Scott Flipse's column Monday on John Walker was liberal garbage. Not surprisingly, it is unsupported by any authority. In fact, not only should John Walker be executed, his father Frank Lindh should be tried for treason and executed.

In Haupt v. United States in 1947, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the treason conviction of Hans Max Haupt. Hans Haupt was the father of Herbert Haupt, one of eight saboteurs convicted by a military tribunal in 1942 for acting as a secret agent, spy and saboteur for the German Reich. Hans was tried for, and convicted of, treason for "[s]heltering his son, assisting him in getting a job and in acquiring an automobile" for his son.

Frank Lindh publically has admitted doing far more for John Walker.

Hans claimed that these acts were the "natural acts of aid for [his] son" and that he "merely had the misfortune to sire a traitor and all he did was to act as an indulgent father toward a disloyal son."

The Supreme Court disagreed. It fact, it held that the evidence was "that the son had the misfortune of being a chip off the old block — a tree inclined as the twig had been been —metaphors which express the common sense observation that parents are as likely to influence the character of their children as are children to shape that of their parents."

Plainly, John Walker and Frank Lindh should be tried for treason and, if convicted, executed.

Ed Fitzpatrick

class of '80

Feb. 4, 2002

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