Lindh Said to Know of Attack Plans Separate From Sept. 11

Days before he allegedly joined a terrorist training camp run by Osama bin Laden, John Walker Lindh told his mother that he would not return to California because “I don’t intend to leave Pakistan until I finish what I came here for.”

The e-mail does not directly show that Lindh, 21, conspired to murder Americans, as U.S. authorities have charged, or that he had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But the computer message, released Friday by federal prosecutors, provides a window into Lindh’s state of mind last spring. Shortly after he sent the e-mail, prosecutors said, Lindh joined a terrorist training camp and met Bin Laden, part of what they called his “effort to go on a jihad.”

The April 5 e-mail was included in government documents responding to legal motions filed recently by Lindh’s defense team, which has sought to remake him as a religious wanderer seeking out the Muslim faith rather than someone conspiring to kill Americans.

To further bolster its case, the government also released portions of statements that Lindh made to U.S. investigators after his arrest last fall.

While Lindh said he was “very ashamed at the high death toll” on Sept. 11, he admitted he had been told of plans for three separate attacks on the U.S. but did nothing to alert America, government lawyers said.

They also strongly rebutted defense assertions that Lindh was tortured and held in dirty, inhumane conditions after his arrest. Rather, they said, he was fed, clothed and housed as well as or better than the U.S. military personnel who arrested him.

For example, prosecutors said, “while the Navy physician who was treating him had to sleep on a concrete floor in a sleeping bag in a room with a hole in the wall and a hole in the ceiling, Lindh slept on a stretcher in a container that protected him from the elements.”

When his case goes to trial in August, a federal jury must decide whether Lindh became an enemy of the U.S. or was simply a Taliban soldier fighting the Northern Alliance.

In a message to Lindh, his mother, Marilyn Walker, had pleaded with him to return home to Marin County for a visit. But her son made it clear in his e-mail that he was determined to stay in Central Asia.

“I don’t know what I can say to you to make you realize that what I’m doing here is serious,” he wrote her. “I came here to Pakistan for a specific purpose. I don’t intend to leave Pakistan until I finish what I came here for, just as I didn’t leave Yemen until I finished what I went there for.”

Lindh’s lawyers maintain that he was studying the Muslim faith, and that he never became a supporter of Bin Laden or terrorism.

But government lawyers took the opposite view. By May 1, they said, Lindh had entered a terrorist training camp where he “embraced the Taliban.” “Lindh had long abandoned his family in his effort to go on a jihad,” prosecutors said.

There is no evidence that Lindh helped plan the Sept. 11 attacks. But the government, in seeking to have him imprisoned for life, contends that he conspired with other terrorists to murder Americans.

Prosecutors said Lindh was so aware of the hatred for Americans that he claimed he was “Irish and not American because he thought it would be safer for him” in the Al Qaeda training camp.

Later, after he surrendered to the Northern Alliance and was arrested by U.S. troops, Lindh “stated that he heard . . . from talk around the camp that America was supposed to be attacked three different times.”

The government released other “highly incriminating” statements Lindh allegedly made after his arrest.

He told his captors that it had been a mistake for Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to attack governments that are supported by the United States. Rather, the government said, Lindh advised that “it was more effective to attack the head of the snake”--a reference to the United States.

He also stated that he “understood the strategy” behind bombings of American embassies, naval ships and military installations.

Lindh told U.S. investigators that he “understood the mission of many who attended the camps was to engage in, among other things, suicide operations in the United States and Israel, and to fight on the front lines with the Taliban,” prosecutors said.

“Thus,” they added, “the meaning of the word ‘terrorism’ is no mystery to the defendant.”

But prosecutors also released statements from Lindh that might help his case.

Lindh “related he didn’t understand why [Al Qaeda] bombed the World Trade Center,” according to the government’s filing. He also said that “when he heard about the World Trade Center bombing, he was very ashamed due to the high death toll.”

The government also rejected the defense assertion that Lindh was “tortured” by his U.S. captors--kept naked inside a metal container, for instance, to make him talk.

“We take this opportunity to correct the record,” prosecutors said.

Lindh, who had been wounded in the leg before he was arrested, was immediately given medical treatment, antibiotics, morphine and Valium, the government said.

“Lindh was then taken back to the same residence where the Special Forces personnel were staying and was given a bed in which to sleep, food to eat and water to drink,” prosecutors said. His diet was said to have included “calorie-rich” food and sweets such as lemon poundcake, fudge brownies and bubble gum.

Prosecutors said Lindh was placed in the metal container for his own safety and well-being.

“His ragged clothing was removed, he was searched, and he was then placed in a large metal container, where he was initially secured to a stretcher,” prosecutors said.

“Within an hour or two, he was wrapped in two comforters for warmth. He was given plenty of water. Within two days, he was provided medical scrubs and was released from the stretcher.”

The government said Lindh was given the same type of ready-to-eat meals provided to U.S. soldiers, as well as haircuts, a Koran and the location of Mecca so he would know in which direction to pray.