Roommate: Walker Lindh serious student of Islam

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The journey that eventually brought American John Walker Lindh to Afghanistan as a member of the Taliban began two years ago when he left the United States for Yemen to study Arabic and Islam.

Five or six weeks during the summer of 1998, John Walker Lindh and Michael Kleinman were roommates at the Yemen Language School. Kleinman took some time Friday to speak with CNN's Jack Cafferty.

CAFFERTY: Tell me a little about what you remember of your relationship with John Walker Lindh, going back to that summer in 1998. What kind of a guy was he? How did you guys spend your time? What sticks out in your mind about him?

KLEINMAN: What really sticks out in my mind is just how serious he was. I mean for a 16 or 17-year-old American kid who is in a completely foreign environment -- I mean Sanaa, Yemen, was like nothing I'd ever seen. He had this laser-like devotion and focus on Islam. And to be perfectly frank, we didn't spend a whole lot of time together because with someone who is that involved and that serious about his own religious search, there really wasn't a lot of room for small talk.

CAFFERTY: Did he ever talk about his family?

KLEINMAN: No, I mean that was another interesting thing. We lived together for five weeks and I never once remember him talking about California, his parents, his family, where he came from. The closest that I ever came to that was one day I asked him why he had converted to Islam about six months before I met him. And as far as I remember, he simply began talking about how Islam was sort of the one true religion and sort of the path.

I got the feeling that he was searching for something, that he was searching for answers in some way and that Islam contained the answers that felt most acceptable to him.

CAFFERTY: Tell me the story about the day that you guys went to change some money. It's an interesting snapshot, if you will, into the way he had immersed himself in, or tried to, in this culture overseas.

KLEINMAN: And it also shows just his, I guess, lack of restraint. Our second day there, someone from this language school where we were both studying took a bunch of students, including the two of us, to a nearby money changer so that we could change our dollars into Yemeni rials. And I think it was about one dollar equaled 130 rials. And usually when you're approached by a beggar in the street, which happened often, you give a rial or five rials.

Anyway, we changed money and we each had this huge wad of Yemeni cash. And immediately Yemenis started coming from all directions. We certainly didn't blend into Sanaa in any way, shape or form. John Walker took out this wad of cash and began peeling off 100 rial bills and handing them out. And this was a significant portion of what your Yemeni would earn in a day. It's as though someone was walking through Times Square handing out $200 to anyone who came up and asked.

CAFFERTY: Yes.

KLEINMAN: So immediately we attracted a large crowd and we became like a comet as we were heading back to the school. There was the administrator and a whole sort of group of us at the front and then John Walker. And stretching off a block, a block-and-a-half behind him was an ever-shifting, ever-growing line of Yemenis, beggars.

CAFFERTY: Very strange.

KLEINMAN: They sort of saw an opportunity with a walking American ATM.

CAFFERTY: Were you guys aware of Osama bin Laden, of al Qaeda, of the terrorist movement in the militant end of the Islamic religion while you were in Yemen in 1998?

KLEINMAN: Only peripherally. I mean there had been some instability and some kidnappings earlier in that summer. At the time they weren't directly connected to militant Islam.

CAFFERTY: Any opinions on what you think ought to happen to him in light of what he's done here?

KLEINMAN: I think he's responsible for his actions. In terms of whether I think he should spend the rest of his life in jail or not, I'm really waiting to watch the trial and see what evidence comes out.