Friday, December 11, 2009
Is Headley India's battle ?
America has hugged the Headley case so tightly to itself perhaps because Headley was an undercover agent who worked for them and then went rogue.
The New York Times has chronicled how Headley crossed sides and worked for America’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) after he was arrested for smuggling in heroin in 1998. The NYT report even quotes court documents to say that Headley knew Pakistan’s narcotics underbelly so well that he was imprisoned for less than two years, after which he was sent to Pakistan to “conduct undercover surveillance operations for the DEA”. In the post-9/11 world of American security, the lines between drug trafficking and terrorism have blurred. In other words, the CIA may well have been just one step away from the DEA.
We have been told that Headley abandoned his real name of Daood Gilani and embraced an American sounding, Christian name, so he could travel in India without attracting suspicion. If Headley was an informant for the US administration, isn’t it likely that he took on a false name so that he could whiz in and out of airports without popping up on security lists? This could help explain why it took so long for the US to "find" his name change.
Another investigative journalist, Gerald Posner, confirms this thesis, writing, that, “in a world of high security, Headley somehow managed to then move with apparent ease in and out of Pakistan. A convicted felon of Pakistani descent, making frequent trips back and forth to the US (there were apparently at least four in one year), would have been monitored by US tracking agencies.”
The FBI had warned India that Mumbai could come under attack in September 2008. Was their intelligence so specific because Headley had supplied the information to them as an informant within the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba before turning double agent on the US?
IMO: Headley’s half brother has turned out to be an official in the public relations office of the Pakistan Prime Minister. Will Indian intelligence officials will ever even get to meet Headley, leave alone interrogate him ?
The New York Times has chronicled how Headley crossed sides and worked for America’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) after he was arrested for smuggling in heroin in 1998. The NYT report even quotes court documents to say that Headley knew Pakistan’s narcotics underbelly so well that he was imprisoned for less than two years, after which he was sent to Pakistan to “conduct undercover surveillance operations for the DEA”. In the post-9/11 world of American security, the lines between drug trafficking and terrorism have blurred. In other words, the CIA may well have been just one step away from the DEA.
We have been told that Headley abandoned his real name of Daood Gilani and embraced an American sounding, Christian name, so he could travel in India without attracting suspicion. If Headley was an informant for the US administration, isn’t it likely that he took on a false name so that he could whiz in and out of airports without popping up on security lists? This could help explain why it took so long for the US to "find" his name change.
Another investigative journalist, Gerald Posner, confirms this thesis, writing, that, “in a world of high security, Headley somehow managed to then move with apparent ease in and out of Pakistan. A convicted felon of Pakistani descent, making frequent trips back and forth to the US (there were apparently at least four in one year), would have been monitored by US tracking agencies.”
The FBI had warned India that Mumbai could come under attack in September 2008. Was their intelligence so specific because Headley had supplied the information to them as an informant within the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba before turning double agent on the US?
IMO: Headley’s half brother has turned out to be an official in the public relations office of the Pakistan Prime Minister. Will Indian intelligence officials will ever even get to meet Headley, leave alone interrogate him ?
# posted by uv : 1:49 PM
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