Excerpts from the second part of ProPublica investigation into the plot behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks. ProPublica is an independent non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in public interest David Coleman Headley seemed like a gregarious,high-rolling American businessman when he set up shop in Mumbai in September 2006. He opened the office of an immigration consulting firm. He partied at swank locales such as the ornate Taj Mahal Hotel,a 1903 landmark favored by Westerners and the Indian elite. He joined an upscale gym,where he befriended a Bollywood actor. He roamed the booming,squalid city taking photos and shooting video. But it was all a front. The tall,fast-talking Pakistani American with the slicked-back hair was a fierce extremist,a former drug dealer,a onetime Drug Enforcement Administration informant who became a double agent. He had spent three years refining his clandestine skills in the terrorist training camps of the Lashkar-i-Taiba militant group. Headleys mentor Sajid Mirs experience in international operations and his skills as a handler of Western recruits were about to pay off. Lashkar had chosen him as project manager of its most ambitious,highly choreographed strike to date. Mirs ally in the plot was a man known to Headley only as Maj Iqbal,who investigators suspect was an officer of Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) and a liaison to the Lashkar. Iqbal is a common Pakistani last name,and investigators have not been able to fully identify him. The iconic Taj hotel was the centerpiece of the plan. When Headley returned to Pakistan after his first scouting trip to Mumbai,Mir told him he needed more images and also schedules for the hotels conference rooms and ballroom,which often hosted high-powered events. They thought it would be a good place to get valuable hostages, an Indian anti-terrorism official said. Pak ignores arrest warrant Frances top counterterrorism magistrate,Jean-Louis Bruguiere,had spent three years investigating Mir after one of Mirs French operatives,Willie Brigitte,was arrested in a foiled bomb plot in Australia. Brigitte gave a long confession identifying Mir as his Lashkar handler,describing him as a figure whose influential connections made him untouchable in Pakistan. With the help of foreign investigators,Bruguiere built a case that Mir was a kingpin leading terrorist operations on four continents. The evidence also convinced Bruguiere that Mir was an officer in the Pakistani army or the ISI. In October 2006,two years before the Mumbai attacks,Bruguiere issued an arrest warrant for Mir that was circulated worldwide by Interpol. There was no response from Pakistan. A Paris court convicted Mir in absentia and sentenced him to 10 years in prison in 2007. Nonetheless,Bruguiere says most Western investigators he dealt with continued to view Lashkar as a regional actor confined to South Asia. For me it was a crucial case,a turning point, Bruguiere said,because of what it revealed about the role played by Pakistani groups in the global jihad and about the role of the Pakistani security forces in terrorism. Many warning signs In 2007,Headley carried out two more reconnaissance missions. Before and after each trip,he met with Mir and Maj Iqbal in Pakistani safe houses,turning over photos,videos and notes,according to investigators and US court documents. At one point,Mir showed Headley a plastic-foam model of the Taj that had been built using the information Headley had gathered. Headleys work was complicated by a tangled personal life that got him in trouble again in December 2007. His estranged fourth wife,a Moroccan,told officials at the US Embassy in Islamabad that she believed he was a terrorist. She made references to training and suicide bombings and described his frequent travel to Mumbai,including her stays with him at the Taj hotel,US law enforcement officials say. But US agents at the embassy decided the womans account lacked specifics. Headley continued to roam free. As the plot took shape in 2008,the FBI and CIA began hearing chatter about Lashkar. The agencies warned India at least three times about threats to Mumbai. The intelligence may have come from communications intercepts or sources in Pakistan. But privately,some US and Indian anti-terrorism officials express suspicion that US agencies were tracking Headleys movements and picking up bits and pieces. without realising he was deeply involved. US intelligence officials say they did not warn the Indians about Headley because they did not connect him to terrorism until months after the attacks. In April 2008,Headleys Moroccan wife returned to the embassy in Islamabad with another tip. She warned that her husband was on a special mission. She also linked him to a 2007 train bombing in India that had killed 68 people and that India and the United States blamed on Lashkar. Authorities have not implicated Headley in that still-unsolved attack,however. Headley returned to Mumbai on a fourth scouting mission in May. He went on boat tours,using a GPS device that Mir gave him to assess landing sites for an amphibious attack,court documents say. That same month,US agencies alerted India that intelligence suggested Lashkar was planning to attack the Taj and other sites frequented by foreigners and Americans. Mir and the other Pakistani masterminds decided on a classic Lashkar fedayeen raid in which fighters take hostages to inflict maximum chaos and casualties. Mir oversaw a veteran Lashkar trainer who prepared 32 recruits during months of drills in mountain camps and at the groups headquarters outside Lahore. In July,Headley began his final scouting trip. In September,the anti-terrorism chief of the Mumbai police visited the Taj hotel to discuss new US warnings. Hotel management beefed up security,Indian officials say. The plotters isolated the 10-man attack team in a safe house in Karachi in mid-September and outlined their mission. In November Headley also headed for Karachi,where he met again with Mir but had no contact with the attack team. The strike The attack squad left Karachi at 8 am on November 22. On the evening of November 26,the squad transferred to an 11-seat dinghy and landed in a slum (in Mumbai) where lights,phones and police were scarce. Lashkar had set up a remote command post in a safe house or a hotel that US and Indian officials believe was in Lahore or Karachi. The room was stocked with computers,televisions,voice-over-Internet phones from a New Jersey company and satellite phones. The assault began about 9.30 p.m. Indian intelligence officers frantically checked known phone numbers associated with Lashkar and were able to intercept and record nearly 300 calls. Mirs voice dominated the conversations. Using the alias Wassi,Mir oversaw the assault on the Taj hotel. The phone handlers in Pakistan made the attack interactive,relaying reports about television coverage to the gunmen and even searching the Internet for the name of a banker they had taken hostage. Mir chided a gunman who grew distracted by the luxuries of a suite. Its amazing, the gunman exclaimed. The windows are huge. Its got two kitchens,a bath and a little shop. Start the fire,my brother, Mir insisted. Start a proper fire,thats the important thing.. Their handlers instructed them to divide ammunition magazines and keep their weapons on burst mode to conserve bullets. For your mission to end successfully,you must be killed, Mir said in one of the intercepted calls. God is waiting for you in heaven. . Fight bravely,and put your phone in your pocket,but leave it on. We like to know whats going on. Another team rampaged through Mumbais central train station. Their tactics reflected Lashkars expert training. They avoided running,which is tiring and churns up emotions. They stayed within arms length in a buddy pair combat formation,a Lashkar signature technique that enabled them to support one another psychologically,sustain fire and exchange ammunition. Unlike the others,however,the duo at the train station failed to call the command post. Instead of barricading themselves with hostages as ordered,they left the station. It was a dramatic error that underscored the crucial role of the handlers phone instructions,their ingenious method of compensating for the limitations of their fighters. In the running gunfights that followed,the chief of Mumbais anti-terrorist unit was killed along with an attacker. The other gunman,a diminutive 21-year-old with a fourth-grade education,was captured. The confession of the lone surviving attacker proved vital to the investigation. The aftermath The three-day siege of Mumbai triggered international outrage. Unruffled,Mir and Headley were already at work on their next target: a Danish newspaper that in 2005 had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. They christened the new plot The Mickey Mouse Project. In December,Mir met Headley again,even though the other handler,Maj Iqbal,had cut off contact with the American. Headley suggested narrowing the scope of the newspaper plot and killing only the cartoonist and an editor. Mir disagreed. Despite the uproar over Mumbai,he seemed eager to take an audacious terrorism campaign into Europe. About the same time,the FBI was pursuing yet another tip about Headley. A friend of his mother in Philadelphia had come forward after seeing the news about the Mumbai attacks. She told agents that she believed Headley had been fighting alongside Pakistani militants for years. Agents conducted an inquiry but then put it on hold because they thought he was out of the country,US officials said. In January 2009,Headley travelled from Chicago to Denmark. Using his business cover,he visited the newspapers offices and enquired about advertising his immigration firm. He shot video of the area and because Mir mistakenly believed the editor was Jewish of a nearby synagogue,documents say. But a few weeks later,Mir put the plan on hold. Pakistani authorities had finally arrested a big fish: Lashkars military chief. They also arrested a Lashkar boss who had allegedly worked the phones with Mir at the command post for the Mumbai attacks,and some low-level henchmen. In March,Mir sent Headley to India to scout more targets. But Headley was fixated on Denmark. For help,he turned to IIyas Kashmiri,an al-Qaeda boss. Kashmiri offered to provide Headley with militants in Europe for the attack. He envisioned attackers decapitating hostages and throwing heads out of the newspaper office windows,documents say. Headley accepted the offer. Still,he kept urging Mir to return to the Mickey Mouse Project. In September 2009,documents show,Headley again discussed joining forces with Mir for the Denmark attack,a sign that Mir was operating freely. But Headley wasnt so lucky. His contact with two known al-Qaeda suspects in Britain had put him on the radar of British intelligence,who alerted their US counterparts. In October,the FBI arrested Headley in Chicago,where he had a Pakistani wife and children. Headleys cooperation gave the FBI a treasure trove of evidence and intelligence. In March he pleaded guilty to helping organise the Mumbai attacks and the Denmark plot. His confession and the contents of his computer showed he had scouted scores of targets,including American ones,around the world,officials say. Investigators say he did not do reconnaissance in the United States,but they noted a chilling detail: His immigration consulting firm had offices in the Empire State Building. ProPublica reporter Sharona Coutts and researchers Lisa Schwartz and Nicholas Kusnetz contributed to this report. It was co-published with The Washington Post. mumbai-attacks-david-coleman-headley-part-2
