Transcribed by Batchild (Sue M.)

BRUCE GELLERMAN: I'm Bruce Gellerman.

ROBIN YOUNG: I'm Robin Young.

BRUCE GELLERMAN: It's "Here and Now".

ROBIN YOUNG: Newsweek magazine is reporting today that John Walker Lindh, the young American from Marin County, California discovered fighting with the Taliban, is now telling investigators that he was a member of Al Qaeda and met Bin Laden. In addition, the magazine reports, some of the government want to try Walker as an enemy belligerent in the U.S. military court, which would mean the possibility of the death penalty. But others feel he would be more useful as a witness to testify against Al Qaeda leaders. Something Steve Hassan agrees with. Steve is an expert in mind control. He's founder of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center and the author of the book Releasing the Bonds, Empowering People to Think For Themselves. And he joins me in the studio. Hello, Steve.

STEVE HASSAN: Hi.

ROBIN YOUNG: Well, we should say right off the bat you've never met John Walker, right?

STEVE HASSAN: Correct.

ROBIN YOUNG: Do you think he was brainwashed?

STEVE HASSAN: I think there's good evidence to believe that he was subjected to a deceptive mind control regime that led him from his original conversion to Islam, which I think was authentic, into this perverted version of Islam conversion in which he became a jihadi and believed that the terrorism acts against our country were justified.

ROBIN YOUNG: What would lead you to believe that? I know that people like you are really examining the tapes of him and--is there something that you see that leads you to think this, or--?

STEVE HASSAN: Well, he reminds me a bit of myself, to be honest. I was 19 years old in 1974 when I was recruited into a front group and I came to believe America was satanic and that another country was the Fatherland and cut off contact with my family and was very, very skinny; I was as skinny as he is now.

ROBIN YOUNG: This is the Unification Church which brought you into its fold.

STEVE HASSAN: Well, it's the Moon organization. They have many hundreds of different names, but, yes, I believed that Moon was the Messiah, I bowed to an altar with his picture on it, was convinced that Satan was everywhere, invading my thoughts, and, of course, being Jewish, I didn't believe in Satan before. I had been mind controlled. And I believe that, that John Walker probably had an authentic conversion to Islam and became Sulayman Al-Faris. But somewhere along the line he became Abdul Hamid and a jihadi, probably while he was studying at a Pakistani madrasa or most certainly when he was at the Al Qaeda terrorist camps.

ROBIN YOUNG: We've heard about the madrasas, that they hound this ideology in from dawn till they go to sleep.

STEVE HASSAN: Right. Basically, you know, every group influences its members, but when we talk about destructive mind control, we're basically talking about an authoritarian, pyramid structured group that uses deception and control of behavior, information, thoughts and emotions to reshape a person's identity and make that new identity dependent and obedient on the leadership.

ROBIN YOUNG: But I still don't--I mean, how do you make a clear distinction between one man's religion and another man's cult?

STEVE HASSAN: Well, for example, I'm a Jew, I belong to Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, Massachusetts. I chant, I pray, I believe in the Almighty. And Judaism, Christianity and Islam all believe in a God that wants us to have free will, that wants us to choose to follow God at our own volition. But destructive mind control groups literally program people so that they don't have a free choice and they don't have access to alternative points of information. They often--their sleep is deprived, they're induced into hypnotic states of consciousness. I understand that people in the Al Qaeda camps were subjected to hundreds of hours of watching videotapes of Americans and Israelis killing Muslims. I've heard tales of suicide agents being put in open coffins and being instructed that they've actually died and that they just need to complete one more mission before going on to Paradise. And my criticism of destructive cults in general is focused on their behaviors, not on their beliefs. And the key is the locus of control, whether or not someone is choosing to have these new beliefs or whether or not it's being forced upon you.

ROBIN YOUNG: Well, and others have also noted that the terrorists and John Walker--none of these people come from situations that are so profoundly awful, that they might be sent into the arms of this change, that they all seem to go through these incredible personality changes-- STEVE HASSAN: Right-- ROBIN YOUNG: --but they weren't in this desperate situation when that happened.

STEVE HASSAN: Right. Cults want intelligent, educated people. They tend to come from middle class to upper middle class backgrounds. They're not street-wise. They're idealistic. They tend to be going through some stressful point in their life--John Walker's parents were divorcing. But basically they're ignorant of cult mind control tactics.

ROBIN YOUNG: Steve, you know there are people listening to this who do not want to hear this. They don't want to hear that a terrorist or someone fighting for the Taliban may be a victim. They had a choice to go there. They should be tried as traitors and none of this "let's psychoanalyze them and find out what happened."

STEVE HASSAN: Ah, you know, it's--there is a, a desire in a stressful, fearful situation to try to simplify a complex situation and just call people evil. I definitely believe that Johnny Walker was engaged in evil acts, working for the Taliban and for Al Qaeda. But I do believe that good people can be hypnotized and indoctrinated into a new identity system and, and told to perform acts, and if it's true, Johnny Walker should be counseled and, rather than killing him or putting him in jail for the rest of his life, I think we should sentence him to years of public service, teaching the public about cults and mind control, helping us deprogram other radical Islamists and maybe making him pay back Johnny Spann's widow and children some money at least to, to recompense them for their suffering.

ROBIN YOUNG: Um-hmm. What else can we learn from taking that tactic with either terrorists or Johnny Walker? What benefit is it to us to spend the time to, quote, deprogram or counsel them?

STEVE HASSAN: Well, we--we, we went on a military engagement to end terrorism, but everyone that knows anything about terrorism knows this is just the first phase, and what we have to deal with in the next phase is millions of people who have been indoctrinated into this totalistic, black/white, us-versus-them hatred of America. And so we're gonna--we're in a psychological war, and therefore we should be using every knowledge, every technique at hand to, uh, to rescue people. I also can go out on a limb and say that in the United States I feel we are subsidizing with taxpayer money destructive cults that are defrauding the public and infringing on people's human rights here. Everything from the, the Moon organization, which has achieved incredible power, owning the Washington Times, Insight magazine-- ROBIN YOUNG: Hmm-- STEVE HASSAN: --UPI. Scientology, which did not have tax exemption status for 25 years until the Clinton administration. And I might say one more point that since 9-11, destructive cults are recruiting like crazy, because the public is fearful, because the economy is in a slump, and they're playing on people's fears and insecurities instead of taking the position that, hey, we're all God's children, we're all living on one spaceship Earth and we have to find a way to live together in peace.

ROBIN YOUNG: Hmm. Steve, thank you so much.

STEVE HASSAN: You're welcome.

ROBIN YOUNG: Steve Hassan is the founder of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center. For more information, go to our web site, www.here-now.org

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