The strange Odyssey of John Walker Lindh: like many teens, he was searching for a spiritual connection. But his journey led to radical Islam -- and charges that he betrayed his country.

• Author: McCollum, Sean
• Position: National

San Anselmo, Calif., across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, is a town of tree-lined streets, where Mercedes SUVs and Porsche coupes glide past million-dollar bungalows. The area is noted for its professional, educated residents and liberal social values, and it is here that John Walker Lindh reached his teens.

Bright and bookish, he played the flute, impressed his high school teachers as a "gifted writer of poetry," and spoke of plans to help the poor when he grew up.

Such a suburban idyll could not be farther from the war-blasted Qala Jangi fortress near Mazar-i-Shafif, Afghanistan. Last November, about 400 captured Taliban fighters were taken there for detention and interrogation. The prisoners revolted, but the uprising was crushed after days of heavy fighting. Only 86 prisoners survived.

One, a scrawny 20-year-old who called himself Abdul Hamid, lay on a stretcher with shrapnel in his leg. His thick hair and beard framed a gaunt and grimy face. CNN beamed that image around the world. In California, John Walker Lindh's parents recognized their son, and cried.

TRAITOR OR TRUTH SEEKER?

How did a privileged American teen end up fighting for the Taliban, the repressive Islamist regime in Afghanistan? Why would a "good, sweet, shy boy," in his mother's words, train with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, the terrorist network implicated in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States?

Lindh now faces life in federal prison for his activities in Afghanistan. But was he a traitor? Or a truth seeker who was searching for meaning in the wrong place, and at the worst possible time?

John Phillip Walker Lindh was born in Silver Spring, Md., an easy commute to Washington, where his father was an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice. His parents, Frank Lindh and Marilyn Walker, named their son after John Lennon and John Marshall, a Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The middle of three children, Lindh lived his first 10 years in Silver Spring before the family moved to San Anselmo in 1991.

EXPLORING FAITH

Lindh was raised Roman Catholic, but his mother and his father, a lawyer for Pacific Gas & Electric, encouraged him to seek his own spiritual path. By 15, he was exploring other faiths with a quiet intensity, including Buddhism, Native American practices, and Islam. According to his father, Lindh's direction took a dramatic turn after he read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the life story of the charismatic American Muslim leader.

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