The father of CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann, the first American to be killed in action after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has blasted the scheduled release this month of John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban who was part of a prison uprising in which his son was slain.

Johnny Spann, 70, of Winfield, Ala., told the Washington Examiner that Lindh, now 38, remains a threat and called on President Trump to ensure he serves his full term of 20 years, which expires in November 2021, rather than being freed because of good behavior on May 23.

“I don’t know if there’s anything that President Trump can do, but there’s gotta be somebody who can do something,” Spann said. It appears there are few, if any, options open to Trump because a judge has agreed that Lindh has abided by the plea bargain struck when he was convicted in 2002.

Spann said he wanted his son to be remembered amid the likely furor over Lindh's release. “Mike, like so many other Americans who serve, was a patriot. Mike left the United States for one reason only: because al Qaeda flew planes into our buildings on Sept. 11. People like Mike put their lives on the line — and sometimes that means giving their lives to keep us free. Lindh tried to join the Taliban and they told him to join al Qaeda. And that’s exactly what he did ... He's a traitor."

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Mike Spann, who was 32 when he was killed, joined the CIA in June 1999 as a paramilitary officer. He was sent to Afghanistan after 9/11 and operated with U.S. Special Forces troops and Northern Alliance fighters. In late November 2001, he was in the military fortress of Qala-i-Jangi carrying out interrogations of hundreds of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters who had been taken prisoner.

Lindh, then 20, traveled to Afghanistan in early 2001 to join the Taliban, and spent weeks at al Qaeda training camps. Baptized a Catholic, his family had moved to San Anselmo, Calif., when he was 10 and he had converted to Islam at age 16. After being captured by Northern Alliance fighters on Nov. 25, 2001, he was taken to Qala-i-Jangi.

Shortly after Mike Spann, who was married with three children, and his fellow CIA officer David Tyson questioned Lindh — who refused to tell them he was an American — the prisoners rose up and overwhelmed the pair. Spann was killed by the mob and Tyson ran for his life.



John Walker Lindh, Mike Spann, Johnny Spann. (AP/Screenshot/Wikipedia)



The Justice Department’s criminal complaint against Lindh in 2002 charged him with conspiracy to kill Americans in Afghanistan, with providing material support to terrorist organizations including al Qaeda, and with engaging in prohibited transactions with the Taliban. The Justice Department alleged that Lindh had not just joined the Taliban, but had also been to al Qaeda training camps and met with Osama bin Laden, who “thanked [Lindh] for taking part in jihad.”

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Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft said that Lindh “could receive life imprisonment.” But the U.S. dropped most of the charges against Lindh in exchange for a guilty plea related to supporting the Taliban and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Speaking at his sentencing in October 2002, Lindh claimed he “made a mistake by joining the Taliban." Judge T.S. Ellis III, handing down the sentence, told Lindh: “Life is making choices and living with the consequences … You made a bad choice to join the Taliban."

Legal scholars believe that Trump does not have the power to order that Lindh serve his full sentence. "If he lived up to the [plea] agreement, it’s a done deal," Arthur Rizer, a former federal prosecutor now at the R Street think tank, told the Washington Examiner. "The president can’t trump — pun intended — proscribed law on how sentences are carried out."

"I would also say that in a free nation, and as a center-right person who believes in limited government, we don’t allow the government to hold people for crimes they may commit — that is what despots do."

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Johnny Spann said he wished Lindh had been charged with treason, but at minimum wants him to serve the full two decades. He believes Lindh is culpable for his son’s death, saying that “everybody in that place knew what was going to happen, but he said nothing," and that Lindh also "knew that terrorists had been dispatched to the United States to kill innocent people [on 9/11], but he didn’t warn anyone."

He said: “I think he got off really light. He had some good attorneys, and he got a slap on the wrist when he should’ve gotten life in prison. If you’re a part of a group that is carrying out terrorist activities, you’re a terrorist too."

The government, he argued, had dropped the ball during the prosecution: “He was training with and fighting for the enemy, and then the government minimized it. Prosecuting him was going to be a big hassle, so they took the easy way out … I feel like the judge or the U.S. attorney’s office or the administration wanted to put it behind them, so they settled for a 20-year plea agreement that they never should’ve done."

Last month, Judge Ellis set Lindh’s release from Terre Haute, Ind., for three weeks' time. The special conditions of his supervised release include his internet communications being monitored, not being allowed to communicate with any extremists or to view extremist materials, and not being allowed to leave the U.S. without permission. He became an Irish citizen in 2013 and has expressed a desire to move to Ireland.

Johnny Spann said that “the restrictions on his release are like a slap in the face" to ordinary Americans. “How stupid do you think we are? You couldn’t control him in prison, so how do you expect to stop him when he’s out?”

He was referring to two government assessments of Lindh, obtained by Foreign Policy in 2017, that painted a picture of an unrepentant extremist who remained radicalized behind bars.

The intelligence summary from the Federal Bureau of Prisons stated that "inmate Walker Lindh made pro-[Islamic State] statements to various reporters and was subsequently dropped by counsel.” Referring to communications between Lindh and his father, Frank, it said: “Mr. Lindh informs his son the only way his previous attorneys would again represent him is for him to apologize and renounce violence in any form and without reservation."

The report quotes Lindh’s father as saying that, in order to represent him again, Lindh’s former attorney “will absolutely demand that you be willing to condemn in all sincerity, publicly if needed, and without any reservation whatsoever, depravity of any kind, whoever commits it.”

But Lindh refused. “It looks like we will have to abandon this project because I am not interested in renouncing my beliefs or issuing condemnations," he was quoted as saying.

An excerpt from a National Counterterrorism Center report stated clearly that Lindh was actively engaging in extremist activity while in prison: “As of May 2016, John Walker Lindh … continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts. In March 2016, he told a television news producer that he would continue to spread violent extremist Islam upon his release.”

Johnny Spann said this was proof that Lindh is still a threat, telling the Washington Examiner: “This guy has not changed and he's no model prisoner. He’s still a radical Islamic terrorist. If anything, he is more radicalized than ever.”