US intel failed to act on repeated Headley warnings: Report

A review being conducted for the director of national intelligence has found that since 2001 a number of leads emerged about the Pakistani-American terrorist, which if taken cohesively could have busted his plot. The US intelligence failed to respond to all these instances of warnings since 2001 about Headley, who went on to play a major role in 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

It was not only his two wives, but several other multiple sources as well, who had all warned American intelligence authorities about Headley's negative side, ProPublica said in a report, a version of which was also published in The Washington Post. In the seven years in which leads accumulated, the double agent was not questioned or placed on a terror watch list, it said.

In fact, just seven months before the Mumbai attacks, one of Headley's ex-wives had told US officials overseas that she suspected he was linked to a 2007 bombing in India that was blamed on LeT. The report said quoting an unnamed senior anti-terror official that the woman had warned that her ex-husband was on a "special mission".

The report came as US President Barack Obama arrived in Mumbai and paid homage to the victims of the 26/11 carnage at the Taj Mahal hotel that was one of the targets of the attack. It was a typical case of flawed information-sharing that failed to convert an "overwhelming" flow of raw intelligence to identify the threat.

The report said a lack of focus on LeT also kept investigators from identifying the threat. It is notable that the just ahead of Obama's ongoing visit to India, the US has imposed sanctions on the group.

"It's a black eye. The problem is the information system. New York didn't know about Philadelphia. Islamabad didn't know about Philadelphia or New York," an official was quoted as saying.

The review was launched after media reports said last month that two of Headley's three wives had tipped off agencies in 2005 and 2007 about his anti-India plans. The review has now found that warnings also came up in 2001, 2002, April 2008 and December 2008 -- the last one a month after the Mumbai attack had already happened.

The 50-year-old Headley who has pleaded guilty to charges of plotting the attack, was arrested only in October 2009. He spied on Pakistani drug traffickers for the Drug Enforcement Administration starting in the late 1990s, though officials say the DEA cut ties with him "well before" Mumbai, the report said.

And the review is also likely to probe whether his work as a US agent affected investigations. The final tip against Headley surfaced on December 1, 2008, in Philadelphia when a friend of his dead mother told the Fderal Bureau of Investigation that Headley "had been fighting alongside individuals in Pakistan to liberate Kashmir for the past five to six years," it said.

The FBI agents, who also looked into the previous leads, however closed the case as they believed Headley was overseas. He was finally picked up after he travelled from Chicago to Denmark to do reconnaissance for a new attack.

"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 report said. The tipsters included, besides his wives and his mother's friend, one of his former girlfriends in New York City and the owner of a business frequented by his mother near Philadelphia.

"The review also turned up a second, more specific tip from Headley's Moroccan wife when she contacted US officials in Pakistan again, just seven months before the Mumbai attacks, officials say," ProPublica said.

A spokeswoman for the Director of National Intelligence said that reviews of this nature are not uncommon and pointed out that since these events occurred, advancements in information sharing systems have been made by applying the lessons learned.