Who is Matthew VanDyke, the American in NIA custody?

Matthew VanDyke, arrested with six Ukrainian mercenaries, is no ordinary character. Often called a CIA asset who was once an al-Qaida affiliate, VanDyke is a dangerous character who can't stop playing war.

His business card, if he ever had one, would read something like: Freedom Fighter. Documentary Filmmaker. Former POW. Trainer of Rebels. Now Guest of the NIA, Matthew Aaron VanDyke, 46, American, Baltimore-born, Georgetown-educated, has spent his entire adult life inserting himself into other people’s wars with the conviction of a man who genuinely believes his passport makes him a protagonist and not a problem.

On March 13, India’s National Investigation Agency arrested seven foreign nationals (six Ukrainians and one American) in what it called a major counter-terrorism operation. That one American was VanDyke. While VanDyke was detained by the Bureau of Immigration at Kolkata airport, three Ukrainians each were detained at airports in Lucknow and Delhi. They had all entered India on tourist visas, reached Guwahati, then travelled to Mizoram and entered Restricted Area Permit zones without permission. A tourist with a restricted-area violation. Happens to the best of us. Except the NIA says they were there to train insurgent groups in Myanmar to carry out attacks in northeast India. Details, details.

VanDyke first gained fame during the Libyan Civil War as a foreign fighter on the side of the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi and as a prisoner of war. This is his origin story, the way Bruce Wayne has a dead mother and a bat. In 2011, he crossed into Libya illegally, joined rebel forces, got ambushed, was shot, and spent the next six months in solitary confinement in two of Gaddafi’s most notorious prisons. Most people would call this a sign from the universe to try a different career. VanDyke called it an internship.

Prisoners broke the lock off his cell on August 24, 2011, and he escaped prison. Free from prison, VanDyke stayed at the home of a fellow escapee for a few days before relocating to the Corinthia Hotel Tripoli as a guest of the National Transitional Council. From solitary confinement to hotel guest of the transitional government in 72 hours. That, in any language, is a resume.

The CIA angle is both the most interesting and least straightforward part of his story. VanDyke studied Security Studies at Georgetown University. Most of his classmates went on to work for the CIA, FBI, Department of Defence (now Department of War), State Department, or think tanks. He tried to join that club. He made it pretty far through the CIA hiring process: taking an analytical test, a drug test, a psychological exam, and even met with his future boss and co-workers at CIA headquarters in Langley. But he was too nervous on the polygraph, and it produced inconclusive results. He failed the lie detector. The CIA said, thanks, we'll call. They didn't. Or did they? The CIA works in mysterious ways. Anyway, he went to the beach for a year. Then he got on a motorcycle and rode across North Africa.

The pattern that emerged over the next decade is what intelligence analysts call a "useful idiot" profile, and what VanDyke would call a "freedom fighter". It was the profile of a mercenary. VanDyke was arrested or detained 20 times by Iraqi security forces between 2008 and 2010. Twenty times. There is a point at which frequency stops being coincidence and starts being a methodology.