(3 years) Before '08 Mumbai attacks, U.S. was warned key figure in plot had terror ties

[UpInArms]

Source: Washington Post

Three years before Pakistani terrorists struck Mumbai in 2008, federal agents in New York City investigated a tip that an American businessman was training in Pakistan with the group that later executed the attack.

The previously undisclosed allegations against David Coleman Headley, who became a key figure in the plot that killed 166 people, came from his wife after a domestic dispute that resulted in his arrest in 2005.

In three interviews with federal agents, Headley's wife said that he was an active militant in the terrorist group Lashkar-i-Taiba, had trained extensively in its Pakistani camps, and had shopped for night-vision goggles and other equipment, according to officials and sources close to the case. The wife, whom ProPublica is not identifying to protect her safety, also told agents that Headley had bragged of working as a paid U.S. informant while he trained with the terrorists in Pakistan, according to a person close to the case.

Federal officials say the FBI "looked into" the tip, but they declined to say what, if any, action was taken. Headley was jailed briefly in New York on charges of domestic assault but was not prosecuted. He wasn't arrested until 11 months after the Mumbai attack, when British intelligence alerted U.S. authorities that he was in contact with al-Qaeda operatives in Europe.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/15/AR2010101505090.html?hpid=topnews

[givemebackmycountry]

1. Wonderful.

Maybe we should spend yet another 500 billion on intelligence.
Ever get the feeling we ain't getting our moneys worth with our "intelligence" agencies?

[G_j]

2. so 11 months after the attack, British intelligence alerted U.S. authorities

Makes the FBI sound pretty lame, after what his wife told them.

[sakabatou]

3. Once again, * admin just ignores shit.

[boppers]

4. Yet another * terrorist attack they pretend didn't happen.

"There hasn't been an attack since 9/11" is horseshit, and should be called out every time somebody dares to utter it.

[OnlinePoker]

5. When they say this, they're talking about in the U.S. n/t

[Swede]

6. U.S. Had Warnings About Plotter of Mumbai Attack

Source: New York Times

Less than a year before terrorists killed at least 163 people in Mumbai, India, a young Moroccan woman went to American authorities in Pakistan to warn them that she believed her husband, David C. Headley, was plotting an attack.

It was not the first time American law enforcement authorities were warned about Mr. Headley, a longtime informer in Pakistan for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration whose roots in Pakistan and the United States allowed him to move easily in both worlds.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/world/asia/17headley.html

[stray cat]

7. Was it enough info to arrest or investigate him - or just assasinate him?

[PSPS]

8. Yet another instance of Bush's incompetence or complicity

With Bush's cronies poised to loot more billions out of the US Treasury whenever there's conflict in the world, it's hard to tell which applies.

[sabra]

9. FBI was told of suspicious activities 3 years before Mumbai attacks

Source: Chicago Trib

Wife of man who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges had told U.S. authorities of his ties to Pakistani militant groups

The wife of the Chicago businessman who scouted targets for the 2008 Mumbai attacks gave details about his ties to Pakistani militant groups to federal agents in New York City three years before the assault.

The FBI chased down the leads but determined the information was insufficient to legally justify further investigation at that time.

In 2005, after David Coleman Headley was briefly arrested in New York City following a domestic dispute, Headley's wife told the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force about his political leanings, associations and other disparate pieces of information, according to a federal official. The wife's contact with the FBI was first reported by ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization, on Friday.
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The FBI investigated the leads and determined that the information did not meet the minimum legal threshold for opening an investigation on a U.S. citizen like Headley, a federal official said. The FBI is limited by U.S. law from investigating the political beliefs of U.S. citizens who have not crossed the line into illegal, threatening or violent actions.

Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-mumbai-headley-1018-20101017,0,7874525.story

[bemildred]

10. The FBI needs to be reorganized top to bottom.

Or got rid of all together. It's incompetent at doing its nominal job (protecting the public and the government from criminals) while enthusiastic about oppressing and harassing anybody who is politically active without being rich.

[happyslug]

14. Don't Knock it, that may be why this was released

The CIA and the FBI are not only internal rivals, but WHO they tend to hire are antagonistic to each other. The FBI prefers mid-western (Ohio to the Dakotas) residents. People who went to small collages located in the Mid-west. The CIA is overwhelming the Ivy league group (preferring Yale and Harvard, but leaving the other Ivy league collages to join). Now, both groups will hire people from anywhere, but sooner or later these these non-typical recruits reveal themselves three ways, first, some show they were always mid-western type (for the FBI) or Ivy Leaguers (For the CIA) but some some reason ended up in a the other type of Collage, second, some quickly adopt the attitude and world view of the CIA (Ivy League) or the FBI (Small midwestern Collage), other are otherwise adopts the attitude and world view of whatever group (FBI or CIA) they join.


My point is both the FBI and CIA are made up of people who often do NOT see the world differently. J Edgar Hoover was the classic case, he opposed rounding up and imprisoning the Japanese-Americans during WWII (It took a West Coast Collage Student, and later Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren to round up the Japanese-Americans). Hoover had written the justification for the Palmer Raids in 1919 against the "Reds" but insisted that such people be given trails before being deported (His supervisor in the Department of Justice over ruled him on that matter). On the other hand, he opposed Communism (and put informers throughout the Communist party and later the KKK to set both groups up for arrest for actual crimes, he did the same for the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam era Anti-war movement). He sent Martin Luther King a tape recording of King's extramarital affairs (it appears to be in hope King would commit suicide rather then have to address what was on the Tape, but then never released the tape).

On the other hand Hoover has NEVER been implicated in any effort to kill someone he opposed politically. He seems to have been willing to use violence against a group that in his opinion were in open revolt (The early 1970 Wounded Knee Incident) but more to intimidate then kill. I point this out for the CIA HAS advocated killing people, technically all outside the US, but it has been the CIA and the Military that have been indicated in any assassination that may have been supported by the US Government (Please note these are NOT cases where there was a shoot out and the FBI imprisoned someone, but when someone was killed deliberately). Hoover just opposed such actions, but the CIA has done them overseas AND been accused (but not proven) to do them inside the USA.

This is one of the differences between the CIA and the FBI and it comes from the background of most of the agents of each. There often do NOT understand each other do to their different background (and that is significant for both are members of the GOP). The classic case was the tape recording of Eleanor Roosevelt during WWII by the US Army. The Army was so proud they took it to FDR so show Eleanor and one of FDR's assistants were having an affair. FDR was so furious at anyone taping Eleanor he sent the Officers in charge to Guadalcanal (Then in the height of Fighting). Hoover thus received the duty of domestic security (Much to the hatred of the financial sections of Wall Street and the "City of London" which preferred people from the Ivy League).

Just a Comment of the on-going FBI-CIA infighting. It makes the Army-Navy-Air Force-Marine infighting look almost like they were fighting on the same side. In many ways it is Main Street (Who Hoover wanted his Agents to be most like) vs Wall Street (Which the Ivy League controls).

As to reorganization, the FBI is doing a more then adequate job. The report was given to them, they looked at it and did some investigation and could find nothing to support the attack. Given the lack of evidence the case was closed. That is all the FBI could do with a the evidence they had, a report is NOT enough, by itself, to authorize an arrest (Guantanamo for example is a CIA-Military prison NOT an FBI prison). The FBI want something called "evidence" and until the attack any evidence was in Pakistan OUTSIDE the Jurisdiction of the FBI (but within CIA Jurisdiction). The real question is why is the FBI being blamed, when this is a CIA area of operations?

Side note: Eleanor had an female aide who was seeing the above male aide of FDR. This was on a trip to Philadelphia at the height of WWII, rooms were scarce. The Army recorders thought it was Eleanor but FDR knew it was the aides. and that Eleanor had taken a "long walk". FDR was furious over the tape recording EVER before he had determined who was actually taped. Just the thought that someone would tape Eleanor offended him, a woman who had agreed to divorce him in the early 1930s so he could marry his former nurse and lover, and then when FDR had decided to run for President agreed NOT to divorce him over the incident, was a woman he owned to much to NO MATTER WHO SHE WAS SLEEPING WITH.

[bemildred]

15. "why this was released" is always an interesting question.

I'm not really willing to get into a discussion about the relative merits of the FBI and CIA, but I appreciate your point of view.

[happyslug]

16. One of my favorite stories was of the top US Spies in the Soviet Union

If I remember reading the story, I tried to find out on them doing a Google search but all I kept getting hits were on the recent spies the FBI arrested and sent back to Russia, this spy refused to have anything to do with the KGB, he wanted to deal with the FBI only. When the FBI offered to turn him over to the CIA, he threatened to STOP spying. He provided inside information on the Politburo for years. The FBI would forward the information to the CIA, but that is only as far as the CIA was permitted with this spy.

This spy preferred and trusted the FBI, but not the CIA. Probably because he was much like the FBI, he was much more "Main Street" as oppose to "Wall Street".

Some more on the difference between the FBI and CIA (including the refusal of the FBI do to internal spying under LBJ, but the CIA was willing to do it):
http://books.google.com/books?id=VnQduXa4JdoC&pg=PA164&lpg=PA164&dq=Soviet+Defectors+FBI&source=bl&ots=SAeYDr6WlM&sig=D8ThO8zC-nX15kG1JsglUDd2CP0&hl=en&ei=gge9TPKTOIH-8Ab4qODSDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Soviet%20Defectors%20FBI&f=false

The Secret War between the FBI and the CIA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_-_The_Secret_War_between_the_FBI_and_CIA

After more than fifty years of rivalry, Agency people are still perceived by FBI agents as intellectual, Ivy League, wine drinking, pipe smoking, international relations types, sometimes aloof. The Bureau's people are regarded by CIA as cigar smoking, beer drinking, door-¬knocking cops. What kind of restructuring might overcome such stereo¬typical perceptions especially when they are generally true?

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/95unclass/Cram.html

[bemildred]

17. What you do is replace all the people at the top, all of them,

with people who are not like "that". Outsiders. The country has plenty of people who are just as smart and just as well educated that do not fit either stereotype, and they would love to have the jobs. The incumbents that are willing to go along and do their jobs get to keep their jobs, the others don't.

Or you could just defund them both, do away with them. They were not always there, they could not be there again, nothing much would happen. I cannot really see that either one has done much for the public good, they are both essentially instruments of repression. The FBI has legitimate cop functions, and sometimes does them well, but the CIA has not even that.

Edit: changing the culture is all about setting up a new status hierarchy, it's easy, your basic corporate takeover.

[ixion]

11. Hey, the FBI is too busy harassing peaceniks and pot smokers to actually concern themselves

with a real threat.

[Ian David]

12. If only we'd had some kind of War President who was keeping us safe at the time.

[Historic NY]

13. another one of those rogue DEA operatives...

[borderline41]

18. David Coleman Headley

this man did not have 3 wives- he had 5. And just because the
name of his wife in New York was being withheld doesn't
protect her identity, there was only one from New York and
everyone  close to him would know who she is. The government
knew he was training in terrorist camps and about the planned
Mumbai attacks- our gov. chose to let it happen.