Not just the boy next door

Only a few years before he converted to Islam, not long before he traveled overseas to study Arabic, not long before he trained at al Qaeda's camp, not long before he met with Osama bin Laden, not long before he was caught in Afghanistan fighting for the Taliban, John Walker Lindh was a friendly kid growing up in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The so-called "American Taliban" has been one of the strangest factors in the war on terrorism. His journey from liberal Takoma Park, Maryland, to the basement of the Kala Jangi prison fortress near Mazar-e-Sharif in Northern Afghanistan has been a source of much interest to the public and psychological experts alike. No one seems able to comprehend how the 20-year-old young man described by his parents as "shy" and "sweet" ended up an exhausted American prisoner calling himself Abdul Hamid and declaring himself a holy warrior.

Lindh, or "Jihad Johnny," as one radio talk show host calls him, converted to Islam at age 16 after moving with his parents from his lifelong home on Walden Road to affluent Marin County in California. He reportedly took his inspiration from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which describes the famous black leader's own conversion.

Soon after Lindh finished high school, he began attending an area mosque and dressing in the traditional Muslim long robe and cap. He gave away his hip-hop CDs and asked to be called Sulayman. In February 2000, he moved to Yemen, with his parents' support, to study Arabic.

The last contact Lindh's parents had with him before his capture was through an email last May in which Lindh explained that he would be waiting out Yemen's summer heat "somewhere cooler." The next time they would see him would be months later on their television screen, when he emerged filthy and disoriented from a prison fortress basement awash with dead bodies of Taliban fighters.

Lindh and other Taliban soldiers had retreated to the prison basement after a revolt against their guards went awry. A week later, the survivors were forced to surrender, injured and starving, when the basement was flooded with ice-cold water. Marilyn Walker cried as she watched her son, with a bullet wound in his leg, tell reporters about his love for the Taliban movement.

"He used to live down the street"

Childhood acquaintances of Lindh remember him in unremarkable terms. "He seemed like a sweet, nice, funny kid," says Jane Clark, mother of Bennet Madison. Madison is a Blair alumnus and childhood friend of Lindh's.

It's difficult for Lindh's childhood acquaintances to equate the friendly, dark-haired little boy they remember with the unsmiling, bearded man now saturating the media. "We all thought it was so crazy," says Blair senior Jessica Schneider. "I mean, he used to live down the street from us."

Blair parent Judy Colwell, whose now-graduated son was also friends with Lindh, describes him as "quiet and sweet, thoughtful. He was not physically very active. He was more of a watcher and a thinker."

"He was really friendly and nice, potentially a little annoying," says Adam Parr, one of Lindh's elementary school pals.

Parr, who attended Kensington Parkwood Elementary School with Lindh, remembers playing the fantasy role-play game ‘Dungeons and Dragons' with Lindh.

The popular computer game has been accused by critics of encouraging the occult and leading teens to cross dangerous lines between imagination and reality. Supporters of the game disagree. One fantasy role-play website displays the quote, "I know of no real case of a Dungeons and Dragons-related suicide or killing. It seems unlikely: the game teaches hope and resourcefulness. It encourages people to believe they can defeat the obstacles they face."

Professor Mark Juergensmeyer, a terrorism consultant for the State Department, speculated in the San Francisco Chronicle on what may have appealed to Lindh about fighting for the Taliban. "Fighting in a war like this can be very exciting," he said. "It's like ‘Dungeons and Dragons.' Combine that with a sense of purpose and a religious dimension, and it can be personally redemptive and transforming."

But there's a fierce debate among experts about the real reason Lindh ended up siding with anti-U.S. forces. Was he indeed just an overzealous convert or was he brainwashed?

In pursuit of happiness

Rick Ross, an expert on cults and extremist groups, believes the Taliban gradually transformed Lindh from a kid seeking "spiritual fulfillment" to a brainwashed American enemy. "It wasn't like Mr. Lindh initially said, as a 16-year-old in California, ‘I want to be a Taliban fighter,'" explains Ross. "That was an evolutionary process that took years, through layers of indoctrination, through a process that took place in increments, step by step, where people don't realize how deep their involvement is becoming."

Ross, who has previously been quoted in The Washington Post and The New York Times, theorizes that after Lindh's first, harmless steps took him to the mosques in California, the situation began to change when he moved to Yemen and came within reach of Taliban extremists. "Where he began, in a pursuit of Islam," says Ross, "was not where he ended up. The idea in Lindh's mind—that he was serving Allah, that he was doing what he should as a true Muslim—was not in accordance with the view of true Muslims."

Ross relates Lindh's indoctrination to the famous frog-in-a-pot experiment. Put a frog in tepid water in a pot on the stove. Increase the heat gradually enough, and the frog won't notice that it is being boiled alive until it's too late.

"The indoctrination," says Ross, "like the water in the pot, is turned up very gradually. They don't realize that this process is going on. And they, in essence, cooperate unknowingly."

Ross points out that as Lindh's submersion into the Taliban deepened, his contact with his family and other outsiders faded away, a typical symptom of cult inductees. "He became submerged in a kind of alternate world or subculture," Ross says. "There was no one to offer him an alternate view."

Juergensmeyer disagrees with the cult theory, but doesn't dispute that Lindh never set out to be part of the Taliban. "I don't think he was brainwashed," says Juergensmeyer. "His kind of involvement in the Taliban, the al Qaeda, is really no different than a lot of rational, ordinary Muslims who then get brought into the al Qaeda. They start with a perception of the world that makes sense, then somehow gets skewed."

Parr says he never could have predicted the dramatic turn his childhood buddy's life would take. "It seems so unbelievable," he says. "My father woke me up and said, ‘Do you remember John Lindh? They just caught him in Mazar-e-Sharif fighting for the Taliban!'"

Nothing but the truth

Of course, no one can really know for sure what was going on in Lindh's head when he decided to stand on the other side of the American guns. He told reporters after his capture that he "supported" the Sept 11 attacks, but his parents defend him, saying he must have been dazed and disoriented after his week-long ordeal in the prison basement.

"He had just come out of this basement of this prison where he went through an ordeal that you and I could hardly imagine," Frank Lindh, father of the suspected terrorist, told CNN, "with grenades coming down, bombs exploding and men dying all around him."

After his son's first hearing on Jan 24, Frank Lindh faced a crowd of reporters and insisted, "John loves America. He never meant to harm any American, and John never did harm any American."

However, Attorney General John Ashcroft said in Jan 23 statement, "Terrorists did not compel John Walker Lindh to join them. John Walker Lindh chose terrorists. Our American system of justice will allow Walker the rights and due process that the terrorists he fought side by side with sought, and still seek, to destroy."

Lindh is now being held in the Alexandria Adult Detention Center in northern Virginia, where he joins high-profile inmates such as Zacarias Moussaoui, so far the only person charged in connection with the Sept 11 attacks, and Robert Hanssen, the former FBI and senior counterintelligence agent imprisoned for spying for Russia.

He spends his days in "administrative segregation," 23 hours a day alone in a concrete cell, less than an hour's drive from his childhood home in Takoma Park.