26/11 Mumbai attacks: Trial and related developments
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Pakistan intelligence services 'aided Mumbai terror attacks'
Militant arrested last year described dozens of meetings between ISI officers and senior Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives
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.
Under questioning, Headley described dozens of meetings between officers of the main Pakistani military intelligence service, the ISI, and senior militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group responsible for the Mumbai attacks.
He claims 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.
Headley, who undertook surveillance of the targets in Mumbai for the operation, claims that at least two of his missions were partly paid for by the ISI and that he regularly reported to the spy agency. However, the documents suggest that supervision of the militants by the ISI was often chaotic and that the most senior officers of the agency may have been unaware at least of the scale and ambition of the operation before it was launched.
More than 160 people were killed by militants from LeT who arrived by sea to attack luxury hotels, a Jewish centre, a café, a hospital and the main railway station in Mumbai, the Indian commercial capital. Casualties included citizens from 25 countries, including four Americans killed and seven Britons injured. The attacks dominated media for days and badly damaged already poor Indian-Pakistan relations.
European and American security services now fear that LeT, which has thousands of militants, runs dozens of training camps and has extensive logistic networks overseas, is moving from what has been a largely regional agenda – focused on the disputed Himalayan former princely state of Kashmir – to a global agenda involving strikes against the west or western interests. The documents suggest the fierce internal argument within the organisation over its strategic direction is being won by hardliners.
Headley, interviewed over 34 hours by Indian investigators in America in June, described how "a debate had begun among the terrorist outfits" and "a clash of ideology" leading to "splits".
"The aggression and commitment to jihad shown by several splinter groups in Afghanistan influenced many committed fighters to leave [LeT]," Headley said. "I understand this compelled the LeT to consider a spectacular terrorist strike in India."
Headley, who changed his name from Daood Gilani, told the investigators that the ISI hoped the Mumbai attack would slow or stop growing "integration" between groups active in Kashmir, with whom the agency had maintained a long relationship, and "Taliban-based outfits" in Pakistan and Afghanistan which were a threat to the Pakistani state.
"The ISI "¦ had no ambiguity in understanding the necessity to strike India," Headley is reported to have said. The aim of the agency was "controlling further split in the Kashmir-based outfits, providing them a sense of achievement and shifting "¦ the theatre of violence from the domestic soil of Pakistan to India."
Headley describes meeting once with a "Colonel Kamran" from the military intelligence service and having a series of meetings with a "Major Iqbal" and a "Major Sameer Ali". A fellow conspirator was handled by a Colonel Shah, he claims. Headley also alleges that he was given $25,000 by his ISI handler to finance one of eight surveillance missions in India.
However, Headley describes the ISI director general, Lt General Shuja Pasha, visiting a key senior militant from LeT in prison after the attacks in a bid "to understand" the operation, implying that, as many western security agencies suspect, the top ranks of the agency were unaware of at least the scale of the planned strike.
The Pakistani government has repeatedly denied any involvement of any security official in the Mumbai attacks. Last night, an ISI spokesman told the Guardian the accusations of the agency's involvement in the Mumbai attacks were "baseless".
LeT was banned in Pakistan in 2002. Jamat-ud Dawa, the social welfare wing of LeT, has been blacklisted in the wake of the Mumbai attacks although it continues to function.
The revelations could prove embarrassing to the US government as well as to the Pakistanis. Reports in American newspapers over the weekend claimed that Headley's wife had tried to alert American authorities to her husband's activities but had been ignored.
India questions FBI's reluctance on disclosing Headley identity
NEW DELHI: Even as the US maintains that it had forwarded all intelligence it had on LeT's plans to carry out attacks in Mumbai ahead of 26/11, the security agencies here are questioning the reluctance on FBI's part to disclose the identity of Lashker operative David Coleman Headley despite his Moroccan wife having tipped off the Americans in 2007 about her husband's terror reconnaissance trips to India.
"The information about an impending attack in Mumbai, including the potential targets, was shared only after Headley was picked up by the FBI sometime in October 2008. This was despite Headley's American wife having alerted the US to his links with Pakistani jehadi outfits as early as 2005, followed by a tip-off by his Moroccan wife in 2007 to the US embassy in Pakistan about his terror reconnaissance trips to Mumbai, during which they had stayed at Taj hotel," a senior official of the security establishment said. "Why is it that the American agencies never revealed his identity to us. Had this been done, we would have arrested him upon his arrival here as early as 2007," the official added.
Headley had travelled to India several times since 2006. He visited Mumbai twice each in 2007 and 2008, staying with his Moroccan wife Faiza Outalha at the Taj hotel, apparently as part of his reconnaissance mission for 26/11 strikes.
Outalha, according to reports in the US media, claimed that she showed the US embassy officials in Islamabad a photo of Headley and herself in the Taj Mahal Hotel. Hotel records have confirmed their stay. "I told them, he's either a terrorist, or he's working for you," she recalled saying to American officials at the US embassy in Islamabad. "Indirectly, they told me to get lost," she was quoted as saying by the newspaper. The security establishment here is wondering why the US never shared Outalha's revelations to the Indian agencies.
"Had the US passed on Faiza's tip-off about Headley's stay at the Taj along with the latter's name and other personal details, we would have intercepted him on his arrival in India in 2008 and questioned him, thus foiling the 26/11 plot," an official here said. The US, on its part has refuted any suggestions that it may have withheld crucial terror information from India. Mike Hammer, spokesperson for the National Security Council, White House, was quoted as saying: "Had we known about the timing and other specifics related to the Mumbai attacks, we would have immediately shared those details with the government of India."
Don aide paid his way to be terror agent
Finally, local don's Headley link found
Police suspect Mohd Ali's hand in two more killings
Shakeel phone call helped cops crack Chand murder case
So congress party leader was directly involved in 26/11 terror attacks.Time to ban congress party under MCOCA, afterall congress party is a gang of criminals
There were some whispers about a local support and still not clear reason as to why kasab and his partner got hold up on terrace of kama hospital for least 30 min. Nothing came out at the trial as far as i know but would be good if underworld link is exposed and political parties that cover and take support from anti-national elements are exposed! Few reports in last month by same TNN reporter does provide enough reason for authorities to investigate deeper.
Finally, local don's Headley link found
The IB informer Salim's death is now being investigated as murder!
Police suspect Mohd Ali's hand in two more killings
Shakeel phone call helped cops crack Chand murder case
Some of the news above were posted on thread before as well but linking here again to make clear the interconnections and more then likely that killing of salim etc were to try and cover up links and role of underworld (ISI in mufti) in terror attack on mumbai.
So congress party leader was directly involved in 26/11 terror attacks.Time to ban congress party under MCOCA, afterall congress party is a gang of criminals
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DGP Roy seemed PR-hungry during 26/11
XCLUSIVE INTERVIEW/ .K. DUTT, FORMER DIRECTOR-GENERAL, NATIONAL SECURITY GUARD
By Anupam Dasgupta/New Delhi
Sarvatra Sarvottam Suraksha (Constant comprehensive security) is their credo. They are the men in black, the men who brightened India's dark November, saved lives and salvaged a nation's wounded pride. From November 26 to 29, 2008, hundreds of hours of news footage was shot in Mumbai as the National Security Guard (NSG) went about eliminating the nine Pakistani terrorists who killed 173 people. Operation Black Tornado over, the heroes disappeared, taking their two dead brothers with them—Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan and Havildar Gajendra Singh Bhist.
Twenty-three months later, J.K. Dutt, the then NSG director-general, talked to THE WEEK for five hours, sharing the wows and woes of the operation. The interview was held in New Delhi, at the India International Centre and later at Dutt's Vasant Kunj residence.
He said that a senior babu from Delhi had called him during the operation and said: "Yaar Dutt, ye kab tak chalega [Hey Dutt, how long will this go on]? Send in your commandos and crush those guys, even if that means losing a few of your men."
The soldier in Dutt was thunderstruck by the speaker's callous approach to uniformed lives. "I was not prepared to lose a single man," said Dutt. "Even today, when I look back at the operation, I see Sandeep's and Gajendra's deaths as too many deaths [not as two deaths]." Sandeep was shot dead at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel and Gajendra died in the heli-borne operation at Nariman House.
A 1972-batch Indian Police Service officer from the West Bengal cadre, Dutt said he was deeply disappointed by the way in which then Maharashtra Director General of Police A.N. Roy handled himself and his force. "The DGP appeared more interested in PR than getting deeply involved in the situation," said Dutt. "Roy called me up twice to inquire if Maharashtra Home Minister R.R. Patil could pay a visit to the Taj. That was something definitely not desirable of the DGP at that point."
The NSG was handicapped by misinformation and lack of information, said Dutt. In the interview he detailed the botch-up where the then Intelligence Bureau director P.C. Haldar sent him a cellphone number saying it belonged to a hostage in Nariman House. The phone actually belonged to a terrorist! Dutt said Haldar "acted in good faith". He also spoke about an exclusive bit of misinformation—the 'secret, sea-facing tunnel' under the Taj!
Dutt was at the NSG base in Manesar, Haryana, when he saw the 26/11 attack on TV. While the TV anchor dismissed it as a gang war, Dutt's gut instinct said otherwise. He alerted his men and waited. At midnight, Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar called to say there were foreign terrorists in Mumbai. At 12:50 a.m. on November 27, Chandrasekhar called again. The message was brief: Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh had asked for NSG assistance.
Dutt called Haldar and asked for all the information they had. The IB was already intercepting cellphone traffic between the terrorists and their Pakistani handlers, with active help from the US.
In a way, Dutt was handicapped as his two key aides were on leave—Major General A.K. Gupta, IG (Operations), and Brigadier S.C. Rangi, the force commander. He asked an air vice marshal if Gupta could be flown from Dehradun to Mumbai. But the air vice marshal advised against a night airlift from Dehradun. Dutt then asked Gupta to fly to Mumbai asap. Rangi was in Rohtak, Haryana, for a wedding.
In the run-up to Operation Black Tornado, Dutt was in touch with Chandrasekhar, Madhukar Gupta, the home secretary, who was abroad, and Sanjeev Tripathi, who was heading the aviation research centre of the Research and Analysis Wing.
So, 200 NSG commandos led by Dutt and Brigadier G.S. Sisodia, IG (Operations & training), reached Palam airport's technical centre at 2:00 a.m. on November 27, 2008. With them was a sniffer dog, who would later nose out the body of the ninth terrorist from under the wreckage in the Taj.
At 3:00 a.m., the 152ft Ilyushin thundered down the runway and disappeared into the night. Once airborne, Dutt briefed his men, dividing them into hits of counter assault teams and counter sniper teams. A hit is the smallest operational unit of the NSG. Next stop: Mumbai.
Excerpts from the interview:
26/11 was a complex and sophisticated attack, complete with strategic, surgical and diversionary hits by the terrorists. Your take.
Correct. Their overall plan was carefully vetted. The execution, too, was done with considerable finesse. So there is no denying an overarching operational sync between the geographically separated hits.
The real challenge for the NSG was to fight them in the hotels and in Nariman House. In the initial hours, the terrorists remained largely unpredictable, moving from room to room. The assault teams' primary objective was to swiftly eliminate them before the hostages began getting killed.
While you clear a room, you dominate the room by quickly interchanging positions and in the end you overwhelm the terrorists. You also have to neutralise simultaneous threats. Then you begin exerting control over the situation and start securing hostages.
Please take us through the run-up.
I was mentally prepared much before the NSG was formally requisitioned. During the briefing session in the aircraft I told the men that this operation would test their mettle and would be very different from everything we had done so far. My men got the message loud and clear.
What happened in Mumbai?
Touchdown was at around 5:00 a.m. I then accompanied Union home minister Shivraj Patil to the Maharashtra Raj Bhavan to meet top state officials. Meanwhile, my men went to the Mumbai Police control room to be briefed, and then they moved to the sites.
Patil was criticised for not visiting any of the sites. Why was he in such a haste to fly back to Delhi?
I cannot comment on the haste. But after the Raj Bhavan meeting got over, I requested him to go to the Taj and have a look. A first-hand feel, I meant. He told me that he cannot visit the hotel as he had to be back in Delhi to brief Sonia Gandhi. At 8:30 a.m., he left for Delhi.
Wasn't Patil being very irresponsible?
No comments. It is up to you to interpret and pass judgments.
You were in touch with Haldar always.
Yes. Before leaving for Mumbai, I sought inputs from him and he was always forthcoming. In those initial hours it was difficult to vouch for precise numbers and definitive facts. I never got a sacrosanct figure about the number of terrorists.
Only during the last leg of our operation inside the Taj did Haldar tell me that I had to account for 10 Kalashnikovs. Even Sandra Samuel [the nanny who fled with baby Moshe Holtzberg from Nariman House] told me that there were at least five terrorists inside the house. I met her at the Colaba police station.
Early on November 28, 2008, Haldar passed on a cellphone number to you. But it was not what he thought it was.
Yes, he gave me the number saying it belonged to a Nariman House hostage. He said, 'Try and establish contact. You can collect whatever information you want about the terrorists.' As I was about to dial the number, he called me and stopped me saying the number belonged to a terrorist.
If you had called the number, the outcome could have been disastrous. So, Haldar almost botched up the Nariman House operation?
If the terrorist had posed as a hostage, it would have infinitely complicated problems. We could have been led into a trap. Especially because Nariman House was inside a heavily constructed urban pocket. But even if I had called that number, I would have tried to confirm if the person was indeed a hostage.
Coming to your second question, Haldar was acting in good faith. At least that was what I felt during my interactions with him.
Was the R&AW secretary in touch with you?
No.
A.N. Roy appeared very casual during the crisis. You visited his Colaba office every day. How did you find him?
Yes, I made it a point to meet him personally at his office, which is a stone's throw from Taj. The DGP appeared more interested in PR than getting deeply involved in the situation. I always felt that was no time at all to exchange pleasantries or courtesies.
What else struck you as gratuitous and avoidable on Roy's part?
There were many ministers in his office. It struck me as unusual that Roy was always surrounded by politicians. It is said that he also volunteered information from Kasab's immediate interrogation. I thought it was too sensitive to be shared openly.
You mean Roy was telling politicians about Kasab's confessions? Did he appear pandering to them?
Yes, I meant precisely that. My answer to the second part of your question is, yes, in a sense.
Was Roy reluctant to handle the situation?
Reluctance might not be the word. But certain things did not happen the ideal way.
THE WEEK (Nov. 29, 2009) reported that on November 28, 2008, Roy and R.R. Patil had instructed then Mumbai police commissioner Hasan Gafoor to withdraw the NSG. Roy apparently wanted the Mumbai Police to take over.
I read about it in THE WEEK. But no one, politician or policeman, ever got in touch with me with any such request. So I reserve my comments.
Did you feel Roy was dabbling in unimportant matters?
Yes. Roy called me up twice to inquire if R.R. Patil could pay a visit to the Taj. I squarely told him that I did not want the minister to come to the Taj as the operation was peaking. I told him this when he first called. But he insisted that Patil be allowed to pay a visit. It was something definitely not desirable of the DGP at that time.
Who else from Delhi was in touch with you?
Two or three top bureaucrats in the government were in touch with me. I kept getting SMSes and calls from them.
Did any of them try to interfere with your running of the operation?
A very senior Delhi bureaucrat called me up and said, 'Yaar Dutt, ye kab tak chalega [Hey Dutt, how long will this go on]? Send in your commandos and crush those guys, even if that means losing a few of your men.'
You were in constant touch with the cabinet secretary and the home secretary.
As things unfolded in Mumbai, I kept the home secretary and the cabinet secretary posted. At the same time, three senior Delhi bureaucrats kept texting me and tried to instruct me how to sustain the operation!
What was your reply?
I took my own decisions. In consultation with my senior commanders, I decided whether it would be a top-down or a bottom-up movement at Nariman House. We chose to rappel down from a helicopter; 18 NSGs landed on the roof of the house.
Were you in touch with M.K. Narayanan, the then national security adviser?
He called me once and said, 'Try to get the terrorists alive. One live terrorist caught from the scene of action will give us more information than [nine] dead terrorists.' I later met him to present the operations report. We talked about a few things that had to do with the NSG's operational aspects.
Did you discuss the weaknesses that were revealed during the operation?
Those are ingredients of the operational basket. I should not be discussing them.
Was the Taj operation challenging?
It was a difficult operation. But since my men had been trained in 'building takedowns', we were slightly initiated that way. More problems happened because the terrorists moved into the heritage wing through the corridor that linked it with the newer Taj Towers.
Marine commandos told us that there may be two or three terrorists in the Taj. The Marcos had a brief skirmish with them when they were moving toward the heritage wing.
Was there anything else confusing you in the Taj?
A Taj employee told me the hotel had a tunnel that opened into the sea. I decided to ensure the four terrorists did not escape that way. It posed many response dilemmas for me. It was much later that a senior Taj official told me that he was not aware of any such tunnel!
About operations at Oberoi-Trident.
Initially, we thought there was only one Oberoi. But upon reaching Mumbai we understood that the Oberoi and Trident are independent structures. So the strategy was changed accordingly.
The Mumbai Police's failure was total. Your take.
There was total breakdown of policing in Mumbai that day onwards. I was shuttling in the city when the attacks were continuing. I did not spot enough policemen on the streets. That was strikingly stark.
I strongly believe that terrorist action in Cama Hospital and Rang Bhavan area was happenstance. The terrorists [Kasab and Ismail] should have been contained and cornered inside the hospital by the police. [The terrorists killed ATS chief Hemant Karkare, Additional Commissioner Ashok Kamte and encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar near Rang Bhavan alley.]
Who all met you in Delhi?
I do not think anyone from the security establishment was eager to learn about the NSG operations. The Prime Minister gave me 30 minutes and inquired about every operational detail.
Was there an offer of foreign assistance?
It was entertained for a brief while, I guess. If I had sought operational assistance then, it would have immediately shown the NSG as incompetent to deal with the situation. But I told myself and my men that we would be winning this battle. I also told Haldar that this was no quick-fix job. In such situations, one has to wait a while to hear positive things.
I can tell you that the US was willing to help us out when the attacks were launched. It was with active US assistance that our security agencies were intercepting the cellphone traffic between the terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan.
About counter-terrorism preparedness and operational competence of elite units like the NSG.
We have to reduce bottlenecks in procuring effective gizmos for our crack teams. The NSG chief should not wait for the Centre's nod to reach out to manufacturers of such gadgets. The Mumbai attacks highlighted the need for having certain very effective, bespoke resources.
What are these resources?
Let's not discuss them. I had put it in my observations, before I retired as NSG chief. I think the government would do well to address these deficiencies.
http://week.manoramaonline.com/cgi-...gramId=1073755753&BV_ID=@@@&contentId=8122056
XCLUSIVE INTERVIEW/ .K. DUTT, FORMER DIRECTOR-GENERAL, NATIONAL SECURITY GUARD
By Anupam Dasgupta/New Delhi
Sarvatra Sarvottam Suraksha (Constant comprehensive security) is their credo. They are the men in black, the men who brightened India's dark November, saved lives and salvaged a nation's wounded pride. From November 26 to 29, 2008, hundreds of hours of news footage was shot in Mumbai as the National Security Guard (NSG) went about eliminating the nine Pakistani terrorists who killed 173 people. Operation Black Tornado over, the heroes disappeared, taking their two dead brothers with them—Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan and Havildar Gajendra Singh Bhist.
Twenty-three months later, J.K. Dutt, the then NSG director-general, talked to THE WEEK for five hours, sharing the wows and woes of the operation. The interview was held in New Delhi, at the India International Centre and later at Dutt's Vasant Kunj residence.
He said that a senior babu from Delhi had called him during the operation and said: "Yaar Dutt, ye kab tak chalega [Hey Dutt, how long will this go on]? Send in your commandos and crush those guys, even if that means losing a few of your men."
The soldier in Dutt was thunderstruck by the speaker's callous approach to uniformed lives. "I was not prepared to lose a single man," said Dutt. "Even today, when I look back at the operation, I see Sandeep's and Gajendra's deaths as too many deaths [not as two deaths]." Sandeep was shot dead at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel and Gajendra died in the heli-borne operation at Nariman House.
A 1972-batch Indian Police Service officer from the West Bengal cadre, Dutt said he was deeply disappointed by the way in which then Maharashtra Director General of Police A.N. Roy handled himself and his force. "The DGP appeared more interested in PR than getting deeply involved in the situation," said Dutt. "Roy called me up twice to inquire if Maharashtra Home Minister R.R. Patil could pay a visit to the Taj. That was something definitely not desirable of the DGP at that point."
The NSG was handicapped by misinformation and lack of information, said Dutt. In the interview he detailed the botch-up where the then Intelligence Bureau director P.C. Haldar sent him a cellphone number saying it belonged to a hostage in Nariman House. The phone actually belonged to a terrorist! Dutt said Haldar "acted in good faith". He also spoke about an exclusive bit of misinformation—the 'secret, sea-facing tunnel' under the Taj!
Dutt was at the NSG base in Manesar, Haryana, when he saw the 26/11 attack on TV. While the TV anchor dismissed it as a gang war, Dutt's gut instinct said otherwise. He alerted his men and waited. At midnight, Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar called to say there were foreign terrorists in Mumbai. At 12:50 a.m. on November 27, Chandrasekhar called again. The message was brief: Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh had asked for NSG assistance.
Dutt called Haldar and asked for all the information they had. The IB was already intercepting cellphone traffic between the terrorists and their Pakistani handlers, with active help from the US.
In a way, Dutt was handicapped as his two key aides were on leave—Major General A.K. Gupta, IG (Operations), and Brigadier S.C. Rangi, the force commander. He asked an air vice marshal if Gupta could be flown from Dehradun to Mumbai. But the air vice marshal advised against a night airlift from Dehradun. Dutt then asked Gupta to fly to Mumbai asap. Rangi was in Rohtak, Haryana, for a wedding.
In the run-up to Operation Black Tornado, Dutt was in touch with Chandrasekhar, Madhukar Gupta, the home secretary, who was abroad, and Sanjeev Tripathi, who was heading the aviation research centre of the Research and Analysis Wing.
So, 200 NSG commandos led by Dutt and Brigadier G.S. Sisodia, IG (Operations & training), reached Palam airport's technical centre at 2:00 a.m. on November 27, 2008. With them was a sniffer dog, who would later nose out the body of the ninth terrorist from under the wreckage in the Taj.
At 3:00 a.m., the 152ft Ilyushin thundered down the runway and disappeared into the night. Once airborne, Dutt briefed his men, dividing them into hits of counter assault teams and counter sniper teams. A hit is the smallest operational unit of the NSG. Next stop: Mumbai.
Excerpts from the interview:
26/11 was a complex and sophisticated attack, complete with strategic, surgical and diversionary hits by the terrorists. Your take.
Correct. Their overall plan was carefully vetted. The execution, too, was done with considerable finesse. So there is no denying an overarching operational sync between the geographically separated hits.
The real challenge for the NSG was to fight them in the hotels and in Nariman House. In the initial hours, the terrorists remained largely unpredictable, moving from room to room. The assault teams' primary objective was to swiftly eliminate them before the hostages began getting killed.
While you clear a room, you dominate the room by quickly interchanging positions and in the end you overwhelm the terrorists. You also have to neutralise simultaneous threats. Then you begin exerting control over the situation and start securing hostages.
Please take us through the run-up.
I was mentally prepared much before the NSG was formally requisitioned. During the briefing session in the aircraft I told the men that this operation would test their mettle and would be very different from everything we had done so far. My men got the message loud and clear.
What happened in Mumbai?
Touchdown was at around 5:00 a.m. I then accompanied Union home minister Shivraj Patil to the Maharashtra Raj Bhavan to meet top state officials. Meanwhile, my men went to the Mumbai Police control room to be briefed, and then they moved to the sites.
Patil was criticised for not visiting any of the sites. Why was he in such a haste to fly back to Delhi?
I cannot comment on the haste. But after the Raj Bhavan meeting got over, I requested him to go to the Taj and have a look. A first-hand feel, I meant. He told me that he cannot visit the hotel as he had to be back in Delhi to brief Sonia Gandhi. At 8:30 a.m., he left for Delhi.
Wasn't Patil being very irresponsible?
No comments. It is up to you to interpret and pass judgments.
You were in touch with Haldar always.
Yes. Before leaving for Mumbai, I sought inputs from him and he was always forthcoming. In those initial hours it was difficult to vouch for precise numbers and definitive facts. I never got a sacrosanct figure about the number of terrorists.
Only during the last leg of our operation inside the Taj did Haldar tell me that I had to account for 10 Kalashnikovs. Even Sandra Samuel [the nanny who fled with baby Moshe Holtzberg from Nariman House] told me that there were at least five terrorists inside the house. I met her at the Colaba police station.
Early on November 28, 2008, Haldar passed on a cellphone number to you. But it was not what he thought it was.
Yes, he gave me the number saying it belonged to a Nariman House hostage. He said, 'Try and establish contact. You can collect whatever information you want about the terrorists.' As I was about to dial the number, he called me and stopped me saying the number belonged to a terrorist.
If you had called the number, the outcome could have been disastrous. So, Haldar almost botched up the Nariman House operation?
If the terrorist had posed as a hostage, it would have infinitely complicated problems. We could have been led into a trap. Especially because Nariman House was inside a heavily constructed urban pocket. But even if I had called that number, I would have tried to confirm if the person was indeed a hostage.
Coming to your second question, Haldar was acting in good faith. At least that was what I felt during my interactions with him.
Was the R&AW secretary in touch with you?
No.
A.N. Roy appeared very casual during the crisis. You visited his Colaba office every day. How did you find him?
Yes, I made it a point to meet him personally at his office, which is a stone's throw from Taj. The DGP appeared more interested in PR than getting deeply involved in the situation. I always felt that was no time at all to exchange pleasantries or courtesies.
What else struck you as gratuitous and avoidable on Roy's part?
There were many ministers in his office. It struck me as unusual that Roy was always surrounded by politicians. It is said that he also volunteered information from Kasab's immediate interrogation. I thought it was too sensitive to be shared openly.
You mean Roy was telling politicians about Kasab's confessions? Did he appear pandering to them?
Yes, I meant precisely that. My answer to the second part of your question is, yes, in a sense.
Was Roy reluctant to handle the situation?
Reluctance might not be the word. But certain things did not happen the ideal way.
THE WEEK (Nov. 29, 2009) reported that on November 28, 2008, Roy and R.R. Patil had instructed then Mumbai police commissioner Hasan Gafoor to withdraw the NSG. Roy apparently wanted the Mumbai Police to take over.
I read about it in THE WEEK. But no one, politician or policeman, ever got in touch with me with any such request. So I reserve my comments.
Did you feel Roy was dabbling in unimportant matters?
Yes. Roy called me up twice to inquire if R.R. Patil could pay a visit to the Taj. I squarely told him that I did not want the minister to come to the Taj as the operation was peaking. I told him this when he first called. But he insisted that Patil be allowed to pay a visit. It was something definitely not desirable of the DGP at that time.
Who else from Delhi was in touch with you?
Two or three top bureaucrats in the government were in touch with me. I kept getting SMSes and calls from them.
Did any of them try to interfere with your running of the operation?
A very senior Delhi bureaucrat called me up and said, 'Yaar Dutt, ye kab tak chalega [Hey Dutt, how long will this go on]? Send in your commandos and crush those guys, even if that means losing a few of your men.'
You were in constant touch with the cabinet secretary and the home secretary.
As things unfolded in Mumbai, I kept the home secretary and the cabinet secretary posted. At the same time, three senior Delhi bureaucrats kept texting me and tried to instruct me how to sustain the operation!
What was your reply?
I took my own decisions. In consultation with my senior commanders, I decided whether it would be a top-down or a bottom-up movement at Nariman House. We chose to rappel down from a helicopter; 18 NSGs landed on the roof of the house.
Were you in touch with M.K. Narayanan, the then national security adviser?
He called me once and said, 'Try to get the terrorists alive. One live terrorist caught from the scene of action will give us more information than [nine] dead terrorists.' I later met him to present the operations report. We talked about a few things that had to do with the NSG's operational aspects.
Did you discuss the weaknesses that were revealed during the operation?
Those are ingredients of the operational basket. I should not be discussing them.
Was the Taj operation challenging?
It was a difficult operation. But since my men had been trained in 'building takedowns', we were slightly initiated that way. More problems happened because the terrorists moved into the heritage wing through the corridor that linked it with the newer Taj Towers.
Marine commandos told us that there may be two or three terrorists in the Taj. The Marcos had a brief skirmish with them when they were moving toward the heritage wing.
Was there anything else confusing you in the Taj?
A Taj employee told me the hotel had a tunnel that opened into the sea. I decided to ensure the four terrorists did not escape that way. It posed many response dilemmas for me. It was much later that a senior Taj official told me that he was not aware of any such tunnel!
About operations at Oberoi-Trident.
Initially, we thought there was only one Oberoi. But upon reaching Mumbai we understood that the Oberoi and Trident are independent structures. So the strategy was changed accordingly.
The Mumbai Police's failure was total. Your take.
There was total breakdown of policing in Mumbai that day onwards. I was shuttling in the city when the attacks were continuing. I did not spot enough policemen on the streets. That was strikingly stark.
I strongly believe that terrorist action in Cama Hospital and Rang Bhavan area was happenstance. The terrorists [Kasab and Ismail] should have been contained and cornered inside the hospital by the police. [The terrorists killed ATS chief Hemant Karkare, Additional Commissioner Ashok Kamte and encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar near Rang Bhavan alley.]
Who all met you in Delhi?
I do not think anyone from the security establishment was eager to learn about the NSG operations. The Prime Minister gave me 30 minutes and inquired about every operational detail.
Was there an offer of foreign assistance?
It was entertained for a brief while, I guess. If I had sought operational assistance then, it would have immediately shown the NSG as incompetent to deal with the situation. But I told myself and my men that we would be winning this battle. I also told Haldar that this was no quick-fix job. In such situations, one has to wait a while to hear positive things.
I can tell you that the US was willing to help us out when the attacks were launched. It was with active US assistance that our security agencies were intercepting the cellphone traffic between the terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan.
About counter-terrorism preparedness and operational competence of elite units like the NSG.
We have to reduce bottlenecks in procuring effective gizmos for our crack teams. The NSG chief should not wait for the Centre's nod to reach out to manufacturers of such gadgets. The Mumbai attacks highlighted the need for having certain very effective, bespoke resources.
What are these resources?
Let's not discuss them. I had put it in my observations, before I retired as NSG chief. I think the government would do well to address these deficiencies.
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Major involvement
By Syed Nazakat
This is clear: a matrix of terrorist cells in Pakistan, India and the Gulf, linked to the LeT and directly supervised by the Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, planned and executed 26/11. It is also clear that from 2005 the US Federal Bureau of Investigation knew of David Headley's (see story on page 50 ) links with the Lashkar-e-Toiba.
Headley's links with the Pakistan army were confirmed when the Interpol issued red corner notices against five Pakistanis, including two serving army officers—Major Sameer Ali and Major Iqbal. The Interpol issued the notice after the National Investigating Agency (NIA) officials, who interrogated Headley, obtained non-bailable warrants against the five.
Both the serving majors are allegedly with the ISI and are based in Lahore. They are fluent in English, Hindi and Urdu, says the 109-page interrogation report of Headley. During the interrogation, Headley said Sameer Ali and Iqbal were his handlers and that his trips to India were funded by Iqbal. He said Colonel Shah and Lt-Col Hamza of the ISI were involved in the planning of the 26/11 attack.
In the dossier given to Pakistan, India has also named Col Sadatullah, who is with the special communications organisation, an official telecommunications agency run by officers from the army's signal corps. The investigators say Sadatullah used his official email—[email protected]—to communicate with LeT commanders.
Headley, during his interrogation by the NIA, provided details about Ilyas Kashmiri, a one-eyed senior al Qaeda commander. Headley confirmed to NIA officials that he has twice met Kashmiri in Pakistan.
Sources in the Union home ministry told THE WEEK that Headley was instructed by Iqbal on how and where to collect video footage from. After each trip, he went back to Pakistan and was debriefed by LeT commanders and ISI officers. The ISI officers were so frustrated with the poor work of Headley that he was twice sent to the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower for surveillance. He was specifically asked to take pictures of the second floor of the Taj, including conference rooms and ballrooms. He was also asked to obtain details of future conferences scheduled at the hotel.
The LeT was aware that despite a lot of preparation, the terrorist attack in Bangalore on July 25, 2008, had failed. So, to put the final touches to 26/11, Ali Abdul Aziz al-Hooti, an Omani and LeT's top organiser in the Gulf, was sent to Mumbai a fortnight before the attack. Ali's mother is a Marathi and he probably has wide contacts in the state. Ali has transferred money and weapons to India and has helped send recruits to Pakistan from his base in Muscat.
The first hint of Ali's activities in Oman emerged during the interrogation of Sarfaraz Nawaz, a 32-year old computer expert from Kerala, who was arrested in Oman and is now in Indian custody. "Ali told me that there are 26 LeT teams working in India. And a major portion of LeT consists of ex-military officers of Pakistan," says Sarfaraz's interrogation report, a copy of which is with THE WEEK.
Sarfaraz told his interrogators that he had recruited Indians for LeT. Among those he dispatched to Pakistan for training was Fahim Ansari, who was arrested on charges of providing surveillance footage to LeT. He was recently acquitted in the 26/11 case due to lack of evidence.
He and Sarfaraz picked three other boys from Kerala. They were sent to Kashmir and were received by the local LeT operative, Umair Kashmiri. Umair confirmed the arrival of the three boys on his cell phone (9858700498) to Sarfaraz. On September 16, 2008, the two Malayali boys were killed in an encounter with the Army in Kupwara, Kashmir. The third, Abdul Jabbar, was arrested later.
Abdul Jabbar's interrogation and subsequent arrest of other LeT men in Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and other states provided strong evidence that India has been seeking for a long time. The evidence will place the ISI at the centre of a global terrorist conspiracy.
http://week.manoramaonline.com/cgi-...gramId=1073755753&BV_ID=@@@&contentId=8122055
By Syed Nazakat
This is clear: a matrix of terrorist cells in Pakistan, India and the Gulf, linked to the LeT and directly supervised by the Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, planned and executed 26/11. It is also clear that from 2005 the US Federal Bureau of Investigation knew of David Headley's (see story on page 50 ) links with the Lashkar-e-Toiba.
Headley's links with the Pakistan army were confirmed when the Interpol issued red corner notices against five Pakistanis, including two serving army officers—Major Sameer Ali and Major Iqbal. The Interpol issued the notice after the National Investigating Agency (NIA) officials, who interrogated Headley, obtained non-bailable warrants against the five.
Both the serving majors are allegedly with the ISI and are based in Lahore. They are fluent in English, Hindi and Urdu, says the 109-page interrogation report of Headley. During the interrogation, Headley said Sameer Ali and Iqbal were his handlers and that his trips to India were funded by Iqbal. He said Colonel Shah and Lt-Col Hamza of the ISI were involved in the planning of the 26/11 attack.
In the dossier given to Pakistan, India has also named Col Sadatullah, who is with the special communications organisation, an official telecommunications agency run by officers from the army's signal corps. The investigators say Sadatullah used his official email—[email protected]—to communicate with LeT commanders.
Headley, during his interrogation by the NIA, provided details about Ilyas Kashmiri, a one-eyed senior al Qaeda commander. Headley confirmed to NIA officials that he has twice met Kashmiri in Pakistan.
Sources in the Union home ministry told THE WEEK that Headley was instructed by Iqbal on how and where to collect video footage from. After each trip, he went back to Pakistan and was debriefed by LeT commanders and ISI officers. The ISI officers were so frustrated with the poor work of Headley that he was twice sent to the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower for surveillance. He was specifically asked to take pictures of the second floor of the Taj, including conference rooms and ballrooms. He was also asked to obtain details of future conferences scheduled at the hotel.
The LeT was aware that despite a lot of preparation, the terrorist attack in Bangalore on July 25, 2008, had failed. So, to put the final touches to 26/11, Ali Abdul Aziz al-Hooti, an Omani and LeT's top organiser in the Gulf, was sent to Mumbai a fortnight before the attack. Ali's mother is a Marathi and he probably has wide contacts in the state. Ali has transferred money and weapons to India and has helped send recruits to Pakistan from his base in Muscat.
The first hint of Ali's activities in Oman emerged during the interrogation of Sarfaraz Nawaz, a 32-year old computer expert from Kerala, who was arrested in Oman and is now in Indian custody. "Ali told me that there are 26 LeT teams working in India. And a major portion of LeT consists of ex-military officers of Pakistan," says Sarfaraz's interrogation report, a copy of which is with THE WEEK.
Sarfaraz told his interrogators that he had recruited Indians for LeT. Among those he dispatched to Pakistan for training was Fahim Ansari, who was arrested on charges of providing surveillance footage to LeT. He was recently acquitted in the 26/11 case due to lack of evidence.
He and Sarfaraz picked three other boys from Kerala. They were sent to Kashmir and were received by the local LeT operative, Umair Kashmiri. Umair confirmed the arrival of the three boys on his cell phone (9858700498) to Sarfaraz. On September 16, 2008, the two Malayali boys were killed in an encounter with the Army in Kupwara, Kashmir. The third, Abdul Jabbar, was arrested later.
Abdul Jabbar's interrogation and subsequent arrest of other LeT men in Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and other states provided strong evidence that India has been seeking for a long time. The evidence will place the ISI at the centre of a global terrorist conspiracy.
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Old wife's tale!
US kept India in the dark about Headley
By Anupam Dasgupta
American terrorist David Coleman Headley's key role in the 26/11 attack could be one of the talking points between India and the US when President Barack Obama visits New Delhi next month. The topic has gained more importance after Faiza Outalha, one of Headley's three ex-wives, recently claimed to have informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about his radical links.
The Moroccan said that in early 2008 she had informed the FBI's Islamabad office about Headley's rabid hatred of India and his links with senior Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) commanders in Pakistan. As Headley was a former US Drug Enforcement Administration agent, the US cannot shirk responsibility of the damage caused by him, a double agent gone rogue.
Sources said Headley, then Daood Syed Gilani, had worked as an FBI agent in the Middle East. Later, the Central Intelligence Agency used him to penetrate the al Qaeda and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami. During his infiltration attempts, he grew closer to the LeT and, through them, to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. Headley made eight trips to India between 2006 and 2008. By this time, he had dropped his Pakistani name.
Headley's confessions to Indian sleuths are proof of his proximity to the LeT and to Ilyas Kashmiri, the leader of the al Qaeda-linked Brigade 313. Sources told THE WEEK that the US always knew that Gilani and Headley were the same person. But they never informed India, until Headley was arrested on October 3, 2009, by FBI agents at Chicago's O'Hare International airport.
So the US will be expected to do some explaining against the backdrop of the terrorism cooperation initiative signed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Obama in November 2009, and the counter terrorism initiative signed by Union Home Secretary G.K. Pillai and ?US Ambassador Timothy Roemer ?in July 2010.
Headley remained in close touch with his associate Tahawwur Hussain Rana for several months after 26/11. This indicates that the duo had lined up other terror targets in India and Europe. Rana, a former Pakistan army captain, and Headley studied at Cadet College Hasan Abdal in Pakistan. Headley remained in touch with LeT leaders Abu al-Qama, Abu Qahafa, Abu Hamza, Sajid Majid and Abu Dujana.
Said G. Parthasarathy, former High Commissioner to Pakistan: "The US will not fully share any security secret intelligence with India, if it concerns Pakistan. This has been historically proven in the 1993 Mumbai serial bombings and in 26/11. It reflects a callous disregard for India's national security. If things have to change on the ground, the first thing the US should do is to declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terror."
Said B. Raman, former head of the Research and Analysis Wing's counter terrorism unit: "The US knew that Headley met two contacts of Kashmiri when he visited the UK before 26/11. Headley aided the LeT, his ISI masters and Kashmiri." Raman said the US might not have parted with all their intelligence on Headley.
Said former joint director of the Intelligence Bureau, Maloy Krishna Dhar: "The Headley saga points to immigration lapses on the part of our agencies. The fact that Headley visited India on multiple occasions should have rung an alarm bell. We should have assessed his intentions."
The CIA's and FBI's blue-chip credentials have also come under the scanner. If they are so advanced, how did they overlook Headley's links with the ISI and LeT? Why did the US hesitate to act, if it knew he was a double agent? Last heard, LtGen. James Clapper, director of national intelligence, has been asked to review the handling of Headley.
http://week.manoramaonline.com/cgi-...gramId=1073755753&BV_ID=@@@&contentId=8122057
US kept India in the dark about Headley
By Anupam Dasgupta
American terrorist David Coleman Headley's key role in the 26/11 attack could be one of the talking points between India and the US when President Barack Obama visits New Delhi next month. The topic has gained more importance after Faiza Outalha, one of Headley's three ex-wives, recently claimed to have informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about his radical links.
The Moroccan said that in early 2008 she had informed the FBI's Islamabad office about Headley's rabid hatred of India and his links with senior Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) commanders in Pakistan. As Headley was a former US Drug Enforcement Administration agent, the US cannot shirk responsibility of the damage caused by him, a double agent gone rogue.
Sources said Headley, then Daood Syed Gilani, had worked as an FBI agent in the Middle East. Later, the Central Intelligence Agency used him to penetrate the al Qaeda and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami. During his infiltration attempts, he grew closer to the LeT and, through them, to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. Headley made eight trips to India between 2006 and 2008. By this time, he had dropped his Pakistani name.
Headley's confessions to Indian sleuths are proof of his proximity to the LeT and to Ilyas Kashmiri, the leader of the al Qaeda-linked Brigade 313. Sources told THE WEEK that the US always knew that Gilani and Headley were the same person. But they never informed India, until Headley was arrested on October 3, 2009, by FBI agents at Chicago's O'Hare International airport.
So the US will be expected to do some explaining against the backdrop of the terrorism cooperation initiative signed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Obama in November 2009, and the counter terrorism initiative signed by Union Home Secretary G.K. Pillai and ?US Ambassador Timothy Roemer ?in July 2010.
Headley remained in close touch with his associate Tahawwur Hussain Rana for several months after 26/11. This indicates that the duo had lined up other terror targets in India and Europe. Rana, a former Pakistan army captain, and Headley studied at Cadet College Hasan Abdal in Pakistan. Headley remained in touch with LeT leaders Abu al-Qama, Abu Qahafa, Abu Hamza, Sajid Majid and Abu Dujana.
Said G. Parthasarathy, former High Commissioner to Pakistan: "The US will not fully share any security secret intelligence with India, if it concerns Pakistan. This has been historically proven in the 1993 Mumbai serial bombings and in 26/11. It reflects a callous disregard for India's national security. If things have to change on the ground, the first thing the US should do is to declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terror."
Said B. Raman, former head of the Research and Analysis Wing's counter terrorism unit: "The US knew that Headley met two contacts of Kashmiri when he visited the UK before 26/11. Headley aided the LeT, his ISI masters and Kashmiri." Raman said the US might not have parted with all their intelligence on Headley.
Said former joint director of the Intelligence Bureau, Maloy Krishna Dhar: "The Headley saga points to immigration lapses on the part of our agencies. The fact that Headley visited India on multiple occasions should have rung an alarm bell. We should have assessed his intentions."
The CIA's and FBI's blue-chip credentials have also come under the scanner. If they are so advanced, how did they overlook Headley's links with the ISI and LeT? Why did the US hesitate to act, if it knew he was a double agent? Last heard, LtGen. James Clapper, director of national intelligence, has been asked to review the handling of Headley.
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These should be front page headline news so that masses can know double standards of usa.
And there should also let it known to our people that how our political ruling elites like that of EX-BSP/congressman Mohammed Ali in nexues with mumbai underwold were directly responsible for the 26/11.Its the internal enemies which indians must be weary of then the external ones.External enemies atleast we know and can be countered easily but its the internal ones who are difficult to countered as they live among us and do their dirty work for their foreign masters.
Samjahuta link is most interesting. And the "secularists" want to go on witch-hunt against Indics for the Samjahuta attack. This is treason.
by Sebastian Rotella
ProPublica, Nov. 5, 2010, 7:49 p.m.
A version of this story was co-published with The Washington Post..
A review of the U.S. government's contacts with David Coleman Headley, a central figure in the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, has identified at least five separate cases in which relatives or associates warned he was training or working with Pakistani militants.
The review, which is being led by the Director of National Intelligence, found that plausible allegations about Headley's extremist ties began as early as 2001 and were more numerous and specific than previously disclosed, federal officials said. They described to ProPublica the results of internal inquiries being conducted by the FBI, CIA, and other agencies for the intelligence director, whose office declined to comment.
In a previously unreported tip, one of Headley's ex-wives told U.S. officials overseas that she suspected he was linked to the 2007 bombing of a train in India that killed dozens of people and has been blamed on the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group. During that meeting, just seven months before the Mumbai attacks, she also warned that Headley was on a "special mission," according to a senior anti-terror official.
As investigative leads about Headley accumulated over seven years, he trained in Pakistani terror camps and scouted Indian, U.S., and British targets around the world for Lashkar, which the United States designated as a terrorist group in 2001. It's not clear whether the investigators who evaluated each tip about Headley knew of all the previous warnings. But it is known that the Pakistani-American businessman was not questioned or placed on a terror watch list.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the government has invested billions of dollars in creating new systems to track threats and improve communication in the counter-terror community and with U.S. allies. Sometimes the system appears to work well, as in the recent response to an al-Qaida plot to plant bombs on cargo planes from Yemen. But the handling of the Headley case suggests that flawed information-sharing, an overwhelming flow of raw intelligence and a lack of focus on Lashkar kept U.S. investigators from identifying an American terrorist.
"It's a black eye," said the senior anti-terror official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The problem is the information system. New York didn't know about Philadelphia. Islamabad didn't know about Philadelphia or New York."
The Director of National Intelligence, or DNI, launched a review of the Headley case after ProPublica reported last month that federal investigators in New York City looked into a 2005 tip from Headley's wife about his training with Lashkar and other extremist activities. The New York Times followed with a report that another of his wives, a Moroccan, warned U.S. embassy officials in Pakistan in 2007 that she thought he was a terrorist. Officials said both leads were taken seriously, but the wives' allegations were too general to connect Headley to a terror group or plot.
The review has found four additional warnings, officials say. The newly discovered leads surfaced in 2001, 2002, April 2008 and December 2008 -- a month after Lashkar killed 166 people in Mumbai, six of them Americans. Headley, whose reconnaissance was crucial to the attacks, was not arrested until October 2009.
The tipsters in the newly disclosed cases all warned that Headley was an extremist, and three tied him to training or other terrorist activity in Pakistan. The tipsters included one of his former girlfriends in New York City, the owner of a business frequented by his mother near Philadelphia, and one of his mother's friends in the Philadelphia area. The review also turned up a second, more specific tip from Headley's Moroccan wife when she contacted U.S. officials in Pakistan again, just seven months before the Mumbai attacks, officials say.
The FBI arrested Headley after British intelligence discovered in July 2009 that he was involved in an al-Qaida plot to strike Denmark. Headley, now 50, has pleaded guilty in the Mumbai and Denmark cases and is cooperating with authorities.
DNI spokeswoman Jamie Smith said she couldn't comment on specific findings in the ongoing review.
"Reviews of this nature are not uncommon and an important part of improving existing processes," Smith said. "Please note that since these events occurred, advancements in information sharing systems have been made by applying the lessons learned from these reviews.
"We take our counterterrorism cooperation with our Indian partners very seriously," she added. "Our respective intelligence and law enforcement professionals work very closely together on terrorism issues of mutual concern."
Nonetheless, federal officials speaking on background described some of the findings of internal inquiries by the agencies involved, including a timeline of the Headley case. They pointed out that the first two tips surfaced during a deluge of information after the Sept. 11 attacks, as the FBI and other overwhelmed agencies struggled to modernize technology and develop databases for tracking threats. They said the system has progressed significantly since then but that the more recent inquiries about Headley may have suffered from lingering flaws.
"I think the question of how much of a role the system played will be clear after the review," said a federal official familiar with the case. "We will know better what was possible then, what can be fixed. We do know that we had an evolving system, technologies, databases back then. It was the beginning of this transformation."
The review is expected to address another unanswered question: whether Headley's work as a U.S. informant affected the investigations of him. Headley began spying on Pakistani drug traffickers for the DEA in the late 1990s and was still an informant when he began training with Lashkar in 2002, according to officials. Some say the DEA cut its ties with him between 2003 and 2005; others simply say his work ended "well before" Mumbai.
"The issue as to whether he was an informant may have played a role," the federal official said.
After 9/11, the First Warning
The first tip about Headley came in New York City in the tense weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The source was a former girlfriend of the fast-talking former drug dealer. (Headley has been married four times and had several wives simultaneously.) Agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York interviewed the woman, who worked as a bartender, on Oct. 4, 2001, after another bartender contacted authorities.
The ex-girlfriend alleged that Headley and his mother supported Pakistani extremists, officials say. She quoted Headley as saying he was ready to fight in Pakistan and that Pakistan had suffered at the hands of the United States. But she also told investigators that he had criticized the Sept. 11 attacks, officials say.
Agents interviewed "more than three people" including Headley's mother, Serrill, a wealthy and flamboyant Philadelphian who had divorced his father, a prominent Pakistani broadcaster, officials say. She told them her son was passionate about Pakistan's struggle with India over the Kashmir region, but she also insisted that he opposed the Sept. 11 attacks.
At the time the ex-girlfriend sounded the alarm, Headley had radicalized and was recruiting and raising funds for Lashkar, according to a source close to the case.
The New York inquiry was closed because investigators didn't see a danger, the federal official said.
"The thinking was: Is there a threat that is actionable?" the official said. "Remember what was going on then after 9/11. There were literally hundreds of thousands of bits of information coming in."
Headley's Mother Mentions Terror Training
Headley trained at a Lashkar camp in the mountains near Muzaffarabad in February 2002. He returned to the East Coast that summer, according to a source close to the case.
In July, a second tipster came forward in the Philadelphia area: the owner of a business where Headley's mother was a regular customer and that Headley had visited at least once.
The business owner called an FBI tip line in Philadelphia and said that Headley's mother often talked about her son and described him as an increasingly fanatical extremist, officials say. Headley had told his mother about training with terrorists at a Pakistani camp and meeting 16-year-old trainees who later died in combat, officials say.
"She was concerned about him. She was trying to figure out why he was doing it," the business owner, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, told ProPublica. "I'm thinking here's this guy, he's traveling all over. I thought: Should I tell someone or should I not? I decided that if anybody knows anything, they should say it."
The phone conversation with the official who answered the terror tip line lasted about three minutes, the business owner said.
"I figured the FBI would take it from there," the business owner said. "There was no follow-up. I never heard anything else about it."
Investigators took basic steps such as record checks, but it is not clear whether they learned of the New York inquiry, officials say. The Philadelphia lead was filed under miscellaneous terror cases and closed.
"They took it to where they could take it," the federal official said. "There was a lot of information coming in about boyfriends, husbands, sons."
Headley trained again in Pakistan in August 2002 and three times in 2003 and 2004, court documents show.
"Were We Concerned About Lashkar in 2005?"
The third tip came in August 2005 after a domestic dispute that resulted in Headley's arrest.
As ProPublica has reported, his wife in New York phoned the Joint Terrorism Task Force there and described his ties to Lashkar. In three interviews, she told investigators about his training, fundraising and work as an informant. She offered to show them his e-mails, an offer they rejected, according to a source close to the case.
The tip became a lead in the FBI's Guardian Threat Tracking System, which was created in 2004 and can be accessed by terrorism task forces, FBI field offices, and more than 50 legal attachés in embassies around the world. FBI supervisors document each lead that goes into the Guardian system and decide whether to proceed from an initial inquiry to a preliminary or full investigation.
Officials believe the investigators were aware of the first inquiry into Headley by their own task force in 2001. But it's not clear they knew of the 2002 Philadelphia tip alluding to terrorist training in Pakistan.
"We can't say for sure they had access to both leads," the federal official said.
The New York task force found "no nexus to terrorism" and closed the inquiry, officials say. Investigators may have been influenced by a view that Lashkar focused on South Asia and did not pose a threat to the United States.
"The guys that work these issues every day will tell you that there is a problem of sheer volume," a U.S. law-enforcement official said. "And there's a question: Were we concerned about Lashkar in 2005?"
By 2005, though, it was already clear that Lashkar's reach extended beyond Kashmir and India. An aggressive FBI investigation in Virginia had resulted in life sentences for American Lashkar militants who had less contact with the group than Headley did. And former Lashkar trainees had been prosecuted in bomb plots against New York, London, and Australia.
Some officials find it strange that the task force didn't interview or monitor Headley or cultivate him as source.
"You wonder why they didn't try to interview him for intelligence purposes," the senior anti-terror official said. "Why didn't they do a lookout at airports for him so he could be checked or interviewed when he was traveling? Why didn't they put him on a watch list?"
A year later, Headley began using his cover as a businessman to scout targets in Mumbai under the direction of terrorist handlers and a Pakistani intelligence officer, according to investigators and court documents.
Two Warnings from Another Wife
In December 2007, Headley's Moroccan wife went to the U.S. embassy in Pakistan with what would become the fourth tip. She met with agents of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security and of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The wife hoped to get a U.S. visa and was angry at her estranged husband, officials say. During two meetings, she told them Headley was involved with "big people" and "looking to participate in jihad against the U.S." She mentioned suicide bombing and terror training but without "actionable details," officials say.
A State Department security officer forwarded the information to the CIA station chief and the FBI legal attaché, but both decided the allegations were too general to pursue, officials said.
The senior anti-terror official who spoke with ProPublica said the agents in Islamabad did not know about all the previous tips. But the other federal official said that hasn't been confirmed.
"I can't rule out that they had access," that official said.
The Moroccan wife returned to the embassy in Islamabad and offered another, more specific warning four months later, in April 2008, officials say.
"She said Headley had been given a special mission and that he had both U.S. and Pakistani passports," the senior anti-terror official said. "She said she felt she had been innocently used in an express train bombing" in India in 2007.
The allegations again connected Headley to Lashkar and, for the first time, to a terrorist attack.
In July 2009, the U.S. Treasury Department accused a chief coordinator for Lashkar of playing a central role in the bombing of the Samjhauta express train, which killed 68 people. Indian investigators have recently pursued theories that Hindu militants were behind the attack. No link to Headley has been disclosed.
The Moroccan wife's description of a "special mission" was accurate: Thanks to Headley's reconnaissance trips, Lashkar was finalizing its plan to strike Mumbai at the time of her warning.
Officials gave no further details on how the embassy personnel responded. The assault on Mumbai began on Nov. 26. The killing didn't stop until Nov. 29.
Connections Discovered
On Dec. 1, a final tip surfaced -- once again in Philadelphia.
Headley's mother had died 11 months earlier, but the news of the Mumbai tragedy spurred a friend of hers to contact the FBI. The friend told agents about a past conversation with Headley's mother that now led her to believe Headley "had been fighting alongside individuals in Pakistan to liberate Kashmir for the past 5 to 6 years," officials say.
Three weeks later FBI agents tracked down a cousin of Headley's in Philadelphia. The cousin said he knew nothing about militants and told agents Headley had lived in Pakistan for the past five years, officials say. But investigators and documents indicate that Headley was actually dividing his time among Pakistan, India, New York, and Chicago.
Agents checked Headley's background and found at least some of the previous leads dating back to the 2001 tip in New York, officials say. But it isn't yet known if they learned about the Moroccan wife's allegations overseas.
By this time, the U.S. view of Lashkar had changed dramatically. Lashkar had targeted Americans in Mumbai, and Headley represented a possible danger, a potential source of badly needed intelligence or both. Nonetheless, officials say the Philadelphia agents closed the case, or "put it on hold," because they believed Headley was overseas.
Just weeks later, however, Headley traveled from Chicago to Denmark and did reconnaissance for a plot against a newspaper that had published caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed in 2005, according to court documents. He even met with newspaper representatives about advertising opportunities, the documents say.
Lashkar suspended the Denmark plot in March, but Headley continued working on it with al-Qaida until he was arrested in Chicago in October 2009. In the final months of his odyssey, Headley scouted targets for Ilyas Kashmiri, the al-Qaida boss who officials say is behind recent threats of Mumbai-style attacks in Europe.
ProPublica research director Lisa Schwartz and researcher Nicholas Kusnetz contributed to this report.
Newly Discovered Warnings About Headley Reveal a Troubling Timeline in Mumbai Case
by Sebastian Rotella
ProPublica, Nov. 5, 2010, 7:49 p.m.
A version of this story was co-published with The Washington Post..
A review of the U.S. government's contacts with David Coleman Headley, a central figure in the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, has identified at least five separate cases in which relatives or associates warned he was training or working with Pakistani militants.
The review, which is being led by the Director of National Intelligence, found that plausible allegations about Headley's extremist ties began as early as 2001 and were more numerous and specific than previously disclosed, federal officials said. They described to ProPublica the results of internal inquiries being conducted by the FBI, CIA, and other agencies for the intelligence director, whose office declined to comment.
In a previously unreported tip, one of Headley's ex-wives told U.S. officials overseas that she suspected he was linked to the 2007 bombing of a train in India that killed dozens of people and has been blamed on the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group. During that meeting, just seven months before the Mumbai attacks, she also warned that Headley was on a "special mission," according to a senior anti-terror official.
As investigative leads about Headley accumulated over seven years, he trained in Pakistani terror camps and scouted Indian, U.S., and British targets around the world for Lashkar, which the United States designated as a terrorist group in 2001. It's not clear whether the investigators who evaluated each tip about Headley knew of all the previous warnings. But it is known that the Pakistani-American businessman was not questioned or placed on a terror watch list.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the government has invested billions of dollars in creating new systems to track threats and improve communication in the counter-terror community and with U.S. allies. Sometimes the system appears to work well, as in the recent response to an al-Qaida plot to plant bombs on cargo planes from Yemen. But the handling of the Headley case suggests that flawed information-sharing, an overwhelming flow of raw intelligence and a lack of focus on Lashkar kept U.S. investigators from identifying an American terrorist.
"It's a black eye," said the senior anti-terror official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The problem is the information system. New York didn't know about Philadelphia. Islamabad didn't know about Philadelphia or New York."
The Director of National Intelligence, or DNI, launched a review of the Headley case after ProPublica reported last month that federal investigators in New York City looked into a 2005 tip from Headley's wife about his training with Lashkar and other extremist activities. The New York Times followed with a report that another of his wives, a Moroccan, warned U.S. embassy officials in Pakistan in 2007 that she thought he was a terrorist. Officials said both leads were taken seriously, but the wives' allegations were too general to connect Headley to a terror group or plot.
The review has found four additional warnings, officials say. The newly discovered leads surfaced in 2001, 2002, April 2008 and December 2008 -- a month after Lashkar killed 166 people in Mumbai, six of them Americans. Headley, whose reconnaissance was crucial to the attacks, was not arrested until October 2009.
The tipsters in the newly disclosed cases all warned that Headley was an extremist, and three tied him to training or other terrorist activity in Pakistan. The tipsters included one of his former girlfriends in New York City, the owner of a business frequented by his mother near Philadelphia, and one of his mother's friends in the Philadelphia area. The review also turned up a second, more specific tip from Headley's Moroccan wife when she contacted U.S. officials in Pakistan again, just seven months before the Mumbai attacks, officials say.
The FBI arrested Headley after British intelligence discovered in July 2009 that he was involved in an al-Qaida plot to strike Denmark. Headley, now 50, has pleaded guilty in the Mumbai and Denmark cases and is cooperating with authorities.
DNI spokeswoman Jamie Smith said she couldn't comment on specific findings in the ongoing review.
"Reviews of this nature are not uncommon and an important part of improving existing processes," Smith said. "Please note that since these events occurred, advancements in information sharing systems have been made by applying the lessons learned from these reviews.
"We take our counterterrorism cooperation with our Indian partners very seriously," she added. "Our respective intelligence and law enforcement professionals work very closely together on terrorism issues of mutual concern."
Nonetheless, federal officials speaking on background described some of the findings of internal inquiries by the agencies involved, including a timeline of the Headley case. They pointed out that the first two tips surfaced during a deluge of information after the Sept. 11 attacks, as the FBI and other overwhelmed agencies struggled to modernize technology and develop databases for tracking threats. They said the system has progressed significantly since then but that the more recent inquiries about Headley may have suffered from lingering flaws.
"I think the question of how much of a role the system played will be clear after the review," said a federal official familiar with the case. "We will know better what was possible then, what can be fixed. We do know that we had an evolving system, technologies, databases back then. It was the beginning of this transformation."
The review is expected to address another unanswered question: whether Headley's work as a U.S. informant affected the investigations of him. Headley began spying on Pakistani drug traffickers for the DEA in the late 1990s and was still an informant when he began training with Lashkar in 2002, according to officials. Some say the DEA cut its ties with him between 2003 and 2005; others simply say his work ended "well before" Mumbai.
"The issue as to whether he was an informant may have played a role," the federal official said.
After 9/11, the First Warning
The first tip about Headley came in New York City in the tense weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The source was a former girlfriend of the fast-talking former drug dealer. (Headley has been married four times and had several wives simultaneously.) Agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York interviewed the woman, who worked as a bartender, on Oct. 4, 2001, after another bartender contacted authorities.
The ex-girlfriend alleged that Headley and his mother supported Pakistani extremists, officials say. She quoted Headley as saying he was ready to fight in Pakistan and that Pakistan had suffered at the hands of the United States. But she also told investigators that he had criticized the Sept. 11 attacks, officials say.
Agents interviewed "more than three people" including Headley's mother, Serrill, a wealthy and flamboyant Philadelphian who had divorced his father, a prominent Pakistani broadcaster, officials say. She told them her son was passionate about Pakistan's struggle with India over the Kashmir region, but she also insisted that he opposed the Sept. 11 attacks.
At the time the ex-girlfriend sounded the alarm, Headley had radicalized and was recruiting and raising funds for Lashkar, according to a source close to the case.
The New York inquiry was closed because investigators didn't see a danger, the federal official said.
"The thinking was: Is there a threat that is actionable?" the official said. "Remember what was going on then after 9/11. There were literally hundreds of thousands of bits of information coming in."
Headley's Mother Mentions Terror Training
Headley trained at a Lashkar camp in the mountains near Muzaffarabad in February 2002. He returned to the East Coast that summer, according to a source close to the case.
In July, a second tipster came forward in the Philadelphia area: the owner of a business where Headley's mother was a regular customer and that Headley had visited at least once.
The business owner called an FBI tip line in Philadelphia and said that Headley's mother often talked about her son and described him as an increasingly fanatical extremist, officials say. Headley had told his mother about training with terrorists at a Pakistani camp and meeting 16-year-old trainees who later died in combat, officials say.
"She was concerned about him. She was trying to figure out why he was doing it," the business owner, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, told ProPublica. "I'm thinking here's this guy, he's traveling all over. I thought: Should I tell someone or should I not? I decided that if anybody knows anything, they should say it."
The phone conversation with the official who answered the terror tip line lasted about three minutes, the business owner said.
"I figured the FBI would take it from there," the business owner said. "There was no follow-up. I never heard anything else about it."
Investigators took basic steps such as record checks, but it is not clear whether they learned of the New York inquiry, officials say. The Philadelphia lead was filed under miscellaneous terror cases and closed.
"They took it to where they could take it," the federal official said. "There was a lot of information coming in about boyfriends, husbands, sons."
Headley trained again in Pakistan in August 2002 and three times in 2003 and 2004, court documents show.
"Were We Concerned About Lashkar in 2005?"
The third tip came in August 2005 after a domestic dispute that resulted in Headley's arrest.
As ProPublica has reported, his wife in New York phoned the Joint Terrorism Task Force there and described his ties to Lashkar. In three interviews, she told investigators about his training, fundraising and work as an informant. She offered to show them his e-mails, an offer they rejected, according to a source close to the case.
The tip became a lead in the FBI's Guardian Threat Tracking System, which was created in 2004 and can be accessed by terrorism task forces, FBI field offices, and more than 50 legal attachés in embassies around the world. FBI supervisors document each lead that goes into the Guardian system and decide whether to proceed from an initial inquiry to a preliminary or full investigation.
Officials believe the investigators were aware of the first inquiry into Headley by their own task force in 2001. But it's not clear they knew of the 2002 Philadelphia tip alluding to terrorist training in Pakistan.
"We can't say for sure they had access to both leads," the federal official said.
The New York task force found "no nexus to terrorism" and closed the inquiry, officials say. Investigators may have been influenced by a view that Lashkar focused on South Asia and did not pose a threat to the United States.
"The guys that work these issues every day will tell you that there is a problem of sheer volume," a U.S. law-enforcement official said. "And there's a question: Were we concerned about Lashkar in 2005?"
By 2005, though, it was already clear that Lashkar's reach extended beyond Kashmir and India. An aggressive FBI investigation in Virginia had resulted in life sentences for American Lashkar militants who had less contact with the group than Headley did. And former Lashkar trainees had been prosecuted in bomb plots against New York, London, and Australia.
Some officials find it strange that the task force didn't interview or monitor Headley or cultivate him as source.
"You wonder why they didn't try to interview him for intelligence purposes," the senior anti-terror official said. "Why didn't they do a lookout at airports for him so he could be checked or interviewed when he was traveling? Why didn't they put him on a watch list?"
A year later, Headley began using his cover as a businessman to scout targets in Mumbai under the direction of terrorist handlers and a Pakistani intelligence officer, according to investigators and court documents.
Two Warnings from Another Wife
In December 2007, Headley's Moroccan wife went to the U.S. embassy in Pakistan with what would become the fourth tip. She met with agents of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security and of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The wife hoped to get a U.S. visa and was angry at her estranged husband, officials say. During two meetings, she told them Headley was involved with "big people" and "looking to participate in jihad against the U.S." She mentioned suicide bombing and terror training but without "actionable details," officials say.
A State Department security officer forwarded the information to the CIA station chief and the FBI legal attaché, but both decided the allegations were too general to pursue, officials said.
The senior anti-terror official who spoke with ProPublica said the agents in Islamabad did not know about all the previous tips. But the other federal official said that hasn't been confirmed.
"I can't rule out that they had access," that official said.
The Moroccan wife returned to the embassy in Islamabad and offered another, more specific warning four months later, in April 2008, officials say.
"She said Headley had been given a special mission and that he had both U.S. and Pakistani passports," the senior anti-terror official said. "She said she felt she had been innocently used in an express train bombing" in India in 2007.
The allegations again connected Headley to Lashkar and, for the first time, to a terrorist attack.
In July 2009, the U.S. Treasury Department accused a chief coordinator for Lashkar of playing a central role in the bombing of the Samjhauta express train, which killed 68 people. Indian investigators have recently pursued theories that Hindu militants were behind the attack. No link to Headley has been disclosed.
The Moroccan wife's description of a "special mission" was accurate: Thanks to Headley's reconnaissance trips, Lashkar was finalizing its plan to strike Mumbai at the time of her warning.
Officials gave no further details on how the embassy personnel responded. The assault on Mumbai began on Nov. 26. The killing didn't stop until Nov. 29.
Connections Discovered
On Dec. 1, a final tip surfaced -- once again in Philadelphia.
Headley's mother had died 11 months earlier, but the news of the Mumbai tragedy spurred a friend of hers to contact the FBI. The friend told agents about a past conversation with Headley's mother that now led her to believe Headley "had been fighting alongside individuals in Pakistan to liberate Kashmir for the past 5 to 6 years," officials say.
Three weeks later FBI agents tracked down a cousin of Headley's in Philadelphia. The cousin said he knew nothing about militants and told agents Headley had lived in Pakistan for the past five years, officials say. But investigators and documents indicate that Headley was actually dividing his time among Pakistan, India, New York, and Chicago.
Agents checked Headley's background and found at least some of the previous leads dating back to the 2001 tip in New York, officials say. But it isn't yet known if they learned about the Moroccan wife's allegations overseas.
By this time, the U.S. view of Lashkar had changed dramatically. Lashkar had targeted Americans in Mumbai, and Headley represented a possible danger, a potential source of badly needed intelligence or both. Nonetheless, officials say the Philadelphia agents closed the case, or "put it on hold," because they believed Headley was overseas.
Just weeks later, however, Headley traveled from Chicago to Denmark and did reconnaissance for a plot against a newspaper that had published caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed in 2005, according to court documents. He even met with newspaper representatives about advertising opportunities, the documents say.
Lashkar suspended the Denmark plot in March, but Headley continued working on it with al-Qaida until he was arrested in Chicago in October 2009. In the final months of his odyssey, Headley scouted targets for Ilyas Kashmiri, the al-Qaida boss who officials say is behind recent threats of Mumbai-style attacks in Europe.
ProPublica research director Lisa Schwartz and researcher Nicholas Kusnetz contributed to this report.
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Is India fibbing on Mumbai attack?
Washington: The blame ball is being lobbed to-and-fro by Indian and the US authorities, looking for someone to blame for the attacks on Mumbai in which hundreds of innocent people were killed.
In the latest of revelations, a US govt agency claims adequate warnings were given to Indian govt about terrorists targetting Mumbai, in particular, but these were ignored, leaving the mega-city open to mass murder.
The Indian govt, on the other hand, says the US is to blame as it failed to connect the dots on David Headley, the man who checked out and red flagged the targets.
The United States did not provide information to India on David Headley before 26/11, as intelligence inputs it had about the Mumbai terror plotter was not enough to sufficiently establish his role in planning terrorist attack there, America's spy chief has said.
However, more importantly, Director of National Intelligence (DNI), James R Clapper, in a statement said that the US did provide information to India about Lashkar-e-Taiba's (LeT) threat to several targets in Mumbai between June and September 2008.The statement from Clapper, who oversees functioning of all the major US intelligence agencies, comes following a review of intelligence information that America had about Headley.
"The review finds the United States government aggressively and promptly provided the Indian government with strategic warnings regarding Lashkar-e-Taiba's threats to several targets in Mumbai between June and September 2008," Clapper said yesterday in a statement.
"The review finds that while some information relating to Headley was available to United States government officials prior to the Mumbai attacks, under the policies and procedures that existed at the time, it was not sufficiently established that he was engaged in plotting a terrorist attack in India."
"Therefore, the United States government did not pass information on Headley to the Indian government prior to the attacks," he said.
The DNI ordered for the review after ProPubica.Co, The Washington Post and The New York Times in a series of investigative articles last month said that Headley's two wives had provided tip-off to US authorities about his LeT connections."The review finds that the United States government did not connect Headley to terrorism until 2009, after the attacks on Mumbai. Had the United States government sufficiently established he was engaged in plotting a terrorist attack in India, the information would have most assuredly been transferred promptly to the Indian government," he said. "Since the December 2009 attempted terrorist attacks on the United States, the Obama Administration has focused on information sharing reforms - new watch listing policies and procedures have been enacted, as well as an increased focus on the pursuit of seemingly disparate and unrelated information regarding reports on individuals and their activities," Clapper said.
Reviews of this nature are not uncommon and are designed to establish whether any future improvements in information sharing processes and other intelligence procedures may be needed, he said.
"United States Intelligence Community policy and practice is to share terrorism-related information promptly with our foreign partners when we deem that information potentially credible and relevant to their national security."
"We do exactly that with partners around the world every day, including India, as was done in this case. The United States takes counter-terrorism and broader national security cooperation with our Indian partners very seriously; our respective intelligence and law enforcement professionals work closely together on a range of issues of mutual concern," he added.
26/11 video: Were arms stored in Taj room?
New CCTV footage from the 26/11 Mumbai attacks has emerged, showing how the Pakistani terrorists created mayhem inside the Taj Mahal Hotel.
The footage - available exclusively to Headlines Today - shows the Pakistani terrorists repeatedly entering and leaving room no. 551 in the hotel. They not only have the keys to the room but are seen bringing a huge rucksack in and carrying it out fully loaded.
Sources fear that the weapons and ammunition used by the terrorists were already stocked up in this room.
The footage also shows two terrorists walking through the Shamiana corridor and firing indiscriminately. There is an explosion at the cashier desk in the tower lobby.
The terrorists appear to be well versed with the layout of the hotel and in command. They move from floor to floor, door to door, killing those who come in the way. One of the terrorists shoots the glass of the north-cote entrance door down and enters the hotel's Palace wing.
NSG commandos too are seen in action, taking positions, giving each other cover and throwing a grenade inside a room. Moments later, the terrorists inside fire.
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This is good move, hope this is done by more people:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/...itch_victims_of_mumbai_88rQqbLfdS2CR75Gtybt3I
Relatives of two New Yorkers murdered in a Hasidic center during the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, India, have sued Pakistan's intelligence agency and the Kashmir-based terror organization that was reportedly behind the operation.
Gavriel Noah Holtzberg, a rabbi originally from Brooklyn, and his pregnant wife, Rivka, were gunned down when terrorists stormed the Chabad Lubavitch center in a commando-style attack that also killed the couple's unborn child.
The Holtzberg's 2 year-old son survived the attack after being rescued by an employee. He now lives with his grandfather in Israel, who filed the suit in Brooklyn federal court.
The lawsuit names Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, several ranking ISI officials, and Lashkar-E-Taiba, a terror group that operates in Kashmir, the disputed territory over which both Pakistan and India claim sovereignty.
The wrongful death suit asks for unspecified damages and cites claims that the ISI has worked closely with the Lashkar-E-Taiba group.
James Kreindler, the attorney who filed the suit on behalf of the Holtzberg' family, also handled a successful civil suit against the government of Libya and its intelligence agencies after the 1988 terror attack that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
A call to Pakistan's embassy in Washington, D.C. was not immediately returned.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/...itch_victims_of_mumbai_88rQqbLfdS2CR75Gtybt3I
Relatives of two New Yorkers murdered in a Hasidic center during the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, India, have sued Pakistan's intelligence agency and the Kashmir-based terror organization that was reportedly behind the operation.
Gavriel Noah Holtzberg, a rabbi originally from Brooklyn, and his pregnant wife, Rivka, were gunned down when terrorists stormed the Chabad Lubavitch center in a commando-style attack that also killed the couple's unborn child.
The Holtzberg's 2 year-old son survived the attack after being rescued by an employee. He now lives with his grandfather in Israel, who filed the suit in Brooklyn federal court.
The lawsuit names Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, several ranking ISI officials, and Lashkar-E-Taiba, a terror group that operates in Kashmir, the disputed territory over which both Pakistan and India claim sovereignty.
The wrongful death suit asks for unspecified damages and cites claims that the ISI has worked closely with the Lashkar-E-Taiba group.
James Kreindler, the attorney who filed the suit on behalf of the Holtzberg' family, also handled a successful civil suit against the government of Libya and its intelligence agencies after the 1988 terror attack that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
A call to Pakistan's embassy in Washington, D.C. was not immediately returned.
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^^
Well well well.........
http://www.rediff.com/news/report/a...pak-isi-chief-lashkar-operatives/20101124.htm
Well well well.........
http://www.rediff.com/news/report/a...pak-isi-chief-lashkar-operatives/20101124.htm
SHASH2K2
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I feel its nothing more than a symbolic gesture against Pakistan.There wont be any changes on ground but it will definitely build up the feeling against Pakistan in western media . I hope is gets adequate coverage in western media.
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26/11: US court summons ISI chief, Saeed
A US court has issued summons to senior Inter-Services Intelligence officials including its powerful chief Maj. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, along with Mumbai attack masterminds and Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi in response to a lawsuit filed by relatives of two American victims accusing them of providing material support for the 26/11 attacks.
The 26-page lawsuit was filed before a New York Court on November 19 against the ISI and LeT by the relatives Rabbi Gavriel Noah Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who were both gunned down by militants at the Chhabad House in Mumbai. Their son Moshe was saved by his Indian nanny.
The 26-page lawsuit accusing the ISI of aiding and abetting the LeT in the killing of more than 160 people was filed before a New York Court on November 19, following which the Brooklyn court issued summons to Major Samir Ali, Azam Cheema, the ISI, Major Iqbal, Lakhvi, LeT, Sajid Majid, Mr. Pasha, Saeed and Nadeem Taj.
"The ISI has long nurtured and used international terrorist groups, including the LeT, to accomplish its goals and has provided material support to the LeT and other international terrorist groups," said the lawsuit filed by relatives of the slain Rabbi.
Mr. Pasha, who has been director general of the ISI since September 2008, has been summoned, so is Nadeem Taj, the director general of ISI from September 2007 to September 2008.
Major Iqbal and Major Samir Ali are other ISI officers who have been issued summons.
The one of its kind lawsuit also brings as defendants Lashkar operatives like operations commander Lakhvi, JuD chief Saeed, and Azam Cheema.
"The Mumbai terrorist attack was planned, trained for and carried out by members of defendant, the LeT. Defendant ISI provided critical planning, material support, control and coordination of the attacks," the lawsuit alleges.
It accuses ISI officers Mr. Pasha, Mr. Taj, Maj. Iqbal and Major Ali of being purposefully engaged in the direct provision of material support or resources including weapons and explosives.
"On and prior to November 26, 2008, the ISI, Pasha, Taj, Iqbal and Ali (as well as other officials, agents and employees of the ISI) directed, engaged and/or relied upon the efforts of US-based individuals, including but not limited to David Headley and Tahawwur Rana, for raising funds, building a network of connections, recruiting participants and planning the operation of the Mumbai terror attack," the lawsuit claims.
Noting that the LeT still operates training camps in Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan, the petition said the group has openly advocated violence against India, Israel and the United States.
It names Muridke, Manshera and Muzaffarabad as centres of training camps operated by the LeT.
The 10 LeT members who undertook the on-the-ground Mumbai terrorist attack underwent extensive training in the LeT camps in Pakistan, the lawsuit alleged.
It also says that Pakistani American LeT operative David Headley, who has already pleaded guilty for his role in the plotting of the attack, built a network of connections from Chicago to Pakistan, undertaking these efforts at the direction and with the material support of both LeT and the ISI.
Prior to and following each trip to Mumbai, Headley reported to and received further instructions from both the LeT, including defendants Majid and Maj. Iqbal, and the ISI, it alleges.
"In September 2008, the 10 LeT attackers were moved to Karachi and installed in an ISI/LeT safe house and isolated from outside contact," it said, adding that while staying in the Karachi safe house, they received specific instructions on Mumbai targets.
The safe house was part of the ISI's "Karachi Project," an initiative by which anti-Indian groups were tasked and supported by the ISI in a surreptitious fashion to engage in acts of international terrorism.
"During the period Headley communicated with and took directions from the ISI regarding the Mumbai plot, defendant Taj, as ISI's Director-General, exerted full command and control over the ISI.
"During the final two months of training of the LeT attackers and throughout the attack, defendant Pasha exerted full command and control over the ISI," it alleged.
During the Mumbai attacks, the lawsuit alleges defendant Majid along with other LeT men operated from a mission control room in Karachi, passing instructions and encouragement to the attackers via telephone.
"By reason of the foregoing, LeT, Saeed, Lakhvi, Cheema and Majid are each liable to each plaintiff, individually and as the personal representative and/or surviving family member of their decedents, for compensatory damages in excess of $75,000, such amount to be determined by a jury," it said.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...f-Saeed/articleshow/6982284.cms#ixzz16D0cFeml
A US court has issued summons to senior Inter-Services Intelligence officials including its powerful chief Maj. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, along with Mumbai attack masterminds and Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi in response to a lawsuit filed by relatives of two American victims accusing them of providing material support for the 26/11 attacks.
The 26-page lawsuit was filed before a New York Court on November 19 against the ISI and LeT by the relatives Rabbi Gavriel Noah Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who were both gunned down by militants at the Chhabad House in Mumbai. Their son Moshe was saved by his Indian nanny.
The 26-page lawsuit accusing the ISI of aiding and abetting the LeT in the killing of more than 160 people was filed before a New York Court on November 19, following which the Brooklyn court issued summons to Major Samir Ali, Azam Cheema, the ISI, Major Iqbal, Lakhvi, LeT, Sajid Majid, Mr. Pasha, Saeed and Nadeem Taj.
"The ISI has long nurtured and used international terrorist groups, including the LeT, to accomplish its goals and has provided material support to the LeT and other international terrorist groups," said the lawsuit filed by relatives of the slain Rabbi.
Mr. Pasha, who has been director general of the ISI since September 2008, has been summoned, so is Nadeem Taj, the director general of ISI from September 2007 to September 2008.
Major Iqbal and Major Samir Ali are other ISI officers who have been issued summons.
The one of its kind lawsuit also brings as defendants Lashkar operatives like operations commander Lakhvi, JuD chief Saeed, and Azam Cheema.
"The Mumbai terrorist attack was planned, trained for and carried out by members of defendant, the LeT. Defendant ISI provided critical planning, material support, control and coordination of the attacks," the lawsuit alleges.
It accuses ISI officers Mr. Pasha, Mr. Taj, Maj. Iqbal and Major Ali of being purposefully engaged in the direct provision of material support or resources including weapons and explosives.
"On and prior to November 26, 2008, the ISI, Pasha, Taj, Iqbal and Ali (as well as other officials, agents and employees of the ISI) directed, engaged and/or relied upon the efforts of US-based individuals, including but not limited to David Headley and Tahawwur Rana, for raising funds, building a network of connections, recruiting participants and planning the operation of the Mumbai terror attack," the lawsuit claims.
Noting that the LeT still operates training camps in Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan, the petition said the group has openly advocated violence against India, Israel and the United States.
It names Muridke, Manshera and Muzaffarabad as centres of training camps operated by the LeT.
The 10 LeT members who undertook the on-the-ground Mumbai terrorist attack underwent extensive training in the LeT camps in Pakistan, the lawsuit alleged.
It also says that Pakistani American LeT operative David Headley, who has already pleaded guilty for his role in the plotting of the attack, built a network of connections from Chicago to Pakistan, undertaking these efforts at the direction and with the material support of both LeT and the ISI.
Prior to and following each trip to Mumbai, Headley reported to and received further instructions from both the LeT, including defendants Majid and Maj. Iqbal, and the ISI, it alleges.
"In September 2008, the 10 LeT attackers were moved to Karachi and installed in an ISI/LeT safe house and isolated from outside contact," it said, adding that while staying in the Karachi safe house, they received specific instructions on Mumbai targets.
The safe house was part of the ISI's "Karachi Project," an initiative by which anti-Indian groups were tasked and supported by the ISI in a surreptitious fashion to engage in acts of international terrorism.
"During the period Headley communicated with and took directions from the ISI regarding the Mumbai plot, defendant Taj, as ISI's Director-General, exerted full command and control over the ISI.
"During the final two months of training of the LeT attackers and throughout the attack, defendant Pasha exerted full command and control over the ISI," it alleged.
During the Mumbai attacks, the lawsuit alleges defendant Majid along with other LeT men operated from a mission control room in Karachi, passing instructions and encouragement to the attackers via telephone.
"By reason of the foregoing, LeT, Saeed, Lakhvi, Cheema and Majid are each liable to each plaintiff, individually and as the personal representative and/or surviving family member of their decedents, for compensatory damages in excess of $75,000, such amount to be determined by a jury," it said.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...f-Saeed/articleshow/6982284.cms#ixzz16D0cFeml
SHASH2K2
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David Coleman Headley was arrested and jailed in Pakistan for ill-treating his wife but the ISI rescued him, according to a confidential report of the National Investigative Authority (NIA).
According to the NIA report, accessed exclusively by Headlines Today, Headley was in the custody of the Lahore Police at least two months before the 26/11 attacks.
He was arrested after his Moroccan wife Faiza Outalha complained to the police of marital discord and physical abuse. Headley spent eight days in custody.
The NIA team learnt about Headley's arrest during his interrogation in Chicago.
"My wife Faiza went and met (Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief) Hafiz Saeed in early September. Before this, she would meet senior officials in the police, set up and create problems for me. I was taken into the Lahore Police's custody on her complaint. I was in the Race Course Police Station for eight days," Headley told NIA officials.
Faiza approached Saeed for help to resolve her marital problem, but he did not get involved as Headley was his main pawn for the 26/11 plot.
According to the NIA report, Headley was freed from custody by the ISI as it could not afford to have him in jail while the 26/11 attacks unfolded. Headley approached Major Iqbal, a serving officer in the ISI, to secure his release.
Help also came in the form of his second wife Shazia Gilani's father, Javed Ahmed, bailing him out.
"My father-in-law bailed me out. Major Iqbal also helped me in this case," Headley told the NIA.
Major Iqbal is still a serving officer in the Pakistan Army.
anand_6869
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When it comes to remembering 26/11 every news channel acts all patriotic and the media offers condolences to the Martyrs, brave men like Major Unnikrishnan have served not only in mumbai but also in the north east and Kashmir if the brave major would have fell to bullets in Kashmir do you think that any one would have even known his name?????
More brave soldiers have fallen to enemy bullets and mortars in Kashmir in the past two years than Kargil and 26/11 combined the only reason why India is not like Afghanistan or terror infected balochistan or witnessing an almost daily barrage of suicide bombs like in Pakistan is because we have the brave men of the armed forces preventing the taliban and LET from leaking into india from Kashmir and the border areas,
many times have maps of key indian cities been recovered from slain millitants killed in kupwara or poonch aren't the lives of these brave men protecting our borders risking life and limb on a daily basis worthy of praise by our media or do only 26/11 martyrs deserve the praise of the media and public???
When Brave soldiers like Amit Phunge, Capt devinder Jass, Naik selva Kumar, Col Neeraj sood, Subedar Sanjay Singh, Major Mohit Sharma and many many more brave men are killed in Kashmir they mostly dont even get a line in the newspaper or even a line of condolence by the media...
Didnt these men go down serving our Nation?? arent these men who go through a 26/11 in the streets of Kashmir and in the Jungles of Bengal and the north east not worthy of praise ??
Many of the paratroopers and commandos who engaged terrorists at Trident nariman house and Taj have fallen to bullets in Kashmir and North east dont these brave soldiers and officers deserve our praise or not???? When paratrooper, Anil Kumar a commando who engaged terrorists in Taj and in Nariman house but fell to bullets while battling Lashkar infiltrators in Kupwara were any such condolences offered to him??? does any one in the media and the influential public even know his name???
just last week alone close to 5 men from the CRPF and Army were martyred in Kashmir, an encounter is mostly raging in Kashmir or a forest in Bengal as you read this post, these brave men go through hell every day don't they deserve a pat on the back since they are the ones who offer protection be it from terrorists , naxals natural disasters or any calamity???
WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARDS???
More brave soldiers have fallen to enemy bullets and mortars in Kashmir in the past two years than Kargil and 26/11 combined the only reason why India is not like Afghanistan or terror infected balochistan or witnessing an almost daily barrage of suicide bombs like in Pakistan is because we have the brave men of the armed forces preventing the taliban and LET from leaking into india from Kashmir and the border areas,
many times have maps of key indian cities been recovered from slain millitants killed in kupwara or poonch aren't the lives of these brave men protecting our borders risking life and limb on a daily basis worthy of praise by our media or do only 26/11 martyrs deserve the praise of the media and public???
When Brave soldiers like Amit Phunge, Capt devinder Jass, Naik selva Kumar, Col Neeraj sood, Subedar Sanjay Singh, Major Mohit Sharma and many many more brave men are killed in Kashmir they mostly dont even get a line in the newspaper or even a line of condolence by the media...
Didnt these men go down serving our Nation?? arent these men who go through a 26/11 in the streets of Kashmir and in the Jungles of Bengal and the north east not worthy of praise ??
Many of the paratroopers and commandos who engaged terrorists at Trident nariman house and Taj have fallen to bullets in Kashmir and North east dont these brave soldiers and officers deserve our praise or not???? When paratrooper, Anil Kumar a commando who engaged terrorists in Taj and in Nariman house but fell to bullets while battling Lashkar infiltrators in Kupwara were any such condolences offered to him??? does any one in the media and the influential public even know his name???
just last week alone close to 5 men from the CRPF and Army were martyred in Kashmir, an encounter is mostly raging in Kashmir or a forest in Bengal as you read this post, these brave men go through hell every day don't they deserve a pat on the back since they are the ones who offer protection be it from terrorists , naxals natural disasters or any calamity???
WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARDS???
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Let there not be another 26/11
The terrorist attacks on Mumbai on November 26, 2008, must be reckoned as one of the most momentous, most tragic and most instructive event in the annals of the Indian Republic. Apart from causing huge loss of life and property, it exposed a number of wide chinks in the armoury of the Indian polity and machinery of governance. A country, aspiring to be a super-power, stood before the entire world as nothing more than a huge tree with a hollow trunk. The event also brought to surface the inner shallowness of India's intellectual discourse which had shaped the outlook of its social and political elite and caused the emergence of a soft and superficial state.
In this case, 10 young terrorists sailed on a Pakistani steamer from Karachi, hijacked an Indian fishing trawler on the high sea, landed quietly at a point near the Gateway of India, divided themselves in four groups and moved towards their pre-determined targets.
One group seized the Taj Hotel, the second entered the Leopold Café/Oberoi hotel, the third proceeded to Chabad/Nariman House and the fourth went to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Railway Terminus. Everywhere, they resorted to bloodbath with impunity, shooting innocent people with the savagery of a brute. They held the city in terror practically for three days. Before nine of them were killed and one captured, they had butchered 180 persons and left many more wounded. It was a tragedy too deep for tears.
What was no less tragic was the incompetence that was displayed on the occasion. When the terrorist attacks occurred, the clarity, cohesion and promptitude that was needed was nowhere to be seen. In sharp contrast to the military precision and speed with which all the four groups of terrorists went about their task, the security apparatus of both, the state and the Central government, looked disjointed. It took quite some time for this apparatus to adjust itself for effective action.
The other components of the social structure did not cover themselves with glory either. For example, almost all the news channels vied with one another in showing live the operation conducted by National Security Guards against the terrorists at the Taj Hotel. They did not care to consider that their coverage could be used by the Pakistani handlers of the terrorists to convey fresh instructions and cause heavier loss of innocent lives.
All this happened despite the fact that India had seen a number of terrorist attacks in its metropolitan cities. In 2008 alone, there were serial blasts in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi. Unfortunately, India remained incorrigible, tempting its adversaries to take advantage of its soft underbelly again and again.
In the aftermath of the attacks, there was a furious denunciation of the Central and the state government agencies by the social and intellectual elite whose mental attitude towards terrorism underwent a marked change. They experienced, first hand, the pain, agony and horror. In the early phase of terrorism, when Kashmiri Pandits and other innocent persons were killed in the valley, these very elite, by and large, had remained unsympathetic and did not come forward in any meaningful way to pressurise the authorities to end the misery of the victims. On the other hand, some of them rationalised terrorism, talked of alienation of Kashmiri youth, went to the extent of ignoring documented facts and other hard evidence and even blamed the governor. To be counted as progressive and to get publicity in the media, flaunting of such postures had become the order of the day. It caused incalculable harm to the nation. While the terrorists slaughtered innocent people, the so-called progressives and liberal-intellectuals, who had no idea of ground reality, slaughtered truth, reputations and will to fight the menace and nip it in the bud.
Since the mid-1980s, when the Indian diplomat, Ravinder Mahatre, was murdered by Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front at Birmingham and a huge subversive drama was staged at Srinagar during the West Indies-India cricket match, I had been underscoring the sinister nature of the Pakistani plan under which terrorism was being injected in Kashmir by arousing religious frenzy and by diverting and deploying sophisticated weapons which the CIA was supplying to the ISI, ostensibly for use in Afghanistan War. But no one listened. Now that the cells have proliferated and started attacking the vital organs of the bodypolitic of India, a very heavy cost and a long time would be required to bring back this body to health. Already about 50,000 lives and several thousands crore of public funds have been lost.
The interrogation of David Coleman Headley, an American citizen and a recruit of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, has revealed how diabolical plans for future terrorist attacks are being worked out, how even houses of Prime Minister and vice-president have been surveyed and how the so-called non-state actors and the ISI are working in close coordination for undertaking their bloody ventures against India.
From all accounts, it has now become abundantly clear that Pakistan, to borrow the expression of Bruce Reidel, has become "the most dangerous country in the world, where every nightmare of the 21st century converge — terrorism, government instability, corruption and nuclear weapons". Even after the elections of February 2008, neither the Army nor the ISI had lost any of its powers. In fact, the Pakistan Army has become a state within the state, and the ISI an Army within the Army. In the ISI itself, ultra conservative elements have come up and carved out a semi-independent niche for themselves. The atmosphere is thick with collusions and conspiracies.
Even otherwise, the Pakistani authorities have earned world-wide notoriety for their deceptive behaviour. In his memoir, Mullah Zaeef, former ambassador of Taliban to Pakistan, has observed: "Pakistan's authorities are so treacherous that they can get milk from a bull. They have two tongues in one mouth, and two faces on one head".
With these dangerous and treacherous environment around us and with our preoccupations with scams and scandals, could we rule out the repetition of a grim and gory tragedy like the one that visited us in Mumbai two years ago? If we have to avoid such a repetition, we must ask ourselves today a few basic questions. Are we retrofitting our machinery of governance and attending to the numerous shortcomings of our polity? And are we giving a new direction to our intellectual discourse which would generate new attitudes and outlook amongst the people in general and the opinion-makers in particular? I am afraid, no one is asking these questions even when the traumatic experience of 26/11 has not faded from the national memory.
Jagmohan is a former governor of J&K and a former Union minister
http://www.asianage.com/columnists/let-there-not-be-another-2611-292
The terrorist attacks on Mumbai on November 26, 2008, must be reckoned as one of the most momentous, most tragic and most instructive event in the annals of the Indian Republic. Apart from causing huge loss of life and property, it exposed a number of wide chinks in the armoury of the Indian polity and machinery of governance. A country, aspiring to be a super-power, stood before the entire world as nothing more than a huge tree with a hollow trunk. The event also brought to surface the inner shallowness of India's intellectual discourse which had shaped the outlook of its social and political elite and caused the emergence of a soft and superficial state.
In this case, 10 young terrorists sailed on a Pakistani steamer from Karachi, hijacked an Indian fishing trawler on the high sea, landed quietly at a point near the Gateway of India, divided themselves in four groups and moved towards their pre-determined targets.
One group seized the Taj Hotel, the second entered the Leopold Café/Oberoi hotel, the third proceeded to Chabad/Nariman House and the fourth went to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Railway Terminus. Everywhere, they resorted to bloodbath with impunity, shooting innocent people with the savagery of a brute. They held the city in terror practically for three days. Before nine of them were killed and one captured, they had butchered 180 persons and left many more wounded. It was a tragedy too deep for tears.
What was no less tragic was the incompetence that was displayed on the occasion. When the terrorist attacks occurred, the clarity, cohesion and promptitude that was needed was nowhere to be seen. In sharp contrast to the military precision and speed with which all the four groups of terrorists went about their task, the security apparatus of both, the state and the Central government, looked disjointed. It took quite some time for this apparatus to adjust itself for effective action.
The other components of the social structure did not cover themselves with glory either. For example, almost all the news channels vied with one another in showing live the operation conducted by National Security Guards against the terrorists at the Taj Hotel. They did not care to consider that their coverage could be used by the Pakistani handlers of the terrorists to convey fresh instructions and cause heavier loss of innocent lives.
All this happened despite the fact that India had seen a number of terrorist attacks in its metropolitan cities. In 2008 alone, there were serial blasts in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi. Unfortunately, India remained incorrigible, tempting its adversaries to take advantage of its soft underbelly again and again.
In the aftermath of the attacks, there was a furious denunciation of the Central and the state government agencies by the social and intellectual elite whose mental attitude towards terrorism underwent a marked change. They experienced, first hand, the pain, agony and horror. In the early phase of terrorism, when Kashmiri Pandits and other innocent persons were killed in the valley, these very elite, by and large, had remained unsympathetic and did not come forward in any meaningful way to pressurise the authorities to end the misery of the victims. On the other hand, some of them rationalised terrorism, talked of alienation of Kashmiri youth, went to the extent of ignoring documented facts and other hard evidence and even blamed the governor. To be counted as progressive and to get publicity in the media, flaunting of such postures had become the order of the day. It caused incalculable harm to the nation. While the terrorists slaughtered innocent people, the so-called progressives and liberal-intellectuals, who had no idea of ground reality, slaughtered truth, reputations and will to fight the menace and nip it in the bud.
Since the mid-1980s, when the Indian diplomat, Ravinder Mahatre, was murdered by Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front at Birmingham and a huge subversive drama was staged at Srinagar during the West Indies-India cricket match, I had been underscoring the sinister nature of the Pakistani plan under which terrorism was being injected in Kashmir by arousing religious frenzy and by diverting and deploying sophisticated weapons which the CIA was supplying to the ISI, ostensibly for use in Afghanistan War. But no one listened. Now that the cells have proliferated and started attacking the vital organs of the bodypolitic of India, a very heavy cost and a long time would be required to bring back this body to health. Already about 50,000 lives and several thousands crore of public funds have been lost.
The interrogation of David Coleman Headley, an American citizen and a recruit of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, has revealed how diabolical plans for future terrorist attacks are being worked out, how even houses of Prime Minister and vice-president have been surveyed and how the so-called non-state actors and the ISI are working in close coordination for undertaking their bloody ventures against India.
From all accounts, it has now become abundantly clear that Pakistan, to borrow the expression of Bruce Reidel, has become "the most dangerous country in the world, where every nightmare of the 21st century converge — terrorism, government instability, corruption and nuclear weapons". Even after the elections of February 2008, neither the Army nor the ISI had lost any of its powers. In fact, the Pakistan Army has become a state within the state, and the ISI an Army within the Army. In the ISI itself, ultra conservative elements have come up and carved out a semi-independent niche for themselves. The atmosphere is thick with collusions and conspiracies.
Even otherwise, the Pakistani authorities have earned world-wide notoriety for their deceptive behaviour. In his memoir, Mullah Zaeef, former ambassador of Taliban to Pakistan, has observed: "Pakistan's authorities are so treacherous that they can get milk from a bull. They have two tongues in one mouth, and two faces on one head".
With these dangerous and treacherous environment around us and with our preoccupations with scams and scandals, could we rule out the repetition of a grim and gory tragedy like the one that visited us in Mumbai two years ago? If we have to avoid such a repetition, we must ask ourselves today a few basic questions. Are we retrofitting our machinery of governance and attending to the numerous shortcomings of our polity? And are we giving a new direction to our intellectual discourse which would generate new attitudes and outlook amongst the people in general and the opinion-makers in particular? I am afraid, no one is asking these questions even when the traumatic experience of 26/11 has not faded from the national memory.
Jagmohan is a former governor of J&K and a former Union minister
http://www.asianage.com/columnists/let-there-not-be-another-2611-292
