Author: Michael Isikoff
Publication: Msnbc.Msn.com
Date: October 16, 2010
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39702336/ns/us_news-security/
There were two separate warnings that an American
businessman was plotting a terrorist attack in India with the Pakistani extremist
group that carried out the Mumbai assault, NBC News confirmed Saturday.
But the second warning, given by the man's
wife to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad just a year before the attack, was never
passed to the FBI in New York, according to U.S. law enforcement officials.
The November 2008 attack in Mumbai left 166
people dead and severely frayed relations between nuclear-armed India and
Pakistan.
Three years before the attack, FBI agents
in New York were told that an American was talking about buying night vision
goggles and other equipment that could be used for terrorist purposes, U.S.
law enforcement officials confirmed to NBC.
But the officials said the information, which
came from the man's ex-wife, was "general" in nature and could not
be linked to any specific terrorism plot. Nor was it sufficient to place the
man, David Coleman Headley, on the "no fly" list or trigger a full-scale
probe at the time.
After the FBI closed out its file on Headley,
the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad was visited in 2007 by another wife of Headley's
who told officials that her husband was involved with members of Lashkar-e-Taiba,
according to U.S. law enforcement and national security officials. But that
report was never passed back to the FBI in New York, one official told NBC.
That and other new information about Headley
could raise new questions about information sharing among U.S. law enforcement
and intelligence agencies. It could also create diplomatically sensitive issues
for the White House, given that President Obama is scheduled to visit India
next week and attend a ceremony commemorating the Mumbai attacks.
"U.S. authorities took seriously what
Headley's former wives said," said a senior administration official.
"Their information was of a general nature and did not suggest any particular
terrorist plot."
Mike Hammer, a White House spokesman, also
said Saturday that the U.S. "regularly provided threat information to
Indian officials in 2008 before the attacks in Mumbai …. Had we known
about the timing and other specifics related ot the Mumbai attacks, we would
have immediately shared those details with the government of India."
Their original tip on Headley came from his
ex-wife in New York who went to the police after he allegedly beat her. In
the course of reporting what was described as a "domestic abuse"
case, she mentioned his sympathy with Pakistani militants and his plans to
purchase night vision goggles, prompting the police officers to call in FBI
agents from its Joint Terrorism Task Force, one of the officials said.
Headley was arrested by the FBI in Chicago
last year and later pleaded guilty to conducting multiple reconnaissance missions
for the Mumbai attacks on behalf of Lashkar.
