Mara Gay Contributor
(Nov. 8) -- In the beginning, it seems, even David Headley wasn't sure where his sympathies lay.
The rogue American informant, who pleaded guilty to plotting the deadly 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, India, and is awaiting sentencing, has always lived between two worlds, working as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration even as he began to wage holy war against the United States.
In the end, though, American authorities say, he chose sides. Headley, who was born in Washington, D.C., but lived in Pakistan until he was a teenager, meandered his way through life to become a jihadist, a double agent with ties to both the United States and terror organizations abroad.
Verna Sadock, AP
David Headley, will not face the death penalty for his role in the 2008 Mumbai, India, terrorist attack if he continues to cooperate with investigators.Today, U.S. officials are trying to explain how they came to send such a man to work for them as an informant in Pakistan, even after receiving multiple warnings that he had become radicalized and wanted to wage jihad against the West.
"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," said a statement today by the office of the director of national intelligence, according to The Associated Press.
David Headley was born Daood Sayed Gilani in 1960, the son of the prominent Pakistani broadcaster Sayed Salim Gilani and Serrill Headley, a wealthy Philadelphia woman who had attended Bryn Mawr. The family moved to Pakistan, but before long, Serrill Headley returned to the United States, leaving Daood and a daughter behind.
In 1977, Daood went to live with his mother in Philadelphia. But he suffered from culture shock and had trouble dealing with his mother's heavy drinking and multiple relationships with men, according to The New York Times. He worked at his mother's bar, the Kyber Pass, where he easily found trouble.
"Those were the days when girls, weed and whatever, were readily available," Jay Wilson, who worked at the Khyber Pass, told the Times. "Daood was not immune to the pleasures of American adolescence."
For Headley, though, drugs would become more than just an adolescent phase. In 1988, he was arrested for attempting to smuggle heroin into the United States from Pakistan. But the information he offered to investigators was so valuable that he only served four years in prison.
Nearly a decade later, in 1997, Headley was arrested on heroin charges again. But prosecutors, citing his extraordinary cooperation, pushed for another light sentence. This time, he spent less than a year in prison, according to a report in ProPublica.
"He ... helped the DEA infiltrate the very close-knit Pakistani narcotics dealing community in New York," prosecutors wrote in 1998 court documents obtained by ProPublica. The attorneys also noted that Headley "traveled to Pakistan" to "develop intelligence on Pakistani heroin traffickers."
Headley's ex-wives and girlfriend, however, say that's not all he was interested in doing in Pakistan. In October 2001, a former girlfriend told the FBI that Headley supported extremists, according to The Washington Post. But there was no proof and no action was taken. Instead, the Times reported, the DEA sent him to Pakistan that year to work as an informant in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
His half brother, Danyal Gilani, said their father, who died in 2008, was ashamed of Headley's behavior. "Because of his involvement with issues related to drugs my father wanted the rest of the family to stay away from his influence," Gilani wrote in a statement to The Daily Telegraph in London.
But Headley could not seem to keep his nose clean. In August 2005, he was arrested for misdemeanor domestic assault after his wife said he hit her across the face, according to ProPublica. The investigative publication reports that Headley's wife met with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force three times that month and told authorities her husband was involved with Lashkar-i-Taiba, an extremist group that carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people. What officials did with that information remains unclear, and Headley wasn't prosecuted for the alleged assault.
In 2006, Headley formally changed his name to make it easier to travel after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to court documents obtained by the Times.
His uncle, William Headley, said the younger man appeared to be split between two identities. "David and Daood; they're like two different people," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2009. The uncle said Headley had "an upbringing that was irreconcilable."
Sponsored LinksIn 2007, Headley's second wife, Faiza Outalha, told the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan she believed her husband was involved in terrorist activity with extremist groups. But American officials said today that they never had information Headley was specifically involved in plotting the Mumbai attacks.
"What we have is various different kinds of information about David Headley that, again, weren't specific to a particular plot in India," Ben Rhodes, deputy national security director for strategic communications, told reporters, according to The Associated Press.
Under a deal with U.S. prosecutors, Headley will not face the death penalty if he continues to cooperate with investigators. He could face life in prison and $3 million in fines when he is sentenced.
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