Could the '08 Mumbai Attack Have Been Prevented? (American Terrorist) (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

[Music] tonight on front line when Edward Snowden exposed the nsa's secret Mass surveillance program the public needs to decide whether these programs are right or wrong Defenders of the NSA said the spying was necessary and they produced an example David Headley David Headley David Coleman Hedley an American recruited by Pakistan terrorists to help plan the most spectacular attack since 911 so many in people lost their lives but was his capture an intelligent success nobody detected him nobody stopped him lots and lots of people died prua reporter Sebastian Rotella unearths new details about headley's shadowy life it's a draft Memoir this is the first time it's been made public and evidence of how high-tech spies accessed the terrorists Communications but still didn't stop the attack what role did the program play in stopping head none tonight front line and prop publica investigate an American Terrorist it was July 2009 a man from America had come here to Copenhagen on business but first some sightseeing first of all he RS a bike an ordinary bicycle and he has his video camera and he rides with with one hand on the handle and holding the video camera riding around and taking pictures you know it's kind such an unusual scene of someone biking along with a camera this is the famous Concert Hall built in 48 these are his actual recordings as he narrated the images along the way frch Embassy European he might have been playing the part of a tourist but his true intent was to case the city in this newspaper gyllen Poston 4 years before it had C cused outrage across the Muslim World by publishing 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad now the visitors plan was to launch an armed siege that would bring it down his name was David Coleman Hedley he was an American Terrorist I came to Copenhagen and 2 years later retracing Headley steps on the globe spanning Journey that had brought him here I'm doing a story here in Copenhagen about the David Hedley case he was planning an attack in Denmark yeah I'm trying to reconstruct his movements and I was wondering if you guys remembered him uh maybe I can go back and he was ostensibly a businessman well we are back here in 2009 there he is David Headley right here Headley yeah he needed to get access to the newspaper I'd been trying to make contact with someone from gyan's Poston who had dealt with Hedley hi this is Sebastian I just I just got your email how are you I'm fine thank you good good I appreciate you're getting back to me I know you're you're busy that would be great at 4:00 okay well I'm a typical blondly here Headley was acting very normal he told me he was a businessman he was here for business he wanted to move his business to Denmark and wanted to buy space in the newspaper for for advertisement I remember that he exchanged business cards with my colleague mhm he didn't seem suspicious in any way we didn't have many walking in from the street wanting to to um to buy space in the newspapers like that Headley was certainly someone who seems to be extremely well prepared he was using a cover and he went to some lengths to conduct that surveillance but also in Target surrounding that as a fallback plan Hotel he cased the area around the newspaper and videotaped nearby restaurants a hotel and the French Embassy station he walked into copenhagen's main train terminal his camera recording every moment it was a very professional way to plan a terrorist attack he was uh doing reconnaissance and planning in in Denmark and and that he was subsequently able to to pass over part of the uh the planning uh to uh to terrorist in Pakistan hedley's reconnaissance of Copenhagen was sponsored by a notorious terrorist named ilas kashmiri at the time he was reporting to Osama Bin [Music] Laden Hedley was working for Al-Qaeda it's very chilling you know because Headley gathers all this information the videotape the notes and he meets with one of the most fearsome terrorists in the worldas kashmi and they have a detailed conversation about how this plot would go down three or four attackers with automatic weapons who go in and take hostages but add a wrinkle which is the beheading of hostages Kashmir says you shoot the hostages first it makes it easier to behead them you behead them and you throw the heads out the window it is without doubt the most serious plot that denark has had this is a symbolically powerful Target this is it there is no other more powerful uh way which all uh Muslims jihadist or or or non-jihadist will understand uh you would be instantaneously the hero of uh the jihadist world but what David Coleman Headley didn't know was that just days before he'd been picked up on the radar of Western Intelligence on this trip to Copenhagen every step he made and every bicycle ride was being monitored we had a security service shadowing him on their own bikes soon Headley headed for home that's when American officials learned of his connection to kashmiri the al-Qaeda [Music] Kingpin by the time he landed in Chicago they had him under surveillance well certainly the concern is is there a Homeland plot here in the United States we received authority to go up on hedley's Communications real time anybody that came in contact with Headley became a target of ours and that's when it kind of grew into a larger picture of who David Hedley really was in American Terrorist age 49 living in an immigrant neighborhood on Chicago's north side with his wife and four children over the next 3 months they investigated tapping his phone monitoring his movements digging into his background they learned that Headley was planning a trip to Pakistan and then Denmark it was cold and rainy Chicago when we drove out to O'Hare airport to make the arrest we had complete surveillance coverage of him while he was driving to O'Hare and I had surveillance coverage on foot in in O'Hare once he arrived he went to the ticket counter we let him get through security um and then we approach him I looked at him and said are you Mr David Hedley and he was a bit surprised and he said why yes I am my partner uttered the words you are under arrest so you know I mean I don't know but I want some I mean I would like doesn't matter what I want but I'm just from some like bust to happen yeah I want to keep on I mean I I know you have plenty of evidence against me he immediately began to bargain giving up details about his Denmark Terror plot but there was more we understand yeah that's what I was always thinking about this by you know he confessed to another ATT this one bigger and deadly the largest impact was when he initially confessed to the interrogators that he had an active role in the Mumbai plot so many innocent people lost their lives because of this individual that I had just handcuffed just hours ago terrorists launched a Brazen attack the Indian city of Mumbai is in chaos following a series of terrorist attacks Mumbai been hit and hit hard Mumbai 10 months earlier had been the scene of a horrific 3-day terrorist [Music] [Applause] Siege right there you go you heard a big blast right now inside the Taj Hotel the world had watched as an icon of India was set a blaze and civilians Indians and westerners were methodically gunned down they wanted anyone with British or American passports I can see someone lifting up a gun like that and firing [Music] the attackers were well armed and well prepared to launch what some here are calling India's 9911 166 people were killed Headley had played a key role in planning the attack the plans how toap these guys or you working on now facing a possible death sentence he bar there some things we we can't share with you as well confessing he'd worked for Pakistani intelligence and Islamic Terror groups Headley became a witness for us prosecutors he was convicted and disappeared into a Maximum Security Prison almost forgotten for several years I had investigated headley's story reporting for propublica and Frontline a secret surveillance program is collecting the telephone records of year old man who says he is the one that was behind me when suddenly in 2013 news broke Edward Snow he for Edward snow is a traitor who seriously endangered US National Security or a hero defending privacy the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong the Snowden Revelations incited a debate over privacy and how invasive the government should be but the NSA said its surveillance programs like the mass collection of phone records and email helped stop Terror attacks in order to find the needle we needed the Hast there is no other way that we know of to connect the dots in the debate between privacy and security approved by a secret Court based on secret interpretations of the law The nsa's Defenders rushed forward an example David Headley David Hedley one of those involved perpetrators of the Mumbai bombing in India David Headley that Headley was working on a Plot to Bomb a ish newspaper office that had published the cartoon depictions of the Prophet Muhammad I was surprised when David Coleman Hedley was identified as a success story in the war on terror my reporting up to that point had shown a broad intelligence failure district courts an American Terrorist who had operated for years without being caught to quote the deputy attorney general in just ation for this program if you looking for the needle and the hay stack you have to have the entire Hy stack to look through now the NSA was saying he was proof that their newly revealed electronic surveillance systems worked soon after snowden's Revelations our team got access to his leaked documents revealing startling new details about the work of spy agencies in the mumai case together with my own investigation of Headley it raised questions why wasn't Headley stopped sooner and could Western intelligence have prevented the attacks on Mumbai it meant I was back on the trail of David Coleman Hedley trying to understand what the NSA might have known I had started in Chicago where Hedley lived with his Pakistani wife wife and four children on the North side near an old friend a man named taor Rana this is how are you you could tell me what you know about how uh they met Headley and R became close in the 1970s growing up outside of Islamabad his glass fellow uh this is Dave David Coleman headley's considered Headley family it was very very nice he called me sister and he said you're my sister and that was very good thing for years the RAS had been operating an immigration company it specialized in getting foreign professionals us worker visas would your husband work in here then my husband he particularly he don't have any Headley used the business as a front while he was plotting the attacks in Mumbai and Denmark did David colan edley ever come to this office yes but he was not working in this office he was working in Mumbai Office Mumbai yes after his arrest Hedley gave up his friend testifying that Ra was his accomplice at trial Rana denied it but he was convicted and sent to prison so many innocent people they are killed in this Mumbai attack David Headley is insane that's it I can say only this thing no person with the brain can do these things he's insane David Coleman Hedley is not his given name he was born dud galani in Washington DC in 1960 his father was a wellknown Pakistani broadcaster his mother sarl Hedley a daughter of Philadelphia High Society the family moved to Pakistan early in the boy's life one neighbor was was this man Chan B who says he's known galani since that time he look like a Gora American or britisher we call them Gora in our language and his eyes one blue and one brown that is the thing which really one can recognize that he is David but soon the parents divorced The Clash of American and Pakistani culture at the heart of the breakup his father remarried his mother returned to America forced to leave her son dud grew up in private military schools where duty to flag and country was instilled every morning at the khabib public school hundreds of boys line up to P tribute to the flag he says he was a student here when Pakistan suffered a humiliating defeat in a war with India stray bombs fell on the school killing two people it was bombed by the Indians he was in that school and he told me about that and if your family suffered some incident like that by enemy what feeling you will have you will forgive them no I don't think so at home dud didn't get along with his stepmother and at age 17 he sought the help of his true mother sarl Hedley she brought him back to the US us to Philadelphia where she owned this bar the kyber pass here dud met American culture head on thanks in part to his mother hello everybody and welcome to the kyber pass pu at second in Chestnut streets we are live tonight she was a fixture in the Philadelphia Social Scene a local character known for her bar the Kyra Pass Pub is 10 years old and her colorful current and what you might call special owner she is a Delaware Valley native but 10 years ago her story read like a Mid Eastern spy novel a past she happily advertised life in Pakistan false charges of Espionage her life under threat and Escape through the bars namesake when her 17-year-old son arrived from Pakistan it only added to the bar's Mystique there they called him the prince but a prince who had a dark side Dow galani age 23 handsome self- assured and within 2 years of these images being taken a heroin addict and a budding drug Smuggler it's hard to pinpoint exactly when galani stepped onto the path that eventually led to the Mumbai attacks Headley has now moved overseas to Philadelphia but he's visiting Pakistan and apparently already has this drug habit so he goes up to the tribal areas with ra his best friend because ra has a military ID unbeknownst toana that he's going up there to get drugs so he uses him essentially as cover and they make it back but a couple days after he returns he gets arrested in a hotel with a woman and there's some kind of incident that causes a commotion and draws the attention of the authori and Headley gets arrested for drug possession but somehow galani got away with it then in 1988 he got caught in transit by us drug agents two kilos of Pakistani heroin tucked into the false bottom of his suitcase on the spot he agreed to cooperate with the DEA The Drug Enforcement Administration one partner got 10 years the other got eight galani only got four he just turns around immediately and betrays everybody when it's convenient for him basically it's survival for himself galani did his time he moved to New York but 3 years later he was arrested again for drug smuggling it's a turning point in his life and he writes about it in a document I was given this is the first time it's been made public a draft Memoir his life in his own words during his second stint in prison galani writes that he rediscovered the seeds of Islam sown in him by his father my father never completely died he says he wanted to leave behind his unrighteous ways turn over and to make amends he would try to work with the Drug Enforcement Administration as an informant more importantly he wanted to get out of jail he hired a lawyer to negotiate terms I remember him being highly intelligent understood what his situation was had a clear idea of what he wanted to do which was what he wanted was to cooperate with the government which he had done previously he cooperated his job was to set up his sources in Pakistan the DEA sent him there one time that happens because there was a lot of suspicion that maybe he was simply trying to set people up but if he had the ability to physically travel to all the way to Pakistan and show his face that that would elay concerns but he says he went more than once without their [Music] knowledge on one trip galani made contact with lashar EBA militant Islamic group affiliated with this mosque in [Music] lore its Mission spoke to gani to his Pakistani identity and his hatred of India lashkar was dedicated to the fight with India over the disputed territory of K asmir lashkar is known for its Technical and Military sophistication and its ties to Pakistan's intelligence agency the isi galani writes that on another trip he met lashkar's leader h s and was moved by his militant call to action one second spent in Jihad he said is superior to 100 years spent in worship and prayer galani was hooked he decides to actually join lashai toyba while is still a source for the DEA when he wasn't in Pakistan D galani lived here on Manhattan's Upper West Side near a video store he owned gilani's life was in flux he was married to a woman in Pakistan and seeing women in America but he'd given up drugs and was immersing himself in radical Islam and then the day that changed everything and everyone including dud galani the next day his DEA handlers call him they needed more than just a drug informant now they wanted to know about terrorists he cooperated Gathering Intelligence on extremists in New York and calling sources in Pakistan but he revealed other views to an ex-girlfriend soon after 911 she then told her friend Terry odonnell you guys are sitting at a bar right you and her you guys standing you her and somebody else another another another another waiter but he was kind of hitting on a girl two stools Down Sports Center was on here and Channel 7 News was on here and it was about 1130 at night the news was on she said well you know my boyfriend said America got what it deserved you know I mean we're not innocent in this and I was like wow it's a pretty insensitive thing to say and then she went on and said he was happy to see it happen and he got off on watching the news over and over again and I was conflicted whether I should say something to the the cops I don't know maybe this guy's just all talk he's just saying this he's an ass is entitled to his opinion does this mean I should call the authorities on him the police or and then you know you look downtown you're like I don't know maybe this guy is for Real tipped off by odonnell the FBI questioned galani about his statements he had also been overheard boasting of going back to Pakistan to fight fight the Jihad with DEA agents in the room he denied it all in October of 2001 he was confronted by FBI agents he said oh well you think I'm an extremist you think I'm interested in Jihad don't forget I'm I'm working for the US government you've got it all wrong I'm I'm one of the good guys I I'm working for the DEA uh and he uses that information to cover allegations of his extremism he talked his way out of it soon after at a hastily call hearing a US prosecutor asked a judge to end galan's probation early a highly unusual move it's the only occasion I can recall it ever happening Howard leer was there for galani he says us officials seemed to want to rush his client to Pakistan as an operative in the new war on terror I think that uh he was going to go back to Pakistan with a view towards uh uh meeting with or or gathering whatever information he could that might be useful to the US government regarding certain extremist elements there intelligence officials say they knew about galan's involvement with lashkar which would soon be designated by the us as a terrorist group but it's not clear if they understood his growing commitment in fact he was becoming more entangled with lashkar by the day by early 2002 he had made his way to its camps in the Northwest mountains near Kashmir soon he was taking military training courses offered by lashar galani would have started out with a religious indoctrination and several months later he would have gone on and done the uh the general training uh the the 3 weeks light weapons and sometime later he went on and he did the specialized training and that's hand to-hand combat Guerilla Warfare training a regular Warfare training the Memoir recounts that during his training galani was taken to cashmir to see how lashar Fighters infiltrated into India lashar TBA is opposed to Suicide bombing they believe it's a sin for you to kill yourself and so what these people are going to do is they are going to fight to the death they're going to die by the enemy's hand rather than their own lar began launching raids by a small number of people in Kashmir and sometimes these were hit and run attacks like you would normally get in battle but quite often what they did is they would hit and then they would stay they didn't run they hunkered down and it was sort of this stronghold option and the idea was that they would fight for hours upon hours sometimes 20 25 30 hours these battles would go on the DEA says it officially deactivated galani as an informant in early 2002 but there are conflicting versions about when he actually stopped cooperating with them investigators and intelligence officials say the the information gleaned from him was of little value hopes of using him to spy on terrorists soon fizzled out if galan's terrorist connections were not causing official alarm they worried his friends and relatives including his mother Sarah Hedley moved to this house in the small town of Oxford Pennsyvania in the late 1990s on many days she would come here for coffee to talk with Phyllis Keith who owns the morning glories Cafe with her husband Michael came in regularly I'd say maybe two sometimes three times a day and at some point some of the stuff she says try to peque your interest and you tell me about that what I remember is it was later in the day and there weren't any other customers in the shop and she sat down and said I think my son might be involved with um training camps in Pakistan just pretty much straight out said that the impression I got from her is that he was in and out of the country pretty regularly and um at times she wouldn't know where he was at that point in time they were saying you know if you hear something you see something that makes you suspicious and one night I went home from work got out the phone book looked up the FBI and gave him a call you think the conversation lasted how long I don't know five minutes did you hear from them again no as da galani honed his skills in lashar ata's Training Camps he was becoming a Pakistani Warrior and after 3 years he wanted to fight in cashmir but one commander in lashar had other plans for him his name Sajid Mir this is the only known picture of Mir he was in his 30s at the time a technically Sophisticated New Generation leader who wanted to emulate al-qaeda's International Jihad he spoke fluent English and led lashkar's recruitment of non- Pakistani operatives his Terror plots were known at least to some in Western intelligence for years Jean Louie buger was a top anti-terror judge in France he began investigating lashar in the early 2000s he says he warned high ranking US security officials about the threat it [Music] posed who is br's investigation led to Sajid mir's conviction in a French Court in absentia Mir was in Pakistan at the time to this day investigators say Mir is Untouchable protected by the most powerful branch of the Pakistani military the isi Sid m is he really an isi person who is within uh lashai Toba or is he a lashai toyba person who was trained by uh the military in the background it doesn't matter it doesn't matter because uh in a sense lashai toyba was a proxy of the interservice intelligence directorate and very much under their control by by 2005 Mir had plans for da galani he was now a lashar operative in training being Reed for an undercover Mission but he wasn't an international spy not yet lashai toyba is a terrorist organization so they train people to kill they don't do Logistics very well and Headley needed real training in uh Espionage the training would come from the isi a man we know of as major ikbal it's probably an alias interpole has him listed as wanted but they don't even have his picture ikbal took the new American recruit and oversized training so the isi could maintain deniability galani says he was always to report to ikbal and Mir separately ibal delegates a non-commissioned officer to give Headley additional training uh in terms of Espionage so now you've got a guy who who's gone through all this lashar training more than most lashar militants do and now he's done this additional Espionage training with the isi how does he compare it to other uh jihadis of the men you've looked at galani is uh you know a gold mine for um both an intelligence Service uh and a militant organization that is looking to gather information he was now Sajid M's agent on orders galani returned to the United States in August 2005 his first stop was in New York his Canadian born second wife was running his video store the couple was having trouble this used to be Flick's video which was the video store that Hadley owned for a number of years he comes back here from Pakistan and he meets with his wife at this store and they have an argument about money and the allegation that the wife made at the time was that he got angry and he hit her uh apparently she said he backhanded her uh with his cell phone in his hand she had galani arrested for assault but the case was ultimately dropped she also reported him to the FBI she met with agents three times and told them in detail about lashar about the training camps even that galani had bought night vision goggles you know this incident that happened here with the combination of the domestic assault Elation and the tip to the FBI represented a golden opportunity to find out who he was this was a serious Moment Like a hinge moment in his trajectory into terrorism the FBI called galan's former Handler at the DEA by now galani had stopped working for them but law enforcement officials say that his past as an informant caused the FBI to drop the inquiry it was as if galani could get away with anything his next stop here at the City Hall in Philadelphia was to follow through on Sajid mir's orders I was looking for um a record of a name change gilani g i l a he comes back to the US and he changes his name there you go to David Coleman Headley so that he can travel more easily more covertly David was English for dud Coleman was his grandfather's name and Hedley was his mother's maiden name it was a simple bureaucratic act but us intelligence officials say changing his name would make it just that much more difficult to keep track of him even though he was working with saajid Meir a terrorist known to Western intelligence and lashar a group in the electronic sites of us and British spy agencies what is interesting is there is already a net right over people like SJ Mir and Headley is communicating and meeting with those people yet his contacts with these people who are now under this Spotlight weren't detected I can't speak to why he wasn't detected as you say when he was communicating with other people that were of of concern and that were on our radar perhaps there would be an awareness that there was an individual who was taking on this role or who had this Alias or something along those lines but not be clear that it was David Hedley an American citizen the name change the training all the preparation was by mid 2006 coming together for what was David Coleman hedley's ultimate Mission Mumbai over the course of 20 months Hedley traveled in and out of India at least eight times staying weeks or months at a stretch each visit he Advanced the attack plan investigating sources say at least survey all the 26 over for lushka operative David Goldman Headley day I had come here 2011 to retrace his steps as we know davidy accus an underg agent working for the American AG not India now I was back looking for new evidence the digital Clues he might have left behind in the physical world Hedley had the edge he looked nothing like a Pakistani and spoke fluent Hindi he insinuated himself into the city walking the streets living like a local Devin bardy is a top police official who investigated the Mumbai attacks after this place they took a left he questioned the people who knew Headley like his secretary Hedley hired her for the Mumbai Office of the immigration company owned by his friend R the business was here but it was just a front he was paying his secretary 11,000 rupes a month but uh he didn't process any case any at least any successful case Visa case so he will come sit there for half an hour one an hour and then he will just vanish but if someone had been looking he was leaving clues in the most visible places the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel an opulent icon of India built in 1903 from the beginning Sajid Meir knew this would be Ground Zero of his attack plan Headley stayed here on his first reconnaissance trip in September 2006 months into the mission he even checked in with a new wife on their honeymoon paying with credit cards he bought meals in hotel restaurants and a designer bag here purchases that would later digitally link Headley to lashar and terrorism we know specifically because of the credit card charges he went to the M Block store and he went and had breakfast in the sea lounge with that wonderful view of in the water and he's videotaping and and and he's just assembling all this information that he's going to use this place enjoy it and then he is going to be the engineer of its destruction as Headley case the Taj Hotel and other potential targets he was leaving behind a digital trail of Clues if a spy agency had been looking Headley kept at least five email addresses while in Mumbai used to contact his lashar and isi bosses and he sent long emails to his high school friend tahur Rana who wired Headley money to help him create the business front and at one point he traded a flurry of 18 emails with Sajid Meir and major rball about one potential Target India's Hindu nationalist party shiv Senna a sworn enemy of lashar come on in Raja Reggie worked with Shi Senna Headley had befriended him and enticed him with fake business opportunities in his Memoir Headley says he got complete access to the group's headquarters filming inside and what happened next yeah he emailed me about the projects so once I said let me see The credibility of the company whatever the projects you have done there and then you start exchange he starts exchanging emails with you definitely yes if he's emailing I would replying it okay did you see him again no so all this is going on by email emails yeah you know he was working for both lashar I of the terrorist group and the isi the Pakistani intelligence agency when he communicates with you he writes to them very excitedly he saw you as a Target uh to potentially do Espionage and even terrorism I mean I that must have been a powerful thing to realize one idea was to offer the leader of the party a trip to America where Headley wrote we can take care of them code for an assassination plot now I'm I'm I'm you know I'm analyzing that because his intentions was very bad very bad Headley and his other Handler major ikbal traded emails with terms that could have raised flags for intelligence analysts he even addressed his Handler by name and rank he was communicating with plotters and groups known to international spy agencies but no one in the intelligence World seemed to have noticed when he returned from his reconnaissance trips Headley found his status in lashkar was growing he was the American operative who did things nobody else could in his personal Life Hedley adopted the ways of lashkar already married to two women Hedley decided to marry again to a Moroccan named fisa I told her that he's already married and he's having kids and okay he said no problem if our wife gives permission then I don't mind she was fiercely independent a med student she wore western clothes and partied with hedley's old friend Chan B he said Hedley wanted a more traditional Muslim wife so he wanted her to wear yes he wanted her to wear all this to stay to look like a Muslim woman she changed for him but fisa felt she was being treated as a mistress she was left alone for months while he was in Mumbai the marriage fell apart and her anger led to what happened next she goes to the US Embassy in Islamabad and warns them about her husband's extremist activities just as the Mumbai plot is really Gathering momentum the the reconnaissance and the preparation that's right they must have had a disagreement she you know she's short fuse she goes to denounce him and and mentioned that he was trained by lashka toyba he's really a terrorist and uh nothing happens she met with Embassy officials three times between December 2007 and April 2008 she told them her husband had ties to the isi and hated India and perhaps most surprising fisa told US Embassy officials about their honeymoon at the Taj the year before in combination with her other charges that could have led investigators directly to headley's connections to lashar and the isi but intelligence officials at the embassy declined to look at the case Embassy Security officials filed it away as low priority an opportunity was lost during the same period the US began picking up chatter disconnected of intelligence but none associated with Headley one of the difficulties with that is lashar is always plotting in 2008 as previous years we knew that they were engaging in plotting and that information has been shared with the Indians but it wasn't clear where they were in a number of these attacks as 2008 progressed the US kept hearing more chatter senior us officials have told us that the NSA was collecting intelligence about about a lashar threat to Mumbai later the CIA intercepted a communication indicating an attack might come by sea counterterror agents at the US Embassy in New Delhi relayed what they knew to their Indian counterparts as a result Indian police issued a warning in September that listed the Taj Hotel at the top of a possible list of targets security at the hotel was temporarily beefed up but little more was done we got warnings that there would likely to be an attack on Mumbai the Taj Hotel was very specific but uh it's like any other thing you you put an alert people will wait for you know 15 days of alert or 30 days of alert and then nothing happens early in hedley's reconnaissance his handlers had a limited goal but his reports seemed to embolden Lar what starts out as this one to two person hit and run attack against the T Mahal Hotel becomes this 10 person multiple target attack of the kind that lraa has never launched before by early summer 2008 a date was set for the attack and another important decision the attackers would hijack an Indian fishing boat and sail to Mumbai David Headley comes here and one of the crucial roles placs is in setting up a maritime attack which is the hardest kind of terrorist attack having the gunmen arrive by sea is harder than having them arrive any other way he took boat tours from here he hired a fisherman to take him around and what he was looking for was the best approach and the best landing site Hedley scoured the city searching by car and boat and then he found the perfect spot a fisherman slump it's a pocket of poverty Aid wealth its Beach used as a public sewer here he saw a strategic Landing site a main thare runs nearby Headley brought a GPS unit to map it out he comes here he plots the GPS coordinates for this landing spot this route from Karachi to Mumbai have been plotted out by GPS this is the route this is where we are right here with a video camera Headley trace the roots for the attack the Taj Mahal Hotel about 8 blocks East two blocks closer was the Leopold Cafe a favorite for Western tourists just around the seaw wall was the oberoy hotel and then a quick taxi ride away locals would be targeted at the busiest rail station in Mumbai Headley soon left for Pakistan with the intelligence he'd gathered he returned on July 1st 2008 airport security cameras captured this picture of him upon his arrival in Mumbai for his last reconnaissance major ikbal and Sajid Meir had given him final instructions now he returned to the Taj to scout the attack's main [Music] target he came here to the lobby using the camera on his mobile phone to film okay these images have never been seen [Music] before he writes in his Memoir that an employee told him to put down the camera videot taking was not allowed there was one more Target to pinpoint Kad house a synagogue and hostel run by an American Rabbi and his wife major ikbal chose the target his objective the global Jihad against Jews and Americans in his Memoir Hedley writes that he looked for security cameras he videotaped and he took these pictures he writes that the building seemed inconsequential he took the risk of calling major ikbal it's not as valuable as you think he says he told him major ikbal replied no Mr Hedley a lot of real estate experts have told us that that particular property is going to appreciate him value within a few months he was laughing writes Headley he sent more emails used his credit card all potential electronic evidence of headley's mission that after 2 years was [Music] over in August he returned to Pakistan here to the galani family compound in lore in his Memoir he explains that lashar was moving forward with the Mumbai attack plan the attackers the boys would carry GPS devices attack leader Sajid Meir took Hadley's reconnaissance video and GPS data and gave them to a man who helped train the attackers his name zerar sha he was lashar's Communications chief his team of young computer experts were 21st centur jihadis I learned a lot about sha from the interrogation of his assistant who was captured and questioned by Indian authorities in his interrogation he said sha was in charge of setting up a way to talk to the attackers once in Mumbai a computer calling system known as voiceover Internet Protocol or viip in 2008 in Pakistan it was a cuttingedge technology that they thought was harder to trace they were wrong what sha never knew was that Western spies had gained access to his online Communications months before the attack on Mumbai it was the British equivalent of the NSA General Communications Headquarters or gchq so this is 201127 but again we have we found the evidence in Edward snowden's Trove of documents so this is um Jeff Larsson reports on technology and intelligence for propublica he was one of the first to analyze the Snowden documents related to Mumbai and Zar sha it's a long arduous process to search through this material because it's so gigantic there's tens of thousands of documents so I started looking for information about what happened in Mumbai and realized that they know about zerar sha it was a startling Revelation Western intelligence had technology in place to monitor sha before the attack on Mumbai it looks like he became a target of Interest they had been following him around the internet um you know it looks like they found they found sort of an operations guy right once they have enough information via just tapping the internet all of a sudden that person becomes a Target but again Sha's emails searches and other online activities were being captured but it is unclear if anyone was actually analyzing the stream of intelligence so we have now have this time frame some September what we don't know is how much is collected how often it's reviewed if it's collected is it analyzed right right exactly I mean we don't know in in other stories we've definitely seen that when they get like an intelligence tip they're on this person immediately there are phases that this you know sort of intelligence collection is going through right they might be collecting it in case you know they get another tip and you get more and more interesting from Sha's assistant we know that in the days before the Mumbai attack sha set up the attack control room it was in the Pakistani Port City of Karachi on the second story of a building whose ground floor was a fishing supply business intelligence sources gave me this layout of the control room two televisions on one wall four laptops connected to the internet the Target in Mumbai was 500 M Away by sea lashar leaders gathered in the control room as the attackers made their way to Mumbai on the hijacked Indian fishing boat Sajid Meir was in charge zarar sha was near him working on a Lenovo laptop connected to the internet at hand would be David Coleman headley's surveillance footage and GPS coordinates that he had [Music] collected all of it was leading to November 26th 2008 that evening Hedley was at home in the city of lore he had been waiting for a message from Sajid Mir in the Karachi control room when he received a text on his phone Mir wrote turn on your television govern struck at hotels stations and restaurants across Mumbai hundreds have been injured and there are reports of Western hostages taken this is possibly the most well coordinated hackers were captured on closed circuit different officials describe this as a professional and highly coordinated explosives some weapons they were able to lock down gun fanned out across the city there were people trapped in that building all people still in this Taj Hotel huge massive fire that is on top of the hotelo hotel everywhere shot a train station India has seen terrorism before but nothing that would have required this level of planning and [Music] coordination they have attacked the hot at least 150 people have been killed one captured gun isak bring Pakistan to the mass 24 hours after these multi-prong coordinated attacks began this crisis is still a Jewish Community Center was attacked the Israeli family taken hostage kabad house is not easy to find but headley's GPS had guided two of the attackers to its location when I first came here in 2011 it was still marked from the bullets and RPGs of the attack the attackers had taken hostages this began a 3day Siege they had a lot of ammunition and they kept on going for a while mosha holberg's brother Rabbi Gabriel holtzberg and his wife rivka were among the first to die this is where they found my brother and his wife flying over here Indian authorities were able to intercept the attackers cell phone calls this is when they overheard the conversation with one of the hostages I'm asking your name my name is Norma listen Norma we are all listening don't do anything wrong okay going to hurt you then it was SJ directing The Siege from karach all we want is to stop operation and left negotiate he wanted a bargain for his wounded attacker he reassured Norma what is it that you want to negotiate just sit back and relax and don't worry okay maybe you're going to you know celebrate your Sabbath with your family a proposed prisoner swap didn't happen then another call from Sid this time he's speaking in [Music] uru [Music] [Music] e it was the beginning of the end of the kabad house attack Indian Commandos finally arrived their assault on the lashar attackers would broadcast on television Sajid Mir and Karachi watched live but there was something else the documents leaked by Edward Snowden say that just hours after the Mumbai attack began British spies realized something incredible they could spy on the attack control room as the attack is happening gchq notice that they can start collecting or listening in on the command center it included access to Sha's electronic communications they can essentially watch over zerar Shaw's shoulder as the attack happens you have in theory access to all all of the websites that they visit you know things that they're looking at on Google Maps the whole bore of everything that they're doing at any given time Sha's computer was serving as a direct line for Sajid Mir to the attackers at kabad house his voice crystal clear as he talked with ukasha one of the attackers The Gunshot signal the final moments of the kabad house [Music] Siege two terrorists were dead six hostages had been murdered [Music] the Mumbai attacks ended the next day 166 people had been killed indiscriminately dozens of nationalities spectrum of religions including [Music] Muslim despite close ties between British and American spy agencies us officials say that only after the killing was underway were they told by gchq about the access to sha the British also informed Indian intelligence which it turned out had been monitoring sha before The Siege as well what's remarkable to me is you know it's it would be very easy to just jump to the conclusion like my God how could this have not uh led to the prevention of the attack this is a huge piece of the puzzle it was an historic near Miss analysis and intelligence sharing that didn't happen exploit one NSA document says the British pre-attack data on Sha later helped analysts piece together lashar's complete operations plan gchq disputes the idea that it had information that could have stopped lashkar's plot and says it would have shared any such intell with India the Snowden documents show that gchq considered the case to be a notable success the on part about this is in writeups after the fact they do say this was a successful operation and things work the way they're supposed to but the facts on the ground is Mumbai still happened [Music] India and the world were reeling lashara was no longer in the shadows the detailed intelligence from the control room gave Western agencies evidence to force Pakistan to crack down on the group Pakistan denied any role in the Mumbai attacks with within days zarar Shaw and other top lashard chiefs were arrested but not David Coleman Headley he was at home in lore still unnoticed by International intelligence even though he did little to hide himself in cyberspace during the attack his wife wrote an email of Praise about his work in Mumbai and barely coded words congrats on your graduation She Wrote he received other emails with Grizzly wire photos of the attacks and then he forwarded them to another email account he owned in an online chat room Headley even boasted he had inside details of the [Music] attacks just 2 weeks after The Siege Hedley traveled back to the United States leaving a path of Rec and border crossings the NSA had now intensified its monitoring of lash car in the isi US intelligence officials say they ended up catching some of headley's emails in the net but they admit they didn't connect the dots there's information that's gathered in terms of his emails and his calls and his contacts one wonders why he didn't get detected earlier it's partly about volume you might be able to access all that stuff but you can't collect it all you can't store it all for very long you can't analyze it so without some little indications of where the needles are you're looking at a an aircraft hanger full of Hast Stacks it's about collecting analyzing and warehousing unimaginable amounts of data the world sends 3 million emails a second your Communications my communications online gaming massive pornography Netflix streaming of films uh financial markets talking to each other and and the intelligence task and it's a very big one is to try and find that very small amount of information which has value we have this giant program predicated on the idea that we're going to suck up all the communications on the world and feed them into some computer and that's how we're going to discover whether terrorist attacks are going to occur the question is does it work like that they did not just look at all of the metadata for every cell phone they're intercepting and then it somehow flashed up on the screen and told him David Coleman Headley is a bad guy you need someone to tell you or something to tip you off to say that this guy David Coleman Headley is interesting all along there had been plenty of signs that Hedley was potentially dangerous tips stretching back seven years and just days after the Mumbai attack Headley by then back with his family in Chicago investigators were looking into another tip it came to the FBI's Philadelphia office from a woman who had known hedley's mother she sees these attacks on Mumbai and she has a friend whose son may have been over in Pakistan fighting and and so she uh she contacts us and so our Philadelphia division goes out and interviews hedley's cousin we talk to him and he states that yes you know uh he is in Pakistan but knows of no uh information in terms of H being involved in any plot what we know now is hle was actually in in Chicago um during that time frame so so what the cousin said to you guys wasn't true that's correct it was another lost opportunity if the Philadelphia tip had been pursued and minating Communications could have been detected a call from his cousin warning him the FBI had visited emails Headley wrote to Jihadi contacts in Pakistan saying he was worried the FBI was interested in him other Communications asking if Sajid Meir had been arrested after the Mumbai attacks and this an email about something he and Mir had been discussing for months more code words but also terms any investigator would question it was a new plot just weeks after the Mumbai attacks Hedley Was preparing to go to Denmark to do reconnaissance the target gyllen Poston the Danish newspaper that had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad hedley's mission was to take revenge on those who had published the cartoons as he done in Mumbai Headley moved with stealth his cover once again a US businessman he stayed at this hotel as he scouted targets he was here until the 22nd of January from the 17th to the 22nd uh yeah when Headley came by to uh visit julan person I guess I had been working there for about 6 months we weren't really used to businessmen walking through the door Hedley surveyed his Target taking this photo of the gyllen Poston building and on January 19th Headley sent a progress update to tahana the same Man Who provided a business cover for him in Mumbai he says that surveillance is going well and that he is going to find out about placing an ad in gillen's Poston and he doesn't hesitate to the newspaper ad Department by email the man who helped plot the Mumbai attacks had walked into one of the top Targets in the world but no one was looking for David Hedley so no one noticed after 10 days on the ground Hedley headed to Pakistan in the wake of the Mumbai attacks lar begins to come under increasing pressure and ultimately they tell Headley to put the attack in Denmark on hold Headley being the entrepreneurial guy that he is wants to continue to move this forward and he finds new support in the form of ilas Kashmir who is al-qaeda's director of operations in Pakistan he told Headley that those above him supported the Denmark plot Hedley was now working for Al-Qaeda it changed the nature of the [Music] attack the plan was taking the editors hostage and beheading them and throwing the heads off the roof this is not just a small attack against the paper a Vengeance attack this is going to be a shock and awe attack in in being so graphic and being so morally incomprehensible to get the job done Headley would need logistical support Kashmir Mary gave him money in the names of two contacts in the UK Headley then flew back to Chicago once there he called kashmir's men but that act placing a phone call was headley's biggest mistake kashmir's men were under surveillance by British counterterror officers the British alerted the Americans the response to this tip would be different it was a telephone number in a first name only an individual named David in contact with two individuals that were of interest of our our foreign liaison partner the tip mentioned Al-Qaeda and came from a trusted Ally still it was just one of many leads coming in it was handed off to the newest FBI agent on a counterterrorism squad I arrived on the squad on July 17th and on July 22nd I received for my super supervisor a lead this is your first lead too right yes a partner and I drove out to the actual location to confirm that that telephone was the number that had been in question it was a public pay phone this caller David last name unknown had used this pay phone more than once they were unaware how close they were to their suspect the pay phone was just blocks away from headley's apartment we began to realize that he was going to travel outside of the United States and then you start working with customs and board protection correct they're scrubbing their flight data the Manifest looking for Davids that were traveling during that time frame at what point do they come up with the name so on July 25th CBP confirmed that there was a David Hedley specifically on that flight that was identified I notified our foreign partners that he was in route to the location that they were monitoring he was on his way here Darby a city in northern England it's where Kashmir said Headley could find support for the Denmark plot it has served as a hub for terrorist activity Derby has a very prevalent second third generation Pakistani Community but the connections with Pakistan are very strong WR through their lineage they are actually entitled to Pakistani citizenship therefore the ease of travel to Pakistan becomes quite straight forward you have individuals who are recruited to go fight in insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan and then bigger causes bigger groups like Al-Qaeda he met with the contacts we know them as Simon and Bash Headley was looking for guns money and unteers it didn't go well Simon and Bash were worried that they were being monitored that they were potentially being watched so they felt more comfortable talking to Headley at a bus stop he comes in thinking that elas Kashmir this incredibly powerful terrorist has got two operatives waiting to meet him to give him $110,000 and guns and and part either participate in the attack or provide men who will and there's a total disconnect and he's totally crestfall and when they immediately make clear to him they don't want to participate in this attack UK was monitoring headley's activities once he was in Derby then providing that information to the US and also to the authorities in Denmark this is the road dejected but still determined to pull off the attack Headley went to Denmark on his own but this time he wasn't alone sare Danish and intelligence agents followed him as he cased Copenhagen right up to the front entrance of his Target gillan's Poston but he had a problem he becomes very confused because the paper has moved you know if you're just focusing in on the paper if you know the location then it comes back and then it seemingly have moved uh there is a another level of complexity he headed back to Chicago with diminished Ambitions if he couldn't take down the paper he would take out the cartoonist it had only been a week since the FBI had identified him and it was only as he flew home that agents learned of hedley's connection to a key Al-Qaeda figure it's when we make the connection with with Headley and ilas Kashmir that is you know we have something here we have someone that's connected to core Al-Qaeda the concern is is there a Homeland plot here in the United States now this investigation had garnered the attention all the way up to attorney general they opened up on Headley monitoring his phones his home his car received authority to go up on hedley's Communications real time anybody that came in contact with Hedley became a target of ours and that's when it kind of grew into a larger picture of who David Headley really was the FBI was combing through large amounts of data and at their request the NSA opened its vast archives years of domestic and international surveillance phone call records and electronic communications like emails were searchable we had people working literally Around the Clock here in Chicago and at FBI headquarters to scrub through this information any receipt any email was a tiny Glimpse Inside the Mind of a terrorist soon they connected him to lashar in the isi but his role in the Mumbai attack remained hidden within the Cascade of [Music] data there was an email from his wife to Headley that said congratulations on your graduation we did not understand what necessarily that email by itself meant just a few days prior to the arrest we started putting the pieces together initially of headley's travel into Mumbai with credit card receipt at a store at The Taj Hotel the Clues added to a larger case the FBI had built with traditional investigative work the wire Taps the stakeouts connecting Headley to Denmark and acting on that information the FBI arrested Headley at O'Hare International Airport on October 3rd 2009 I said Mr Hedley we would like to do this quietly discreetly um if you would just come with us and he said very well a fledgling plot against a newspaper had been stopped but for those killed 10 months before in Mumbai the evidence came too [Music] late it was a case study of the limitations of the most sophisticated spying capabilities can you give me any examples where it has actually prevented a terror plot David Headley David Headley David Headley us officials later claimed hedley's case was an NSA success story in order to find the needle we needed the Hast stack there is no other way that we know of to connect the dots they said programs that collect phone records and overseas Communications played a key role but others give a different account of the importance of the programs like the one collecting overseas Communications I want to either exaggerate or minimize the role that different agencies play the role that the NSA is playing in this case is support that is correct so that this was not a plateau that is discovered by that that program that's correct after the Snowden Revelations a White House panel examined the intelligence community's claims about the Headley case and other Terror investigations David medine was its chairman in the Headley case what we found was that the NSA did conduct a search of telephone records and provided the results of that search to the FBI but what we also found out was the information that was provided to the FBI either corroborated or duplicated information that the FBI already had so what role did the program play in in identifying or stopping headl none us intelligence officials now concede that assertions about the nsaa's role in stopping the Denmark plot were overstated but they insist that the agency did valuable work on the case I think somewhere in those aircraft hangers full of hay stacks the Americans had some great stuff but only retrospectively are you able to find it I don't have any idea how the David Coleman Headley example justifies this Dragnet approach I mean first of all they didn't stop him before he carried out significant operational activity for a long period of time nobody detected him nobody stopped him lots and lots and lots of people died horrifically so you know I mean I don't know but I want some I mean I would like it doesn't matter what I want but I just some like to in the end it wasn't Hightech spying that revealed the extent of headley's role in the Mumbai attacks not it was David Coleman Hedley it was just a matter of moments uh and he was he was ready to to speak with us that's what I was always thinking about this thing about s you know maybe you mentioned this maybe you could do something we had a a little bit of an idea that he was involved in Mumbai but until we started talking to him he gave it up we just didn't know and I'll be person you you got you know what I [Music] mean [Music] for more on this and other Frontline programs visit our website at pbs.org [Music] Frontline frontlines American Terrorist is available on DVD to order visit shop pbs.org or call 1800 play PBS Frontline is also available for download on it [Music] TS

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

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Length: 83min 16sec (4996 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 29 2023