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and he held one,

saying that they were

going to be filing charges

against john walker lindh.

and a reporter asked if he had

been permitted to have a lawyer.

and ashcroft said...

-i think it's important to

understand that the subject here

is entitled

to choose his own lawyer

and to our knowledge has not

chosen a lawyer at this time.

this afternoon, a grand jury in

the eastern district of virginia

returned a 10-count indictment

against walker lindh.

-a couple weeks later, again,

he was asked about the treatment

of john walker lindh.

and he said that

john walker lindh's rights...

-...including his rights

not to incriminate himself

and to be represented

by counsel

have been carefully,

scrupulously honored.

-so i felt, like,

he's flat-out lying.

any human

can read the newspaper

and see pictures

of this guy being tortured.

-and his defense argues

that his statements

to the fbi

are unreliable

because he made them

after being held

for two or three days

in this metal container.

-and more information

was coming out...

-...blindfolded,

his hands and feet

painfully bound

to a stretcher.

-...that he had

a bullet in his leg,

that he was

being held in a box.

i was getting very much

a vibe from my boss to drop it,

and i was concerned there was

an ethical violation here.

we still have not resolved

this with the criminal division

about how to deal with it.

and she said...

-i want you to close the file.

-..."i want you to close

the file."

it was clear

that there was another plan

that was being put into place,

and it was to prosecute this guy

and make an example out of him.

-he's accused of conspiring

to murder american citizens,

supporting terrorists,

and supplying services

to the taliban.

-the government was now

filing a criminal complaint

against this guy.

he was the first

terrorism suspect

to be prosecuted after 9/11,

and there was literally

a national hysteria

around the case.

-he tried to kill

american troops.

-1950s, what he did

would have been called treason,

and he would have been

sentenced to death.

-he's a traitor.

he should have been executed.

-two and two didn't

add up to four until march.

the prosecutor in the

john walker lindh criminal case,

the case i advised

against bringing,

contacted me directly.

and he said, "as you know,

there is a federal court

discovery order

for all justice

department correspondence

related to the interrogation

of the american taliban

john walker lindh.

and i have two of your e-mails,

and i wanted to make sure

i have everything."

and i knew i had written

way more than two e-mails.

so, immediately,

i became very concerned.

and, you know, i went upstairs,

and i'm like,

i'm gonna straighten this out

because i know the file

was like an inch thick."

and i went and looked

in the file, the hard copy file,

and there were

two pieces of paper in there.

i mean,

there was a fax cover sheet

and two very innocuous e-mails.

[ sighs ]

and i had a knot.

i felt like

i was gonna be physically ill.

i consulted with

a colleague of mine

who was a very seasoned attorney

on the verge of retirement.

he worked in

the ethics division with me.

and he looked at the file

and said, very matter-of-factly,

"this file has been purged."

and i thought, "what?

we're the government.

like, we're prosecuting enron

and arthur anderson right now

for destruction of evidence

and obstruction of justice.

what do you mean

it's been purged?"

the stuff in that file

was very damning

because it said that the fbi had

committed an ethical violation

in its interrogation

of john walker lindh.

and if that confession

could not be used at trial --

that was central

to trying him --

they would have no case.

i called tech support.

i'm like, "look,

is there any way

to get any of this stuff back?

it's really important."

she said that there was,

and we were able

to recover 14 e-mails

that had the substance

of what happened.

and i wrote a memo to my boss

and said,

"i don't know why

they weren't in the file."

and i made a copy of that memo

with the attachments

in case it "disappeared" again,

and i gave it to my boss.

and she said, "why weren't

these e-mails in the file?"

and it felt like

a rhetorical question.

and i said, "look, i don't know

what's going on here,

but this is not right

and you know it.

and i'm giving

my two weeks' notice.

i'm resigning."

i think people very high up

at justice

wanted to cover up the fact

that the ethics office

at the justice department

didn't want

to follow the rules

and were not

going to follow the rules

and were going to conceal this

from a court of law.

i could not live with myself

knowing that another human being

could be put to death

because i kept my mouth shut.

-michael isikoff is a newsweek

magazine investigative reporter.

-one morning, i heard

michael isikoff saying,

"well, the department says

john walker lindh

was never represented by counsel

and has never taken

that position."

and i picked up the phone

and i called him,

and i said, "you're wrong.

i don't know who's feeding you

this line of crap,

but it's completely wrong,

and i have the e-mails

to prove it."

and i went to a local kinkos,

and i faxed him the e-mails.

he said he would write

an article about it,

and he asked if i wanted

to be quoted in the article.

and i said, "wouldn't that be

a big red flag

pointing right at me?"

and he said, "yeah."

and i said, "well, then, no,

i don't want to be quoted."

a lot of whistle-blowers,

that's why they report

anonymously --

they don't want

to get in trouble for it.

but then, my e-mails

that i had sent to him

were published in full

on newsweek's website

with my name.

-i decided i had had enough.

the agency wasn't what it had

been before september 11th.

so, i resigned

and truly did not look back.

and then i got a job

with the senate

foreign relations committee.

and in that job, i got a call

once from a journalist.

he had developed information

that the cia was misusing

its formal agreement

with the state department

to provide cover

by putting people

who had been involved

in the torture program

undercover

so that their names couldn't

be exposed in the press.

so, i wrote a letter to the

agency asking for clarification.

something like

six weeks passed,

and finally, a colleague of mine

came in the office and said,

"uh, hey, you got a response

from the cia to your letter."

i said, "i haven't seen

any response."

he said, "well, they

classified it top secret sci" --

sensitive compartmented

information --

and i wasn't cleared

for top secret sci

in that senate job.

i said, "well, what'd

the letter say?"

he said, "the letter says

to go f*** yourself."

and so, i thought, "wow.

they're still mad."

and then my book came out,

and that [scoffs]

really made them mad.

-his new book is

"the reluctant spy:

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