|
Green_T


Registered: 10/02/08
Posts: 4,042
Loc: UK
|
DEA failed to warn India on 2008 Mumbai Terror Attack - mastermind was informant
#13347048 - 10/17/10 06:36 AM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
NOTE: Article title changed by Green_T
26/11: FBI's failure to warn India to affect Obama's visit
October 17, 2010 - India Today
Even two years after the horrific Mumbai terror strikes on November 26, 2008, which claimed the lives of 166 people and injured several times that number, a miasma of suspicion hangs over the role of US agencies in failing to prevent the attack.
A report in the Washington Post on Saturday seems to have only deepened the doubts and raised questions about the nature of Indo-US counter-terrorism cooperation. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), according to the newspaper, was told in 2005 by one of the key conspirators, David Coleman Headley's wife that he was a member of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT), that he had trained in its military camps in Pakistan and had shopped around for equipment such as night-vision goggles for them.
Indeed, Headley managed to visit India in March 2009, three months after the Mumbai attack. He was arrested only after British intelligence stumbled upon his plans to carry out attacks in Europe and tipped off the FBI, which arrested him in October 2009.
The Post reports that Headley's wife phoned the special line of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York on August 26, 2005, and this led to her husband's arrest on August 31.
"He was released on bond and was never prosecuted for reasons that remain unclear," the Post adds. The unstated suspicion is that he pulled strings with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), for whom he worked as an informant between 1988 and March 2008. They used him to break the closely run Pakistani cartels and serve as a witness against drug runners.
As part of this operation, they encouraged, and possibly financed, his visits to Pakistan. Headley's wife, whose identity is being held secret for her security, not only gave the FBI details of his relationship with the Lashkar but also showed them audio cassettes and jihadi propaganda material, and "described his emails and calls from Pakistan and to individuals whom she thought to be extremists".
Headley was inducted into the Lashkar's India operations in 2005 and in 2006, and to draw a smokescreen around himself he had changed his name from Daoud Gilani to David Coleman Headley. He carried out six visits to India for detailed surveillance of targets between September 2006 and March 2009. At any point of time before the Mumbai attack, information on his background would have led to his arrest and interrogation, and a possible foiling of the Lashkar's Mumbai plan.
Inexplicably, neither the FBI, nor the DEA, with whom Indian officials interact regularly, provided any hint till September 2008 when the FBI tipped off the Indian side about a possible conspiracy to attack Indian targets in Mumbai. India and the US have been cooperating on counter-terrorism since 2000. That was when a Joint Working Group on Counter-Terrorism, a multi-agency outfit, was established and it keeps holding regular meetings in Washington and New Delhi.
Indeed, the FBI tip-off came only by accident. An FBI official seconded to the Special Operations Division of the DEA was asked to listen in to some audio tapes made by Headley in Pakistan. While listening to the tapes, the FBI officer came across conversation in which there was reference to a "fedayeen assault" on Mumbai aimed at various places and hotels. Instead of filing the report only to the DEA, the officer also alerted his own agency.
After it became clear that the DEA was not raising the issue by itself, the FBI formally warned India in September 2008. The FBI later claimed that their hands were clean on the issue. But the Washington Post revelations indicate that the FBI, a trained counter-terror agency, also failed to act when it should have.
Especially since December 2001, when the LeT had been declared a Foreign Terrorist Organisation by the US in the wake of the December 13 attack on Parliament House in Delhi. Both the DEA and the FBI are refusing to talk about the Headley case because they claim it is ongoing and that they do not discuss informants, but there are other indications as to his association with them.
One of them is the manner in which a federal judge cleared him of probation in December 2001, enabling him to travel to Pakistan. He began serving a 15-month sentence in November 1998, but was out within six months and headed for Pakistan. Under the original sentence he would have been on probation till mid-2004.
But the prosecutor asked the judge to end his probation early and the judge agreed. Whether it was 9/11, or some other development, this was around the time that Headley was radicalised and in 2002, in one of his visits, probably on behalf of the DEA, he also attended a Lashkar-e-Tayyeba training camp for three weeks and was trained to use guns and grenades.
In April 2003, he went for the longer three-month course, which also included close combat tactics and survival skills. In all, he had five rounds of training with the Lashkar. A statement by the US Ambassador Timothy Roemer in Delhi, meanwhile, has noted that they were examining the Post report, and that "when we have determined exactly what transpired, we will be in a position to speak to the specific claims made in the article and other media reports."
Unravelling the mumbai attacks
June 1988: Daoud Gilani arrested in Frankfurt airport with 2 kg of heroin 1992: Released after serving four years in prison after cooperating with Drug Enforcement Administration
1997: Moves to Manhattan to run two video stores. Arrested again on drug charges
1998: Sentenced to 19 months in prison but released in six months
1999: Judge waives probation. He goes to Pakistan (Pak) where he has an arranged marriage
February 2002: Attends threeweek course at an LeT camp in Pak
December 2002: Marries his girlfriend of eight years in New York April 2003: Attends a three-month course again in Pak
August 2003: Attends another three-week course in the camp and learn counter surveillance
December 2003: Goes back for another three-month course and receives combat and tactical training
August 25-26, 2005: Gilani's US wife files complaint against him to the police, she also calls up the FBI. At a later date, she tells the FBI that Gilani bragged about his training in Pak
February 2006: Officially changes his name to David Coleman Headley
June 2006: Headley goes to Chicago to get help setting up a cover First World Immigration company in Mumbai
September 2006: Headley travels to India using the immigration business as a cover and conducts video surveillance of various targets, including Taj Mahal Hotel
October 2006: Goes to Pakistan, briefs Lashkar leaders as well as Pak military officials involved in the plot
February 2007: Headley returns to Mumbai and carries out further surveillance of the targets and again goes to Pakistan to report to his interlocutors
September 2007: Returns to Mumbai and conducts additional surveillance, again goes to Pak to report
March 2008: Meets co-conspirators in Pak and discusses potential landing sites. He is asked to go back to Mumbai
April 2008: Returns to Mumbai with GPS device to precisely determine landing site and the location of targets
July 2008: He carries out his fifth visit to Mumbai and conducts video surveillance of the various targets and again reported back to Pak
November 26, 2008: Mumbai attacked by 10 terrorists
October 2009: FBI arrests Headley
--------------------
"I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" - Thomas Jefferson Legalize Meth | Drug War Victims
Edited by Green_T (10/17/10 06:43 AM)
|
Green_T


Registered: 10/02/08
Posts: 4,042
Loc: UK
|
Re: Planner of Mumbai Terrorist Attacks was protected by DEA [Re: Green_T]
#13347058 - 10/17/10 06:42 AM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
This is absolutely sickening. The DEA failed to warn authorities about a terrorist attack (India's 9/11) because they wanted to protect an informant.
Scum.
|
veggie

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,538
|
Re: Planner of Mumbai Terrorist Attacks was protected by DEA [Re: Green_T]
#13347095 - 10/17/10 07:02 AM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|

Just sickening. The blood of all those people killed and injured are on the United States hands. All because of the drug war.
|
Dutchie3k
Psychic Drifter



Registered: 12/16/08
Posts: 348
Loc: this hazy bubble, state o...
|
Re: Planner of Mumbai Terrorist Attacks was protected by DEA [Re: veggie]
#13347610 - 10/17/10 10:31 AM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
Oh of course not. They'd had to have taken him off the streets and lose their little cash cow of information.
DEA=swine. Who knew.
-------------------- "The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others - the living - are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later"
|
ukshroomer
Law Abider


Registered: 11/08/09
Posts: 484
Loc: Netherlands
Last seen: 4 days, 10 hours
|
Re: Planner of Mumbai Terrorist Attacks was protected by DEA [Re: Dutchie3k]
#13347683 - 10/17/10 10:56 AM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
Im not saying that i know anything for sure. I would assume however that the US, UK etc benefited from these attacks. Let's remember that radicalism in Pakistan poses a huge threat to the US, UK , Israel due to the fact that it is a nuclear power. A terrorist attack in India actually puts the US in a better position to deal with Pakistan because it now mobilises the Indian population and government to give more resources in fighting the war on terror.
--------------------
|
smaerd


Registered: 03/11/08
Posts: 2,058
Last seen: 12 years, 10 months
|
Re: Planner of Mumbai Terrorist Attacks was protected by DEA [Re: ukshroomer]
#13347765 - 10/17/10 11:20 AM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
Swine are better than the DEA and the police. Let's not degrade the animals here.
|
DropScience
Stranger

Registered: 03/22/09
Posts: 164
Last seen: 12 years, 8 months
|
Re: Planner of Mumbai Terrorist Attacks was protected by DEA [Re: smaerd]
#13349052 - 10/17/10 05:09 PM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
how many times do gov't agencies have to get caught directing patsies before people realize that the majority of terror attacks are false flag events.
|
Green_T


Registered: 10/02/08
Posts: 4,042
Loc: UK
|
Re: Planner of Mumbai Terrorist Attacks was protected by DEA [Re: DropScience]
#13453253 - 11/08/10 11:13 AM (13 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Update....
This article will be seen by many more than the original posted, since it appeared in the NYT...
D.E.A. Deployed Mumbai Plotter Despite Warning November 7, 2010 - New York Times
WASHINGTON — American authorities sent David C. Headley, a small-time drug dealer and sometime informant, to work for them in Pakistan months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite a warning that he sympathized with radical Islamic groups, according to court records and interviews. Not long after Mr. Headley arrived there, he began training with terrorists, eventually playing a key role in the 2008 attacks that left 164 people dead in Mumbai.
The October 2001 warning was dismissed, the authorities said, as the ire of a jilted girlfriend and for lack of proof. Less than a month later, those concerns did not come up when a federal court in New York granted Mr. Headley an early release from probation so that he could be sent to work for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in Pakistan. It is unclear what Mr. Headley was supposed to do in Pakistan for the Americans.
“All I knew was the D.E.A. wanted him in Pakistan as fast as possible because they said they were close to making some big cases,” said Luis Caso, Mr. Headley’s former probation officer.
On Sunday, while President Obama was visiting India, he briefed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the status of his administration’s investigation of Mr. Headley, including the failure to act on repeated warnings that he might be a terrorist. A senior United States official said the inquiry has concluded that while the government received warnings, it did not have strong enough evidence at the time to act on them. “Had the United States government sufficiently established he was engaged in plotting a terrorist attack in India, the information would have most assuredly been transferred promptly to the Indian government,” the official said in a statement to The New York Times. The statement did not make clear whether any American agencies would be held accountable.
In recent weeks, United States government officials have begun to acknowledge that Mr. Headley’s path from American informant to transnational terrorist illustrates the breakdowns and miscommunications that have bedeviled them since the Sept. 11 attacks. Warnings about his radicalism were apparently not shared with the drug agency that made use of his ties in Pakistan.
The director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., began an investigation into Mr. Headley’s government connections after reports last month that two of the former drug dealer’s ex-wives had gone to American authorities between 2005 and 2008, before the Mumbai attacks, to say they feared he was plotting with terrorists. Combined with the earlier warning from the former girlfriend, three of the women in Mr. Headley’s life reported his ties to terrorists, only to have those warnings dismissed.
An examination of Mr. Headley’s story shows that his government ties ran far deeper and longer than previously known. One senior American official knowledgeable about the case said he believed that Mr. Headley was a D.E.A. informant until at least 2003, meaning that he was talking to American agencies even as he was learning to deal with explosives and small arms in terrorist training camps.
The review raises new questions about why the Americans missed warning signs that a valued informant was becoming an important figure in radical Islamic groups, and whether some officials chose to look the other way rather than believe the complaints about him. The October 2001 warning from the girlfriend was first reported Friday by ProPublica, the independent investigative news operation, and published in The Washington Post.
Fuller details of how the government handled the matter were provided to The Times by officials who did not want to be quoted discussing a continuing inquiry. They disclosed that the F.B.I. actually talked to Mr. Headley about the girlfriend, and he told them she was unreliable. They said that while he seemed to have a philosophical affinity for some groups, there was no evidence that he was plotting against the United States. Also influencing the handling of the case, they said, was that he had been a longtime informant.
The Indian government has been outspoken in its concerns that the United States overlooked repeated warnings about Mr. Headley’s terrorist activities because of his links to both American law enforcement as well as to officials in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate — a key ally of the United States in the fight against terrorism.
Bruce O. Riedel, a terrorism expert at the Brookings Institution and a former C.I.A. officer, said the Indians were right to ask, “ ‘Why weren’t alarms screaming?’ ”
Mr. Headley, 50, born in the United States to a Pakistani diplomat and Philadelphia socialite, has pleaded guilty in connection with the Mumbai plot and a thwarted attack against a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. As he has many times before, he is cooperating with the authorities, this time hoping to avoid the death penalty. Officials of the D.E.A., which has a long history with Mr. Headley, declined to discuss their relationship with him. The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. said that Mr. Headley had never worked with them. Privately, the agencies point fingers at each other.
The transcript of a Nov. 16, 2001, probation hearing in federal court in New York shows the government took great pains not to identify which agency was handling Mr. Headley, or whether he worked for more than one.
Mr. Caso, his former probation officer, recalled that Mr. Headley had been turned over to the D.E.A. Another person familiar with the case confirms this account. It was a world Mr. Headley knew well. After arrests in 1987 and 1998, he cooperated with the drug agency in exchange for lighter sentences. He specialized in the ties between Pakistani drug organizations and American dealers along the East Coast.
A September 1998 letter that prosecutors submitted to court after an arrest then showed that the government considered Mr. Headley — who had admitted to distributing 15 kilograms of heroin over his years as a dealer — so “reliable and forthcoming,” that they sent him to Pakistan to “develop intelligence on Pakistani heroin traffickers.”
The letter indicates that Mr. Headley, who faced seven to nine years in prison for his offense, was such a trusted partner to the drug agency in the 1990s that he helped translate hours of tape-recorded telephone intercepts, and coached drug agency investigators on how to question Pakistani suspects. The courts looked favorably on his cooperation, according to records, sentencing Mr. Headley to 15 months in prison, and five years’ probation.
While he was on probation, in October 2001, a woman told the F.B.I. that she believed her former boyfriend, Mr. Headley, was sympathetic to extremist groups in Pakistan, according to a senior American official who has been briefed on the case. The government was flooded with thousands of such tips at that time, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
William Headley, an uncle, recalled that agents called his sister to ask if her son had terrorist leanings. “She didn’t seem upset at all by the call,” William Headley said. “And I didn’t think much of it either because at that time, I thought the government was checking out anyone who had ties to Pakistan.”
It is unclear how widely disseminated the warning was. But in that probation hearing one month later, the government enlisted Mr. Headley’s help again, suspending his sentence in exchange for what court records described only as “continuing cooperation.” According to the transcript, it was a rushed affair. The probation officer apologized for not being properly dressed, and the lawyers explained that they had not been able to make their case in writing. Mr. Headley was a potential gold mine, according to an official knowledgeable about the agreement to release him from probation. One person involved in the case said American agencies had “zero in terms of reliable intelligence. And it was clear from the conversations about him that the government was considering assignments that went beyond drugs.”
American authorities have not disclosed what happened after Mr. Headley resumed his role as an informant. But in December 2001, the same month Mr. Headley departed for Pakistan, the United States designated the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba as a terrorist organization. Less than two months later — in February 2002 — Mr. Headley began training with the group on “the merits of waging jihad.”
Between 2002 and 2005, Mr. Headley attended at least four additional Lashkar sessions, including training on surveillance and small-arms combat. Then in 2007, he began scouting targets for the group to attack in Mumbai, staying at least twice at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel, and hiring fishermen for private tours of the port that helped him identify where the sea-traveling attackers could land. It is unclear when and why his connections to the United States government ended.
After the Mumbai attacks, Mr. Headley apparently turned his attention to Europe, according to recently released transcripts of his questioning by the Indian authorities. He contacted Ilyas Kashmiri, widely considered one of Al Qaeda’s most dangerous operatives, and begin plotting the attack against the Danish newspaper, according to his own account. Mr. Kashmiri put Mr. Headley in touch with Qaeda operatives in Europe who would help. He traveled to Britain in August 2009, then to Stockholm.
British intelligence authorities alerted the United States to Mr. Headley’s August meeting in Britain, saying that they believed he was involved in a plot against the Denmark newspaper. He was arrested in connection with the Denmark plot last October.
American authorities had no idea that he was also involved in the Mumbai attacks until he told them. Since then, he has been in federal custody in Chicago.
An American counterterrorism official said that agents who had questioned Mr. Headley called him “dangerously engaging.” The official said Mr. Headley was “a very charming individual who clearly knows how to manipulate the system to get what he wants” and added that agents steeled themselves before meeting with him so as not to “get sucked into his mind games.”
--------------------
"I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" - Thomas Jefferson Legalize Meth | Drug War Victims
|
|