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Spann's Father Slams Ashcroft
Thursday, August 1, 2002
By Stewart M. Powell
Hearst Newspapers

“I heard my president say we're not going to cut deals with terrorists,” Spann said in a telephone interview from his real estate firm in Winfield, Ala. “We can never whip terrorists by letting people off. I feel like they should back up and throw this plea bargain out.”

WASHINGTON -- Hearst
The father of the CIA agent killed in Afghanistan says he's disappointed that Attorney General John Ashcroft failed to strongly support his request to speak at the sentencing of John Walker Lindh.

Johnny Spann, father of slain operative Johnny “Mike” Spann, also accused the Bush administration of betraying his son by plea-bargaining with Lindh. Spann said he had expected forceful backing from the Justice Department for his bid to address the court at Lindh's Oct. 4 sentencing in Alexandria because of the president's strong push for victims' rights.

Ashcroft advised Spann's home-state senator, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., on Monday that Justice Department prosecutors would not officially back Spann's request because the Spann family may not meet the legal definitions of victims who are encouraged to participate at sentencing proceedings. Justice Department prosecutors would “not object” to Spann testifying and “would be pleased if the judge in the case allowed Mr. Spann to testify,” Ashcroft told Sessions.

Justice Department prosecutors never charged Lindh with murdering Spann's 32-year-old son, a Manassas Park resident who was killed Nov. 25 at the outset of a six-day uprising by captured al-Qaida and Taliban fighters at the Qala-I-Janghi fortress in northern Afghanistan.

“It's a start for the attorney general to say he's not opposed to me speaking,” Spann said. “But I'm disappointed the Justice Department doesn't consider us victims. We have victims' rights. I realize I sound emotional, but Mike was a victim and we're victims because Mike was a victim.”

Mike Spann died at the hands of unidentified captives moments after finishing his prison interrogation of Lindh, a captured American citizen who had fought for the ousted Taliban rulers of Afghanistan. Lindh had remained silent during the CIA questioning.

Johnny Spann said he blames Lindh for complicity in the death because he failed to warn his son that captured fighters for the Taliban and al-Qaida terrorist network “were armed and about to ambush him.”
(More: The Northern Virginia Journal Online News Source)
2002 © Hearst Newspapers.

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