SYMPATHY FOR A RAT

Friday, December 21, 2001

I COULDN'T believe my ears.

I'm watching this CNN interview with the shaggy-haired traitor John Walker yesterday when suddenly I hear the interviewer - identified as a CNN correspondent - tell Walker how much he "respects" the cause to which Walker has pledged his allegiance.

I was so stunned that I went searching for the interview transcript on CNN's Web site to see if I'd heard it right and there it was for anyone to read: the correspondent - author and self-styled adventurer Robert Young Pelton - was expressing an unseemly and, to say the least, unjournalistic sympathy for a sworn enemy of the United States in wartime.

Doesn't anyone at CNN even listen to this stuff before putting it on TV?

"Yourself a Muslim?" asked Walker hopefully at one point in the interview, which was aired for the first time during Aaron Brown's show on Wednesday night and then aired throughout the day yesterday on CNN (though it was taped back on Dec. 2).

"No, unfortunately, I'm not," answered Pelton to the religion question. "But," he was quick to add, "I respect the cause and I respect the call."

Respect the cause? As I understand it, the "cause" for which the American-born Walker was willing to kill Americans is the fundamentalist Islamic philosophy of the repressive Taliban, which the United States has aided Afghan nationalists in driving from power.

So who is Robert Young Pelton? He is the author of a handful of free-wheeling and best-selling travel books, including "The World's Most Dangerous Places," "Come Back Alive" and "The Adventurist."

He's an unusual personality who, depending on which bio you're reading, has ventured through 60 or 80 countries in search of off-the-beaten-path adventures.

Delve further and you come across some wild statements uttered by Pelton, such as an on-line Q&A he conducted with the Terrorism Research Center in which he likened the New York City police to terrorists ("the New York City police seem to do just fine terrorizing immigrants with toilet plungers") and then later stated, "There is no such thing as terrorism."

Yesterday morning on CNN, Pelton told anchorwoman Catherine Callaway, "I've taken Americans to other jihads, so it's not uncommon to find Americans fighting these wars."

What?! He takes people to jihads? Is this what it takes to get a job as a "correspondent" for CNN?

FRISCO PAPERS ON THE OUTS

THE San Francisco Examiner has outed Taliban traitor John Walker's father, sparking a media feud with its arch rival, the Phil Bronstein-edited Chronicle. Examiner columnist P.J. Corkery wrote that Walker's dad, Frank Lindh, left his wife for a man, and intimated that it helped drive Walker into the arms of Osama bin Laden. "When Frank Lindh left his family in 1997, it was to move in with a male companion," Corkery reported. ". . . Family friends say the men lived as a gay couple . . . Sources close to the family say the father's turn of life from married man to modern gay man startled and flustered the 16-year-old." Corkery said Lindh has been trying to keep his "turn of life" out of the papers, noting, "Given the pummeling that the Walkers . . . have taken from the national press over their wayward son, you can't blame the old man for wanting to suppress reporting on his sexuality." In the rival Chronicle, columnist Rob Morse wrote that Corkery's column "took attacks on [Walker's] family to a new and disgusting level."