Ryan Anderson, a National Guardsman who was sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for trying aid al-Q

http://www.buzzfeed.com/claudiakoerner/this-guardsman-says-he-was-role-playing-when-he-wrote-he-wan#.eva72xBBk



Ryan Anderson, a National Guardsman who was sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for trying aid al-Qaeda, claims his mental disorders prevented him from stopping himself.

posted on Nov. 22, 2015, at 5:53 p.m.

Three months before National Guardsman Ryan Anderson was scheduled to deploy to Iraq, he posted a message on the internet forum Brave Muslims.

“Just curious, would there be any chance for a brother who might be on the wrong side at the present, could join up…defect so to speak?”

Halfway across the nation in Montana, a vigilante judge posing online as a radical Muslim flagged the message to federal authorities, setting into motion an undercover investigation, Anderson’s arrest in Washington state, a court-martial, and a life sentence in prison.

Erin and Ryan Anderson. Courtesy Erin Anderson

Prosecutors framed the case as a treasonous plot, another potential radicalized fighter foiled. But more than 10 years after his conviction, Anderson maintains it was more a misunderstanding fueled by mental disorders that made it impossible for him to keep from going over the cliff.

The person recorded in undercover videos, the emails, the text messages that amassed into a terror conviction, were of a “totally fictitious individual who I invented to avoid the truth,” Anderson said, reflecting publicly on his conviction for the first time to BuzzFeed News.

“Make no mistake about it: I lied my way into prison.”

It was Nov. 2, 2003, a time when two U.S. military helicopters came under fire in Iraq and 16 soldiers were killed — the deadliest attack on American troops since the invasion began months prior — when Anderson made the post on the Brave Muslims forum referring to defection.............................