The American behind Indias 9/11 Mumbai attacks

In the United States,stubborn questions persist about David Coleman Headley,a confessed Lashkar operative and ISI spy. The Pakistani-Americans testimony at a trial in Chicago this year revealed the ISIs role in the Mumbai attacks and a plot against Denmark. It was the strongest public evidence to date of ISI complicity in terrorism.

But the trial shed little light on Headleys past as a US Drug Enforcement Administration informant and the failure of US agencies to pursue repeated warnings over seven years that could have stopped his lethal odyssey sooner and perhaps prevented the Mumbai attack.

US officials say Headley simply slipped through the cracks. If that is true,his story is a trail of bureaucratic dysfunction. But if his ties to the US government were more extensive than disclosed as widely believed in India an operative may have gone rogue with tragic results. Both scenarios reveal the kind of breakdowns that the government has spent billions to correct since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Chapter 1: The Prince

The 51-year-old was born Daood Gilani in Washington,DC. His father,Syed Saleem Gilani,a renowned Pakistani broadcaster,and his mother,Serrill Headley,a free spirit from a wealthy Philadelphia family,moved to Pakistan when he was a baby,but the parents divorced and Serrill returned alone.

At 17,he returned to Philadelphia to live with his mother. He helped her manage the Khyber Pass,a trendy club that she owned. He was tall and smooth and had a striking characteristic: One eye was brown,the other blue. Employees nicknamed him The Prince.

When he was 24,Headley was arrested in Lahore for drug possession,according to his testimony and US officials. He somehow beat the charges.

In 1988,police caught him at the Frankfurt,Germany,airport en route to Philadelphia with two kilos of heroin hidden in a suitcase. The DEA took over,and he made a deal on the spot. He got four years in prison.

Struggling with addiction,he spent six months in prison for a probation violation in 1995.

Chapter 2: Informant and Militant

In early 1997,he signed up as a confidential DEA informant. In January 1998,the DEA sent him to Pakistan,where he met with drug suppliers and gathered useful intelligence. This was the only trip at the DEAs behest, a senior DEA official said.

He broke the rules by trying to set up dealers with jailhouse phone calls that were not monitored by agents,according to court records. He angled for leverage with his handlers,according to a close associate from that period.

Headley served another eight months in prison. He became a more devout Muslim behind bars,according to his associate. Soon after his release in 1999,probation officials permitted him to travel to Pakistan for a few weeks for an arranged marriage.

In mid 2000,he immersed himself in the ideology of Lashkar-i-Toiba. In the winter of that year,he met Hafiz Saeed,who made a statement that was Headleys epiphany: One second spent in jihad is superior to 100 years of worship and prayer.

Chapter 3: Mission in Pakistan?

On Sept. 12,2001,Headleys DEA handler called him. Agents were canvassing sources for information on the al Qaeda attacks of the day before. Headley began collecting counterterror intelligence. He worked sources in Pakistan. But a former girlfriend of his told a bartender named Terry ODonnell that he also wanted to go to Pakistan to fight alongside Islamic militants,according to law enforcement officials. She said he had praised the Sept. 11 attacks,recalled ODonnell,now a New York firefighter.

ODonnell contacted an FBI-led task force. Investigators interviewed Headleys mother and the girlfriend,who described his ideological support for militants in Kashmir.

Headley denied the accusations. He told the agents he had a distant Pakistani relative who was an army general and the deputy director of the ISI,according to US and Indian officials.

Today,US intelligence believes the relative may have been Gen. Faiz Gilani,ISIs deputy director at the time.

The investigators cleared Headley. Six weeks later,a federal judge ended Headleys probation three years early so he could travel to Pakistan. A transcript and accounts of participants show the hearing was rushed.

Chapter 4: The Path to Holy War

By February 2002,Headley was training in Lashkars mountain camps. He did a three-week introductory course on ideology and jihad.

That summer,Headley returned to New York and proposed to his Canadian-born girlfriend with a diamond ring in Central Park. Photos show he had bulked up and grown a long beard. His sharp profile and receding,slicked-back hair gave him a hawk-like look.

In June,Headley visited his mother in Oxford,Pa. One day,Headleys mother told Phyllis Keith,co-owner of the Morning Glories cafe that she frequented,that she was concerned because he was training in militant camps in Pakistan. He was increasingly fanatical and had described meeting teen-age trainees who had later died,she said,according to US officials.

Keith called the FBI in Philadelphia and told them about the mothers account. Headley later told an associate that an FBI agent had gone to his mothers house and asked about him. But the FBI says there was no such visit.

Headley did his second Lashkar training stint in August. When he was not at the camps,he lived with his Pakistani wife in Lahore. By then,two of their four children had been born.

On Dec. 11,2002,Headley returned to New York to marry his fiancée there. At the airport,border inspectors sent him to the secondary inspection area for questioning. He had been stopped earlier at airports in 1993,1996 and 2001,according to US officials.

The inspectors found nothing amiss. They did not know about the allegations by ODonnell and Keith,according to US officials.

Chapter 5: Narrow Escapes

Sajid Mir,a Lashkar chief in charge of foreign recruits,told Headley he wanted to use him for missions in India.

The American suggested he could perfect his cover by changing his name to hide his Pakistani ancestry and using a Chicago immigration consulting firm owned by Tahawwur Rana,his boyhood friend. Mir loved both ideas.

In the summer of 2005,Headley saw his Canadian wife in New York. She was furious. He had gone for months without communicating with her from Pakistan. She had called Headleys father in Lahore,and he told her about the Pakistani wife and children.

On Aug. 25,Headley and his wife argued,he allegedly hit her,and police arrested him for assault. The wife also called a terror tip line. She knew more about Lashkar then than most Westerners,officials say.

Agents from the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed her three times. She told them about his extremist activities,overseas training and acquisition of equipment for the terror group. The FBI knew about the previous allegations in New York and Philadelphia. Yet,the agents did not question Headley,officials say.

In January 2006,Headley was recruited by an ISI officer named Major Iqbal. US counterterror officials believe Iqbal was in Directorate S,the wing of the ISI that works with militant groups.

On Feb. 7,Headley was stopped at JFK International. He told border inspectors he had been visiting family in Pakistan,officials say. The inspectors didnt have access to databases where leads were stored. Nor was his name on a watch list. He eluded detection again.

Chapter 6: Target

Mumbai

Headley had fun in the city he was planning to devastate. He joined an upscale gym,befriended a Bollywood actor,hung out in the Colaba area,and tried to romance a 25-year-old who owned a café,according to Indian investigators. He stayed at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel,the prime target designated by his handlers. He charmed employees,praising the opulent architecture,going on in-house tours and shooting hours of video.

In 2007,things got more complicated on the domestic front. Headley met a young Moroccan in Lahore and soon married her. Faiza Outalha was a medical student and Western in outlook,but Headley had her dress in traditional Muslim style. This created a problem when she insisted on accompanying him to Mumbai,because he was posing as a non-Muslim American. A stay at the Taj ended in a tearful spat,and he sent her back to Lahore.

In December 2007,Outalha reported him to the US embassy in Islamabad. In December,January and April,she met with agents of the State Departments security bureau and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Outalha described his involvement with Lashkar and visits to India. She told them she had stayed at the Taj with him. She called him a drug dealer,terrorist and spy,according to officials.

The State Department security agent communicated the wifes warning in an information package to the CIA,FBI and DEA,according to US officials. Its not clear whether anyone did anything further. The DEA senior official says he has not seen any record that his agency was informed.

Headley,meanwhile,wrapped up his mission. The targets were chosen by Major Iqbal,who wanted to ensure that Americans and Jews would die.

Chapter 7: Congrats On Your Graduation

On the night of Nov. 26,2008,Headley watched the coverage of the terror attack on television with his Moroccan wife; they had reconciled weeks earlier. He got a celebratory email from his Pakistani wife,whom he had moved with their children to Chicago in September. The wife knew about his reconnaissance and praised him in an email using coded language,according to court testimony.

Congrats on your graduation, the wife wrote on Nov. 28,according to court documents. Graduation ceremony is really great. Watched the movie the whole day.

In October,Major Iqbal and Mir had visited him at home,the first time he had seen his ISI and Lashkar handlers together,according to Headleys testimony. They wanted to take their holy war to Europe. They assigned him to scout the Jyllands-Posten newspaper of Denmark,which had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Headley visited his family in Chicago over the Christmas holiday. He learned that yet another tipster had gone to the FBI. It was a female friend of his mother,who had died earlier in the year. Apparently motivated by news of the Mumbai attacks,the woman contacted the Wilmington,Del.,FBI office,which passed the lead to the Philadelphia field office.

Interviewed on Dec. 1,the tipster said Headleys mother had told her years earlier that her son was fighting alongside militants in Pakistan. The tipster said she believed he was still involved in militant activity. FBI agents reviewed records and found most or all of the warnings dating back to 2001,according to a law enforcement official.

Headley went to Copenhagen in mid-January,2009. He did video surveillance,assessed target areas and took notes. On Jan. 20,he went to the newspaper offices in the historic Kings Square. He met with an advertising representative in the lobby for about 15 minutes.

Headley returned to Pakistan and met with his handlers. In March,they decided to put the plot on hold. Responding to foreign pressure,Pakistani authorities had arrested Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi Lashkars military leader and a few other suspects.

Headley had grown disenchanted with Lashkar. He shifted to al-Qaeda with the help of a friend called Abderrehman Syed,a former army major who had left the Lashkar.

He said they were conducting the ISIs jihad and we should conduct Gods jihad, Headley testified.

Syed became Headleys latest handler. He introduced him to Ilyas Kashmiri,who took over sponsorship of the Denmark plot,according to Headleys testimony and other evidence.

Kashmiri was enthusiastic. He gave Headley the names of militants in Britain and Sweden who could help with funds and weapons and possibly take part in an attack. Kashmiri said the gunmen should storm the newspaper,Mumbai-style,then put on a media spectacle.

He wanted them to behead hostages and throw the heads out of windows into Kings Square.

Chapter 8: The Downfall

Back in Chicago that summer,Headley prepared for his second reconnaissance trip to Denmark. He communicated with two al Qaeda operatives in Britain referred to him by Kashmiri. In July,British intelligence learned about his impending visit and notified the FBI.

Headleys meeting in the English town of Derby on July 26 did not go well. The militants,Simon and Bash,didnt want to participate in the attack and couldnt supply weapons.

Headley continued to Stockholm to see a veteran militant named Farid. An agitated Farid told Headley to leave him alone because Swedish police had him under tight surveillance.

He took a train to Copenhagen on July 31. Danish agents shadowed him.

Headley returned via Atlanta on Aug. 5. Airport inspectors questioned him,then let him go so the FBI could continue surveillance. On Oct. 9,the FBI arrested him at Chicagos OHare Airport. He was bound for Pakistan with his Denmark videos in his luggage.

Epilogue: Questions And Contradictions

In addition to Major Iqbal,Mir and two other accused Lashkar masterminds were indicted this year by US federal prosecutors. Despite abundant evidence,Pakistan has not arrested or charged them or half a dozen other top suspects,officials say.

The targeting of the West in Mumbai and Denmark has raised fears that Lashkar could become a more formidable threat than a diminished al-Qaeda.

Pakistans Federal Investigative Agency is in charge of the investigation. But in reality,no one in Pakistan is trying to arrest Major Iqbal,Sajid Mir or the others,US and Indian officials say.

Pakistani officials deny that Major Iqbal was an ISI officer. That only makes it harder to understand why he has not been arrested. It raises questions about the potential knowledge and involvement of ISI chiefs.

Contributing: Sabrina Shankman and David Montero for PBS FRONTLINE.

Excerpted from a ProPublica-PBS Frontline investigation. Full report on http://www.propublica.org