but intelligence officials have said that during his time in prison, he has remained a committed jihadist. and one of the controversial things about this case is that he was found in a prison in afghanistan. and he was interviewed actually there by american agents. and shortly after that, there was an uprising at the prison in which an american cia agent named johnny michael spann was killed. and there has always been a question in the mind of his parents whether lindh had a hand in that. so it remains controversial. i know you ll be on top of this. appreciate it. that does it for us. right now we have much more news with craig melvin who is up in new york. hey, pal, you have a busy show today. oh, yes, i feel like every day is a busy one. hallie jackson, thank you. good morning to you.
with prosecutors, now spend a maximum of 20 years in prison. legal sources say despite the passionate rhetoric, many government lawyers felt that life sentence was too harsh given what lynn actually did. that is tom brokaw and pete williams on nightly news from july of 2002, talking about john walk walker lindh after being captured. and he will be released tomorrow. pete williams who you saw in that clip has covered this story from the beginning. pete, talk to us about why lindh is being released and maybe put into context what it was like when this arrest happened. he is being released now because he was sentenced to 20 years, but in the federal system there is no parole, but there is time off for in either sense good be may have. so doing the calculation, it came out to 17 years. and it seemed obvious when he
was sentenced that he would only serve 17 years. so there is also a three year probation term. and the judge has impeased a very unusual set of restrictions on john lindh when gets out tomorrow. any internet device that he uses has to be approved by the probation office, it has to be monitored, he can t speak to anyone in a foreign language, he can t look at extremist isist i. he has said that he hoped to go to ireland, but that didn t seem like it will happen. the reason for the concern is this. when john walker lindh pleaded guilty, the story that you just saw the beginning of there, he said te said tearfully that he renounced any connection with terrorism or jihadist groups, that if he had known what he knew then, what he was when he was sentenced, he never would have gone to afghanistan, he never would have hooked up with the taliban.