bjbjLULU JEFFREY BROWN: And finally tonight,
the man whose blueprint guided the 2008 terror
attacks in Mumbai, India, that killed 166
people, a Pakistani-American who took the
name David Coleman Headley. He was both a
paid informer for the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration and a member of the Pakistani
terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. "Frontline"
and the news service ProPublica have investigated
how American law enforcement and intelligence
agencies missed several opportunities to thwart
Headley's plot, including a tip that came
from one of Headley's several Pakistani wives
after the two fought. We start with an excerpt.
The correspondent is Sebastian Rotella. SEBASTIAN
ROTELLA, ProPublica/"Frontline": Her anger
led to what happened next. She goes to the
U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and warns them about
her husband's extremist activities just as
the Mumbai plot is really gathering momentum,
the reconnaissance and the preparation. MARC
SAGEMAN, former CIA official: That's right.
They must have had a disagreement. She has
a short fuse. She goes to denounce him and
mentioned that he was trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba,
he's really a terrorist. And nothing happens.
SEBASTIAN ROTELLA: Perhaps most surprising,
Faiza revealed to U.S. Embassy officials that
she and Headley had spent their honeymoon
at the Taj Hotel the year before. In combination
with her other charges, that could have led
investigators directly to Headley's work for
Lashkar. Alarming and detailed accusations
were piling up. PHILIP MUDD, former FBI senior
adviser: His wife says he's involved in something.
You look at him for a week or a month and
you can't find anything interesting. There's
72 other active investigations going on in
your office. I think people are too quick
in all these cases when they look at the individual
case and say, hey, you should have known,
when, in fact, you're not looking at an individual
case. You're looking at 6,000, saying, I can't
afford to prioritize this guy, when I have
got 72 other knowns that are really taking
our resources and that merit further investigation.
SEBASTIAN ROTELLA: But the U.S. did collect
enough intelligence to send a series of warnings
in 2008 to India about a potential attack
in Mumbai, including on the Taj Hotel. G.K.
PILLAI, former Indian home secretary: We got
warnings that there was likely to be an attack
on Mumbai. The Taj Hotel was very specific,
but it's like any other thing. You put an
alert, people will wait for 15 days of alert,
or 30 days of alert, and then nothing happens.
SEBASTIAN ROTELLA: G.K. Pillai led the department
overseeing India's security agencies. He believes
that David Headley must have been a source
of that information, but the U.S. never let
on. G.K. PILLAI: If the Americans had just
told us once, look, we have got this guy.
He's coming in. We have a little bit of a
suspicion about this guy. We will just bring
him to your notice. And that wasn't done.
SEBASTIAN ROTELLA: Given that you were getting
these warnings, why do you think the Americans
just didn't tell you about the potential danger
from Headley in there period? G.K. PILLAI:
I can only say that it is because the information
that David Headley was perhaps providing to
the Americans proved useful enough that they
were willing to overlook and keep this under
wraps because he was useful to them. JUDY
WOODRUFF: Headley is now in an undisclosed
federal prison, awaiting sentencing after
pleading guilty to several charges. Margaret
Warner takes the story from there. MARGARET
WARNER: And ProPublica correspondent Sebastian
Rotella joins us now. And welcome. SEBASTIAN
ROTELLA: Thank you. MARGARET WARNER: That's
quite a fine piece of work. Remind us how
crucial David Headley was to the planning
of these Mumbai attacks. SEBASTIAN ROTELLA:
He's absolutely crucial, because he does the
key reconnaissance for a period of 20 months,
mapping out the blueprint of the killing zone
very meticulously, in-depth undercover reconnaissance,
which he's able to do very effectively because
he's not just a terrorist, but he s a spy.
He's being directed by the ISI, Pakistan's
intelligence service. There's strong evidence
to that, in addition to this terrorist group
Lashkar-e-Taiba. He's essentially a joint
operation. So he's working for both. MARGARET
WARNER: And he was, as your title says, the
perfect terrorist. By accident of birth, he
was the perfect man for the job. SEBASTIAN
ROTELLA: I think that's right. He had grown
up with a foot in both of these worlds, in
the U.S. and in Pakistan. He was able to sort
of change shapes and change identities and
function in both worlds with remarkable effectiveness.
MARGARET WARNER: And he even had -- one of
your interviewers mentioned this, and you
showed this -- one blue eye and one brown
eye. SEBASTIAN ROTELLA: It's sort of the classic
physical symbol of that duality, yes. MARGARET
WARNER: So, after you have spent nearly two
years on this project, what did your reporting
lead you to in terms of what his motive was?
What drove him? Was it religious zeal? Was
it a hatred of India? SEBASTIAN ROTELLA: Certainly,
those two things play a role, but it's kind
of a cocktail of motivations that seem to
shift. The one constant appears to be kind
of a hunger for adrenaline is one of the things
that people said, because, yes, the religion
was important, and the nationalism, the Pakistani
nationalism, was important, but this was also
someone who was very Western in his outlook,
who enjoyed Western culture, enjoyed the high
life. So he wasn't a dour jihadi. But the
one thing that seems to be driving him, in
addition to ideology and kind of glory, is
this -- this adrenaline rush. MARGARET WARNER:
Now, the piece quite painfully points out
at least three missed opportunities, where
someone actually close to him or close to,
say, his mother actually reported at least
the Pakistani training camp activities to
the federal authorities, either at the embassy
or to the FBI. What was your conclusion after
all this as to why those weren't followed
up on? SEBASTIAN ROTELLA: That's one of the
most disturbing and puzzling aspects of the
case. There's really about half-a-dozen warnings,
the ones we already knew about and we discovered
a couple of others, where he's coming to the
attention of the authorities, but for some
reason he's slipping through the cracks. There's
kind of two possibilities, two scenarios.
One is that it's always harder than it seems
in hindsight to detect a terrorist in the
making, and that the system didn't work the
way it should have, that people didn't have
the benefit of the previous warnings when
they were investigating the next one. MARGARET
WARNER: Even though this was post-9/11. SEBASTIAN
ROTELLA: Even though this was post-9/11, and
that was exactly what we were supposed to
be doing, was working on those kinds of systems.
The other is this question of because he has
been an informant, and because there is a
sense -- there are sources who believe that
he continued to do some work for some time
after he was officially deactivated by the
DEA in late 2001, early 2002, there's a sense
that his activities or his past as an informant
played a role in -- perhaps in being detected
as less than a threat. That's a very difficult
area. You have people in India who go to the
extreme of believing he was still a double
agent all along. You have people in the U.S.
insisting that that's nonsense. And then there's
some evidence to suggest there may have been
something in between. But we try to be very
careful and balanced how we report it, because
it is a profound mystery still. MARGARET WARNER:
Now, briefly -- and I don't know if you got
into this -- but is this system working any
better now? SEBASTIAN ROTELLA: Certainly,
you would think that it's working better than
particularly some of the early warnings after
9/11. But there's still some concern, because
some of these warnings were pretty recent,
and you have to wonder. One would hope so,
yes. MARGARET WARNER: Sebastian Rotella, thank
you so much. SEBASTIAN ROTELLA: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: "Frontline" airs tonight on
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