty with the Taliban.

But toward the end of the course, an al Farooq instructor approached Lindh and others to ask if anyone would be interested in taking up jihad in either Israel or the United States.

Lindh and his comrades thought the offer was a trick question, an effort by the Arabs who ran the camp to ferret out spies rumored to be among them. But the recruitment was likely for real.

Next Page: Standing armed watch in the barren hills of Afghanistan

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