He happened to have gone to Afghanistan in 2000 as a nineteen year old
In May 2001, George Bush gave the Taliban $43 million
Lindh was still in Afghanistan on 9/11
About a month and a half later, he was captured in Afghanistan and suddenly hit the news as "American Taliban"
Here's
his lawyer on the 2002 plea deal:
... We weren't going to plead to an al-Qaida count. We weren't going to plead to a conspiracy to kill Americans. And the reason was that John didn't do any of those things. The plea we did agree to today was true; that is to say, he was a soldier in the Taliban army, one of I guess what, 50,000 perhaps. But he was, and he was there ... John, having converted to Islam, having studied in Yemen, both Arabic and then later in Pakistan, having studied the Koran, went to Afghanistan to serve as a soldier in the Taliban army. That's all he ever wanted to do and that's all he ever did. Once he got there, he never did fire his gun ... He never did fire his gun – never did hurt anybody. And we had one meeting in negotiations where my colleagues on the prosecution side were sitting there, and I said who did he ever hurt? And I got no answer to that. He never hurt anybody ... But the very first thing that John told his interrogators the third day, on December 3, was that after September 11, he was quite troubled by the events because, first of all, he doesn't believe in attacks on civilians. He feels very strongly about that. That's wrong. It's not in the Koran as far as he is concerned. It is not his brand of Islam. He thought it was very wrong, but he couldn't get out for fear of death. He couldn't just leave the district of Qatar. He would have been killed ... To find by accident a 21-year-old fellow at the bottom of a basement who is there for religious reasons is not a great victory in the war on terrorism ...
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