A Perfect Terrorist: Did FBI let Headley get away?

New York**:** David Coleman Headley is the subject of a Frontline documentary A Perfect Terrorist by ProPublica reporter Sebastian Rotella. The new documentary identifies cases in which relatives or associates warned the FBI prior to the Mumbai attacks that Headley was working with Pakistani militants. Watch the promo. In October last year, Rotella first reported on a tip from Headley’s wife in 2005 about his training with Lashkar. Then The New York Times followed with a report that another of Headley’s wives, a Moroccan, warned the US embassy officials in Pakistan in 2007 that Headley was a terrorist. Shockingly, the FBI ignored both the leads and the warnings against Headley in 2001, 2002, April 2008 and December 2008. Headley, whose reconnaissance was crucial to the Mumbai attacks, was not arrested until October 2009. All the facts point to Headley being a ‘double agent’ working for the US and the Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Pakistani American was a drug smuggler, then a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) informant in exchange for a lighter sentence. The DEA used his fluency in English and Urdu to bust Pakistani heroin rings. But while working as an informant, Headley hooked up with the Lashkar. “Investigators feel Headley’s ties to the DEA, past or ongoing, did have an impact on the FBI assessments that he was not a threat. But we report new details about those warnings — and new missed opportunities to detect his activity — that add to the questions about why FBI agents did not question him,” Rotella told Firstpost_._ [caption id=“attachment_137670” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“In October last year, Rotella first reported on a tip from Headley’s wife in 2005 about his training with Lashkar. Image courtesy: ProPublica.”]  [/caption] A plea-bargain deal-maker, Headley avoided extradition to India by cooperating with the Feds. At the end of the film, Headley, seated in an interrogation room, slaps the air a high five after he realises he’s got away. “It’ll make your blood boil and it’s supposed to,” noted Newsday_._ Rotella spoke to Firstpost in New York about how the evidence that has accumulated links Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate to the Mumbai attacks. The documentary airs in America this week as India marks the three-year anniversary of 26/11 on Saturday. Excerpts: A Perfect Terrorist tracks Headley’s rise from a heroin dealer and a US government informant to a plotter of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Will the documentary rattle Pakistan by again making the point that Headley had an ISI handler? The documentary will use the trail testimony from Chicago and new reporting to show that there is strong evidence that Headley had an ISI handler and was an operative directed by the ISI and Lashkar during the Mumbai plot. Pakistan denies this, as you know. But we explore the evidence that has accumulated during the past three years. The US government has indicted Major Iqbal, Headley’s alleged intelligence handler, a strong sign that authorities believe in the ISI connection. As the lead correspondent on this documentary, did you talk to people who were close to Headley and did they tell you that he had a latent jihadist streak or was incredibly mixed-up despite leading the good life in Philadelphia on his American mother’s largess? We did talk to people close to Headley and they gave further insight into his formative years and his descent into drugs, informant work and extremism. It’s hard to sum up a psychological analysis, but certainly the clash of worlds (religiously conservative and nationalist in Pakistan, Western and modern in Philadelphia), in which he grew up, appears to have had an impact. People who knew him when he came back to the US in the late 70s say he seemed smooth and sharp, but was dealing with culture shock. That appears to play a role in the drug use and downward spiral, a classic pattern in Islamic radicalisation. After his shortened probation, did Headley play the US authorities by pretending that he was doing counter-terrorism work while actually training with the Lashkar-e-Taiba? This remains a point of dispute. The reporting turned up more contradictions. In their first detailed comments on the case, the DEA insist that they did not send him to Pakistan in late 2001 when his probation was ended early. They said he was deactivated during that period as an official law enforcement informant. Yet as you know, there are disputed versions. Headley himself testified in Chicago this year that he remained a DEA informant until September 2002. People at other agencies, officials present at the probation hearing and his associates insist that the government ended his probation to send him to Pakistan as an informant and that he remained an informant until as late as 2005. A possible explanation for the contradictions, sources say, is that he became one of a number of drug informants who in the post 9/11 period shifted from official law enforcement work to gathering counter-terror intelligence secretly for other agencies or for the DEA in tandem with other agencies. But it is not clear which agency he worked for in Pakistan, if any; how long that work lasted; and what he did. Continues on the next page At the Rana trial in Chicago, Headley gave specific evidence about the close alliance between the ISI and the Lashkar terrorist group. But has it been a futile exercise because Pakistan still hasn’t arrested ISI’s Major Iqbal or the other Mumbai attack masterminds? It’s not for me to say if it’s a futile exercise. It seems clear that Headley gave valuable and unprecedented evidence about that issue and also about potential plots and targets. US prosecutors took the drastic step of indicting Major Iqbal this year based on the investigation. It is true that Iqbal, Sajid Mir and others remain at large despite great US and Indian pressure on Pakistan and abundant evidence. Since Headley was as an informant for the DEA, were US intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials very sloppy about taking repeated warnings about Headley’s terrorist activities seriously? As I mentioned, the whole informant issue remains remarkably murky. Some investigators feel his ties to the DEA, past or ongoing, did have an impact on the FBI assessments that he was not a threat. But we report new details about those warnings — and new missed opportunities to detect his activity — that add to the questions about why FBI agents did not question him as a potential source of intelligence if not a suspect. US officials insist he simply slipped through the cracks and that it is harder to detect a terrorist than it seems in hindsight. Indian officials, and some in the US and Europe, feel that the US government knows more than it has disclosed about him. Both scenarios suggest breakdowns in law enforcement and intelligence. Your reportage on the Rana-Headley trial was comprehensive and excellent. Is there anything new we are going to find out about Headley, the ISI, or Pakistan in this documentary? How long did it take you to put A Perfect Terrorist together? People who have followed the reporting closely will see new material in the film and learn more about previously reported issues. People who have not followed it will probably learn quite a bit. The work on the documentary took most of this year. It built on my past reporting, but we did a lot of additional reporting in the US, Europe, India and Pakistan. We also gained unprecedented access to places and people involved in the case, as you will see, and I think the result is powerful and dramatic.