New York Times Admits Mumbai Terror Plotter Was U.S. Intelligence Asset

I think this is a breakthrough that the article, D.E.A. Deployed Mumbai Plotter Despite Warning, got through the Times' gate keepers. Right in the first paragraph it becomes clear that Headley was released from custody and resumed his role as an informant, being then sent to Pakistan to train with a terror organization.

American authorities sent David C. Headley, a small-time drug dealer and sometime informant, to work for them in Pakistan months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite a warning that he sympathized with radical Islamic groups, according to court records and interviews. Not long after Mr. Headley arrived there, he began training with terrorists, eventually playing a key role in the 2008 attacks that left 164 people dead in Mumbai.

Though failing to admit that this all points obviously towards an organized, US intelligence staged, false flag attack in Mumbai, the article at least gets the information out. Remember in many other instances, such as the 93 WTC bombing, it is the informer, the intelligence asset, who carries out the plot. Remember also that the new Al-Qaeda target Awlaki dined in the Pentagon. Remember that Bin Laden himself and many others involved in terror, were known to have worked with our government. Then draw your own conclusions about who the War on Terror really serves.

From The New York Times


WASHINGTON — American authorities sent David C. Headley, a small-time drug dealer and sometime informant, to work for them in Pakistan months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite a warning that he sympathized with radical Islamic groups, according to court records and interviews. Not long after Mr. Headley arrived there, he began training with terrorists, eventually playing a key role in the 2008 attacks that left 164 people dead in Mumbai.

The October 2001 warning was dismissed, the authorities said, as the ire of a jilted girlfriend and for lack of proof. Less than a month later, those concerns did not come up when a federal court in New York granted Mr. Headley an early release from probation so that he could be sent to work for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in Pakistan. It is unclear what Mr. Headley was supposed to do in Pakistan for the Americans...

...An examination of Mr. Headley’s story shows that his government ties ran far deeper and longer than previously known. One senior American official knowledgeable about the case said he believed that Mr. Headley was a D.E.A. informant until at least 2003, meaning that he was talking to American agencies even as he was learning to deal with explosives and small arms in terrorist training camps.

...Mr. Headley, 50, born in the United States to a Pakistani diplomat and Philadelphia socialite, has pleaded guilty in connection with the Mumbai plot and a thwarted attack against a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. As he has many times before, he is cooperating with the authorities, this time hoping to avoid the death penalty. Officials of the D.E.A., which has a long history with Mr. Headley, declined to discuss their relationship with him. The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. said that Mr. Headley had never worked with them. Privately, the agencies point fingers at each other.

...The transcript of a Nov. 16, 2001, probation hearing in federal court in New York shows the government took great pains not to identify which agency was handling Mr. Headley, or whether he worked for more than one.

...American authorities have not disclosed what happened after Mr. Headley resumed his role as an informant. But in December 2001, the same month Mr. Headley departed for Pakistan, the United States designated the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba as a terrorist organization. Less than two months later — in February 2002 — Mr. Headley began training with the group on “the merits of waging jihad.”

Between 2002 and 2005, Mr. Headley attended at least four additional Lashkar sessions, including training on surveillance and small-arms combat. Then in 2007, he began scouting targets for the group to attack in Mumbai, staying at least twice at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel, and hiring fishermen for private tours of the port that helped him identify where the sea-traveling attackers could land. It is unclear when and why his connections to the United States government ended.