Thanks karan.Karan Dixit wrote:Ramana,
Here is the timeline:
http://karandixit.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/headley/
It needs some serious updates:
- Kiyani
- Headley's wives
- British intelligence services
I am going to get on it this Saturday.
A_Gupta wrote:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oc ... or-attacks
Pakistan's powerful intelligence services were heavily involved in preparations for the Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 2008, according to classified Indian government documents obtained by the Guardian.
A 109-page report into the interrogation of key suspect David Headley, a Pakistani-American militant arrested last year and detained in the US, makes detailed claims of ISI support for the bombings.
SSridhar wrote:On why the ISI planned the 26/11 Mumbai terror attackFrom my own post here dated July 21,Headley reportedly claimed that a key motivation for the ISI in aiding the attacks was to bolster militant organisations with strong links to the Pakistani state and security establishment who were being marginalised by more extreme radical groups.LeT is absolutely capable of launching an attack all on its own. It could have perfectly launched the 26/11 all by itself. Look at the the PA involvement in 26/11 - training at Mangla and possibly outskirts of Karachi, supply of maritime charts and GPS waypoints, arranging a boat for PNR 2.5 million, providing satellite phones, handling the terrorists and motivating them through every step for three days, and setting up communication. Some of these can be handled by LeT itself and there are any number of retired PA, PN officers available to do the rest. I therefore believe that rather than LeT initiating the Mumbai attack, it was completely a PA initiated attack and foot soldiers were supplied by the eastern-allies of the PA, namely the LeT. That was the same in the two bombings in Kabul where the western-allies of the PA, namely the Haqqani Group, supplied the suicide bombers. However, there is an assault going on the LeT to wean away its cadres to the Punjabi Taliban (or Wahabandis). LeT (and the PA) cannot remain impervious to this development. The only way to survive this threat is by LeT increasing its stock among the rural masses, particularly in Central and South Punjab. And, the only way of increasing the stock is to mount an even more audacious attack on India. Attractive opportunities are presenting themselves with upcoming events in India. The Kabul attacks and the 26/11 left tell-tale evidences linking to the PA and the were messages to India and also to the US that it is PA that determines India policies in Pakistan and nobody can do anything about that. Having conveyed that message, the PA may choose to be more careful in covering its tracks in the immediate future.
Lalmohan wrote:i think many of us from the very begining pointed the finger at TSPA/Kiyanahin as originating this charade
LET were the executors
this just confirms the hypothesis
Then why are they hiding him?Also could the US handlers of DCH didn't know what he was upto even after the 26/11 attack. Maybe they had a Rahul Butt moment?
Most likely India gave that folder to Guardian to quote from.18 October 2010: Whatever the spin by governments in India and the US, president Barack Obama's November state visit to this country will be a washout closing resembling disaster unless America seriously revisits three issues. One is the matter of publically and unequivocally supporting India's bid for permanent membership in the UN Security Council (UNSC). The two other things focus on two individuals, David Coleman Headley and Warren Anderson, who must be turned over to India in the interests of justice. Without clear and apparent movement on these issues, obviously initiated by India but actively encouraged by the US, Obama's visit will create no ripples here and become a case of lost opportunities.....
David Coleman Headley is the third and most important focal point. When he was first exposed as a Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorist scout for 26/11 and a US undercover agent, this writer was among the first to analyze that America was protecting him. This writer also made the point that the US decided to arrest Headley only when his plans to target the Danish paper carrying the Prophet's cartoons had reached an advanced stage. In other words, the US stood by and watched 26/11 happen but only moved to stop Headley when core Western interests were threatened. Recently, the US and NATO carried out a month-long bombing campaign against Al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in North Waziristan when a plot to attack several European cities came to light. On the other hand, there was no decisive action to prevent 26/11, except a routine tip-off to Indian authorities with vague timelines.
Every day brings more revelations about Headley, 26/11 and the shameful complicity of US covert services which, at the very least, will scupper Obama's visit. The latest is that one of Headley's three wives informed US officials about his LeT terrorist connections and suspicions about a 26/11 plan complete with tape-recordings and other evidence nearly a year before the Bombay carnage but that they ignored her and continued to protect him as an operative. In the face of such media disclosures, the US says it gave India access to Headley. Earlier, India was demanding Headley's extradition, but dropped it probably under US pressure. But new revelations about Headley are again making Indian public opinion deeply suspicious of US intentions vis-a-vis India, robbing its counterterrorist thrust of credibility, and letting an impression grow that Pakistan has a free pass to terrorize India.
The only way to salvage the situation is for the US to turn over Headley to India, overriding the judicial guarantees given to him that prevent this. In a situation where India held a terrorist who had harmed the US, America would not permit Indian legal procedures to stand in the way of getting him. The Manmohan Singh government immediately must have to make a strong pitch to gain custody of Headley. It will forthwith convey the seriousness of the issue and send a message to the US not to toy with intimate Indian concerns and anxieties. It will also give notice to Pakistan that India will hunt down Pakistani terrorists to the ends of the world.
If Barack Obama cannot promise delivery on any of the three discussed subjects, then he should be prepared for a non-visit in November.
I had not know this that David Headley hadPatni wrote:Posting link to the original investigative report by "propublica" a version of the same is published by Washington post as linked by Amber G in previous post.
FBI Was Warned Years in Advance of Mumbai Attacker’s Terror Ties
by Sebastian Rotella
ProPublica, Oct. 15, 2010, 5:18 p.m
ProPublica researchers Lisa Schwartz and Nicholas Kusnetz contributed to this report.
This would be to defeat retinal scanners if they had the record. This guiy is not an informant. He is much higher than that.corrective eye surgery
So he gets retinal corrective eye surgery.Pakistani-American LeT terrorist David Coleman Headley had videographed the outer boundary of the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh’s residence (7 RCR) after the 26/11 terror attack during his final trip to India in March 2009.
Headley also told the interrogators of the nexus between ISI-Al Qaeda and LeT. He has disclosed that the 26/11 terror attack was not only the handiwork of the ISI but was closely coordinated by the top brass of the Al Qaeda leadership like Illyas Kashmiri of 313 brigade (Al Qaeda) and Abdur Rehman alias Pasha. Incidentally, Pasha joined the Al Qaeda, following his differences with the LeT leadership. Headley said that Pasha told him that “he had met Osama Bin Laden a number of times,.”
Headley further disclosed that he used to “separately brief his ISI handler (Major Iqbal) after each reconnaissance visit to Mumbai’’. He also said that the ISI was fully involved in 26/11 and the money with which the first boat consisting `25 lakh was purchased was provided by the ISI. Headley told the NIA sleuths that “getting a boat loaded with weapons to India had to have been cleared by the Pakistan government authorities’’.
Headley has named serving ISI officers Major Iqbal, Major Sameer Ali, Col Shah, Lt Col Hamza and one Brig Rijaz based in Muzaffarabad who is the handler of the LeT’s chief military commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi. He said that ISI DG Sujja Pasha had visited a Mumbai attack conspirator Zakki in Udial jail to understand the Mumbai attack conspiracy. He explained that “every important member of LeT is handled by one or more ISI officials.”
Headley confessed that he had told his handlers that “ an attack on the National Defence College in the capital could kill more Indian military officers than had been killed in all the wars between India and Pakistan since it was a vulnerable target’’. An attack on the Delhi Chabad House at Pahargunj was also discussed which Abdur Rehman felt could be carried out by the LeT wing in Nepal. It was during the first week of February 2006 that Headley visited the US and “pursued” his move to change his name from Daood Gilani to David Headley. During the course of interrogation, he revealed: “I could complete my work in a couple of days.”
LINKsunnyp wrote:
European terror attacks mastermind sent operative to Britain to raise arms and money
Ilyas Kashmiri, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, sent an associate to Britain to meet two men from Derby in August 2009, security sources have told the Daily Telegraph.
The British contacts were supposed to assist the associate, a US citizen called David Coleman Headley, with plans for a truck-bomb attack on the Danish newspaper behind cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
Kashmiri said contacts in Europe would provide “money, weapons and manpower” for Headley, according to US documents, although none materialised.
It is feared the network has now been re-tasked to support Kashmiri’s plans for Mumbai-style attacks in Europe.
Intelligence suggesting Kashmiri boasted that he had already sent terrorists to Britain and Germany as part of the plot, sparked an alert across the continent two weeks ago.
The Obama administration has ordered a review of U.S. intelligence about an American conspirator involved in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack to determine if there was a breakdown in information sharing among U.S. agencies that might have helped identify the suspect before the attack, two administration officials tell NBC.
The "after-action review" was ordered by James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, and is being overseen by White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan. It was triggered by reports over the weekend that two ex-wives of the Mumbai plotter, Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley, had separately reported concerns to U.S. officials that he may have been involved in militant activity in Pakistan, the officials said.
There is a dispute among U.S. agencies about whether all the information provided by the two wives were shared among U.S. law enforcement — and whether it rose to the level that should have prompted a more aggressive inquiry into Headley’s activities. There also could be questions about whether information about Headley should have been passed along to the Indian government prior to the attack.
<snip>
It is very clear that power that be leaked the 109 page document on Headley interrogation to select media at very importunate time to use as a counter against what ever pressure POTUS wanted to exert on GoI during planned visit next month. IMHO a slow but a strong case is being built up, it seems by GoI, to bring out in eye of western public the duplicity of CIA/ISI in War on Terror! For a change very influential main stream western media houses seem to provide unprecedented headline and first page coverage to same!By Emily Wax and Greg Miller
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 19, 2010; 11:18 PM
NEW DELHI - Pakistan's main intelligence service was far more involved in funding and orchestrating the 2008 Mumbai attacks than was previously believed, according to a classified Indian investigative report. But that conclusion was disputed Tuesday by U.S. intelligence officials, who said they saw no evidence to substantiate Pakistani government involvement.
The Indian report is based primarily on the interrogation of David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani American who was arrested last year in Chicago and pleaded guilty this year in U.S. federal court to helping to plot the attack.
The three-day siege in Mumbai left 166 people dead, including six Americans. It has been attributed to the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-i-Taiba, but the extent of official Pakistani involvement - if any - has long been hotly contested.
In the report, Headley is quoted describing his extensive contact with handlers from Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, and speculates on its alleged motivation for helping to launch the strike. In Headley's telling, the ISI was hoping to refocus militants against neighboring India at a time when they were increasingly turning their guns on Pakistan. "The ISI, I believe, had no ambiguity about the necessity to strike India," he said, according to the report.
Pakistani officials immediately rejected the suggestion that the ISI was involved, with one calling it an "Indian-staged drama."
The ISI has often been accused of exporting militancy to India, Afghanistan and beyond, rather than trying to eliminate it at home. Headley's account, if true, offers an unusual firsthand insight, complete with the names of ISI personnel with whom he says he met as the plot took shape.
But India has a significant motive of its own for blaming its arch rival for the assault, in which 10 gunmen targeted two international hotels, a tourist cafe and a Jewish outreach center.
A U.S. counterterrorism official said American authorities have seen no evidence that ISI leaders were aware of, let alone involved in overseeing, the attack.
"There are no indications that the Pakistani ISI made any kind of institutional decision to help direct, plan or orchestrate the Mumbai attacks," said the U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation. "If there was information pointing to Pakistani government sponsorship of the Mumbai attacks, surely the United States would have reacted accordingly."
Any substantial ISI link to the attack could have serious repercussions for the CIA. The agency has provided tens of millions of dollars in funding to the ISI over the past decade, and it relies extensively on Pakistani cooperation for the capture of alleged terrorists as well as permission to carry out drone strikes in areas of Pakistan near the Afghan border.
But Pakistan maintains murky relations with many of the extremist groups that operate on its soil, including Lashkar-i-Taiba, which it long nurtured but later banned.
While Lashkar was originally oriented toward antagonizing India - particularly in the disputed region of Kashmir - the group in recent years has begun to align itself with al-Qaeda and other transnational groups that espouse global jihad. Members have begun to carry out attacks within Pakistan, as retribution for Pakistani cooperation with the United States. In the report, Headley is quoted as pointing to that shift as the origin of the Mumbai attacks.
The ISI, Headley said, was under "tremendous pressure to stop the integration of Kashmir-based outfits with Jihadi-based outfits" and hoped "to shift . . . the theatre of violence from the domestic soil of Pakistan to India."
The 109-page document - elements of which were reported in recent days by the British paper the Guardian and the New York Times and which was obtained by The Washington Post on Tuesday - relies on 34 hours of interrogation by Indian investigators.
U.S. officials refused to say whether Headley's accounts to American interrogators have been consistent with what he apparently told Indian investigators. Justice Department and FBI officials declined to comment, although members of both agencies were present during the questioning by Indian officials.
Headley, 50, was born Daood Gilani and later changed his name. Despite the skepticism from U.S. intelligence agencies, the Indian report includes significant detail on Headley's alleged interactions with the ISI. He identifies at least four ISI operatives by name or pseudonym and describes receiving travel funding and detailed intelligence training from the ISI.
The report "reinforces the sense that Pakistan is riding a jihadist Frankenstein," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst who led the Obama administration's initial review of its Afghanistan and Pakistan strategies. Given the level of detail in the Indian report, Riedel said, there appears to be "no question of an ISI role in Mumbai."
The report was leaked at an important time, about three weeks before President Obama is to visit India. India has been frustrated by the attention and financial support that Washington gives Pakistan. The United States has urged the two nations to restart talks over Kashmir in hopes that improved relations will help stabilize the region.
Meanwhile Tuesday, intelligence officials said the U.S. director of national intelligence will review Headley's handling. The decision by James R. Clapper Jr. to undertake the review comes after a ProPublica report in The Post on Sunday that Headley's wife told the FBI about his terrorist ties three years before the attacks. The director's office will also examine a 2007 incident, reported by the New York Times, in which another wife of Headley told officials at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan that she thought he was a terrorist
Miller reported from Washington. Correspondent David Nakamura and special correspondent Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad, Pakistan; special correspondent Khan Haq Nawaz in Peshawar, Pakistan; and Sebastian Rotella of ProPublica in Washington contributed to this report.
Obama's boat to India springs leaks
By M K Bhadrakumar
In the world of diplomacy and politics, a "leak" invariably means something and its timing is never accidental. The leak is a form of diplomatic ingenuity. Two leaks in successive weeks, appearing in New York and London in the run-up to the visit by United States President Barack Obama to India in early November, raise tricky questions. They threaten to become the leitmotif of Obama's visit.
The thrust of the "original leak" on October 15 in ProPublica, a Manhattan-based website that specializes in "investigative journalism", can be summed up as follows:
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation had advance information relating to the planning of the terrorist strike on Mumbai in 2008 that killed 166 people but didn't share the details with Indian agencies.
The FBI knew as far back as 2005 that David Coleman Headley, an American national who figures now as a key person in the plot, was an active militant in the Pakistani terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), had trained extensively in Pakistani camps and shopped for night-vision goggles and other equipment, but didn't prosecute him.
A "complicated relationship" existed between American authorities and Headley stretching over a decade since he began working as an "informant" for the US Drug Enforcement Administration sometime in the late 1990s.
Headley was probably an American "asset" within the LeT who turned "jihadi" at some point.
The two leaks are joined at the hip. The narrative is that: a) The US is hypocritical while professing to be India's strategic partner; b) The ISI was involved in the Mumbai terrorist strike but there is nothing anybody can do about it now.
US officials are in desperate damage-control mode. The point is, now is a critical time in the US-India partnership. Expectations are high that Obama's visit will lift the strategic ties out of the trough of inertia of the past couple of years.
There is talk of easing of restrictions by the US on "dual-use" technology flow to India, of new vistas of cooperation in space and energy, a multi-billion dollar arms deal for C-17 military transport aircraft and new business opportunities in the burgeoning Indian market that hold the potential to generate tens of thousands of jobs in the US. The Delhi grapevine is that India has all but decided to award to the US a massive contract for 126 multi-purpose fighter aircraft - worth anywhere up to $16 billion.
excerpt:
Bhadrakumar makes one valid point, but US first needs to accept that Indo-centric TSP Army must be dismantled. Otherwise the US and India will never be on the same page.Meanwhile, NATO cross-border operations on Pakistani territory infuriate the Pakistani military. In short, as the New York Times commented: "General Petraeus seems determined to show progress on achieving American goals in Afghanistan - both military and political - ahead of a December review of the war effort ordered by Obama."
The Pakistani military establishment is furious with Petraeus. A highly placed Pakistani general has been quoted as threatening: "Petraeus has to lower his goalposts if he wishes to see some semblance of peace in Afghanistan." The Pakistani military is hoping Obama will ultimately rein in Petraeus and sue for peace.
But, Washington is circling its wagons. In a hard-hitting opinion-piece on Tuesday titled "Petraeus rewrites the playbook in Afghanistan", influential Washington Post columnist David Ignatius rubbished the Pakistani military's orchestrated media campaign to discredit Petraeus. Ignatius wrote:
"Gen David Petraeus appears to be making a strategic pivot in Afghanistan. He is shooting more, increasing special-operations raids and bombings on Taliban commanders. But he is also talking more - endorsing President Hamid Karzai's reconciliation talks with Taliban officials and guaranteeing their safety to and from Kabul as a confidence-building measure.
With Petraeus in the political-military driver's seat, he can steer a process to push the disparate Taliban groups toward a political settlement. The diplomatic side of this game depends on Petraeus's ability to pound those who resist - with devastating firepower. That's why he has been pushing Pakistan so hard to step up its operations against the Haqqani network, sheltered in the tribal areas of the northwest, and against the Quetta Shura Taliban fighters, who operate from Baluchistan in Pakistan's southwest."
No doubt, the US is also seeking a regional consensus, as was evident at the special representatives' conference held in Rome this week in which Iran participated for the first time. This political-military approach aims at progressively reducing the US dependence on Pakistan.
Quite clearly, the Headley controversy pops up at a critical point in the Afghan war. Delhi's comfort level with Obama's AfPak policy is rising and the Pakistani military stands to gain immensely if Headley takes the center stage in the region's security discourse.
The Indians would be downright stupid to get agitated over the leaks (which reveal nothing startlingly new) instead of optimizing the outcome of Obama's visit. As the CNAS report underscores, US interests in a closer security relationship with India include:
# Ensuring a stable Asian and global balance of power.
# Protecting and preserving access to the global commons.
# Countering terrorism and violent extremism.
# Ensuring access to secure global energy resources.
# Fostering greater stability, security and economic prosperity in South Asia, including in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
)That Paki PM Gilani was saying that there will be some good news on Kashmir soon.Rangudu wrote:Ramana
It looks like some elements within GoI have leaked the Headley details to sabotage/prevent something during the Obama visit. If a secret Obama visit to TSP is on the cards, maybe there is some deal being negotiated detrimental to Indian interests.
Not speaking for anybody else but I do seem to feel that it is my duty towards my country that I should be critical of every party/PM in power.Good for democracy and all that stuff.Though doing it mindlessly takes the sting out and labels you a nutcase.ramana wrote:
Having said all this its your perogrative and correct duty to scream sell out when you see apt. We don't want the people thinking that India is a banana democracy.
By Americans you mean? I thought it was leaked by Indians.ramana wrote:Also for all we know the Indian report was leaked to WaPo and Guardian by elements in DC who bat for China.
So another angle could be to derail the Obama policy by creating legitimacy issues. So again civil war going on in DC with India as the whipping boy.SSridhar wrote:Take by Ms. Lisa Curtis on the latest Headley saga
Commenting on the U.S.' slow response to the information, Lisa Curtis, Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, told The Hindu, “Many officials in the U.S. government responsible for Pakistan policy often failed in the past to understand the close links between Pakistan-based terrorist groups targeting India and those that target the West.”
Ms. Curtis said that rather than viewing the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terror outfit Headley was said to have been trained with, on par with the Al-Qaeda, U.S. officials tended to see it only through an Indo-Pakistani lens.
However with regard to the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, Ms. Curtis cautioned that legal issues could arise in the event that direct ISI links were made to the Mumbai attacks, which also killed six U.S. citizens.
She said, “From a policy perspective, there could be major blowback on the Obama administration if it is perceived as stifling information related to a terrorist incident in which U.S. citizens were murdered.”
There were also questions being raised whether the U.S. authorities had failed to follow up on terrorism leads associated with Headley “because it could potentially implicate Pakistan's intelligence service, with whom the Central Intelligence Agency is closely working,” Ms. Curtis, formerly with the CIA, said.
India: For the record. India's Intelligence Bureau (IB) issued a terror alert on 19 October placing all military installations on high alert following a new threat from Pakistan, Press Trust of India reported. IB warned that Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Pakistan's intelligence services trained special suicide attackers to assault India's defense installations. Militants may use a sea route to enter India and carry out the attacks, according to IB sources.
India-Pakistan: According to a 109 page Indian interrogation report of the Pakistani-American jihadist, David Headley, officers through senior field grade ranks in Pakistan's intelligence services were involved directly in the 2008 Mumbai militant attacks and intended to control a further split in Kashmir-based militant groups by providing them with a victory, The Guardian reported yesterday, 18 October.
Headley, a Pakistani American originally named Daood Gilani, undertook surveillance missions of the LeT targets in the 2008 Mumbai operation, He said he regularly reported to the ISI, but the Indian interrogation report suggests that supervision of the terrorists by the ISI was often chaotic. Headley also opined that the senior officers of the agency were unaware of the Mumbai operation beforehand.
According to the Indian interrogation report and The Guardian, Headley said he met once with a Pakistan Army "Colonel Kamran" and had a series of meetings with two majors named "Sameer Ali" and "Iqbal" from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). A fellow terrorist met with Colonel Shah." At least one of eight surveillance missions in India as paid for by the ISI, who paid him $25,000.
Comment: The Guardian does not admit that the Indian interrogation report might have been leaked deliberately.In any event, the publication of key excerpts will help justify to the international community the grounds for Indian suspicions and caution in dealing with Pakistan.
Headley might have told the truth, but the Pakistanis he dealt with certainly did not use their real names or affiliations. Headley's confession of involvement in the Mumbai attacks is sufficient to convince India that Pakistanis and Pakistan itself bear ultimate responsibility for the more than 160 dead in Mumbai in 2008.
The most plausible statement by Headley is that he was told the reason for the Mumbai attacks was to unite Kashmiri militant factions that were splintering and to move militant activity out of Pakistan and against India. Otherwise, Headley has a bit for Pakistan and a bit for India.
His allegations, as reported, will reinforce India's conviction that Pakistani officials continue to support the anti-Indian Islamic terrorists. On the other hand, Pakistanis will see other comments as exonerating the Pakistani government from blame by perpetuating the notion of rogue operations within the Pakistani intelligence service.
Any long time student of the Pakistani military hierarchy knows that rogue operations by serving senior field grade officers are all but impossible.[/b] Headley told his interrogators what they wanted to hear and hardened viewpoints already set in stone.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should call it a day. His writ does not appear to run at all in government and even his pet issues at one point in time — Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmir, United States — seem to have been taken away from him. In fact, such is the state of affairs here in Delhi that even minister of external affairs S M Krishna appears to be more active and ‘happening’ than the prime minister.
The good doctor tried to intervene in Jammu and Kashmir but was completely overtaken by the aggressive Union home minister P Chidambaram, to the point where the latter insisted on leading the all party delegation to the Valley a few weeks ago and wanted the members to follow a structured agenda. In fact Chidambaram has been making statements about small issues that should have come from the state government — such as the opening of schools and colleges — with Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah having been virtually driven further indoors, if that were possible.
The decision to appoint interlocutors for ‘a sustained’ dialogue between New Delhi and Srinagar generated some interest in the Valley, in that it could have been a step forward. The demand was for a political delegation as every sensible person in Jammu and Kashmir, and in Delhi for that matter, was clear that only political leaders could acquire the mandate to take the negotiations forward in a productive manner. So the expectation was that a team of political leaders would be appointed to begin the discussions, in which all shades of opinion — including the separatists and the youth — would be spoken to and consulted.
Instead a mouse emerged from behind the government roar of ‘we are going to do all that we can’ and the country was told that three individuals — a journalist, an academic and a bureaucrat — had been entrusted with the highly complicated and demanding job. For once the people of New Delhi and Srinagar are on the same page with their reactions as the dismay in the Valley was equalled, and perhaps surpassed, by the indignation and disbelief in the national capital. This has nothing to do with the personal capabilities of the three individuals, but everything to do with the government’s reluctance to repose powers in political leaders lest the Union home minister lose control. After all no political leader of any consequence is going to accept Chidambaram as the last word on Kashmir.
This announcement has really served as a giant step backwards, adding to the disillusionment and cynicism engulfing Jammu and Kashmir. This columnist was in the Valley on the day the interlocutors were announced and the reactions from the policemen, to the separatists, to the political leaders including many from the Congress itself, to the ordinary citizen ranged from anger, to an expression of complete frustration and anger at being toyed with again.
Now it is being made out that the journalist in the group is not the ‘head’ of the team, and that there is room for a political leader. But this is just absurd talk, and it is not going to work at all. No one in the Valley is willing to talk to this team that will probably drive in and out of Srinagar in a convoy of security forces, meet the chief minister, talk to a few persons the National Conference can arrange meetings with and return with little except their own views of what should be done in Jammu and Kashmir. The separatists have dismissed the team as a joke, and the people have lost interest and instead of looking at New Delhi have turned to look inwards again for the ‘next step’ that could make their demand for azaadi acquire more teeth.
Opportunity after opportunity lost. It can only be because of one of two reasons. One, that the government is ignorant and arrogant and does not care about Jammu and Kashmir which is of course quite possible. Or two, and this seems to be plausible as well, is that the government does not want a solution of any kind and is quite happy containing and keeping the state by force. Peaceful demonstrations have always upset the governments in Delhi, be it the British before 1947 or others in Independent India. For peaceful protests force negotiations that the political leaders in power are afraid of, while violence begets violence and the state, of course, has mightier guns.
At the same time the youth in Jammu and Kashmir seem to have realised — and one can only hope that this remains — the power of non-violence. The protests all across the Valley in this phase have worried the security agencies and the governments to a point where the young people were first branded as Lashkar-e-Toiba, then as Hizbul and terrorists, until finally the truth as they say, was out and the world realised that these were spontaneous protests by the youth. There is anger and frustration but this has to be channelled into peaceful protests, as nothing works more for the people protesting against governments, than non-violence. It increases the pressure on the governments, both domestically and internationally. JKLFs Yasin Malik is one who realised this a long time ago, and although he has spent days and years in jail, he has managed to resist the pressure from the state to become violent.
One knows it is easy to counsel especially when hope is literally, dying day-by-day in Jammu and Kashmir. There is no point in asking Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to intervene, as he is clearly no longer in command. The others in the UPA government are totally insensitive to the issue. Perhaps then one should appeal to this team of interlocutors to resign and make it clear to the government that if there has to be a way forward, and if the demands and the aspirations of the people of Kashmir have to be taken firmly on board, the first step will have to be in the form of senior political interlocutors armed with authority, knowledge and sensitivity.
by Sebastian Rotella
ProPublica, Oct. 20, 2010, 7:39 a.m.
The Director of National Intelligence will review the handling of David Coleman Headley, the former U.S. informant and confessed plotter of the Mumbai attacks in 2008, intelligence officials said Tuesday.
The decision by Admiral James Clapper to undertake the review comes after a ProPublica report in the Washington Post last week that Headley’s wife warned the FBI about his terrorist ties three years before the attacks that killed 166 people, officials said. The director’s office will also examine a 2007 incident, reported by the New York Times, in which another wife of Headley told officials at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan that she thought he was a terrorist.
The separate warnings to different agencies of the government raise the question of whether the intelligence community properly synthesized the information it was receiving about Headley.
A federal law enforcement official said Tuesday that the State Department did report information about a 2007 warning from Headley’s Moroccan wife after she met twice with officials of the State Dept.’s diplomatic security bureau and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Pakistan. Officials have determined that the diplomatic security officer sent a written report about the wife's allegations to the FBI, CIA and DEA, said the federal law enforcement official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.
What happened after that will be a focus of Clapper's inquiry.
“Director Clapper has initiated an after-action-review to determine lessons learned,” said Jamie Smith, the DNI’s spokeswoman. “Reviews of this nature are an important part of improving existing processes. Since these events occurred, advancements in information sharing systems have been made by applying the lessons learned from these reviews."
Officials declined to provide further specifics but the review is certain to examine the response of federal agencies to the warnings and the extent to which the enigmatic Headley’s work as a U.S. informant overlapped with his activity as a militant of the Lashkar-i-Taiba terrorist group.
“These events happened some time ago and given recent press reports he initiated an after action review to look into whether any further improvements on the information sharing system need to be made,” a federal official said, speaking on background.
Headley was arrested last year, 11 months after the Mumbai attacks, and has pleaded guilty to doing terrorist reconnaissance in that case and a foiled al Qaeda plot in Denmark.
The official version of Headley’s odyssey contains gaps and mysteries. Federal officials have confirmed that he was a DEA informant when he began training with Lashkar in early 2002. But it is not clear when his relationship with the U.S. government ended, if it evolved from anti-drug work to intelligence-gathering, and if his status as an informant affected the federal inquiries into the tips from his wives.
Moreover, some U.S. and Indian anti-terror officials believe that American agencies monitored Headley in 2008, gathering intelligence that played a role in at least three U.S. warnings to India about a Lashkar plot to attack Mumbai. Headley’s links to suspected Pakistani intelligence officials who helped direct and fund his reconnaissance intensify suspicions that he was a double agent or rogue agent.
Accounts differ about whether Headley was an informant when his New York wife contacted the task force after a domestic dispute that resulted in his arrest in 2005.
One federal official said Headley stopped working for the DEA before the New York tip at some point between 2003 and 2005.
Meanwhile, a former senior law enforcement official said the DEA “closed” Headley as an informant “well before” the Mumbai attacks. But the former senior official could not say if the businessman-turned-militant was still working for the drug agency in 2005 or when he scouted targets for Lashkar in Mumbai between 2006 and 2008.
Neither scenario precludes another possibility, according to U.S. and Indian anti-terror officials: that Headley shifted from providing information on drug trafficking to an intelligence mission. The DEA works alongside intelligence agencies on task forces and shares informants, officials say. Because of Headley’s language skills and his contacts in the elite and underworld in South Asia, a spy agency may have used him—on its own or alongside the DEA--to gather information on militants in Pakistan, officials say.
The intelligence review will also examine the details of the warnings from Headley’s wives. Federal officials have said that investigators took the warnings seriously, but could not tie Headley to a specific plot or group because the allegations were too general.
A U.S. anti-terror official and a law enforcement document describing the initial phone tip from Headley’s wife to the New York task force made it clear that she reported his “ties to the Lashker-i-Taiba terrorist organization” and frequent travel to Pakistan.
A New York Police detective working for the task force conducted three interviews with the wife. Another federal investigator participated in the second interview, according to a person close to the case.
The wife described Headley’s accounts of his experiences at Lashkar’s mountain training complex near Muzaffarabad, a sprawling facility that had already been identified by convicted American and European terrorists in previous cases, according to officials and the person close to the case. Headley’s wife recounted his recruitment, fund-raising and procurement of equipment for Lashkar starting in the late 1990s and offered to show the investigators his e-mails because she had learned the password to his account, according to the person close to the case.
The investigators did not look at the e-mails, according to the person close to the case. But they told the wife that the FBI had a file on Headley. They asked about information including his bank accounts and credit cards, according to the person close to the case.
The wife told investigators that Headley boasted that his training with Lashkar was part of a secret anti-terror mission for the DEA and FBI, which he said had “joined forces.”
“I thought he was working for you,” the wife told the JTTF investigators, according to the person close to the case.
Federal officials say Headley was never an FBI informant, however.
In an overseas development, news reports Tuesday asserted that Headley’s confession implicated officials of Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) in the Mumbai massacre. The reports in the Indian press and Associated Press were based on a leaked summary of Headley’s statement to Indian investigators who questioned him in Chicago this summer.
An Indian-anti-terror official confirmed the general accuracy of the reports, which said Headley described a close relationship between high-ranking ISI officers and Lashkar terror bosses. Headley identified ISI officers who helped train, direct and fund him as he scouted targets in Mumbai, according to the official.
Moreover, Headley’s terrorist scouting took him across India and around the globe to locales including Tokyo and Bangkok, according to Indian and U.S. officials.
“He’s traveled the world looking at targets like Indian embassies, other things they might want to hit,” a senior U.S. anti-terror official said.
Its possible that the real info got suppressed and diluted. If US takes action it could be cleaning out its Paki/jihadi sympathisers from its agencies. Lets see how this turns out. 26/11 and DCH involvement could be used to flush the system of its holdouts from teh Afghan mujhadeen days. However this is an internal matter for US if they want to keep those guys....
American journalist Sebastian Rotella quoted a federal law enforcement official as saying on ProPublica website that the State Department did report information about a 2007 warning from Headley's Moroccan wife after she met twice with officials of the State Department's diplomatic security bureau and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Pakistan.
Officials have determined that the diplomatic security officer sent a written report about the wife's allegations to the FBI, CIA and DEA, ProPublica said.
What happened after that will be a focus of the inquiry to be conducted by none other than the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Admiral (rtd.) James Clipper.
"Director Clapper has initiated an after-action-review to determine lessons learned," newly appointed DNI spokeswoman Jamie Smith said.
"Reviews of this nature are an important part of improving existing processes. Since these events occurred, advancements in information sharing systems have been made by applying the lessons learned from these reviews," she said.
The White House and the State Department have so far maintained that there was no lapse in the investigation based on the information provided by the two wives of Headley – one in 2005 and other in 2007.
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Means even Hindu is forced to admit the magnitude of the DCH issue despite having US citizens pretending to be Indian news reporters.David Headley, the Pakistani-American arrested in Chicago in October 2009 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for plotting a terrorist attack in Denmark, pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges of involvement in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. As part of a bargain to avoid a death sentence, in addition to the FBI charges of conspiring to blow up the offices of a Danish newspaper, he pleaded guilty to the charges of scouting terrorist targets in Mumbai during visits to that city, providing material support to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and aiding and abetting the killing of U.S. citizens in the Mumbai attacks. But a year after his arrest, there are more questions than answers not only about the planning behind the attacks and Headley's links with LeT and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, but also about his alleged connections with U.S. intelligence agencies. In recent days, information has emerged that two of his three wives told U.S. authorities at different times that the man had links with the LeT and might be planning a terrorist attack. One wife told the FBI as far back as 2005 that he was training with the LeT during his visits to Pakistan and of his boast that he was an American spy. Another wife told an official of the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad in 2007 that Headley's so-called business trips to India seemed to be a front for something more sinister.
Did U.S. intelligence agencies deliberately not act against Headley, as has been alleged, because he was supposed to be their man in the LeT? Or to prevent antagonising the Pakistan security establishment which has known links to the LeT? It is possible that the information from the two women was too vague to be acted upon. That the U.S. warned India of a terrorist strike in Mumbai in 2008 and specifically on the Taj Mahal hotel is known. Did the warnings emanate from the monitoring of ‘agent' Headley? If so, did U.S. authorities have more specific information on the Mumbai attacks? The other disclosure, that Headley told his Indian interrogators of the direct involvement of certain mid-level officials of the ISI in the Mumbai attacks, does not help solve this bewildering jigsaw. Islamabad's reluctance to crack down on the LeT/Jamat-ud-dawa even after the Mumbai attacks showed that the group continues to wield clout. But there is still no evidence to conclude that the Mumbai operation had official Pakistani sanction. The clearest thing that emerges from the Headley saga is that the American and Indian intelligence agencies had several opportunities to avert the Mumbai terror attacks. They missed them.